{"id":5155,"date":"2024-10-10T14:05:18","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T14:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kreisky-forum.org\/veranstaltung\/algeria-and-the-challenges-of-democratization"},"modified":"2026-04-21T10:48:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T10:48:54","slug":"algeria-and-the-challenges-of-democratisation","status":"publish","type":"kreisky_event","link":"https:\/\/www.kreisky-forum.org\/en\/veranstaltung\/algeria-and-the-challenges-of-democratization","title":{"rendered":"ALGERIA, A LINK BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH, EAST AND WEST?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Gudrun Harrer in conversation with Slimane Zeghidour<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>ALGERIA, A LINK BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH, EAST AND WEST?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnly young nations have a history,\u201d says the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It is indeed so short that everyone knows it by heart, so much does it merge with the history of their family - and their own. Slimane Zeghidour, the Franco-Algerian reporter and essayist, can testify to this. He is the \u201ctwin\u201d of the Algerian State. Born in Algeria, then French, on the eve of the war (1954-1962) that gave birth to sovereign Algeria, he lived through the entire conflict enclosed in a displaced persons camp, under the strict control of French soldiers, behind closed doors, without radio or newspapers.<\/p>\n<p>In the camp surrounded by barbed wire, he \u201cdiscovered,\u201d at the same time as the horrors of war, the dispensary and the school. Seriously ill, military doctors saved his life. Conscripts, in uniform, taught him to read and write. Thanks to which, he was able to read, in public, the leaflet dropped by a plane, on the very day of independence, the magic word: \"Ceasefire\".<\/p>\n<p><em>Irony of History: \"thanks\" to the war, he was able to heal, learn... write, and tell.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The largest country in Africa, Algeria, as a French possession since 1830, was part of Europe until its independence in the summer of 1962. Since then, it has experienced, after the euphoria, a first coup d'\u00e9tat, then the austerity, repression and shortage of the Soviet-style single party, later a civil war between the army and the Islamic fundamentalist movement, then the return to an authoritarian power... The invasion of Ukraine allowed it to bounce back and strengthen its role as a major supplier of gas to the EU. A project called SoutH2 should deliver Algerian hydrogen via a corridor running from Algeria to Germany via Italy and Austria.<\/p>\n<p>This evening Slimane Zeghidour will try to untangle the interwoven threads of his personal history and that of his two countries, France and Algeria, the two \"Siamese peoples\", with a back and forth between the past and the present and a back and forth between his personal journey and the evolution of both States. Slides from the camp, family archives and maps will mark a journey through time that is also intended to be a link between the two shores of the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Slimane Zeghidour <\/strong>is a writer and journalist, serving as editor-in-chief and editorialist at TV5 MONDE for 20 years. As a senior reporter, he covered Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, and Central Asia for outlets like Le Monde, El Pais, and others. He followed the rise of religious fundamentalisms across various regions, including Brazil, Algeria, Israel, and Iran. Zeghidour taught geopolitics of religions at Sciences-Po and Celsa journalism school, and lectured at universities like Berkeley, Princeton, and Tel Aviv. He authored several works, including the autobiographical <em>Sors, la route t'attend<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Gudrun Harrer<\/strong>, Senior Editor, Der Standard; Lecturer in Modern History and Politics of the Near and Middle East at the University of Vienna and at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gudrun Harrer in conversation with Slimane Zeghidour ALGERIA, A LINK BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH, EAST AND WEST? &nbsp; \u201cOnly young nations have a history,\u201d says the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It is indeed so short that everyone knows it by heart, so much does it merge with the history of their family - and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5157,"template":"","format":[29],"meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"schwerpunkt":[43],"class_list":["post-5155","kreisky_event","type-kreisky_event","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","schwerpunkt-internationale-politik-europa-und-sicherheit","format-podiumsdiskussion"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>ALGERIA, A LINK BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH, EAST AND WEST? - Kreisky Forum<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kreisky-forum.org\/en\/event\/algeria-and-the-challenges-of-democratisation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ALGERIA, A LINK BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH, EAST AND WEST? - Kreisky Forum\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gudrun Harrer in conversation with Slimane Zeghidour ALGERIA, A LINK BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH, EAST AND WEST? &nbsp; \u201cOnly young nations have a history,\u201d says the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. 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