Conflits, géopolitique · Conflits revue de géopolitique

Algérie, un pays empêché - Akram Belkaïd

·43 min·3 clips

How does Saudi Arabia use date donations as geopolitical soft power during Ramadan?

1. 'Conflits, géopolitique' hosts a long-form interview with Akram Belkaïd, journalist and author of 'Chronicles of Ramadan' (published by Tallandier), examining Ramadan as a social fact and Algeria as a geopolitical subject. 2. Belkaïd is presented as a journalist and author whose books include 'An Algeria Without Questions'; no guest co-host is identified, and the interviewer remains unnamed throughout. 3. The episode's core thesis is that Ramadan is a 'total social fact' — interrupting every domain of life — whose complexity is obscured in France by a default of ignorance and political stigmatisation. 4. On dates as geopolitics, Belkaïd explains that Saudi Arabia distributes date donations annually to Muslim-majority poor countries across Africa and sub-Saharan regions as a tool of soft power. 5. Social media has disintermediated traditional religious authority: Muslims now consult Instagram and TikTok scholars for rulings on fasting validity, bypassing the imam, the grandfather, and the father in a single click. 6. This disintermediation produces a spectrum from progressive voices to 'extremely retrograde' ones who declare fasting invalid if the believer listens to music or applies aftershave, creating a climate of permanent surveillance of private behaviour. 7. Economically, Ramadan now represents more than 4–5% of annual household consumption spending for the families concerned in France, and major supermarkets have displaced small community grocery stores as the primary point of supply. 8. Maghrebi restaurant owners who once lost customers during Ramadan now offer dedicated iftar menus because Muslim families with purchasing power are choosing to break the fast in restaurants. 9. In France, political debate around Ramadan is predominantly negative: Belkaïd cites politicians who proposed banning Ramadan for young people and describes a persistent framing of the practice as 'problematic.' 10. On Gaza, Belkaïd says his practice of Ramadan changed permanently after witnessing the famine imposed on Gaza, describing it as impossible to fast festively when entire families in Gaza have nothing to eat in the evening. 11. Belkaïd argues that the Franco-Algerian wound is more acute in France than in Algeria, because France contains multiple incompatible memories: Pied-Noir nostalgia, Harki descendants, post-1990s arrivals, and French families carrying the transmitted trauma of conscripts. 12. By contrast, a 20-year-old Algerian today relates to the independence war the way a French 20-year-old in the 1970s related to World War I — as irrelevant ancient history. 13. Despite official tension, Belkaïd says the real relationship between the two peoples is 'fluid and works': mixed marriages, university exchanges, and strong trade flows make France Algeria's third-largest supplier and Algeria France's second commercial outlet in Africa after Morocco. 14. Algeria's new quinquenarian leaders — who did not live through the Algerian war and studied in Algeria rather than France — are 'de-complexed' and treat France as one partner among several rather than a necessary horizon. 15. On Algeria's regional role, Belkaïd traces a diplomatic golden age under Houari Boumédiène — the 1973 Algiers Conference, the American hostage crisis mediation — contrasting it with today's pragmatic balance politics that include NATO joint exercises and cordial relations with Italian Prime Minister Meloni. 16. Algeria held a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council and pushed resolutions on Palestine, yet controversially voted for the Trump peace plan because it included a mention of a Palestinian state — a position neither Russia nor China adopted, as both abstained. 17. On culture, Belkaïd critiques the election of Boualem Sansal to the Académie française: he argues Sansal's career as a senior Algerian ministry official — absent from clandestine opposition during the single-party era — contradicts his current persona as a persecuted dissident. 18. The episode is conducted as a formal sit-down interview with prepared questions; the register is analytical throughout, with occasional irony (notably the reference to Jean-François Copé and to Zola being rejected 25 times from the Académie). 19. The episode will appeal to listeners interested in French-Algerian history, contemporary Islam in Europe, and the intersection of literature and politics in Francophone culture. 20. Listeners seeking a neutral or celebratory account of Ramadan, or those with no interest in Maghrebi geopolitics, are unlikely to find the episode rewarding.

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