Relations between post-colonial Algeria and France have remained close throughout the years, although sometimes difficult. In 1962, the Evian Accords peace treaty provided land in the Sahara for the French Army, which it had used under de Gaulle to carry out its first nuclear tests ("Gerboise bleue"). Many European settlers () living in Algeria and Algerian Jews, who contrary to Algerian Muslims had been granted French citizenship by the Crémieux decrees at the end of the 19th century, were expelled to France where they formed a new community. On the other hand, the issue of the , the Muslims who had fought on the French side during the war, still remained unresolved. Large numbers of were killed in 1962, during the immediate aftermath of the Algerian War, while those who escaped with their families to France have tended to remain an unassimilated refugee community. The present Algerian government continues to refuse to allow and their descendants to return to Algeria.