Dealing with a Nuclear Past: Revisiting the Cases of Algeria and Kazakhstan through a Decolonial Lens

ABSTRACT

Over 2000 nuclear weapons explosions were conducted worldwide between 1945 and 1996. Most of these high-yield explosions took place at nuclear test sites in the Global South: among them, the Algerian Sahara and the Kazakh steppe, where their respective colonising powers (at the time) France and the Soviet Union tested their nuclear arsenal. Contemporary Algeria and Kazakhstan still bear the egregious impact of these nuclear tests. The perceptions and demands of the local population, including victims and survivors of the testing, related to addressing the nuclear past have not been comprehensively investigated. Little is known about the local-regional resistance to these tests, aside from the Sahara Protest Team in 1959 and the anti-nuclear Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement in 1989. Our aim is to develop this line of research by considering the links between anti-nuclear movements and colonialism in Algeria and Kazakhstan. By revisiting these cases using a decolonial lens, we develop a more comprehensive understanding of resistance to nuclear testing in the Global South.

KEYWORDS:

• nuclear testing
• nuclear (de)colonialism
• Global South
• nuclear imperialism
• anti-nuclear movements
• nuclear resistance

More than 2000 nuclear weapons explosions were conducted worldwide between 1945, when the United States (US) first tested its atomic bomb, and 1996, when the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) – the global treaty to ban nuclear weapons testing – was adopted (UN 1996; Arms Control Association 2022). Before this global consensus on outlawing nuclear testing was formed, Global South countries were the arena for nuclear testing.¹ The majority of global nuclear weapons testing was carried out by superpowers in colonised territories or occupied lands. Among them, the Algerian Sahara and the Kazakh steppe were chosen by their then-colonising powers, France and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), respectively.

Indeed, between 1949 and 1989, as part of the global arms race, the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests in the colonised Kazakh steppe, at the Semipalatinsk polygon situated in the north-eastern part of Kazakhstan; while between 1960 and 1966, France carried out a total of 17 nuclear tests in the colonised Algerian Sahara. In both cases, irreversible harm was caused to environmental and human security. These consequences are acknowledged by the Treaty on the Prohibition of the Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) that entered into force in 2021 (although without the signatures of nuclear weapons states) (UN 2017; ICAN 2023). Specifically, Articles 6 and 7 focus on support for the victims and survivors of nuclear testing and recommend remedial measures (UN 2017; TPNW 2017).

Contemporary Algeria and Kazakhstan are situated in the nuclear-weapon-free zones established in the region of Africa and Central Asia by the treaties of Pelindaba (1996) and Semipalatinsk (2006) respectively (UN 1975). The deep commitment of the two countries to the global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament process is tied to their historical legacy and nuclear injustice, as both countries still bear the egregious impact of French and Soviet nuclear testing. Furthermore, having both joined the CTBT (CTBTO 2023) and the TPNW (Algeria is yet to ratify it) (ICAN 2023), they are obliged to respect this international norm, namely Articles 6 and 7.²

The perceptions and demands of local populations, including victims and survivors of the testing with respect to their country’s nuclear past, have been overlooked. In particular, access to information about the impact of nuclear weapons testing remains restricted due to the limitation or absence of French and Soviet archival material. Little is also known about the local-regional resistance to these tests. Except for two cases – the International-Pan African movement of the Sahara Protest Team in 1959 that initially tried to raise awareness internationally about the dangers of nuclear testing and pressure the French government to stop the tests; and the anti-nuclear Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement in 1989 which was instrumental in stopping the Soviet nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk polygon – Global South movements have remained largely neglected subjects from a decolonial point of view.

The question of how nuclear legacies are seen through the decolonial lens, especially in the aftermath of those tests, is timely and necessary. First, it is important to revisit the nuclear past in order to fill the gap in research and address the lack of knowledge from a decolonial standpoint. Second, it is crucial to question established narratives and discourses by acknowledging the agency of affected communities to reclaim and offer a more comprehensive and nuanced account of the events. Finally, applying a decolonial perspective allows us to uncover new dimensions for the study of nuclear weapons testing. In this article, we propose to answer the following research question: How did the Global South’s anti-nuclear movements in former Soviet and French nuclear test sites connect to decolonisation, and how did the colonial/imperial³ character of nuclear testing affect these movements?

To address this question, an abductive and explanatory method is applied using a comparative case studies approach. The article is organised as follows: first, we construct the conceptual framework showcasing the nexus between nuclear colonialism and nuclear imperialism on one hand, and nuclear decolonisation and anti-nuclear movements on the other. Second, we examine the implications of the tests and their history – from a decolonial perspective – on Algerian and Kazakh indigenous people to articulate an alternative account of the tests in which Algerian and Kazakh colonial subjects mattered. Finally, we reconstruct patterns and commonalities of the nuclear testing and the anti-nuclear movements in these two Global South countries, to briefly analyse the wider implications for postcolonial Algeria and Kazakhstan in the current nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and arms control regime.

Conceptual framework

This article investigates the concept of nuclear resistance during the historical process of decolonisation in both Algerian and Kazakh cases based on the premise that the dominant narratives disregarded the affected communities and rarely identified the colonial and imperial practices in the nuclear activities of the colonial states. This section addresses some conventional understandings of nuclear imperialism and nuclear resistance (the anti-nuclear movement) within the key theoretical paradigms of nuclear colonialism and nuclear decolonisation respectively, in order to contextualise the research findings.

Nuclear colonialism

As a point of departure, it is worth mentioning that so far, the colonial and imperial dimensions of nuclear activities have been almost exclusively documented in the English language literature, whether it concerns the American-Indian population of the Western US (Endres 2009), the native population in Alaska (Edwards 2011) or the inhabitants of the Pacific (Barker 2012). Overall, the notion of nuclear colonialism has been a key theme in US scholarship since the 1980s (LaDuke and Churchill 1985). The same cannot be said about the French or Soviet literature, despite their imperial/colonial nuclear legacy. As such, we will rely mainly on the Anglophone literature in this conceptual framing.

Danielle Endres (2009) highlights that nuclear colonialism was initially understood as a system of domination through which colonial powers disproportionately targeted and devastated colonised peoples and their lands to maintain and enhance the production of nuclear weapons. This reiterated the conventional understanding asserted by Valerie Kuletz (1998) who defined nuclear colonialism as the process by which colonial powers appropriated indigenous lands and displaced native populations through activities such as nuclear testing, development, mining and military training. Recent studies address nuclear colonialism as a rhetorical phenomenon perpetuated through discourse. Endres (2009, 39) argues that “nuclear colonialism is significantly a rhetorical phenomenon that builds upon the discourses of colonialism and nuclearism”.

For the purpose of this article, we define nuclear colonialism as both an extension of colonisation and a rhetorical phenomenon. The former highlights colonial practices in nuclear activities for the development of weapons, creating a system in which the colonising nuclear state violates and extracts value from the land and the lives of indigenous people in the colonised states. The latter refers to colonial narratives and discourses through which nuclear colonising states created a system of obscurities that concealed the harms caused and emphasised instead dominance and national security (Barker et al. 2022).

Nuclear imperialism

The notion of nuclear imperialism has shifted and evolved over time. Initially, it referred to possessing knowledge and expertise about nuclear technologies (Forsberg 1979) and later to spreading that ‘imperial’ knowledge into peripheries with the aim to further improve and test the capacities of the bombs (Alexis-Martin 2019). Thus nuclear imperialism conventionally implies a nuclear world order, where the centre (colonising nuclear powers) continuously exploits the periphery (colonised states) in many forms (Tawfik 2022; Hussain and Zuhoor 2019). Nuclear imperialism has been used to describe scenarios where one state dominates another for nuclear purposes (Alexis-Martin 2019), with the dominant state projecting its power most significantly through weapons tests – such as French nuclear weapons testing in the Algerian Sahara, or Soviet nuclear weapons testing in the Kazakh steppe – and “through the vaporization of land and the erosion of the rights of people who lived there” (Shiga 2019, 284). This practice resulted in “the invasion, occupation, division, and dispossession of the affected lands indigenous and local peoples own and belong to, and the water, food, and air they require to sustain healthy lives” (Broinowski 2020, 8).

By exploring these nuclear weapons testing cases within the framework of imperialism, Christopher Robert Hill (2019, 2) insists that “it is necessary from the outset to rescale – to depart from histories concerned with the scientists and research centres of the metropole and to explore ones concerned with the environmental and human sacrifices of the periphery.” In addition, Anais Maurer and Rebecca Hogue (2020, 27) define nuclear imperialisms as “the state-sponsored, systemic mode of oppression in current or former sites of empire through any use of the nuclear complex.” Used in the plural form, imperialisms “involve multiple empires, technologies, and ideological framings that exist and extend beyond geographic, temporal, and national boundaries and borders” (Maurer and Hogue 2020, 27).

In the context of our study, the term ‘nuclear imperialism’ will be used to examine how colonising nations exerted control over indigenous lands, displaced native populations and exploited resources through nuclear testing activities, highlighting the inherent colonial dynamics and imperialistic tendencies associated with such practices.

Nuclear decolonisation

From a historical perspective, decolonisation is most commonly used to refer to the transition from a world of colonial empires to a world of nation-states (The National History Center 2020). There is no such consensus, however, over its meaning in other contexts, with some even arguing that the term has been distorted in academic discourse (Belfi and Sandiford 2021).

 While Itty Abraham (2018, 12) asserts that decolonisation needs to be understood as a moment in history characterised by the efforts of developing nations to bring about “progressive change” and establish a “post-imperial world order”, Robert J. C. Young (2020, 38) explains that it has come to signify “the attempt to resituate knowledge and everyday practice outside the dominant power structures of Western/European/North American” and developed into a practice which seeks to reevaluate the past in all countries, including the colonising and the colonised. Scholars are still investigating contemporary questions of nuclear decolonisation.⁴ Nuclear decolonisation starts by recoupling the nuclear processes of developing and testing weapons with colonial histories that have been neglected, as a result of nuclear governments restraining and obscuring indigenous knowledge. Therefore, for the purpose of this article we will adopt the definition of decolonisation from the ‘Henry M. Jackson School Task Force Report of Winter 2022’: “actions that disrupt colonial structures and contribute to the repair of colonial harms” (Barker et al. 2022, 4).

Anti-nuclear movements as a decolonising practice

Research on anti-nuclear activism has focused primarily on the ways in which Western anti-nuclear movements opposed the production of nuclear weapons and the generation of electricity by nuclear power plants. One example is Michael Mandelbaum’s (1984) comparison between the Western anti-nuclear weapon movements in the US and Europe during the 1980s; another is Milton Katz’s (1986) critical analysis of the activism of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), an American anti-nuclear movement from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s.

Very little of this work relates to the Global South and anti-colonialism, despite the concept being widely deployed in relation to the contestation of nuclear colonialism in the Pacific (Corfield 2009; Barker 2012; Maclellan 2005; Keown 2018). To be sure, academic interest is growing in the resistance against nuclear colonialism in other places such as Algeria (Cooper 2022) and Kazakhstan (Rozsa 2020; Budjeryn and Kassenova 2020). So far, however, most scholarship on anti-nuclear activism has failed to consider the intersections between anti-colonial resistance, anti-nuclear resistance and contestation of the global nuclear order. To address this gap, we drew on different fields of literature: first and foremost, the aforementioned scholarship on ‘nuclear colonialism’ and ‘nuclear imperialism’.

Methodology

Our article uses an abductive, explanatory methodology. It departs from an outcome – the occurrence and persistent effects of nuclear testing in colonised territories in the Global South (Dados and Connell 2012) – and tries to explain why and under what circumstances it transpired, and how it was dealt with and resisted by the local populations. We adopt this approach to address how the anti-nuclear movements in former Soviet and French nuclear test sites in the Global South are connected to decolonisation and how the colonial/imperial character of nuclear testing influenced these movements. To this end, we use a comparative approach focusing on the cases of Algeria and Kazakhstan. These cases serve as geographical parallels spanning two continents and nearly four decades. By examining these examples – as we compare the attitudes of the colonising nuclear states, the colonised states’ indigenous population and the reaction and transnational solidarity of the ‘Global South community’ – we aim to demonstrate the empirical relevance of our theoretical proposition and incorporate a decolonial lens into our research methodology.

Through our methodology, we seek to reconstruct the events of the two cases, focusing on the colonial/imperial violence endured by indigenous people and the agency of transnational movements (especially involving Global South actors). By exploring these dynamics across time and space, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of anti-nuclear movements in relation to decolonisation and to challenge the classic Cold War (colonial-imperialist) depiction of ‘nuclear testing’ as a pacific, harmless exercise necessary for the protection of national and international security (Barker et al. 2022).

To that effect, our article relies on desk research and local sources such as postcolonial studies published in both countries. The sources also include journalistic resources, official websites, reports and conference/workshop proceedings; to supplement the academic materials, it also relies on sources about the history of nuclear testing made public (through publication or leaks) and information provided by local scholars and activists, as well as accounts of eyewitness testimonies and the memoirs of relevant actors.

Our objective is to revisit the cases of Algeria and Kazakhstan in the context of dealing with the nuclear past by applying a decolonial lens and showcasing the complexity and multidimensionality of the nuclear architecture, in order to support a more subtle interpretation than either the traditional colonial version of the story or the more recent postcolonial nationalist account, neither of which can be considered as a comprehensive summary of the events.

Case studies

The Kazakh steppe

In the midst of the Cold War, following the spirit of geopolitical nuclear competition, in order to keep pace with technological advancement and pursue military superiority, both of the superpowers constructed special areas allocated for nuclear weapons testing (Holloway 1981). In the USSR, the first atomic bomb codenamed Pervaya molniya (First Lighting) was tested on 29 August 1949 (Nuclear Threat Initiative 2021) at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site (SNTS). Henceforth, Moscow officially entered the nuclear club and competed in an arms race with the US (UN 2023).

The SNTS had been established in 1947 by the Soviet government in the Kazakh steppe – an area that, prior to Soviet domination, had been under Russian imperial/colonial occupation (Gal-Dem 2022). The SNTS area was 18,000 square kilometres in size spanning “the territory of Abyraly district, [the] former Semipalatinsk region as well as some areas of Pavlodar and Karaganda region” (Qazaqstan Tarihy 2014). Known also as the ‘polygon’, it is located in the north-eastern part of contemporary Kazakhstan (then Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic), around 150 km west of the city of Semipalatinsk, which comprised a population of 116,000 people in 1949 (Bauer et al. 2013) and functioned as a centre of cultural heritage (Lewis et al. 2017; Vesti Semey 2021).

According to the Soviet military and scientists, the area was chosen as a suitable location for the nuclear weapons testing programme for several reasons: its considerable distance from the metropole to maintain secrecy and preclude possible intelligence surveillance; its featureless geographical landscape; its relative proximity to transportation hubs; its ease of access to construction materials and resources (including uranium supplies [Fyodorov 2002]) and its allegedly low population (Alexander 2020). According to Catherine Alexander (2020, 474), “the Soviets could be said to have constructed a national sacrifice zone by declaring lands to be empty, then repeatedly wasting the territory”. Despite being deemed “almost uninhabited”, there were rural settlements and villages with tens of thousands of inhabitants just hundreds of kilometres away from the nuclear epicentres (Bauer et al. 2013).

The Soviets ran the nuclear weapons programme in the SNTS area for almost 50 years. Between 1949 and 1989, a quarter of the world’s nuclear tests was conducted at the Semipalatinsk polygon. 456 nuclear explosions, 340 underground tests and 116 atmospheric tests were carried out in the polygon, with the total yield estimated according to the sources between 17.4 (IAEA 2014) and 50 (Reed 2023) megatons, tantamount to 3333 Hiroshima bombs. This makes it one of the most severely bombed areas in the Global South creating long-lasting, irreversible damage (IAEA 2014).

These experiments prompted appalling economic, political, human and environmental costs, supported by numerous testimonies of victims and survivors. Not only was the environment of this area contaminated with the exposure to the ionised radiation due to nuclear fallout, but the bombing impacted an estimated 1.5 million people (Bauer et al. 2005) who suffered severe humanitarian consequences (Grosche et al. 2015). Victims, survivors and ‘downwinders’ still continue to bear a transgenerational impact including, among others, health abnormalities, birth defects, higher rates of premature death, mortality, cancer and other chronic illnesses (Parfitt 2010). It is noteworthy that the local population was for many years neither informed about the nuclear weapons testing programmes (Jacobs 2013) nor aware of its impact and possible consequences on the environment and the health of the population (Werner and Purvis-Roberts 2006).

The SNTS was designed as “an experimental landscape where science, technology, Soviet Cold War militarism, and human biology intersected” (Stawkowski 2016, 144). Subsequently, Soviet militarism during the Cold War can be comparable to the model of nuclear colonialism due to the modality of experiments executed at the SNTS (Jacobs 2013, 173), where “the locals were not only disregarded but often dehumanized” (Budjeryn and Kassenova 2020).

The Soviet government was fully responsible for the command and control of this programme (Kassenova 2022a). Even though the Soviet military and scientists, while conducting tests, were aware “that the rain and wind would make the local population more susceptible to radioactive fallout”, military and political objectives remained a top priority (Kassenova 2009). Simultaneously, medical workers were censored in sharing data reporting diseases related to radiation exposure along with statistics on those illnesses and cancer rates (Werner and Purvis-Roberts 2006), and instead instructed to provide false diagnoses to conceal the truth (Clay 2001).

From the decolonial perspective, the implications of Soviet nuclear imperialism intertwined with ‘red racism’, that is, racial classification and discrimination on the ground of nationality within the Soviet Union (Budjeryn and Kassenova 2020), and culminated in destroying the land of the Kazakh steppe, exploiting natural resources, changing the lives of the local population and landscape forever, with the creation of atomic lakes and craters from nuclear tests and the establishment of experiment labs (Reed 2023). One of the institutes that, under the guise of a clinic, collected and examined data on the impact of radiation on humans was the Anti-Brucellosis Dispensary Number Four which, for research purposes, treated people as subjects of investigation and monitored the effects of the tests (Werner and Purvis-Roberts 2006).

Although nuclear weapons testing halted in 1989, there was a series of anti-nuclear actions in which a range of actors (Sultanbayeva 2019) participated at various levels (Kassenova 2022b), supported by the resistance of the local population against testing, that led to the official shutdown of the Semey polygon in 1991, preventing planned tests in the meanwhile (Putz 2022).

Behind the local resistance to nuclear imperialism stood the efforts of the grassroots movement Nevada-Semipalatinsk, established in 1989 under the leadership of the Kazakh poet, activist and politician (then a member of the USSR’s Supreme Soviet) Olzhas Suleymenov (Rietiker 2018). The name of the movement was inspired by the demonstrations in Nevada as it expressed the connection between different peoples living near nuclear test sites undergoing similar experiences: that is, native Americans of the Western Shoshone nation in Nevada (Suleymenov 1989) and the Kazakhs of Semey. In both cases, their demonstrations also served as a call for independence as the involved local actors intended to reclaim their occupied lands from the US and Soviet Union respectively (Rozsa 2020). The connection between Semey and Nevada was also reflected in the logo of the organisation (Akzhasarova 2023). The main objective of the movement was to close the SNTS and achieve a global ban on nuclear weapons testing (Suleymenov 1989).

Despite the repression of the Soviet Union against any protests, different means of exerting civic pressure (mass rallies, petitions) were implemented by the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement (Carter 1990). The movement quickly mobilised thousands of people marching against nuclear tests along with organising a petition of more than a million signatures to terminate the nuclear weapons testing programme at the Semey polygon (Masa Media 2021). This rapid mobilisation was, to some extent, achieved by Suleymenov speaking up about the danger of the radioactive fallout on people's health during a television speech and “calling people to gather for a meeting” (Lerager 1990, 16).

Thanks to a successful anti-nuclear campaign in which elements of transnational engagement coupled with increased awareness among the international public about the impact of the tests, the movement contributed to ending atomic tests at the SNTS and, overall, helped towards establishing a global norm against nuclear testing by achieving “a moratorium of all nuclear testing in the former Soviet Union” (Hanaček and Martinez-Alier 2022, 974). The transnational engagement took place in the form of building alliances with the US-based peace and disarmament civil society organisations and indigenous people, as in the case of the Western Shoshone.⁵

Transindigenous solidarity between Western Shoshone and Kazakh activists was conducted through joint education tours in the US and politico-cultural exchanges through reciprocal protests (Rozsa 2020). One of these exchanges happened during a joint conference with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in 1990 in Almaty, Kazakhstan, hosting 300 participants from around the globe who were welcomed by thousands of local demonstrators (GNAD 2011).

Coinciding with the dissolution of the Soviet Union after almost 70 years and Kazakhstan’s gaining of independence, the SNTS was officially closed on 29 August 1991. This date has a symbolic meaning highlighting the day when the first Soviet bomb was tested, and today is commemorated worldwide as the United Nations International Day against Nuclear Tests (UN 2023). Overall, the path towards Kazakh denuclearisation (led by civic anti-nuclear opposition) can be considered as a decolonial act (Sultanbayeva 2019), closely linked to the discourse of desovietisation and the establishment of a sovereign state with its own identity and liberated from its Soviet nuclear past (Abzhaparova 2011).

The Algerian Sahara

Over sixty years ago, on 13 February 1960, France conducted its first nuclear test in the Algerian Sahara Desert, thus marking its entry into the exclusive nuclear weapons club. Meanwhile, the Algerian War (revolution) of Liberation (1954–62) – that ended 132 years of French colonial occupation (1830–1962) – was entering its most difficult phase. Eager to join the ‘atomic club’ along with the US, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom (UK), the Suez Crisis (Rauf 1995)⁶ had finally convinced the leaders of the Fourth Republic of the necessity to accelerate its nuclear development programme. Thus began the search for a test site (Regnault 2003) within the territories of the empire. The chosen locations for these destructive experiments were the Algerian Sahara (1960), then – following Algeria’s independence in 1962 – in Polynesia (Panchasi 2022).

Between 1960 and 1966, the French colonial regime carried out a total of 17 nuclear tests near the towns of In Ekker and Reggane in the Algerian Sahara, four of them atmospheric detonations (near the oasis town of Reggane), and 13 underground (in Hoggar Massif near In Ekker). Gerboise Bleue-Blue Jerboa, the first French nuclear test – with the estimated yield of 70 kilotons (KT) – was four times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb, and three times stronger than the equivalent first tests by the US or the UK (Panchasi 2022). These tests caused the destruction of human, animal and vegetal lives and the contamination of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of lands in the Algerian Sahara and elsewhere (Henni 2022), as declassified military documents reveal (Le Parisien 2014). The radioactive fallout was not restricted to the Saharan Desert, but spread across Africa and the Mediterranean (Bolton 2017).

According to the French, the Saharan nuclear sites were selected for their remoteness and emptiness, but in fact the Reggane and In Ekker test sites were anything but empty, as there were towns where thousands of – unwitting and uncared for – indigenous and nomadic people lived (Mansouri 2019). They eventually lost lives and suffered – and still suffer today – from congenital anomalies, cancer and other chronic diseases, due to their exposure to radiation and the polluted environment (Centre de documentation et de recherche sur la paix et les conflits 2002). Moreover, the French explosions were anything but safe, clean, or contained, as archival documents revealed the insufficient precautions taken (Mansouri 2019) to protect the local people, the French personnel and the Algerian manual labourers (Barker et al. 2022).

This is supported by the testimonies of the local people and the Algerian manual labourers whose bodies – in Jill Jarvis’s (2022, 57) words – “bear the highest cost of nuclear imperial violence”. Accordingly, on the day of the first nuclear bombing, local people were ordered to leave their homes and take cover only with blankets, while special black glasses were given to the French experts and dignitaries present at the site (Chanton 2006). Testimonies of manual labourers at the Reggane test site⁷ reveal cases of arbitrary arrest and deportation to Reggane and forced labour in hazardous conditions without proper equipment or training. This exemplifies how nuclear colonialism relied on exploiting and oppressing colonised peoples to advance the colonising power’s nuclear goals. Based on another set of documented testimonies, Algerian scholars assert that 150 Algerian prisoners were used as ‘guinea pigs’. During the third atmospheric explosion known as ‘Red gerboa’, they were tied to poles near the site of the explosion in order to study human behaviour during an atomic explosion (see Khiati 2018; Mansouri 2019; Bedjaoui 2020).⁸

Moreover, “the slow violence” of French nuclear imperialism (Jarvis 2022, 76) that toxified the Sahara Desert was displayed by the way the French colonial civil and military authorities left the Saharan nuclear test sites in 1966, as they disposed of the contaminated equipment and materials in the Sahara by burying them under the sand. Though the locations of the contaminated burial sites are unknown (Collin and Bouveret 2020), their toxic remains and debris are still severely damaging and contaminating Saharan lives, resources and environment (Henni 2022).

The French nuclear testing programme was strongly entwined with the Algerian decolonisation process. In addition to delaying ceasefire negotiations, the atomic detonations in the Sahara caused widespread outrage (Cooper 2021) at many levels: at the domestic level in France; from the UN’s Afro-Asian bloc at the intergovernmental level through the 1959 resolution’s debate and adoption process of the 1959 resolution;⁹ at a regional level by the African nationalists through the Monrovia Conference of Independent African States; and at a transnational level, as Ghana provided a forum to meet and plan protests against French nuclear testing. For the purpose of our study, we will focus on the latter level, especially the transnational form of nuclear activism, as it is a perfect illustration of a nuclear decolonial practice.

Following France's announcement of its intentions to use Algeria’s land for testing a new atomic bomb, African leaders and organisations became concerned with the dangers of nuclear fallouts in their countries and condemned the plans almost unanimously. In 1959, just a year after Gerboise Bleue, they passed a resolution denouncing the decision to use Africa for nuclear tests at the Monrovia Conference (of Independent African States) in Algeria (Allman 2008).

Subsequently, an important anti-nuclear movement was formed. The ‘Sahara Protest Team’ aimed to raise awareness of the dangers of nuclear testing conducted by France and other nuclear powers by organising an active anti-nuclear movement in Africa and disconcerting the French government as well as pressuring it to abandon nuclear testing (Liu 2011). Several famous Western pacifists and influential radical black activists travelled to Ghana to join the team (Allman 2008). Eventually, the group was composed of 19 members: two from the US, three Britons, a French woman, 11 from Ghana and one each from Nigeria and Basutoland (now Lesotho). It received strong and enthusiastic support from Ghana’s ruling political party, the Convention People's Party (CPP); moreover, the Ghana Council for Nuclear Disarmament (GCND) approached Ghana’s Cabinet for assistance, resulting in a special grant for the protest team. The African Affairs Committee, comprising top government ministers and CPP activists, met regularly at Kwame Nkrumah’s residence in Accra, indicating government support (Allman 2008). Overall, Ghana supported the difficult journey of the team of protestors to stand up against racial injustice and nuclear imperialism (Tawfik 2022) inflicted by colonial France on Algerians in the Sahara.

The team planned to travel to and occupy the test site, in an attempt to challenge and prevent the French nuclear explosions. On 6 December 1959, the international pacifists began the 2,100-mile journey from Accra, Ghana’s capital, to Reggane in the Algerian Sahara. Their journey attracted immediate media attention and public support. However, their trip was cut short by the French army in Burkina Faso (then a French colony) and the team was forced to withdraw. They tried twice again to no avail, but continued to march and demonstrate.¹⁰ Finally, due to threats of deportation and confiscation of equipment, and tight surveillance by the French, the protesters decided to give up on the project (Liu 2011).

It is important to note that, though the movement emerged during the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear war loomed large, Sutherland (the leader of the Sahara team) hardly mentions the Cold War in his memoirs (Sutherland and Meyer 2000). In any case, the Sahara Protest project offered a “direct link” with the African struggle for independence (Bennett 2003, 231). What further contextualises the movement within the broader history of decolonisation is its self-identification with African nationalism. The movement thus skilfully fused decolonisation with nuclear disarmament (Bennett 2003). After the team’s gradual dissolution in January 1960, the opposition to the French nuclear testing in the Algerian Sahara did not stop. Small demonstrations (including fasts, picketing and leafleting) continued around the Upper Volta (today’s Burkina Faso), Ghana, Nigeria, the UK, West Germany and the US; larger demonstrations were organised in Tunis (Tunisia), Tripoli (Libya) and Rabat (Morocco), on 25 and 31 January 1960 (Cooper 2022). Eventually, neither the Sahara Protest Team nor the subsequent demonstrations of non-state anti-nuclear resistance were capable of stopping the French nuclear tests in Algeria.

Indeed, even after Algeria’s independence, the Evian Accords¹¹ marked a “nuclear compromise” that granted France a five-year lease to the Saharan military and nuclear testing bases (Cooper 2021). In their later accounts, Algerian leaders argued that the military clauses of the Evian Accords should be reinterpreted in light of the political circumstances of the time (Fraise and Cooper 2022; Naylor 2000). In his memoirs, Algerian negotiator Redha Malek denied secret clauses regarding nuclear tests in the Accords and acknowledged that military cooperation agreements were reached on the condition that the health of the locals would not be affected and that French forces decontaminated the area (Malek 2003). In the documentary L’Algérie, de Gaulle et la Bombe [Algeria, de Gaulle, and the Bomb], Malek expressed the resigned attitude of the Algerian delegation towards French demands for nuclear tests: “If they had something to explode, let them do it as quickly as possible and let’s not talk about it anymore” (cited in Kellou and Bobin 2021). Given the prevailing nationalistic concerns within the Algerian leadership, this specific concession has to be read in light of the French renunciation of their ambition to retain the Sahara and separate it from Algeria.¹² As Saad Dahlab (another prominent Algerian negotiator at Evian) put it, “every concession was only temporary or circumstantial”, including the control of nuclear tests sites (Dahlab 1990). This suggests that the negotiators lacked the technical knowledge necessary to understand the health and environmental implications of those experiments and prioritised territorial unity over health and environmental concerns. This complex interplay between territorial concerns, nuclear testing and the negotiations surrounding the Evian Accords shaped the postcolonial landscape of Algeria. It reflects the delicate balance between political aspirations, health and environmental considerations in the aftermath of decolonisation.

Conclusion

In this article, we applied a comparative case studies approach by juxtaposing the attitudes of the colonising nuclear states, the colonised indigenous population and the Global South’s community reaction regarding the nuclear tests in both the Algerian Sahara and the Kazakh steppe. As a result of comparative analysis, our case studies support several concluding remarks.

The existence of nuclear colonialism patterns

Both case studies highlighted, at least to some extent, the same imperial and colonial practices. First, both colonial nuclear powers operated their first nuclear testing programmes outside their imperial cores, and never tested on their primary or indigenous home soil – consistent with a pattern of extractive colonisation. France conducted its explosions in the Sahara, which was a contested territory during the Algerian War of Liberation that led to the independence of today’s Algeria, including its Sahara territory. The Soviet Union carried out nuclear tests in the Kazakh steppe at the Semipalatinsk polygon.

Second, colonial powers used discursive strategies of dishonesty, misinformation and secrecy with regard to their nuclear programmes. They claimed that the Algerian Sahara and the Kazakh steppe were vast areas devoid of people and thus natural containers of radioactive contamination. Moreover, they obscured nuclear knowledge over which they had a monopoly and deliberately spread misinformation regarding the risks and dangers of testing.

Third, both governments persisted in using these discursive practices following the end of the tests and of colonisation. As the former colonisers still withhold knowledge relevant to the tests and their consequences by refusing to disclose the nuclear archives, Algeria is still waiting for the topographic maps of the tests, without which decontamination is impossible (Moreno 2022), while Kazakhstan does not have a full picture of the humanitarian impact of nuclear tests (Vakulchuk et al. 2014). This is also evident by the failure of the French and Russian governments (and others) to educate their people (also inside Algeria and Kazakhstan [Stawkowski 2020]) about the humanitarian and environmental impact of the nuclear tests conducted in their former colonised territories. The dominance of the colonial narrative is also visible in the representation of the Kyshtym/Maiak (Sembritzki 2018), Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents as the greatest nuclear disasters, even though more serious accidents occurred during the nuclear testing outside of these examples, such as the 1962 infamous Béryl Accident in Algeria and leakage of radioactive gases from underground tests to the neighbouring town of Chagan in close vicinity to Semipalatinsk on 12 and 17 February 1989 (GNAD 2011; Los Angeles Times 1982).

Fourth, insensitive to local population and environment, French and Soviet nuclear strategists were willing to expose the Algerian (and neighbouring African) and Kazakh populations to radiation risks that would have been considered unacceptable in metropolitan Paris (Cooper 2022) or Moscow (Jacobs 2013).

The emergence of the anti-nuclear movements during colonisation as a nuclear decolonising practice

By resisting nuclear testing during colonisation and thus emerging as a nuclear decolonising practice, movements such as the Sahara Protest Team and the Nevada-Semipalatinsk represented particular cases of Global South agency and supranational/transnational solidarity, as well as of the nuclear movement’s activism.

Today it is important to acknowledge the significant mark left by anti-nuclear movements from the Global South that actively fostered South-South and South-North collaboration by contributing to the debates that created the non-proliferation and disarmament rules and norms.

In the case of the Sahara Protest Team it would be easy to dismiss this movement’s impact. As it did not bring the French nuclear tests in Algeria to a halt, one may argue that it did not leave a legacy of Pan-African resistance, resilience and determination in the face of oppressors. Nonetheless, the movement did shed light on the matter of racial injustice and imperialism of nuclear weapons. This was simultaneously (and subsequently) highlighted by the interventions of the ‘Afro-Asian bloc’ during UN debates, which most importantly led to a resolution censuring French plans for nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara. The Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement, on the other hand, was successful in creating a mass mobilisation against Soviet nuclear tests and achieved its goal of shutting down the SNTS as well as stopping scheduled tests during 1989 and after. Furthermore, driven by the idea of a worldwide ban on nuclear explosions, the movement was able to draw international attention to the humanitarian and ecological consequences that contributed towards the establishment of a global norm against nuclear tests. As far as supranational engagement is concerned, the two movements built regional and transnational alliances in resisting colonial nuclear testing. The Sahara Protest Team united European anti-nuclear groups, African liberation forces and US civil rights groups into a campaign supported by an African government (Ghana), thus linking anti-colonial militancy with growing transnational pacifism. The Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement participated in transborder cooperation and set up a partnership with US civil society organisations in the field of peace and disarmament, bringing people together across different political ideologies despite Cold War divisions.

Both states were fighting for independence and developing an anti-nuclear movement at the same time. Algeria was fighting a war of decolonisation that coincided with the first French nuclear explosions, while Kazakhstan was moving towards independence after 70 years of Soviet governance following the brutal suppression of the 1986 December protest (Shelekpayev 2022), including suffering from 40 years of nuclear testing. This (apparently casual) coincidence of events allowed both movements to build their activism and resistance by linking decolonisation with denuclearisation. In other anti-nuclear testing movements, the story of decolonisation often plays a peripheral or rhetorical role, as colonialism is less visible (for example, the anti-nuclear movement in the Pacific). On the contrary, we argue here that decolonisation reoriented the trajectory of nuclear resistance and contributed significantly to the transnational support the Algerian and Kazakh movements gained.

Today, the two countries comply with their international obligations and commitments to uphold the objectives of non-proliferation and contribute to the disarmament process. This is apparent in their adherence to the TNPW, which paves the way towards complete international nuclear disarmament. This adherence means they are bound by the obligations found in Articles 6 and 7, which compel them to provide assistance for the victims of nuclear weapons testing that was not carried out by them but conducted on their soil and to clean up the contaminated environment. Despite the fact that France and Russia oppose the Ban Treaty, this does not prevent them from providing humanitarian and technical assistance to Algeria and Kazakhstan under the provisions of the Treaty if requested (Collin and Bouveret 2020). Furthermore, there are many ties between the former colonies and their former colonisers, in particular relating to peaceful nuclear energy. Despite the turbulent history they share, this gives rise to hopes that dealing with the past through a decolonial lens on the official level may finally bring justice to the victims and future generations by cooperating to ensure health security for local people and by creating healthier environments (Ibid).

To move forward and attain ‘Nuclear Justice’, a decolonial way of thinking is also needed in the former colonies affected by the colonial and imperial nuclear testing. This can be achieved by incorporating nuclear history into their national education systems (which is not yet the case) and by hosting international fora and arenas in affected Global South countries to help further educate the international community about the dangers and risks of nuclear testing.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Austin R. Cooper for his help and for providing access to his PhD dissertation titled “Saharan Fallout: French Explosions in Algeria and the Politics of Nuclear Risk during African Decolonization (1960–66)”, University of Pennsylvania, which is not yet publicly available. The authors are also grateful to the editors and reviewers who took the time to engage with this article. Their constructive feedback is appreciated.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leila Hennaoui

Leila Hennaoui is an Associate Professor in International Law at Hassiba Ben Bouali University, Chlef, Algeria. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

Marzhan Nurzhan

Marzhan Nurzhan is currently a PhD Candidate at the Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.

Notes

1 In the context of this article and for the purpose of discussing nuclear decolonisation, we define the Global South as any colonised peoples subject to the power/authority of some distant metropole.

2 Kazakhstan is a co-chair of an informal working group on victim assistance, environmental remediation, international cooperation and assistance; for more details, see: https://www.icanw.org/tpnw_intersessional_work_article_6_7_victim_assistance_environmental_remediation_international_cooperation.

3 Here, the terms "colonial" and "imperial" are used together to encompass the complex dynamics of nuclear testing and its impact on anti-nuclear movements in the Global South. While they are distinct notions, their conflation is justified by the intertwined historical realities of colonial legacies and imperial ambitions in the context of nuclear testing. The forthcoming analysis will further explore and clarify the specific connections and nuances between the two concepts.

4 A good account of this research can be found in the papers published in the 2018 special issue of the Asian Journal of Political Science, which tackled the decolonising practices in arms control and disarmament (Mathur 2018) and in the documented presentations of the 2019 Workshop ‘Decolonising the Nuclear’. http://m-a-r-s.online/sessions/decolonising-the-nuclear-public-lecture-and-research-workshop.

5 Suleymenov travelled to the Nevada test site area in the US and met with the Western Shoshone people.

6 The Suez Crisis (October-November 1956) proved to be a signal lesson for the French not to rely on their allies, thus in effect determining France’s ‘independent’ course on nuclear matters.

7 See the testimonies of Sanaafi Mohamme (1936) and Chai Kouider (1926) and others documented in publications of the Algerian National Center for Studies and Research in the National Movement and the Revolution (CNERMNR 2000): https://www.cnerh-nov54.dz/.

8 See also a documented interview of a former German legionnaire who recounted the story of the prisoners in Karl Gass’ film Allons enfants de l’Algérie [Onwards, Children of Algeria] (1961) and also included in Azzedine Meddour’s archival film Combien je vousaime [How Much I Love You] (1985).

9 Morocco's delegation drafted UN resolution A/RES/1379(XIV) and garnered support for it from newly independent African and Asian states. The resolution, prompted by the Moroccan government's opposition to the French nuclear testing programme in Algeria, led to discussions in the UN's First Committee on Disarmament and International Security and ultimately resulted in a General Assembly resolution urging France to refrain from nuclear tests.

10 For a detailed account of the team’s journey, see Bill Sutherland’s memoires (Sutherland and Meyer 2000).

11 The Accords were a key stage in the path to achieving Algeria’s independence in 1962, agreed between the French government and the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale's (FLN) after a long and difficult negotiation process. While the accords focused primarily on the political and territorial aspects of the Algerian conflict, specific provisions regarding nuclear testing were not explicitly mentioned. The Accords granted France a five-year lease to maintain military and nuclear testing bases in the Sahara region. However, the lack of explicit reference to nuclear testing in the Accords left room for interpretation and subsequent challenges by Algerian leaders. For more information, see https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/evian-accords-1962.

12 For more details on the French attempt to separate the Sahara from the rest of Algeria see Henni (2021).