Word: algerianness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Sarkozy's embrace of tougher anti-immigration policies have created considerable antipathy in Algeria - as has the President's refusal to apologize for crimes and abuses committed during France's colonial past. The resentment has even gotten personal: last week, apparently referring to Sarkozy's distant Jewish ancestry, the Algerian Veterans Affairs Minister Mohammed Cherif Abbès described France's "Jewish lobby" as "the real architect of Sarkozy's ascent to power...
...more than halfway, admitting "yes, terrible crimes were committed throughout the war of independence that claimed innumerable victims on both sides", and that it was to honor all those victims that he'd made the trips. "It's this work of remembering that I've come to offer the Algerian people," he said...
...Indeed, despite Sarkozy's acnowledgement of the often brutal French colonialization - and the chilling of relations between Paris and Algiers it had provoked in the past - it's unlikely his comments will fully satisfy Algerian critics like President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who once likened French occupation of his country to Germany's WWII occupation of France. But Sarkozy's decision to make the trip despite the ambient hostility toward him - and his surprising reversal in discussing France's colonial past - was an indication he was ready to say and do some important things while in Algeria...
...have other sorts of travelers: Robert Byron, after his time at Eton and Oxford, paid for his Tibet trip piecemeal by serializing articles about it. There is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the thoughtful French aviator who piloted his way around Algerian skies and Saharan camels before becoming at one point—randomly—director of the Aeroposta Argentina Company...
...Meanwhile, even the diplomatic arena once so hospitable to Sarkozy's may now not be quite so kind. Tensions are high ahead of Sarkozy's state visit to Algeria Monday, after a conservative member of the Algerian cabinet claimed the President's election to the Elysée was the work of a "Jewish lobby" in France. Far from denouncing the comment - or firing the official - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika merely told Sarkozy during a phone call Thursday that the view did "not reflect anything of Algeria's position". That chilly sign from abroad is yet another indication that Sarkozy...