The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian
War of Independence or the Algerian Revolution
(Arabic: الثورة الجزائرية‎
Al-thawra Al-Jazaa'iriyya; Berber languages:
Tagrawla Tadzayrit; French: Guerre d'Algérie
or Révolution algérienne) was fought between
France and the Algerian National Liberation
Front (French: Front de Libération Nationale
– FLN) from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria
gaining its independence from France.
An important decolonization war, it was a
complex conflict characterized by guerrilla
warfare, maquis fighting, and the use of torture.
The conflict also became a civil war between
the different communities and within the communities.
The war took place mainly on the territory
of Algeria, with repercussions in metropolitan
France.
Effectively started by members of the National
Liberation Front (FLN) on November 1, 1954,
during the Toussaint Rouge ("Red All Saints'
Day"), the conflict led to serious political
crises in France, causing the fall of the
Fourth French Republic (1946–58) replaced
by the Fifth Republic with a strengthened
Presidency.
The brutality of the methods employed by the
French forces failed to win hearts and minds
in Algeria, alienated support in metropolitan
France and discredited French prestige abroad.After
major demonstrations in Algiers and several
other cities in favor of independence (1960)
and a United Nations resolution recognizing
the right to independence, De Gaulle decided
to open a series of negotiations with the
FLN.
These concluded with the signing of the Évian
Accords in March 1962.
A referendum took place on 8 April 1962 and
the French electorate approved the Évian
Accords.
The final result was 91% in favor of the ratification
of this agreement and on 1 July, the Accords
were subject to a second referendum in Algeria,
where 99.72% voted for independence and just
0.28% against.The planned French withdrawal
led to a state crisis.
This included various assassination attempts
on de Gaulle as well as some attempts at military
coups.
Most of the former were carried out by the
Organisation armée secrète (OAS), an underground
organization formed mainly from French military
personnel supporting a French Algeria, which
committed a large number of bombings and murders
both in Algeria and in the homeland to stop
the planned independence.
Upon independence in 1962, 900,000 European-Algerians
(Pieds-noirs) fled to France within a few
months in fear of the FLN's revenge.
The French government was totally unprepared
for the vast number of refugees, which caused
turmoil in France.
The majority of Algerian Muslims who had worked
for the French were disarmed and left behind
as the treaty between French and Algerian
authorities declared that no actions could
be taken against them.
However, the Harkis in particular, having
served as auxiliaries with the French army,
were regarded as traitors and many were murdered
by the FLN or by lynch-mobs, often after being
abducted and tortured.
About 90,000 managed to flee to France, some
with help from their French officers acting
against orders, and as of 2016 they and their
descendants form a significant part of the
Algerian-French population.
== Background: French Algeria ==
=== 
Conquest of Algeria ===
On the pretext of a slight to their consul,
the French invaded Algeria in 1830.
Directed by Marshall Bugeaud, who became the
first Governor-General of Algeria, the conquest
was violent, marked by a "scorched earth"
policy designed to reduce the power of the
native rulers, the Dey, including massacres,
mass rapes, and other atrocities.
Between 500,000 and 1,000,000, from approximately
3 million Algerians, were killed within the
first three decades of the conquest.
French losses from 1830–51 were 3,336 killed
in action and 92,329 dead in the hospital.In
1834, Algeria became a French military colony
and was subsequently declared by the constitution
of 1848 to be an integral part of France and
divided into three departments: Alger, Oran
and Constantine.
Many French and other Europeans (Spanish,
Italians, Maltese, and others) later settled
in Algeria.
Under the Second Empire (1852–1871), the
Code de l'indigénat (Indigenous Code) was
implemented by the Sénatus-consulte of July
14, 1865.
It allowed Muslims to apply for full French
citizenship, a measure that few took, since
it involved renouncing the right to be governed
by sharia law in personal matters and was
considered a kind of apostasy.
Its first article stipulated:
The indigenous Muslim is French; however,
he will continue to be subjected to Muslim
law.
He may be admitted to serve in the army (armée
de terre) and the navy (armée de mer).
He may be called to functions and civil employment
in Algeria.
He may, on his demand, be admitted to enjoy
the rights of a French citizen; in this case,
he is subjected to the political and civil
laws of France.
Prior to 1870, fewer than 200 demands were
registered by Muslims and 152 by Jewish Algerians.
The 1865 decree was then modified by the 1870
Crémieux decrees, which granted French nationality
to Jews living in one of the three Algerian
departments.
In 1881, the Code de l'Indigénat made the
discrimination official by creating specific
penalties for indigènes and organizing the
seizure or appropriation of their lands.After
World War II, equality of rights was proclaimed
by the Ordonnance of March 7, 1944, and later
confirmed by the Loi Lamine Guèye of May
7, 1946, which granted French citizenship
to all the subjects of France's territories
and overseas departments, and by the 1946
Constitution.
The Law of September 20, 1947 granted French
citizenship to all Algerian subjects, who
were not required to renounce their Muslim
personal status.Algeria was unique to France
because, unlike all other overseas possessions
acquired by France during the 19th century,
only Algeria was considered and legally classified
an integral part of France.
=== Algerian nationalism ===
Both Muslim and European Algerians took part
in World War II, fighting for France.
Algerian Muslims served as tirailleurs (such
regiments were created as early as 1842) and
spahis; and French settlers as Zouaves or
Chasseurs d'Afrique.
With Wilson's 1918 proclamation of the Fourteen
Points, the fifth reading: "A free, open-minded,
and absolutely impartial adjustment of all
colonial claims, based upon a strict observance
of the principle that in determining all such
questions of sovereignty the interests of
the populations concerned must have equal
weight with the equitable claims of the government
whose title is to be determined", some Algerian
intellectuals—dubbed oulémas—began to
nurture the desire for independence or, at
least, autonomy and self-rule.Within this
context, a grandson of Abd el-Kadir spearheaded
the resistance against the French in the first
half of the 20th century.
He was a member of the directing committee
of the French Communist Party (PCF).
In 1926, he founded the Étoile Nord-Africaine
(North African Star) party, to which Messali
Hadj, also a member of the PCF and of its
affiliated trade union, the Confédération
générale du travail unitaire (CGTU), joined
the following year.The North African Star
broke from the PCF in 1928, before being dissolved
in 1929 at Paris's demand.
Amid growing discontent from the Algerian
population, the Third Republic (1871–1940)
acknowledged some demands, and the Popular
Front initiated the Blum-Viollette proposal
in 1936 which was supposed to enlighten the
Indigenous Code by giving French citizenship
to a small number of Muslims.
The "Pieds noires".
(Algerians of European origin) violently demonstrated
against it and the North African Party opposed
it, leading to the project's abandonment.
The pro-independence party was dissolved in
1937, and its leaders were charged with the
illegal reconstitution of a dissolved league,
leading to Messali Hadj's 1937 founding of
the Parti du peuple algérien (Algerian People's
Party, PPA), which, at this time, no longer
espoused full independence but only extensive
autonomy.
This new party was dissolved in 1939.
Under Vichy, the French state attempted to
abrogate the Crémieux decree in order to
suppress the Jews' French citizenship, but
the measure was never implemented.On the other
hand, nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas founded
the Algerian Popular Union (Union populaire
algérienne) in 1938.
In 1943 Abbas wrote the Algerian People's
Manifesto (Manifeste du peuple algérien).
Arrested after the Sétif massacre of May
8, 1945, during which the French Army and
pieds-noirs mobs killed about 6,000 Algerians,
Abbas founded the Democratic Union of the
Algerian Manifesto (UDMA) in 1946 and was
elected as a deputy.
Founded in 1954, the National Liberation Front
(FLN) succeeded Messali Hadj's Algerian People's
Party (PPA), while its leaders created an
armed wing, the Armée de Libération Nationale
(National Liberation Army) to engage in an
armed struggle against French authority.
France, which had just lost Indochina, was
determined not to lose the next anti-colonial
war, particularly not in its oldest and nearest
major colony, which was regarded as an integral
part of the republic.
== War chronology ==
=== Beginning of hostilities ===
In the early morning hours of November 1,
1954, FLN maquisards (guerrillas) attacked
military and civilian targets throughout Algeria
in what became known as the Toussaint Rouge
(Red All-Saints' Day).
From Cairo, the FLN broadcast a proclamation
calling on Muslims in Algeria to join in a
national struggle for the "restoration of
the Algerian state – sovereign, democratic
and social – within the framework of the
principles of Islam."
It was the reaction of Premier Pierre Mendès
France (Radical-Socialist Party), who only
a few months before had completed the liquidation
of France's tete empire in Indochina, which
set the tone of French policy for five years.
He declared in the National Assembly, "One
does not compromise when it comes to defending
the internal peace of the nation, the unity
and integrity of the Republic.
The Algerian departments are part of the French
Republic.
They have been French for a long time, and
they are irrevocably French.
... Between them and metropolitan France there
can be no conceivable secession."
At first, and despite the Sétif massacre
of May 8, 1945, and the pro-Independence struggle
before World War II, most Algerians were in
favor of a relative status-quo.
While Messali Hadj had radicalized by forming
the FLN, Ferhat Abbas maintained a more moderate,
electoral strategy.
Fewer than 500 fellaghas (pro-Independence
fighters) could be counted at the beginning
of the conflict.
The Algerian population radicalized itself
in particular because of the terrorist acts
of French-sponsored Main Rouge (Red Hand)
group, which targeted anti-colonialists in
all of the Maghreb region (Morocco, Tunisia
and Algeria), killing, for example, Tunisian
activist Farhat Hached in 1952.
=== FLN ===
The FLN uprising presented nationalist groups
with the question of whether to adopt armed
revolt as the main course of action.
During the first year of the war, Ferhat Abbas's
Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto
(UDMA), the ulema, and the Algerian Communist
Party (PCA) maintained a friendly neutrality
toward the FLN.
The communists, who had made no move to cooperate
in the uprising at the start, later tried
to infiltrate the FLN, but FLN leaders publicly
repudiated the support of the party.
In April 1956, Abbas flew to Cairo, where
he formally joined the FLN.
This action brought in many évolués who
had supported the UDMA in the past.
The AUMA also threw the full weight of its
prestige behind the FLN.
Bendjelloul and the pro-integrationist moderates
had already abandoned their efforts to mediate
between the French and the rebels.
After the collapse of the MTLD, the veteran
nationalist Messali Hadj formed the leftist
Mouvement National Algérien (MNA), which
advocated a policy of violent revolution and
total independence similar to that of the
FLN, but aimed to compete with that organisation.
The Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN),
the military wing of the FLN, subsequently
wiped out the MNA guerrilla operation in Algeria,
and Messali Hadj's movement lost what little
influence it had had there.
However, the MNA retained the support of many
Algerian workers in France through the Union
Syndicale des Travailleurs Algériens (the
Union of Algerian Workers).
The FLN also established a strong organization
in France to oppose the MNA.
The "Café wars", resulting in nearly 5,000
deaths, were waged in France between the two
rebel groups throughout the years of the War
of Independence.
On the political front, the FLN worked to
persuade—and to coerce—the Algerian masses
to support the aims of the independence movement
through contributions.
FLN-influenced labor unions, professional
associations, and students' and women's organizations
were created to lead opinion in diverse segments
of the population, but here too, violent coercion
was widely used.
Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist from Martinique
who became the FLN's leading political theorist,
provided a sophisticated intellectual justification
for the use of violence in achieving national
liberation.
From Cairo, Ahmed Ben Bella ordered the liquidation
of potential interlocuteurs valables, those
independent representatives of the Muslim
community acceptable to the French through
whom a compromise or reforms within the system
might be achieved.
As the FLN campaign of influence spread through
the countryside, many European farmers in
the interior (called Pieds-Noirs), many of
whom lived on lands taken from Muslim communities
during the nineteenth century, sold their
holdings and sought refuge in Algiers and
other Algerian cities.
After a series of bloody, random massacres
and bombings by Muslim Algerians in several
towns and cities, the French Pieds-Noirs and
urban French population began to demand that
the French government engage in sterner countermeasures,
including the proclamation of a state of emergency,
capital punishment for political crimes, denunciation
of all separatists, and most ominously, a
call for 'tit-for-tat' reprisal operations
by police, military, and para-military forces.
Colon vigilante units, whose unauthorized
activities were conducted with the passive
cooperation of police authorities, carried
out ratonnades (literally, rat-hunts, raton
being a racist term for denigrating Muslim
Algerians) against suspected FLN members of
the Muslim community.
By 1955, effective political action groups
within the Algerian colonial community succeeded
in convincing many of the Governors General
sent by Paris that the military was not the
way to resolve the conflict.
A major success was the conversion of Jacques
Soustelle, who went to Algeria as governor
general in January 1955 determined to restore
peace.
Soustelle, a one-time leftist and by 1955
an ardent Gaullist, began an ambitious reform
program (the Soustelle Plan) aimed at improving
economic conditions among the Muslim population.
=== After the Philippeville massacre ===
The FLN adopted tactics similar to those of
nationalist groups in Asia, and the French
did not realize the seriousness of the challenge
they faced until 1955, when the FLN moved
into urbanized areas.
"An important watershed in the War of Independence
was the massacre of Pieds-Noirs civilians
by the FLN near the town of Philippeville
(now known as Skikda) in August 1955.
Before this operation, FLN policy was to attack
only military and government-related targets.
The commander of the Constantine wilaya/region,
however, decided a drastic escalation was
needed.
The killing by the FLN and its supporters
of 123 people, including 71 French, including
old women and babies, shocked Jacques Soustelle
into calling for more repressive measures
against the rebels.
The French authorities stated that 1,273 guerrillas
died in what Soustelle admitted were "severe"
reprisals.
The FLN subsequently claimed that 12,000 Muslims
were killed.
Soustelle's repression was an early cause
of the Algerian population's rallying to the
FLN.
After Philippeville, Soustelle declared sterner
measures and an all-out war began.
In 1956, demonstrations by French Algerians
caused the French government to not make reforms.
Soustelle's successor, Governor General Lacoste,
a socialist, abolished the Algerian Assembly.
Lacoste saw the assembly, which was dominated
by pieds-noirs, as hindering the work of his
administration, and he undertook the rule
of Algeria by decree.
He favored stepping up French military operations
and granted the army exceptional police powers—a
concession of dubious legality under French
law—to deal with the mounting political
violence.
At the same time, Lacoste proposed a new administrative
structure to give Algeria some autonomy and
a decentralized government.
Whilst remaining an integral part of France,
Algeria was to be divided into five districts,
each of which would have a territorial assembly
elected from a single slate of candidates.
Until 1958, deputies representing Algerian
districts were able to delay the passage of
the measure by the National Assembly of France.
In August and September 1956, the leadership
of the FLN guerrillas operating within Algeria
(popularly known as "internals") met to organize
a formal policy-making body to synchronize
the movement's political and military activities.
The highest authority of the FLN was vested
in the thirty-four member National Council
of the Algerian Revolution (Conseil National
de la Révolution Algérienne, CNRA), within
which the five-man Committee of Coordination
and Enforcement (Comité de Coordination et
d'Exécution, CCE) formed the executive.
The leadership of the regular FLN forces based
in Tunisia and Morocco ("externals"), including
Ben Bella, knew the conference was taking
place but by chance or design on the part
of the "internals" were unable to attend.
In October 1956, the French Air Force intercepted
a Moroccan DC-3 bound for Tunis, carrying
Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohammed Boudiaf, Mohamed
Khider and Hocine Aït Ahmed, and forced it
to land in Algiers.
Lacoste had the FLN external political leaders
arrested and imprisoned for the duration of
the war.
This action caused the remaining rebel leaders
to harden their stance.
France opposed Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser's material and political assistance
to the FLN, which some French analysts believed
was the revolution's main sustenance.
This attitude was a factor in persuading France
to participate in the November 1956 British
attempt to seize the Suez Canal during the
Suez Crisis.
During 1957, support for the FLN weakened
as the breach between the internals and externals
widened.
To halt the drift, the FLN expanded its executive
committee to include Abbas, as well as imprisoned
political leaders such as Ben Bella.
It also convinced communist and Arab members
of the United Nations (UN) to put diplomatic
pressure on the French government to negotiate
a cease-fire.
In 1957, it become common knowledge in France
that the French Army was routinely using torture
to extract information from suspected FLN
members.
Hubert Beuve-Méry, the editor of Le Monde,
declared in an edition on 13 March 1957: "From
now on, Frenchman must know that they don't
have the right to condemn in the same terms
as ten years ago the destruction of Oradour
and the torture by the Gestapo."
Another case that attracted much media attention
was the murder of Maurice Audin, a Communist
math professor at the University of Algiers
and a suspected FLN member whom the French
Army arrested in June 1957.
Audin was tortured and killed and his body
was never found.
As Audin was French rather than Algerian,
his "disappearance" while in the custody of
the French Army led to the case becoming a
cause célèbre as his widow aided by the
historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet determinedly
sought to have the men responsible for her
husband's death prosecuted.Existentialist
writer, philosopher and playwright Albert
Camus, native of Algiers, tried unsuccessfully
to persuade both sides to at least leave civilians
alone, writing editorials against the use
of torture in Combat newspaper.
The FLN considered him a fool, and some Pieds-Noirs
considered him a traitor.
Nevertheless, in his speech when he received
the Nobel Prize for Literature, Camus said
that when faced with a radical choice he would
eventually support his community.
This statement made him lose his status among
left-wing intellectuals; when he died in 1960
in a car crash, the official thesis of an
ordinary accident (a quick open-and-shut case)
left more than a few observers doubtful.
His widow claimed that Camus, though discreet,
was in fact an ardent supporter of French
Algeria in the last years of his life.
=== Battle of Algiers ===
To increase international and domestic French
attention to their struggle, the FLN decided
to bring the conflict to the cities and to
call a nationwide general strike and also
to plant bombs in public places.
The most notable instance was the Battle of
Algiers, which began on September 30, 1956,
when three women, including Djamila Bouhired
and Zohra Drif, simultaneously placed bombs
at three sites including the downtown office
of Air France.
The FLN carried out shootings and bombings
in the spring of 1957, resulting in civilian
casualties and a crushing response from the
authorities.
General Jacques Massu was instructed to use
whatever methods deemed necessary to restore
order in the city and to find and eliminate
terrorists.
Using paratroopers, he broke the strike and,
in the succeeding months, destroyed the FLN
infrastructure in Algiers.
But the FLN had succeeded in showing its ability
to strike at the heart of French Algeria and
to assemble a mass response to its demands
among urban Muslims.
The publicity given to the brutal methods
used by the army to win the Battle of Algiers,
including the use of torture, strong movement
control and curfew called quadrillage and
where all authority was under the military,
created doubt in France about its role in
Algeria.
What was originally "pacification" or a "public
order operation" had turned into a colonial
war accompanied by torture.
=== Guerrilla war ===
During 1956 and 1957, the FLN successfully
applied hit-and-run tactics in accordance
with guerrilla warfare theory.
Whilst some of this was aimed at military
targets, a significant amount was invested
in a terror campaign against those in any
way deemed to support or encourage French
authority.
This resulted in acts of sadistic torture
and brutal violence against all, including
women and children.
Specializing in ambushes and night raids and
avoiding direct contact with superior French
firepower, the internal forces targeted army
patrols, military encampments, police posts,
and colonial farms, mines, and factories,
as well as transportation and communications
facilities.
Once an engagement was broken off, the guerrillas
merged with the population in the countryside,
in accordance with Mao's theories.
Kidnapping was commonplace, as were the ritual
murder and mutilation of civilians (see Torture
section).
Although successfully provoking fear and uncertainty
within both communities in Algeria, the revolutionaries'
coercive tactics suggested that they had not
yet inspired the bulk of the Muslim people
to revolt against French colonial rule.
Gradually, however, the FLN gained control
in certain sectors of the Aurès, the Kabylie,
and other mountainous areas around Constantine
and south of Algiers and Oran.
In these places, the FLN established a simple
but effective—although frequently temporary—military
administration that was able to collect taxes
and food and to recruit manpower.
But it was never able to hold large, fixed
positions.
The loss of competent field commanders both
on the battlefield and through defections
and political purges created difficulties
for the FLN.
Moreover, power struggles in the early years
of the war split leadership in the wilayat,
particularly in the Aurès.
Some officers created their own fiefdoms,
using units under their command to settle
old scores and engage in private wars against
military rivals within the FLN.
=== French counter-insurgency operations ===
Despite complaints from the military command
in Algiers, the French government was reluctant
for many months to admit that the Algerian
situation was out of control and that what
was viewed officially as a pacification operation
had developed into a war.
By 1956, there were more than 400,000 French
troops in Algeria.
Although the elite colonial infantry airborne
units and the Foreign Legion bore the brunt
of offensive counterinsurgency combat operations,
approximately 170,000 Muslim Algerians also
served in the regular French army, most of
them volunteers.
France also sent air force and naval units
to the Algerian theater, including helicopters.
In addition to service as a flying ambulance
and cargo carrier, French forces utilized
the helicopter for the first time in a ground
attack role in order to pursue and destroy
fleeing FLN guerrilla units.
The American military later used the same
helicopter combat methods in the Vietnam War.
The French also used napalm, which was depicted
for the first time in the 2007 film L'Ennemi
intime (Intimate Enemies) by Florent Emilio
Siri.
The French army resumed an important role
in local Algerian administration through the
Special Administration Section (Section Administrative
Spécialisée, SAS), created in 1955.
The SAS's mission was to establish contact
with the Muslim population and weaken nationalist
influence in the rural areas by asserting
the "French presence" there.
SAS officers—called képis bleus (blue caps)—also
recruited and trained bands of loyal Muslim
irregulars, known as harkis.
Armed with shotguns and using guerrilla tactics
similar to those of the FLN, the harkis, who
eventually numbered about 180,000 volunteers,
more than the FLN activists, were an ideal
instrument of counterinsurgency warfare.
Harkis were mostly used in conventional formations,
either in all-Algerian units commanded by
French officers or in mixed units.
Other uses included platoon or smaller size
units, attached to French battalions, in a
similar way as the Kit Carson Scouts by the
U.S. in Vietnam.
A third use was an intelligence gathering
role, with some reported minor pseudo-operations
in support of their intelligence collection.
U.S. military expert Lawrence E. Cline stated,
"The extent of these pseudo-operations appears
to have been very limited both in time and
scope.
... The most widespread use of pseudo type
operations was during the 'Battle of Algiers'
in 1957.
The principal French employer of covert agents
in Algiers was the Fifth Bureau, the psychological
warfare branch.
"The Fifth Bureau" made extensive use of 'turned'
FLN members, one such network being run by
Captain Paul-Alain Leger of the 10th Paras.
"Persuaded" to work for the French forces
included by the use of torture and threats
against their family; these agents "mingled
with FLN cadres.
They planted incriminating forged documents,
spread false rumors of treachery and fomented
distrust.
... As a frenzy of throat-cutting and disemboweling
broke out among confused and suspicious FLN
cadres, nationalist slaughtered nationalist
from April to September 1957 and did France's
work for her."
But this type of operation involved individual
operatives rather than organized covert units.
One organized pseudo-guerrilla unit, however,
was created in December 1956 by the French
DST domestic intelligence agency.
The Organization of the French Algerian Resistance
(ORAF), a group of counter-terrorists had
as its mission to carry out false flag terrorist
attacks with the aim of quashing any hopes
of political compromise.
But it seemed that, as in Indochina, "the
French focused on developing native guerrilla
groups that would fight against the FLN",
one of whom fought in the Southern Atlas Mountains,
equipped by the French Army.The FLN also used
pseudo-guerrilla strategies against the French
Army on one occasion, with Force K, a group
of 1,000 Algerians who volunteered to serve
in Force K as guerrillas for the French.
But most of these members were either already
FLN members or were turned by the FLN once
enlisted.
Corpses of purported FLN members displayed
by the unit were in fact those of dissidents
and members of other Algerian groups killed
by the FLN.
The French Army finally discovered the war
ruse and tried to hunt down Force K members.
However, some 600 managed to escape and join
the FLN with weapons and equipment.Late in
1957, General Raoul Salan, commanding the
French Army in Algeria, instituted a system
of quadrillage (surveillance using a grid
pattern), dividing the country into sectors,
each permanently garrisoned by troops responsible
for suppressing rebel operations in their
assigned territory.
Salan's methods sharply reduced the instances
of FLN terrorism but tied down a large number
of troops in static defense.
Salan also constructed a heavily patrolled
system of barriers to limit infiltration from
Tunisia and Morocco.
The best known of these was the Morice Line
(named for the French defense minister, André
Morice), which consisted of an electrified
fence, barbed wire, and mines over a 320-kilometer
stretch of the Tunisian border.
The French military command ruthlessly applied
the principle of collective responsibility
to villages suspected of sheltering, supplying,
or in any way cooperating with the guerrillas.
Villages that could not be reached by mobile
units were subject to aerial bombardment.
FLN guerrillas that fled to caves or other
remote hiding places were tracked and hunted
down.
In one episode, FLN guerrillas who refused
to surrender and withdraw from a cave complex
were dealt with by French Foreign Legion Pioneer
troops, who, lacking flamethrowers or explosives,
simply bricked up each cave, leaving the residents
to die of suffocation.Finding it impossible
to control all of Algeria's remote farms and
villages, the French government also initiated
a program of concentrating large segments
of the rural population, including whole villages,
in camps under military supervision to prevent
them from aiding the rebels.
In the three years (1957–60) during which
the regroupement program was followed, more
than 2 million Algerians were removed from
their villages, mostly in the mountainous
areas, and resettled in the plains, where
it was difficult to reestablish their previous
economic and social systems.
Living conditions in the fortified villages
were poor.
In hundreds of villages, orchards and croplands
not already burned by French troops went to
seed for lack of care.
These population transfers effectively denied
the use of remote villages to FLN guerrillas,
who had used them as a source of rations and
manpower, but also caused significant resentment
on the part of the displaced villagers.
Relocation's social and economic disruption
continued to be felt a generation later.
The French Army shifted its tactics at the
end of 1958 from dependence on quadrillage
to the use of mobile forces deployed on massive
search-and-destroy missions against FLN strongholds.
In 1959, Salan's successor, General Maurice
Challe, appeared to have suppressed major
rebel resistance, but political developments
had already overtaken the French Army's successes.
=== Fall of the Fourth Republic ===
Recurrent cabinet crises focused attention
on the inherent instability of the Fourth
Republic and increased the misgivings of the
army and of the pieds-noirs that the security
of Algeria was being undermined by party politics.
Army commanders chafed at what they took to
be inadequate and incompetent political initiatives
by the government in support of military efforts
to end the rebellion.
The feeling was widespread that another debacle
like that of Indochina in 1954 was in the
offing and that the government would order
another precipitate pullout and sacrifice
French honor to political expediency.
Many saw in de Gaulle, who had not held office
since 1946, the only public figure capable
of rallying the nation and giving direction
to the French government.
After his time as governor general, Soustelle
returned to France to organize support for
de Gaulle's return to power, while retaining
close ties to the army and the pieds-noirs.
By early 1958, he had organized a coup d'état,
bringing together dissident army officers
and pieds-noirs with sympathetic Gaullists.
An army junta under General Massu seized power
in Algiers on the night of May 13, thereafter
known as the May 1958 crisis.
General Salan assumed leadership of a Committee
of Public Safety formed to replace the civil
authority and pressed the junta's demands
that de Gaulle be named by French president
René Coty to head a government of national
unity invested with extraordinary powers to
prevent the "abandonment of Algeria."
On May 24, French paratroopers from the Algerian
corps landed on Corsica, taking the French
island in a bloodless action, Opération Corse.
Subsequently, preparations were made in Algeria
for Operation Resurrection, which had as its
objectives the seizure of Paris and the removal
of the French government.
Resurrection was to be implemented in the
event of one of three following scenarios:
Were de Gaulle not approved as leader of France
by the parliament; were de Gaulle to ask for
military assistance to take power; or if it
seemed that communist forces were making any
move to take power in France.
De Gaulle was approved by the French parliament
on May 29, by 329 votes against 224, 15 hours
before the projected launch of Operation Resurrection.
This indicated that the Fourth Republic by
1958 no longer had any support from the French
Army in Algeria and was at its mercy even
in civilian political matters.
This decisive shift in the balance of power
in civil-military relations in France in 1958,
and the threat of force, was the primary factor
in the return of de Gaulle to power in France.
=== De Gaulle ===
Many people, regardless of citizenship, greeted
de Gaulle's return to power as the breakthrough
needed to end the hostilities.
On his June 4 trip to Algeria, de Gaulle calculatedly
made an ambiguous and broad emotional appeal
to all the inhabitants, declaring, "Je vous
ai compris" ("I have understood you").
De Gaulle raised the hopes of the pied-noir
and the professional military, disaffected
by the indecisiveness of previous governments,
with his exclamation of "Vive l'Algérie française"
("Long live French Algeria") to cheering crowds
in Mostaganem.
At the same time, he proposed economic, social,
and political reforms to improve the situation
of the Muslims.
Nonetheless, de Gaulle later admitted to having
harbored deep pessimism about the outcome
of the Algerian situation even then.
Meanwhile, he looked for a "third force" among
the population of Algeria, uncontaminated
by the FLN or the "ultras" (colon extremists),
through whom a solution might be found.
De Gaulle immediately appointed a committee
to draft a new constitution for France's Fifth
Republic, which would be declared early the
next year, with which Algeria would be associated
but of which it would not form an integral
part.
All Muslims, including women, were registered
for the first time on electoral rolls to participate
in a referendum to be held on the new constitution
in September 1958.
De Gaulle's initiative threatened the FLN
with decreased support among Muslims.
In reaction, the FLN set up the Provisional
Government of the Algerian Republic (Gouvernement
Provisoire de la République Algérienne,
GPRA), a government-in-exile headed by Abbas
and based in Tunis.
Before the referendum, Abbas lobbied for international
support for the GPRA, which was quickly recognized
by Morocco, Tunisia, China, and several other
African, Arab, and Asian countries, but not
by the Soviet Union.
In February 1959, de Gaulle was elected president
of the new Fifth Republic.
He visited Constantine in October to announce
a program to end the war and create an Algeria
closely linked to France.
De Gaulle's call on the rebel leaders to end
hostilities and to participate in elections
was met with adamant refusal.
"The problem of a cease-fire in Algeria is
not simply a military problem", said the GPRA's
Abbas.
"It is essentially political, and negotiation
must cover the whole question of Algeria."
Secret discussions that had been underway
were broken off.
From 1958 to 1959, the French army won military
control in Algeria and was the closest it
would be to victory.
In late July 1959, during Operation Jumelles,
Colonel Bigeard, whose elite paratrooper unit
fought at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, told journalist
Jean Lartéguy, (source)
We are not making war for ourselves, not making
a colonialist war, Bigeard wears no shirt
(he shows his opened uniform) as do my officers.
We are fighting right here right now for them,
for the evolution, to see the evolution of
these people and this war is for them.
We are defending their freedom as we are,
in my opinion, defending the West's freedom.
We are here ambassadors, Crusaders, who are
hanging on in order to still be able to talk
and to be able to speak for.
During this period in France, however, opposition
to the conflict was growing among the population,
notably the French Communist Party, then one
of the country's strongest political forces,
which was supporting the Algerian Revolution.
Thousands of relatives of conscripts and reserve
soldiers suffered loss and pain; revelations
of torture and the indiscriminate brutality
the army visited on the Muslim population
prompted widespread revulsion, and a significant
constituency supported the principle of national
liberation.
By 1959, it was clear that the status quo
was untenable and France could either grant
Algeria independence or allow real equality
with the Muslims.
De Gaulle told an advisor: "If we integrate
them, if all the Arabs and the Berbers of
Algeria were considered French, how could
they be prevented from settling in France,
where the living standard is so much higher?
My village would no longer be called Colombey-les-Deux-Églises
but Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées".
International pressure was also building on
France to grant Algeria independence.
Since 1955, the UN General Assembly annually
considered the Algerian question, and the
FLN position was gaining support.
France's seeming intransigence in settling
a colonial war that tied down half the manpower
of its armed forces was also a source of concern
to its North Atlantic Treaty Organization
allies.
In a September 16, 1959, statement, de Gaulle
dramatically reversed his stand and uttered
the words "self-determination" as the third
and preferred solution [6], which he envisioned
as leading to majority rule in an Algeria
formally associated with France.
In Tunis, Abbas acknowledged that de Gaulle's
statement might be accepted as a basis for
settlement, but the French government refused
to recognize the GPRA as the representative
of Algeria's Muslim community.
=== Week of barricades ===
Convinced that de Gaulle had betrayed them,
some units of European volunteers (Unités
Territoriales) in Algiers led by student leaders
Pierre Lagaillarde and Jean-Jacques Susini,
café owner Joseph Ortiz, and lawyer Jean-Baptiste
Biaggi staged an insurrection in the Algerian
capital starting on January 24, 1960, and
known in France as La semaine des barricades
("the week of barricades").
The ultras incorrectly believed that they
would be supported by General Massu.
The insurrection order was given by Colonel
Jean Garde of the Fifth Bureau.
As the army, police, and supporters stood
by, civilian pieds-noirs threw up barricades
in the streets and seized government buildings.
General Maurice Challe, responsible for the
army in Algeria, declared Algiers under siege,
but forbade the troops to fire on the insurgents.
Nevertheless, 20 rioters were killed during
shooting on Boulevard Laferrière.
Eight arrest warrants were issued in Paris
against the initiators of the insurrection.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, a member of parliament
and future Front national founder, who called
for the barricades to be extended to Paris,
and theoretician Georges Sauge were then placed
under custody.In Paris on January 29, 1960,
de Gaulle called on his ineffective army to
remain loyal and rallied popular support for
his Algerian policy in a televised address:
I took, in the name of France, the following
decision—the Algerians will have the free
choice of their destiny.
When, in one way or another – by ceasefire
or by complete crushing of the rebels – we
will have put an end to the fighting, when,
after a prolonged period of appeasement, the
population will have become conscious of the
stakes and, thanks to us, realised the necessary
progress in political, economic, social, educational,
and other domains.
Then it will be the Algerians who will tell
us what they want to be....
Your French of Algeria, how can you listen
to the liars and the conspirators who tell
you that, if you grant free choice to the
Algerians, France and de Gaulle want to abandon
you, retreat from Algeria, and deliver you
to the rebellion?....
I say to all of our soldiers: your mission
comprises neither equivocation nor interpretation.
You have to liquidate the rebellious forces,
which want to oust France from Algeria and
impose on this country its dictatorship of
misery and sterility....
Finally, I address myself to France.
Well, well, my dear and old country, here
we face together, once again, a serious ordeal.
In virtue of the mandate that the people have
given me and of the national legitimacy, which
I have incarned for 20 years, I ask everyone
to support me whatever happens.
Most of the Army heeded his call, and the
siege of Algiers ended on February 1 with
Lagaillarde surrendering to General Challe's
command of the French Army in Algeria.
The loss of many ultra leaders who were imprisoned
or transferred to other areas did not deter
the French Algeria militants.
Sent to prison in Paris and then paroled,
Lagaillarde fled to Spain.
There, with another French army officer, Raoul
Salan, who had entered clandestinely, and
with Jean-Jacques Susini, he created the Organisation
armée secrète (Secret Army Organization,
OAS) on December 3, 1960, with the purpose
of continuing the fight for French Algeria.
Highly organized and well-armed, the OAS stepped
up its terrorist activities, which were directed
against both Algerians and pro-government
French citizens, as the move toward negotiated
settlement of the war and self-determination
gained momentum.
To the FLN rebellion against France were added
civil wars between extremists in the two communities
and between the ultras and the French government
in Algeria.
Beside Pierre Lagaillarde, Jean-Baptiste Biaggi
was also imprisoned, while Alain de Sérigny
was arrested, and Joseph Ortiz's FNF dissolved,
as well as General Lionel Chassin's MP13.
De Gaulle also modified the government, excluding
Jacques Soustelle, believed to be too pro-French
Algeria, and granting the Minister of Information
to Louis Terrenoire, who quit RTF (French
broadcasting TV).
Pierre Messmer, who had been a member of the
Foreign Legion, was named Minister of Defense,
and dissolved the Fifth Bureau, the psychological
warfare branch, which had ordered the rebellion.
These units had theorized the principles of
a counter-revolutionary war, including the
use of torture.
During the Indochina War (1947–54), officers
such as Roger Trinquier and Lionel-Max Chassin
were inspired by Mao Zedong's strategic doctrine
and acquired knowledge of convince the population
to support the fight.
The Fifth Bureau were organized by Jean Ousset,
French representative of the Opus Dei, under
the order of Permanent Secretary General of
the National Defense (SGPDN) Geoffroy Chodron
de Courcel.
The officers were initially trained in the
Centre d'instruction et de préparation à
la contre-guérilla (Arzew).
Jacques Chaban-Delmas added to that the Centre
d'entraînement à la guerre subversive Jeanne-d'Arc
(Center of Training to Subversive War Jeanne-d'Arc)
in Philippeville, Algeria, directed by Colonel
Marcel Bigeard.
According to the Voltaire Network, the Catholic
stay-behind Georges Sauge animated conferences
there, and the maxim "This Army must be fanatic,
despising luxury, animated by the spirit of
the Crusades."
appeared on the walls.
Pierre Messmer hence dissolved structures
which had turned themselves against de Gaulle,
leaving the "revolutionary war" to the exclusive
responsibility of Gaullist General André
Beaufre.The French army officers' uprising
was due to a perceived second betrayal by
the government, the first having been Indochina
(1947–1954).
In some aspects the Dien Bien Phu garrison
was sacrificed with no metropolitan support,
order was given to commanding officer General
de Castries to "let the affair die of its
own, in serenity" ("laissez mourir l'affaire
d'elle même en sérénité").
The opposition of the UNEF student trade-union
to the participation of conscripts in the
war led to a secession in May 1960, with the
creation of the Fédération des étudiants
nationalistes (FEN, Federation of Nationalist
Students) around Dominique Venner, a former
member of Jeune Nation and of MP-13, François
d'Orcival and Alain de Benoist, who would
theorize in the 1980s the "New Right" movement.
The FEN then published the Manifeste de la
classe 60.
A Front national pour l'Algérie française
(FNAF, National Front for French Algeria)
was created in June 1960 in Paris, gathering
around de Gaulle's former Secretary Jacques
Soustelle, Claude Dumont, Georges Sauge, Yvon
Chautard, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour (who
later competed in the 1965 presidential election),
Jacques Isorni, Victor Barthélemy, François
Brigneau and Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Another ultra rebellion occurred in December
1960, which led de Gaulle to dissolve the
FNAF.
After the publication of the Manifeste des
121 against the use of torture and the war,
the opponents to the war created the Rassemblement
de la gauche démocratique (Assembly of the
Democratic Left), which included the French
Section of the Workers' International (SFIO)
socialist party, the Radical-Socialist Party,
Force ouvrière (FO) trade union, Confédération
Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens trade-union,
UNEF trade-union, etc., which supported de
Gaulle against the ultras.
=== Role of women ===
Women participated in a variety of roles during
the Algerian War.
The majority of Muslim women who became active
participants did so on the side of the National
Liberation Front (FLN).
The French included some women, both Muslim
and French, in their war effort, but they
were not as fully integrated, nor were they
charged with the same breadth of tasks as
the women on the Algerian side.
The total number of women involved in the
conflict, as determined by post-war veteran
registration, is numbered at 11,000, but it
is possible that this number was significantly
higher due to underreporting.Urban and rural
women's experiences in the revolution differed
greatly.
Urban women, who constituted about twenty
percent of the overall force, had received
some kind of education and usually chose to
enter on the side of the FLN of their own
accord.
Largely illiterate rural women, on the other
hand, the remaining eighty percent, due to
their geographic location in respect to the
operations of FLN often became involved in
the conflict as a result of proximity paired
with force.Women operated in a number of different
areas during the course of the rebellion.
"Women participated actively as combatants,
spies, fundraisers, as well as nurses, launderers,
and cooks", "women assisted the male fighting
forces in areas like transportation, communication
and administration" the range of involvement
by a woman could include both combatant and
non-combatant roles.
While most women's tasks were non-combatant,
their less frequent, violent acts were more
noticed.
The reality was that "rural women in maquis
rural areas support networks" contained the
overwhelming majority of those who participated;
female combatants were in the minority.
=== End of the war ===
De Gaulle convoked the first referendum on
the self-determination of Algeria on January
8, 1961, which 75% of the voters (both in
France and Algeria) approved and de Gaulle's
government began secret peace negotiations
with the FLN.
In the Algerian départements 69.51% voted
in favor of self-determination.
The talks that began in March 1961 broke down
when de Gaulle insisted on including the much
smaller Mouvement national algérien (MNA),
which the FLN objected to.
Since the FLN was the by far stronger movement
with the MNA almost wiped out by this time,
the French were finally forced to exclude
the MNA from the talks after the FLN walked
out for a time.The generals' putsch in April
1961, aimed at canceling the government's
negotiations with the FLN, marked the turning
point in the official attitude toward the
Algerian war.
Leading the coup attempt to depose de Gaulle
were General Raoul Salan, General André Zeller,
General Maurice Challe, and General Edmond
Jouhaud.
Only the paratroop divisions and the Foreign
Legion joined the coup, while the Air Force,
Navy and most of the Army stayed loyal to
General de Gaulle, but at one moment de Gaulle
went on French television to ask for public
support with the normally lofty de Gaulle
saying "Frenchmen, Frenchwomen, help me!".
De Gaulle was now prepared to abandon the
pieds-noirs, which no previous French government
was willing to do.
The army had been discredited by the putsch
and kept a low profile politically throughout
the rest of France's involvement with Algeria.
The OAS was to be the main standard bearer
for the pieds-noirs for the rest of the war.
Talks with the FLN reopened at Évian in May
1961; after several false starts, the French
government decreed that a ceasefire would
take effect on March 18, 1962.
A major difficulty at the talks was de Gaulle's
decision to grant independence only to the
coastal regions of Algeria, where the bulk
of the population lived, while hanging onto
the Sahara, which happened to be rich in oil
and gas, while the FLN claimed all of Algeria.
During the talks, the pied-noir and Muslim
communities engaged in a low level civil war
with bombings, shootings, throat-cutting and
assassinations being the preferred methods.
The Canadian historian John Cairns wrote at
times it seemed like both communities were
"going berserk" as everyday "murder was indiscriminate".
On 29 June 1961, de Gaulle announced on TV
that fighting was "virtually finished" and
afterwards there was no major fighting between
the French Army and the FLN; during the summer
of 1961 the OAS and the FLN engaged in a civil
war, in which the greater number of the Muslims
soon made a difference.
To pressure de Gaulle to abandon his demand
to keep the Sahara, the FLN organized demonstrations
in France from Algerians living there in the
fall of 1961, which the French police crushed.
It was in the course of crushing one demonstration
that a massacre of Algerians on 17 October
1961, which was ordered by Maurice Papon,
took place.
On 10 January 1962, the FLN started a "general
offensive" against the OAS, staging a series
on the pied-noir communities as a way of applying
pressure.
On 7 February 1962, the OAS attempted to assassinate
the Culture Minister André Malraux by setting
off a bomb in his apartment building that
failed to kill its intended target, but did
leave a four-year girl living in the adjoining
apartment blinded by the shrapnel.
The blinding of the girl did much to turn
French opinion against the OAS.
On 20 February 1962 a peace accord was reached
for granting independence to all of Algeria.
In their final form, the Évian Accords allowed
the pieds-noirs equal legal protection with
Algerians over a three-year period.
These rights included respect for property,
participation in public affairs, and a full
range of civil and cultural rights.
At the end of that period, however, all Algerian
residents would be obliged to become Algerian
citizens or be classified as aliens with the
attendant loss of rights.
The agreement also allowed France to establish
military bases in Algeria even after independence
(including the nuclear test site of Regghane,
the naval base of Mers-el-Kebir and the air
base of Bou Sfer) and to have privileges vis-à-vis
Algerian oil.
The OAS started a campaign of spectacular
terrorist attacks to sabotage the Évian Accords,
hoping that if enough Muslims were killed,
a general pogrom against the pieds-noirs would
break out, leading the French Army to turn
its guns against the government.
Despite ample provocation with OAS lobbying
mortar shells into the casbah of Algiers,
the FLN gave orders for no retaliatory attacks.
In the spring of 1962, the OAS turned to bank
robbery to finance its war against both the
FLN and the French state, and bombed special
units sent by Paris to hunt them down.
Only eighty deputies voted against the Évian
Accords in the National Assembly and Cairns
wrote the "fulminations" of Jean-Marie Le
Pen against de Gaulle were only "...the traditional
verbal excesses of third-rate firebrands without
a substantial following and without a constructive
idea".Following the cease fire tensions developed
between the pied-noir community and their
former protectors in the French Army.
An O.A.S. ambush of French conscripts on 20
March was followed by 20,000 gendarmes and
troops being ordered to occupy the major pied-noir
district of Bab-el-Oued in Algiers.
A week later French-officered Muslim tirailleurs
panicked and opened fire on a crowd of pied-noir
demonstrators in the centre of the city.
Total casualties in these three incidents
were 326 dead and wounded amongst the pied-noir
and 110 French military personnel.
A journalist who saw the shootings on 26 March
1962, Henry Tanner, described the scene: "When
the shooting stopped, the street was littered
with bodies, of women, as well as men, dead,
wounded or dying.
The black pavement looked grey, as if bleached
by fire.
Crumpled French flags were lying in pools
of blood.
Shattered glass and spent carriages were everywhere".
A number of shocked pieds-noirs screamed that
they were not French anymore.
One woman screamed "Stop firing!
My God, we're French..." before she was shot
down.
The massacre served to greatly embitter the
pied-noir community and led to a massive surge
of support for the OAS.In the second referendum
on the independence of Algeria, held in April
1962, 91 percent of the French electorate
approved the Evian Accords.
On July 1, 1962, some 6 million of a total
Algerian electorate of 6.5 million cast their
ballots.
The vote was nearly unanimous, with 5,992,115
votes for independence, 16,534 against, with
most pieds-noirs and Harkis either having
fled or abstaining.
De Gaulle pronounced Algeria an independent
country on July 3.
The Provisional Executive, however, proclaimed
July 5, the 132nd anniversary of the French
entry into Algeria, as the day of national
independence.
During the three months between the cease-fire
and the French referendum on Algeria, the
OAS unleashed a new campaign.
The OAS sought to provoke a major breach in
the ceasefire by the FLN, but the attacks
now were aimed also against the French army
and police enforcing the accords as well as
against Muslims.
It was the most wanton carnage that Algeria
had witnessed in eight years of savage warfare.
OAS operatives set off an average of 120 bombs
per day in March, with targets including hospitals
and schools.
During the summer of 1962, a rush of pieds-noirs
fled to France.
Within a year, 1.4 million refugees, including
almost the entire Jewish community, had joined
the exodus.
Despite the declaration of independence on
July 5, 1962, the last French forces did not
leave the naval base of Mers El Kébir until
1967.
(The Evian Accords had permitted France to
maintain its military presence for fifteen
years, so the withdrawal in 1967 was significantly
ahead of schedule.)
Cairns writing from Paris in 1962 declared:
"In some ways the last year has been the worse.
Tension has never been higher.
Disenchantment in France at least has never
been greater.
The mindless cruelty of it all has never been
more absurd and savage.
This last year, stretching from the hopeful
spring of 1961 to the ceasefire of March 18,
1962 spanned a season of shadow boxing, false
threats, capitulation and murderous hysteria.
French Algeria died badly.
Its agony was marked by panic and brutality
as ugly as the record of European imperialism
could show.
In the spring of 1962 the unhappy corpse of
empire still shuddered and lashed out and
stained itself in fratricide.
The whole episode of its death, measured at
least seven and half years, constituted perhaps
the most pathetic and sordid event in the
entire history of colonialism.
It is hard to see how anybody of importance
in the tangled web of the conflict came out
looking well.
Nobody won the conflict, nobody dominated
it."
== Strategy of internationalisation of the
Algerian War led by the FLN ==
At the beginning of the war, on the Algerian
side, it was necessary to compensate the military
weakness with political and diplomatic struggle,
in order to win the war.
Indeed, the balance of power was asymmetric
between France and the FLN so at this time,
victory seemed difficult to achieve.The Algerian
revolution began with the insurrection of
November 1, when the FLN organized a series
of attacks against the French army and military
infrastructure, and published a statement
calling on Algerians to get involved in the
revolution.
In the short term however, it had a limited
impact: the events remained largely unreported,
especially by the French press (only two newspaper
columns in Le Monde and one in l'Express),
and the insurrection all but subsided.
Nevertheless, François Mitterrand, the French
Minister of the Interior, sent 600 soldiers
to Algeria.
Furthermore, the FLN was weak militarily at
the beginning of the war.
It was created in 1954, so its numbers were
not numerous.
The FLN was linked the ALN which was also
underdeveloped: it included only 3,000 men
who were badly equipped and badly trained.
Thus, they could not compete with the French
army.
In addition to that, there were conflicting
divisions within the nationalist groups.
As a consequence, the members of the FLN decided
to develop a strategy to internationalize
the conflict: as they were militarily weaker
than France, they'd have appeal politically,
diplomatically and internationally.
First, this political aspect would reinforce
the legitimacy of the FLN in Algeria.
Secondly, this strategy would be necessary
all the more as Algeria had a special status
compared to other colonised territories.
Indeed, Algeria was part of metropolitan France.
The French strategy consisted of keeping the
conflict internal and strictly French in order
not to deteriorate its image abroad.
Thus, the FLN tried to give an international
aspect to the conflict to get support from
abroad, but also to put a diplomatic pressure
on the French government.
These objectives are in the statement of 1954.Thereby,
the conflict rapidly became international
thanks to the FLN which used the tensions
due to the Cold War and the emergence of the
Third World.
First of all, the FLN used the tensions between
the American and the Soviet blocs to serve
its interests.
Indeed, their objective was to be supported
materially by the Eastern bloc so that the
Western Bloc would react, and would ask for
their independence because it was in the American
interest that Algeria stayed on the western
side.
Furthermore, the FLN used the tensions within
each bloc, for instance, between France and
the USA.
The USA couldn't openly tolerate colonisation.
But France was their ally, and they couldn't
renounce this alliance.
Nevertheless, it gave them a bad image abroad,
and could encourage Algeria to join the eastern
side.
In situation, the USA had every interest in
pushing France to give Algeria its independence.Secondly,
the FLN could count on Third-World support.
After World War II, many new states were created
as a result of decolonization.
In 1945, there were 51 states in the UN, and
in 1965, they were 117.
Thus, the balance of power in the UN changed
a lot, and the recently decolonized countries
were now a majority, so they had huge capacities.
In addition to that, those new states were
part of the Third-World movement.
They went to be a third path (the non-alignment)
in a bipolar world, they were against colonisation,
and for modernization.
Thus, they felt concerned by the Algerian
conflict and supported the FLN on the international
stage.
As an example, in 1954, a few days after the
first insurrection, the radio in Yugoslavia
(Third-Worldist) begun to make propaganda
for the struggle of Algeria.
The FLN was invited in 1955 at the Bandung
conference to represent Algeria, which was
a huge international recognition.
Finally, Third-World countries tried to ensure
that the Algerian conflict would be discussed
at the UN general assembly.
As a result, the French government was more
and more isolated.
After the Battle of Algiers, the FLN was weakened.
Therefore, they were forced to accept more
direct support from abroad, especially the
financial and military support from China.
This helped them to rebuild the ALN with 20
000 men.
As a result, the international dimension of
the conflict was reinforced.
Indeed, as there was a competition between
the USSR and China, Khrushchev would show
stronger moral support to Algeria, which in
turn would push the USA to react.
In addition to that, in 1958, the Provisional
Government of the Algerian Republic (PGAR)
was created.
This meant that Algeria had official representatives,
so the negotiations with the French government
were facilitated.
Nevertheless, negotiations lasted three years,
in a tense climate.
But these negotiations would eventually turn
out to the better advantage of the Algerian
than of the French government.
The PGAR was supported by the countries of
the Third World and by the communist bloc.
On the contrary, France remained isolated,
and under the pressure from the USA: France
was eventually to give in.
Algeria finally became independent with the
Evian agreements and largely thanks to the
internationalization of the conflict.
According to Matthew Connelly, this strategy
was then used as a model by other revolutionary
groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization
of Yasser Arafat, and the African National
Congress of Nelson Mandela.
== Pieds-Noirs' and Harkis' exodus ==
Pieds-Noirs (including indigenous Mizrachi
and Sephardi Jews) and Harkis accounted for
13% of the total population of Algeria in
1962.
For the sake of clarity, each group's exodus
is described separately here, although their
fate shared many common elements.
=== Pieds-noirs ===
Pied-noir (literally "black foot") is a term
used to name the European-descended population
(mostly Catholic), who had resided in Algeria
for generations; it is sometimes used to include
the indigenous Sephardi Jewish population
as well, which likewise emigrated after 1962.
Europeans arrived in Algeria as immigrants
from all over the western Mediterranean (particularly
France, Spain, Italy and Malta), starting
in 1830.
The Jews arrived in several waves, some coming
as early as 600 BC and during the Roman period,
known as the Maghrebi Jews or Berber Jews.
The Maghrebi Jewish population was outnumbered
by the Sephardic Jews, who were driven out
of Spain in 1492, and was further strengthened
by Marrano refugees from the Spanish Inquisition
through the 16th century.
Algerian Jews largely embraced French citizenship
after the décret Crémieux in 1871.
In 1959, the pieds-noirs numbered 1,025,000
(85% of European Christian descent, and 15%
were made up of the indigenous Algerian population
of Maghrebi and Sephardi Jewish descent),
and accounted for 10.4% of the total population
of Algeria.
In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 of them
fled, the first third prior to the referendum,
in the largest relocation of population to
Europe since the Second World War.
A motto used in the FLN propaganda designating
the pieds-noirs community was "Suitcase or
coffin" ("La valise ou le cercueil") – an
expropriation of a term first coined years
earlier by pied-noir "ultras" when rallying
the European community to their hardcore line.
The French government claimed not to have
anticipated such a massive exodus; it estimated
that a maximum of 250–300,000 might enter
metropolitan France temporarily.
Nothing was planned for their move to France,
and many had to sleep in streets or abandoned
farms on their arrival.
A minority of departing pieds-noirs, including
soldiers, destroyed their possessions before
departure, to protest and as a desperate symbolic
attempt to leave no trace of over a century
of European presence, but the vast majority
of their goods and houses were left intact
and abandoned.
A large number of panicked people camped for
weeks on the docks of Algerian harbors, waiting
for a space on a boat to France.
About 100,000 pieds-noirs chose to remain,
but most of those gradually left in the 1960s
and 1970s, primarily due to residual hostility
against them, including machine-gunning of
public places in Oran.
=== Harkis ===
The so-called Harkis, from the Algerian-Arabic
dialect word harki (soldier), were indigenous
Muslim Algerians (as opposed to European-descended
Catholics or indigenous Algerian Mizrachi
Sephardi Jews) who fought as auxiliaries on
the French side.
Some of these were veterans of the Free French
Forces who participated in the liberation
of France during World War II or in the Indochina
War.
The term also came to include civilian indigenous
Algerians who supported a French Algeria.
According to French government figures, there
were 236,000 Algerian Muslims serving in the
French Army in 1962 (four times more than
in the FLN), either in regular units (Spahis
and Tirailleurs) or as irregulars (harkis
and moghaznis).
Some estimates suggest that, with their families,
the indigenous Muslim loyalists may have numbered
as many as 1 million.In 1962, around 90,000
Harkis took refuge in France, despite French
government policy against this.
Pierre Messmer, Minister of the Armies, and
Louis Joxe, Minister for Algerian Affairs,
gave orders to this effect.
The Harkis were seen as traitors by many Algerians,
and many of those who stayed behind suffered
severe reprisals after independence.
French historians estimate that somewhere
between 50,000 and 150,000 Harkis and members
of their families were killed by the FLN or
by lynch mobs in Algeria, often in atrocious
circumstances or after torture.
The abandonment of the "Harkis" both in terms
of non-recognition of those who died defending
a French Algeria and the neglect of those
who escaped to France, remains an issue that
France has not fully resolved—although the
government of Jacques Chirac made efforts
to give recognition to the suffering of these
former allies.
== Death toll ==
While it is difficult to enumerate the war's
casualties, the FLN estimated in 1964 that
nearly eight years of revolution effected
1.5 million deaths from war-related causes.
Some other French and Algerian sources later
put the figure at approximately 960,000 dead,
while French officials estimated it at 350,000.
French military authorities listed their losses
at nearly 25,600 dead (6,000 from non-combat-related
causes) and 65,000 wounded.
European-descended civilian casualties exceeded
10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded
violent incidents.
According to French official figures during
the war, the army, security forces and militias
killed 141,000 presumed rebel combatants.
But it is still unclear whether this includes
some civilians.
More than 12,000 Algerians died in internal
FLN purges during the war.
In France, an additional 5,000 died in the
"café wars" between the FLN and rival Algerian
groups.
French sources also estimated that 70,000
Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted
and presumed killed, by the FLN.Martin Evans
citing Gilert Meyinier imply at least 55,000
to up to 60,000 non-Harki Algerian civilians
were killed during the conflict without specifying
which side killed them.Historians, like Alistair
Horne and Raymond Aron, state that the actual
number of Algerian Muslim war dead was far
greater than the original FLN and official
French estimates, but was fewer than the 1
million deaths claimed by the Algerian government
after independence.
Horne estimated Algerian casualties during
the span of eight years to be around 700,000.
Uncounted thousands of Muslim civilians lost
their lives in French Army ratissages, bombing
raids, or vigilante reprisals.
The war uprooted more than 2 million Algerians,
who were forced to relocate in French camps
or to flee into the Algerian hinterland, where
many thousands died of starvation, disease,
and exposure.
In addition, large numbers of Harkis (pro-French
Muslims) were murdered when the FLN settled
accounts after independence, with 30,000 to
150,000 killed in Algeria in post-war reprisals.
== Lasting effects in Algerian politics ==
After Algeria's independence was recognised,
Ahmed Ben Bella quickly became more popular
and thereby more powerful.
In June 1962, he challenged the leadership
of Premier Benyoucef Ben Khedda; this led
to several disputes among his rivals in the
FLN, which were quickly suppressed by Ben
Bella's rapidly growing support, most notably
within the armed forces.
By September, Bella was in de facto control
of Algeria and was elected premier in a one-sided
election on September 20, and was recognised
by the U.S. on September 29.
Algeria was admitted as the 109th member of
the United Nations on October 8, 1962.
Afterward, Ben Bella declared that Algeria
would follow a neutral course in world politics;
within a week he met with U.S. President John
F. Kennedy, requesting more aid for Algeria
with Fidel Castro and expressed approval of
Castro's demands for the abandonment of Guantanamo
Bay.
Bella returned to Algeria and requested that
France withdraw from its bases there.
In November, his government banned political
parties, providing that the FLN would be the
only party allowed to function overtly.
Shortly thereafter, in 1965, Bella was deposed
and placed under house arrest (and later exiled)
by Houari Boumédiènne, who served as president
until his death in 1978.
Algeria remained stable, though in a one-party
state, until a violent civil war broke out
in the 1990s.
For Algerians of many political factions,
the legacy of their War of Independence was
a legitimization or even sanctification of
the unrestricted use of force in achieving
a goal deemed to be justified.
Once invoked against foreign colonialists,
the same principle could also be turned with
relative ease against fellow Algerians.
The FLN's struggle to overthrow colonial rule
and the ruthlessness exhibited by both sides
in that struggle were mirrored 30 years later
by the passion, determination, and brutality
of the conflict between the FLN government
and the Islamist opposition.
The American journalist Adam Shatz wrote that
much of the same methods employed by the FLN
against the French such as "the militarization
of politics, the use of Islam as a rallying
cry, the exaltation of jihad" to create an
essentially secular state in 1962, were used
by Islamic fundamentalists in their efforts
to overthrow the FLN regime in the 1990s.
== Torture ==
=== 
French use of torture ===
Torture was a frequent process in use from
the beginning of the colonization of Algeria,
which started in 1830.
Claude Bourdet had denounced these acts on
December 6, 1951, in the magazine L'Observateur,
rhetorically asking, "Is there a Gestapo in
Algeria?"
Torture was also used on both sides during
the First Indochina War (1946–54).
D. Huf, in his seminal work on the subject,
argued that the use of torture was one of
the major factors in developing French opposition
to the war.
Huf argued, "Such tactics sat uncomfortably
with France's revolutionary history, and brought
unbearable comparisons with Nazi Germany.
The French national psyche would not tolerate
any parallels between their experiences of
occupation and their colonial mastery of Algeria."
General Paul Aussaresses admitted in 2000
that systematic torture techniques were used
during the war and justified it.
He also recognized the assassination of lawyer
Ali Boumendjel and the head of the FLN in
Algiers, Larbi Ben M'Hidi, which had been
disguised as suicides.
Bigeard, who called FLN activists "savages",
claimed torture was a "necessary evil".
To the contrary, General Jacques Massu denounced
it, following Aussaresses's revelations and,
before his death, pronounced himself in favor
of an official condemnation of the use of
torture during the war.Bigeard's justification
of torture has been criticized by Joseph Doré,
archbishop of Strasbourg, Marc Lienhard, president
of the Lutheran Church of Augsbourg Confession
in Alsace-Lorraine, and others.In June 2000,
Bigeard declared that he was based in Sidi
Ferruch, a torture center where Algerians
were murdered.
Bigeard qualified Louisette Ighilahriz's revelations,
published in the Le Monde newspaper on June
20, 2000, as "lies."
An ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz had
been tortured by General Massu.
However, since General Massu's revelations,
Bigeard has admitted the use of torture, although
he denies having personally used it, and has
declared, "You are striking the heart of an
84-year-old man."
Bigeard also recognized that Larbi Ben M'Hidi
was assassinated and that his death was disguised
as a suicide.
In 2018 France officially admitted that torture
was systematic and routine.
=== Algerian use of terror ===
Specializing in ambushes and night raids to
avoid direct contact with superior French
firepower, the internal forces targeted army
patrols, military encampments, police posts,
and colonial farms, mines, and factories,
as well as transportation and communications
facilities.
Kidnapping was commonplace, as was the murder
and mutilation of civilians.
At first, the FLN targeted only Muslim officials
of the colonial regime; later, they coerced,
maimed, or killed village elders, government
employees, and even simple peasants who refused
to support them.
Throat slitting and decapitation were commonly
used by the FLN as mechanisms of terror.
During the first two and a half years of the
conflict, the guerrillas killed an estimated
6,352 Muslim and 1,035 non-Muslim civilians.
== French school ==
Counter-insurgency tactics developed during
the war were used elsewhere afterwards, including
the Argentinian Dirty War in the 1970s.
In a book, journalist Marie-Monique Robin
alleges that French secret agents taught Argentine
intelligence agents counter-insurgency tactics,
including the systemic use of torture, block-warden
system, and other techniques, all of which
were employed during the 1957 Battle of Algiers.
The Battle of Algiers film includes the documentation.
Robin found the document proving that a secret
military agreement tied France to Argentina
from 1959 until the election of President
François Mitterrand in 1981.
== Historiography ==
Although the opening of the archives of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs after a 30-year
lock-up enabled some new historical research
on the war, including Jean-Charles Jauffret's
book, La Guerre d'Algérie par les documents
(The Algerian War According to the Documents),
many remain inaccessible.
The recognition in 1999 by the National Assembly,
permitted the Algerian War, at last, to enter
the syllabi of French schools.
In France, the war was known as "la guerre
sans nom" ("the war without a name") while
it was being fought as the government variously
described the war as the "Algerian events",
the "Algerian problem" and the "Algerian dispute";
the mission of the French Army was "ensuring
security", "maintaining order" and "pacification",
but was never described as fighting a war;
while the FLN were referred to as "criminals",
"bandits", "outlaws", "terrorists" and "fellagha"
(a derogatory Arabic word meaning "road-cutters",
but which was popularly mistranslated as "throat-cutters"-a
reference to the FLN"s favorite method of
execution, namely making people wear the "Kabylian
smile" by cutting their throats, pulling their
tongues out and leaving them to bleed to death).
After reports of the widespread use of torture
by French forces started to reach France in
1956–57, the war become commonly known as
"la sale guerre" ("the dirty war"), a term
that is still used today, and which reflects
the very negative memory of the war in France.As
the war was officially a "police action",
for decades no monuments were built to honor
the about 25,000 French soldiers killed in
the war while the Defense Ministry refused
to classify veterans as veterans until the
1970s.
When a monument to the Unknown Soldier of
the Algerian War was erected in 1977, the
French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
in his dedication speech refused to use the
words war or Algeria, instead using the phrase
"the unknown soldier of North Africa".
A national monument to the French war dead
was not built until 1996, and even then spoke
only of those killed fighting in "Afrique
du nord" and was located in a decrepit area
of Paris rarely visited by tourists, as if
to hide the monument.
Further adding to the silence were the vested
interests of French politicians.
François Mitterrand, the Socialist president
1981–95 had been the Interior Minister 1954–55
and the Justice Minister 1955–57 during
which time he had been deeply involved in
the repression of the FLN, and it was only
after Mitterrand's death in 1996 that Socialists
started to become willing to talk about the
war, and even then remaining very guarded
about Mitterrand's role.
Likewise, de Gaulle had promised in the Evian
accords that the pieds-noirs could remain
in Algeria, but after independence, the FLN
had freely violated the accords, leading to
the entire pied-noir population fleeing to
France, usually with only the clothes they
were wearing as they had lost everything they
had in Algeria.
For Gaullists, this was not exactly a shining
moment to cherish.In English, British and
American historians tended to see the FLN
as freedom fighters with the French being
condemned as imperialists.
One of the first books about the war in English,
A Scattering of Dust by American journalist
Herb Greer depicted the Algerian struggle
for independence in a very sympathetic way.
Most work in English done in the 1960s and
1970s, usually the work of left-wing scholars,
focused on explaining the FLN as a part of
a generational change in Algerian nationalism
and depicted the war as either a reaction
to intolerable racist oppression and/or an
attempt by peasantry impoverished by French
policies to improve their lot.
One of the few military histories of the war
was The Algerian Insurrection by a retired
British Army officer Edgar O'Ballance who
wrote with frank admiration for French tactics
in Algeria, seeing the FLN as a terrorist
group that needed to be suppressed and concluded
that the tactics that won the war militarily
lost the war politically.In 1977, the British
historian Alistair Horne published A Savage
War of Peace, which is generally regarded
as the leading book written on the subject
in English, though written from a French perspective
rather the Algerian.
After 15 years, Horne was not concerned about
right or wrong, but with cause and effect.
A Francophile who lived in Paris at the time
of the war, Horne had condemned the Suez war
and the French bombing of the Tunisian village
of Sakiet Sidi Youssef in 1958, arguing that
the inflexibility of the FLN had won Algeria
independence and created a sense of Algerian
national identity, leading to rule by authoritarian,
but "progressive" FLN regime.
The American journalist Adam Shatz wrote:
"Not surprisingly, the best single survey
of the war is by an English journalist, Alistair
Horne, whose masterful A Savage War of Peace,
published in 1977, still has no equal in French."In
a 1977 column published in The Times Literacy
Supplement reviewing the book A Savage War
of Peace by Alistair Horne, the Iraqi-born
British historian Elie Kedourie vigorously
attacked Horne as an apologist for terrorism,
accusing him of engaging the "cosy pieties"
of bien-pensants as Kedorie condemned those
Western intellectuals who excused terrorism
when committed by Third World revolutionaries.
Kedourie claimed that far from a mass movement,
the FLN were a small gang of murderous intellectuals
who used brutally terroristic tactics against
the French and any Muslim who was loyal to
the French, whom the French had beaten back
by 1959.
Kedourie charged that de Gaulle had cynically
sacrificed the colons and the harkis as Kedourie
charged that de Gaulle had chosen to disregard
his constitutional oath as president to protect
all the French to ensure that "the French
withdrew and handed over power to the only
organized body of armed men who were on the
scene-a civilized government thus acting for
all the world like the votary of some Mao
or Ho, in the barbarous belief that legitimacy
comes from the power of the gun".Before the
war, Algeria was a favored setting for French
films with the British French professor Leslie
Hill having written: "In the late 1920s and
1930s, for instance, North Africa provided
film-makers in France with a ready fund of
familiar images of the exotics, mingling,
for instance, the languid eroticism of Arabian
nights with the infinite and hazy vistas of
the Sahara to create a powerful confection
of tragic heroism and passionate love".
During the war itself, French censors banned
the entire subject of the war.
Since 1962 when film censorship relating to
the war eased, French films dealing with the
conflict have consistently portrayed the war
as a set of conflicting memories and rival
narratives (of which only some may be true,
but which ones is left unclear) with most
films dealing with the war taking a disjointed
chronological structure where scenes before,
during and after the war are juxtaposed out
of sequence with one film critic referring
to the cinematic Algeria as "an ambiguous
world marked by the displacements and repetitions
of dreams".
The consistent message of French films dealing
with the war is that something horrible happened,
but just what happened, who was involved,
and why being left unexplained.
Though atrocities, especially torture by French
forces are acknowledged, the French soldiers
who fought in Algeria were and are always
portrayed in French cinema as the "lost soldiers",
tragic victims of the war who are more deserving
of sympathy than the FLN people they tortured
(almost invariably portrayed as vicious, psychopathic
terrorists) – an approach to the war that
has raised anger in Algeria.From time to time,
the memory of the Algerian War surfaced in
France.
In 1987, when SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie,
the "Butcher of Lyon" was brought to trial
for crimes against humanity, graffiti appeared
on the walls of the banlieues (the slum districts
in which most Algerian immigrants in France
live in) reading: "Barbie in France!
When will Massu be in Algeria!".
Barbie's lawyer Jacques Vergès adopted a
tu quoque defense, asking the judges "is a
crime against humanity is to be defined as
only one of Nazis against the Jews or if it
applies to more seriously crimes...the crimes
of imperialists against people struggling
for their independence?", going on to say
there was nothing his client did against the
French Resistance that was not done by "certain
French officers in Algeria" whom Vergès noted
could not be prosecuted because of de Gaulle's
amnesty of 1962.
In 1997, when Maurice Papon, a career French
civil servant was brought to trial for crimes
against humanity for sending 1, 600 Jews from
Bordeaux to be killed at Auschwitz in 1942,
it emerged over the course of the trial that
on 17 October 1961 Papon had organized a massacre
of between 100 and 200 Algerians in downtown
Paris, which was the first time that most
of the French had heard of the massacre.
The revelation that hundreds of people had
been killed by the Paris Sûreté was a great
shock in France and led to uncomfortable questions
being raised about what had happened during
the Algerian War.
The American historian William Cohen wrote
that the Papon trial "sharpened the focus"
on the Algerian War, it not provide "clarity"
as Papon's role as a civil servant under Vichy
led to misleading conclusions in France that
it was former collaborators who were responsible
for the terror in Algeria, when in fact most
of the men responsible like Guy Mollet, General
Marcel Bigeard, Robert Lacoste, General Jacques
Massu and Jacques Soustelle had all been résistants
in World War Two, which was a fact that many
French historians found very unpalatable.In
1992, the American John Ruedy published Modern
Algeria: Origins and Development of a Nation.
Ruedy wrote under French rule, the traditional
social structure had been so completely destroyed
that when the FLN launched its independence
struggle in 1954, the only way of asserting
one's interests was the law of the gun, which
explains why the FLN was so violent not only
in regards to its enemies, but also within
the movement, forming the basis of an "alternative
political culture" based on brute force that
persists to this day.On 15 June 2000, Le Monde
published an interview with Louisette Ighilahriz,
a former FLN member who described in graphic
detail her torture at the hands of the French
Army and made the sensational claim that the
war heroes General Jacques Massu and General
Marcel Bigeard had personally been present
when she being tortured for information.
What made the interview very touching for
many French people was that Ighilahriz was
not demanding vengeance, but rather wished
to express thanks to Dr. François Richaud,
the army doctor who extended her much kindness
and whom she believed saved her life by treating
her every time she was tortured, asking if
it were possible for her to see Dr. Richaud
one last time to thank him personally (Dr.
Richaud it turned out had died in 1997).
As Ighilahriz had been an attractive woman
in her youth, university-educated, secular,
fluent in French and fond of quoting Victor
Hugo, and her duties in the FLN had been as
an information courier, she made for a most
sympathetic victim as she was a woman did
not come across as Algerian.
William Cohen commented had she been an uneducated
man who had been involved in killings and
was not coming forward to express thanks for
a Frenchman, her story might not had resonated
the same way.
The Ighiahriz case led to a public letter
signed by 12 people who been involved in the
war to President Chirac asking that October
31 be made a public day of remembrance for
victims of torture in Algeria.
In response to the Ighilahriz case, General
Paul Aussaresses gave an interview on 23 November
2000 in which he candidly admitted to ordering
torture and extrajudicial executions, stating
he had personally executed 24 fellagha, which
he argued were justified as torture and extrajudicial
executions were the only way to defeat the
FLN.
In May 2001, General Aussaresses published
his memoirs Services spéciaux Algérie 1955–1957,
in which presented a detailed account of torture
and extrajudicial killings in the name of
the republic which he wrote were all done
under orders from Paris, confirming what had
been long suspected.
As a result of these interviews and Aussaresses's
book, the Algerian War was finally extensively
discussed by the French media who had ignored
the subject as much as possible for decades,
through no consensus emerged about how to
best remember the war.
Adding to the interest was the decision by
one war veteran Georges Fogel to come forward
to confirm that he had seen Ighiahriz and
many others tortured in 1957 while the politician
and war veteran Jean Marie Faure decided in
February 2001 to release extracts from the
diary he kept at the time showing "acts of
sadism and horror" he had witnessed.
The French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet called
this a moment of "catharsis" that was "explainable
only in near-French terms: it is the return
of the repressed".In 2002, Une Vie Debout:
Mémoires Politiques by Mohammed Harbi, a
former advisor to Ben Bella was published
in which Harbi wrote: "Because they [the FLN
leaders] weren't supported at the moment of
their arrival on the scene by a real and dynamic
popular movement, they took power of the movement
by force and they maintained it by force.
Convinced that they had to act with resolution
in order to protect themselves against their
enemies, they deliberately chose an authoritarian
path."The Algerian War remains a contentious
event today.
According to historian Benjamin Stora, one
of the leading historians on the Algerian
war, memories concerning the war remain fragmented,
with no common ground to speak of:
There is no such thing as a history of the
Algerian War; there is just a multitude of
histories and personal paths through it.
Everyone involved considers that they lived
through it in their own way, and any attempt
to understand the Algerian War globally is
immediately rejected by protagonists.
Even though Stora has counted 3,000 publications
in French on the Algerian war, there still
is no work produced by French and Algerian
authors cooperating with one another.
Even though, according to Stora, there can
"no longer be talk about a 'war without a
name', a number of problems remain, especially
the absence of sites in France to commemorate"
the war.
Furthermore, conflicts have arisen on an exact
commemoration date to end the war.
Although many sources as well as the French
state place it on March 19, 1962, the Evian
agreements, others point out that the massacres
of harkis and the kidnapping of pieds-noirs
took place afterwards.
Stora further points out, "The phase of memorial
reconciliation between the two sides of the
sea is still a long way off."
This was evidenced by the National Assembly's
creation of the law on colonialism on 23 February
2005, which asserted that colonialism had
overall been "positive."
Alongside a heated debate in France, the February
23, 2005, law had the effect of jeopardizing
the treaty of friendship that President Jacques
Chirac was supposed to sign with President
Abdelaziz Bouteflika—a treaty no longer
on the agenda.
Following this controversial law, Bouteflika
has talked about a cultural genocide, particularly
referring to the 1945 Sétif massacre.
Chirac finally had the law repealed through
a complex institutional mechanism.
Another matter concerns the teaching of the
war, as well as of colonialism and decolonization,
in particular in French secondary schools
Hence, there is only one reference to racism
in a French textbook, one published by Bréal
publishers for terminales students (those
passing their baccalauréat).
Thus, many are not surprised that the first
to speak about the October 17, 1961, massacre
were music bands, including, but not only,
hip-hop bands such as the famous Suprême
NTM ("les Arabes dans la Seine") or politically
engaged La Rumeur.
Indeed, the Algerian War is not even the subject
of a specific chapter in textbook for terminales
Henceforth, Benjamin Stora stated:
As Algerians do not appear in an "indigenous"
condition, and their sub-citizens status,
as the history of nationalist movement, is
never evoked as their being one of great figures
of the resistance, such as Messali Hadj and
Ferhat Abbas.
They neither emerge nor are being given attention.
No one is explaining to students what colonization
has been.
We have prevented students from understanding
why the decolonization took place.
In metropolitan France in 1963, 43% of French
Algerians lived in bidonvilles (shanty towns).
Thus, Azouz Begag, the delegate Minister for
Equal Opportunities, wrote an autobiographic
novel, Le Gone du Chaâba, about his experiences
while living in a bidonville in the outskirts
of Lyon.
It is impossible to understand the third-generation
of Algerian immigrants to France without recalling
this bicultural experience.
An official parliamentary report on the "prevention
of criminality", commanded by then Interior
Minister Villepin and made by member of parliament
Jacques-Alain Bénisti, claimed that "Multilingualism
(bilinguisme) was a factor of criminality."
(sic).
Following outcries, the definitive version
of the Bénisti report finally made multilingualism
an asset rather than a fault.After having
denied its use for 40 years, the French state
has finally recognized its history of torture;
although, there was never an official proclamation
about it.
General Paul Aussaresses was sentenced following
his justification of the use of torture for
"apology of war crimes."
But, as it did during wartime, the French
state claimed torture were isolated acts,
instead of admitting its responsibility for
the frequent use of torture to break the insurgents'
morale and not, as Aussaresses has claimed,
to "save lives" by gaining short-term information
which would stop "terrorists".
The state now claims that torture was a regrettable
aberration due to the context of the exceptionally
savage war.
But academic research has proven both theses
false.
"Torture in Algeria was engraved in the colonial
act; it is a 'normal' illustration of an abnormal
system", wrote Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard
and Sandrine Lemaire, who discuss the phenomena
of "human zoos."
From the enfumades (smoking parlors) of the
Darha caves in 1844 by Pélissier to the 1945
riots in Sétif, Guelma, and Kherrata, the
repression in Algeria has used the same methods.
Following the Sétif massacres, other riots
against the European presence occurred in
Guelma, Batna, Biskra, and Kherrata; they
resulted in 103 deaths among the pieds-noirs.
The suppression of these riots officially
saw 1,500 other deaths, but N. Bancel, P.
Blanchard and S. Lemaire estimate the number
to be between 6,000 and 8,000.
=== INA archives ===
Note: concerning the audio and film archives
from the Institut national de l'audiovisuel
(INA), see Benjamin Stora's comments on their
politically oriented creation.
Cinq Colonnes à la une, Rushes Interview
Pied-Noir, ORTF, July 1, 1962
Cinq Colonnes à la une, Rétrospective Algérie,
ORTF, June 9, 1963 (concerning these INA archives,
see also Benjamin Stora's warning about the
conditions of creation of these images)
=== Contemporary publications ===
Trinquier, Roger.
Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency,
1961.
Leulliette, Pierre, St. Michael and the Dragon:
Memoirs of a Paratrooper, Houghton Mifflin,
1964.
Galula, David, Counterinsurgency Warfare:
Theory and Practice, 1964.
Jouhaud, Edmond.
O Mon Pays Perdu: De Bou-Sfer a Tulle.
Paris: Librarie Artheme Fayard, 1969.
Maignen, Etienne Treillis au djebel – Les
Piliers de Tiahmaïne Yellow Concept, 2004.
Derradji, Abder-Rahmane, The Algerian Guerrilla
Campaign Strategy & Tactics, The Edwin Mellen
Press, New York, USA, 1997.
Feraoun, Mouloud, Journal 1955–1962, University
of Nebraska Press, USA, 2000.
Pečar, Zdravko, Alžir do nezavisnosti.
Beograd: Prosveta; Beograd: Institut za izučavanje
radničkog pokreta, 1967.
=== Other publications ===
==== English language ====
Aussaresses, General Paul.
The Battle of the Casbah, New York: Enigma
Books, 2010, ISBN 978-1-929631-30-8.
Horne, Alistair (1978).
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962.
Viking.
ISBN 978-0-670-61964-1.
Maran, Rita (1989).
Torture: The Role of Ideology in the French-Algerian
War, New York: Prager Publishers.
Windrow, Martin.
The Algerian War 1954–62.
London: Osprey Publishing, 1997.
ISBN 1-85532-658-2
Arslan Humbaraci.
Algeria: a revolution that failed.
London: Pall mall Press Ltd, 1966.
Samia Henni: Architecture of Counterrevolution.
The French Army in Northern Algeria, gta Verlag,
Zürich 2017, ISBN 978-3-85676-376-3
Pečar, Zdravko, Algeria till Independence.
Currently being translated into English by
Dubravka Juraga: https://historyofalgeria.wordpress.com/
==== French language ====
Translations may be available for some of
these works.
See specific cases.
Benot, Yves (1994).
Massacres coloniaux, La Découverte, coll.
"Textes à l'appui", Paris.
Jauffret, Jean-Charles.
La Guerre d'Algérie par les documents (first
tome, 1990; second tome, 1998; account here)
Rey-Goldzeiguer, Annie (2001).
Aux origines de la guerre d'Algérie, La Découverte,
Paris.
Robin, Marie-Monique.
Escadrons de la mort, l'école française,453
pages.
La Découverte (15 September 2004).
Collection: Cahiers libres.
(ISBN 2-7071-4163-1) (Spanish transl.: Los
Escuadrones De La Muerte/ the Death Squadron),
539 pages.
Sudamericana; Édition: Translatio (October
2005).
(ISBN 950-07-2684-X)
Mekhaled, Boucif (1995).
Chroniques d'un massacre.
8 mai 1945.
Sétif, Guelma, Kherrata, Syros, Paris, 1995.
Slama, Alain-Gérard (1996).
La Guerre d'Algérie.
Histoire d'une déchirure, Gallimard, coll.
"Découvertes Gallimard" (n° 301), Paris.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre.
La Torture sous la République (1970) and
many others, more recent (see entry).
Roy, Jules (1960).
"La guerre d'Algérie" ("The War in Algeria",
1961, Grove Press)
Etienne Maignen.
Treillis au djebel- Les Piliers de Tiahmaïne
Yellow Concept 2004.
Gilbert Meynier.
Histoire intérieure du FLN 1954–1962 Fayard
2004.
== Films ==
Le Petit Soldat by Jean-Luc Godard (1960 – banned
until 1963 because of the presence of scenes
of torture)
Octobre à Paris by Jacques Panijel (1961)
Muriel (film) by Alain Resnais (1962)
Lost Command aka Les Centurions (1966)
The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo
(1966 - banned in France for five years)
Elise ou la vraie vie by Michel Drach (1970)
Avoir 20 ans dans les Aurès by René Vautier
(1972)
La Guerre d'Algérie, a documentary film by
Yves Courrière (1972)
R.A.S. by Yves Boisset (1973)
Wild Reeds by André Téchiné (1994)
"Deserter" by Martin Huberty (2002)
La Trahison by Philippe Faucon (2005, adapted
from a novel by Claude Sales – on the presence
of Muslim soldiers in the French Army)
Nuit noire by Alain Tasma (2005, on the Paris
massacre of 1961)
Caché (film) (a.k.a. Hidden) by Michael Haneke
(2005, referring to the Paris massacre of
1961)
Harkis by Alain Tasma (2006)
Mon colonel by Laurent Herbier (2007)
L'Ennemi Intime by Florent Emilio Siri (scenario
by Patrick Rotman, 2007)
Cartouches Gauloises by Mehdi Charef (2007)
Balcon sur la mer by Nicole Garcia (2010)the
adult lives of two children who survive the
siege of Oran.
Outside the Law (Hors la loi) by Rachid Bouchareb
Ce que le jour doit à la nuit by Alexandre
Arcady (2012)
== See also ==
List of colonial heads of Algeria
Algiers putsch of 1961
Armée de l'Air (Part III: End of empire in
Indochina and Algeria, 1939-1962)
Ahmed Ben Bella
Frantz Fanon
Adolfo Kaminsky (1925–), famous forger who
worked for FLN, draft dodgers, etc., to make
false ID
Nationalism and resistance in Algeria
Nuclear weapons and France
Paris massacre of 1961
Oran massacre of 1962
Manifesto of the 121
Torture during the Algerian War
History of Algeria since 1962
Independence Day (Algeria)
French Algeria
Evian Agreements
