Algerian War 1

Algerian War

Algerian War

Date 1 November 1954 – 19 March 1962(7 years, 4 months, 2 weeks and 4 days)

Location Algeria

Result French military victoryFLN political victoryÉvian Accords•• Algerian independence• Exodus of the Pieds-Noirs

Belligerents FLN (ALN) MNA PCA

French Fourth Republic(1954–1958)

French Fifth Republic (1958–1962)

FAF(1960–61)

OAS(1961–62)

Commanders and leadersSaadi YacefMustapha Benboulaïd†Ferhat AbbasHouari BoumedienneHocine Aït AhmedAhmed Ben BellaKrim BelkacemFrantz FanonLarbi Ben M'Hidi†Rabah BitatMohamed BoudiafAli La Pointe

Paul Cherrière (1954–55)Henri Lorillot (1955–56)Raoul Salan (1956–58)Maurice Challe (1958–60)Jean Crepin (1960–61)Fernand Gambiez (1961)

Pierre LagaillardeRaoul SalanEdmond JouhaudJean-JacquesSusiniSaid BoualamPaul Aussaresses

Strength40,000 670,000[1]

90,000 Harki3,000 (OAS)

Casualties and losses

153,000 dead[2][3]

unknown number of wounded25,600 dead65,000 wounded

100 dead (OAS)2,000 jailed (OAS)

400,000–1,500,000 total Algerian war dead[4]

Algerian War 2

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The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of independence or the Algerian Revolution (Arabic: الثورة

Ath-Thawra Al-Jazā’iriyya; French: Guerre d'Algérie, "Algerian War") was a war between France and the الجزائريةAlgerian independence movements 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,terrorism against civilians, the use of torture on both sides, and counter-terrorism operations by the French Army.The conflict was also a civil war between loyalist Algerians who believed in a French Algeria and theirinsurrectionist Algerian Muslim counterparts.[5] Effectively started by members of the National Liberation Front(FLN) on November 1, 1954, during the Toussaint Rouge ("Red All Saints' Day"), the conflict shook the foundationsof the French Fourth Republic (1946–58) and led to its eventual collapse.

OverviewThe war involved a large number of rival movements which fought against each other at different moments, such ason the independence side, when the National Liberation Front (FLN) fought viciously against the Algerian NationalMovement (MNA) in Algeria and in the Café Wars on the French mainland; on the pro-French side, during its finalmonths, when the conflict evolved into a civil war between pro-French hardliners in Algeria and supporters ofGeneral Charles de Gaulle. The French Army split during two attempted coups, while the right-wing Organisation del'armée secrète (OAS) fought against both the FLN and the French government's forces.Under directives from Guy Mollet's French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) government and fromFrançois Mitterrand, who was minister of the interior, the French Army initiated a campaign of "pacification" ofwhat was considered at the time to be a full part of France. This "public-order operation" quickly grew to a full-scalewar. Algerians, who had at first largely favored a peaceful resolution, turned increasingly toward the goal ofindependence, supported by Arab countries and, more generally, by worldwide opinion fueled by anti-colonialistideas. Meanwhile, the French were divided on the issues of "French Algeria" (l'Algérie Française), specifically,concerning whether to keep the status-quo, negotiate a status intermediate between independence and completeintegration in the French Republic, or allow complete independence. The French army finally obtained a militaryvictory in the war, but the situation had changed, and Algerian independence could no longer be forestalled.Because of the instability in France, the French Fourth Republic was dissolved. Charles de Gaulle returned to powerduring the May 1958 crisis and subsequently founded the Fifth Republic with his Gaullist followers. De Gaulle'sreturn to power was supposed to ensure Algeria's continued occupation and integration with the French Community,which had replaced the French Union and brought together France's colonies. However, de Gaulle progressivelyshifted in favor of Algerian independence, purportedly seeing it as inevitable. De Gaulle organized a vote for theAlgerian people. The Algerians chose independence, and France engaged in negotiations with the FLN, leading tothe March 1962 Evian Accords, which resulted in the independence of Algeria.

Algerian War 3

After the failed April 1961 Algiers putsch, organized by generals hostile to the negotiations headed by MichelDebré's Gaullist government, the OAS (Organisation de l'armée secrète), which grouped various opponents ofAlgerian independence, initiated a campaign of bombings. It also initiated peaceful strikes and demonstrations inAlgeria in order to block the implementation of the Evian Accords and the exile of the pieds-noirs (Algerians ofEuropean origin). Ahmed Ben Bella, who had been arrested in 1956 along with other FLN leaders, became the firstPresident of Algeria.To this day, the war has provided an important strategy frame for counter-insurgency thinkers, while the use oftorture by the French Army has provoked a moral and political debate on the legitimacy and effectiveness of suchmethods. This debate is far from being settled because torture was used by both sides.The Algerian war was a founding event in modern Algerian history. It left long-standing scars in both French andAlgerian societies and continues to affect some segments of society in both countries.[citation needed] It was not untilJune 1999, 37 years after the conclusion of the conflict, that the French National Assembly officially acknowledgedthat a "war" had taken place,[6] while the Paris massacre of 1961 was recognized by the French state only in October2001. On the other hand, the Oran massacre of 1962 by the FLN has also not yet been recognized by the Algerianstate. Relations between France and Algeria are still deeply marked by this conflict and its aftermath.

Background: French Algeria

Conquest of AlgeriaOn the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algiers in 1830.[7] Directed by Marshall Bugeaud, whobecame the first Governor-General of Algeria, the conquest was violent, marked by a "scorched earth" policydesigned to reduce the power of the Dey; this included massacres, mass rapes, and other atrocities.[8] ApplaudingBugeaud's method, liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville could declare: "War in Africa is a science. Everyone isfamiliar with its rules and everyone can apply those rules with almost complete certainty of success. One of thegreatest services that Field Marshal Bugeaud has rendered his country is to have spread, perfected and madeeveryone aware of this new science."[8]

In 1834, Algeria became a French military colony and, in 1848, was declared by the constitution of 1848 to be anintegral part of French territory and divided into three French departments (Algiers, Oran and Constantine). AfterAlgeria was divided into the French departments, many French and other Europeans (Spanish, Italians, Maltese, andothers) began to settle in Algeria.Under the Second Empire (1852–1871), the Code de l'indigénat (Indigenous Code) was implemented by the Sénatusconsulte of July 14, 1865. It allowed Muslims to apply for full French citizenship, a measure that few took, since itinvolved renouncing the right to be governed by sharia law in personal matters and was considered a kind ofapostasy. Its first article stipulated

: "The indigenous Muslim is French; however, he will continue to be subjected to Muslim law. He maybe admitted to serve in the army (armée de terre) and the navy (armée de mer). He may be called tofunctions and civil employment in Algeria. He may, on his demand, be admitted to enjoy the rights of aFrench citizen; in this case, he is subjected to the political and civil laws of France." (for French original,see below)[9]

However, until 1870, fewer than 200 demands were registered by Muslims and 152 by Jewish Algerians.[10] The1865 decree was then modified by the 1870 Crémieux decrees, which granted French nationality to Jews living inone of the three Algerian departments. In 1881, the Code de l'Indigénat made the discrimination official by creatingspecific penalities for indigenes and organizing the seizure or appropriation of their lands.[10]

After the 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

Algerian War 4

and overseas departments, and by the 1946 Constitution. The Law of September 20, 1947, granted French citizenshipto all Algerian subjects, who were not required to renounce their Muslim personal status.[11]

Algeria was unique to France because, unlike all other overseas possessions acquired by France during the 19thcentury, only Algeria was considered an integral part of France in the same manner that Alaska and Hawaii areconsidered states in the United States of America, despite their geographic distance from the mainland.

Algerian nationalismBoth native and European Algerians took part in World War I, fighting for France. Natives as tirailleurs (suchregiments were created as early as 1842[12]) and spahis ; and French settlers as Zouaves or Chasseurs d'Afrique.With Wilson's 1918 proclamation of the Fourteen Points, whose fifth point proclaimed: "A free, open-minded, andabsolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that indetermining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight withthe equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined", some Algerian intellectuals—dubbedoulémas began to nurture the desire for independence or, at least, autonomy and self-rule.Within this context, Hadj Abd el-Kadir, grandson of Abd el-Kadir, spearheaded the resistance against the French inthe 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 amember of the PCF and of its affiliated trade union, the Confédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU), joinedthe following year.The North African Star broke from the PCF in 1928, before being dissolved in 1929 at Paris's demand. Amidgrowing 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 IndigenousCode by giving French citizenship to a small number of Muslims. The pieds-noirs (Algerians of European origin),however, violently demonstrated against it; North African Party opposed it; these led to the project's abandonment.The independent party was dissolved in 1937, and its leaders were charged with the illegal reconstitution of adissolved 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 an extensive autonomy. This new partywas again dissolved in 1939. Under Vichy, the French state attempted to abrogate the Crémieux decree in order tosuppress the Jews' having French citizenship, but the measure was never implemented.On the other hand, independent leader Ferhat Abbas founded the Algerian Popular Union (Union populairealgérienne) in 1938, while writing in 1943 the Algerian People's Manifest (Manifeste du peuple algérien). Arrestedafter the Sétif massacre of May 8, 1945, during which the French Army and Pied Noir mobs killed about 6,000Algerians,[13] Abbas founded the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto (UDMA) in 1946 and was elected asa 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) toengage in an armed struggle against French authority.

War chronology

Beginning of hostilitiesIn the early morning hours of November 1, 1954, FLN maquisards (guerrillas) or "terrorists", as they were called by the French, launched attacks in various parts of Algeria against military and civilian targets in what became known as the Toussaint Rouge (Red All-Saints' Day). They also attacked many French civilians, killing several.[citation

needed] 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

Algerian War 5

had completed the liquidation of France's empire in Indochina, which set the tone of French policy for five years. OnNovember 12, he declared in the National Assembly: "One does not compromise when it comes to defending theinternal peace of the nation, the unity and integrity of the Republic. The Algerian departments are part of the FrenchRepublic. They have been French for a long time, and they are irrevocably French.... Between them and metropolitanFrance there can be no conceivable secession." At first, and despite the Sétif massacre of May 8, 1945 "that havebetween 20 000 and 45 000 deaths, according to other sources", and the pro-Independence struggle before WorldWar II, most Algerians were in favor of a relative status-quo. While Messali Hadj had radicalized by forming theFLN, Ferhat Abbas maintained a more moderate, electoral strategy. Fewer than 500 fellaghas (pro-Independencefighters) could be counted at the beginning of the conflict.[14] The Algerian population radicalized itself in particularbecause of the Main Rouge (Red Hand) terrorist attacks.[14] This terrorist group engaged in anti-colonialist actions inall of the Maghreb region (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), killing, for example, Tunisian activist Farhat Hached in1952.

The FLNThe FLN uprising presented nationalist groups with the question of whether to adopt armed revolt as the main courseof action. During the first year of the war, Ferhat Abbas's Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto (UDMA), theulema, 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 leaderspublicly 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 fullweight of its prestige behind the FLN. Bendjelloul and the pro-integrationist moderates had already abandoned theirefforts to mediate between the French and the rebels.After the collapse of the MTLD, the veteran nationalist Messali Hadj formed the leftist Mouvement NationalAlgérien (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 theFLN, subsequently wiped out the MNA guerrilla operation in Algeria, and Messali Hadj's movement lost what littleinfluence it had had there. However, the MNA retained the support of many Algerian workers in France through theUnion Syndicale des Travailleurs Algériens (the Union of Algerian Workers). The FLN also established a strongorganization in France to oppose the MNA. The "Café wars", resulting in nearly 5,000 deaths, were waged in Francebetween the two rebel groups throughout the years of the War of Independence.

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the six historical Leaders of the FLN

On the political front, the FLN worked to persuade — and to coerce —the Algerian masses to support the aims of the independencemovement through contributions. FLN-influenced labor unions,professional associations, and students' and women's organizationswere created to lead opinion in diverse segments of the population, buthere too violent coercion was widely used. Frantz Fanon, a psychiatristfrom Martinique who became the FLN's leading political theorist,provided a sophisticated intellectual justification for the use of violencein achieving national liberation.[15] He stated that only throughviolence could an oppressed people attain human status.[citation needed]

From Cairo, Ahmed Ben Bella ordered the liquidation of potentialinterlocuteurs valables, those independent representatives of theMuslim community acceptable to the French through whom acompromise or reforms within the system might be achieved.

As the FLN campaign of influence and terror spread through thecountryside, many European farmers in the interior (calledPieds-Noirs) sold their holdings and sought refuge in Algiers and otherAlgerian 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 populationbegan to demand that the French government engage in sterner countermeasures, including the proclamation of astate of emergency, capital punishment for political crimes, denunciation of all separatists, and most ominously, acall for 'tit-for-tat' reprisal operations by police, military, and para-military forces. Colon vigilante units, whoseunauthorized 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 ofthe Muslim community.

By 1955 effective political action groups within the Algerian colonial community succeeded in convincing many ofthe governors general sent by Paris that the military was not the way to resolve the conflict. A major success was theconversion of Jacques Soustelle, who went to Algeria as governor general in January 1955 determined to restorepeace. Soustelle, a one-time leftist and by 1955 an ardent Gaullist, began an ambitious reform program (the SoustellePlan) aimed at improving economic conditions among the Muslim population (Library of Congress).

After the Philippeville massacreThe FLN adopted tactics similar to those of nationalist groups in Asia, and the French did not realize the seriousnessof the challenge they faced until 1955, when the FLN moved into urbanized areas. "An important watershed in theWar of Independence was the massacre of Pieds-Noirs civilians by the FLN near the town of Philippeville (nowknown as Skikda) in August 1955. Before this operation, FLN policy was to attack only military andgovernment-related targets. The commander of the Constantine wilaya/region, however, decided a drastic escalationwas needed. The killing by the FLN and its supporters of 123 people, including 71 French,[16] including old womenand babies, shocked Jacques Soustelle into calling for more repressive measures against the rebels. The governmentclaimed it killed 1,273 guerrillas in retaliation; according to the FLN and to The Times magazine, 12,000 Algerianswere massacred by the armed forces and police, as well as Pieds-Noirs gangs.[17] Soustelle's repression was an earlycause of the Algerian population's rallying to the FLN.[16] After Philippeville, Soustelle declared sterner measuresand an all-out war began. In 1956 demonstrations of French Algerians forced the French government to abolish anidea of reform.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

Algerian War 7

rule of Algeria by decree. He favored stepping up French military operations and granted the army exceptionalpolice powers—a concession of dubious legality under French law—to deal with the mounting political violence. Atthe same time, Lacoste proposed a new administrative structure that would give Algeria a degree of autonomy and adecentralized 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. Deputies representingAlgerian risings were able to delay until 1958 passage of the measure by the National Assembly of France.In August/September 1956, the internal leadership of the FLN met to organize a formal policy-making body tosynchronize the movement's political and military activities. The highest authority of the FLN was vested in thethirty-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 etd'Exécution, CCE) formed the executive. The externals, including Ben Bella, knew the conference was taking placebut by chance or design on the part of the internals were unable to attend.Meanwhile, in October 1956, the French Air Force intercepted a Moroccan DC-3 that was flying to Tunis, carryingAhmed 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 actioncaused the remaining rebel leaders to harden their stance.France took a more openly hostile view of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's material and political assistanceto the FLN, which some French analysts believed was the most important element in sustaining continued rebelactivity in Algeria. This attitude was a factor in persuading France to participate in the November 1956 Britishattempt 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 thedrift, the FLN expanded its executive committee to include Abbas, as well as imprisoned political leaders such asBen Bella. It also convinced communist and Arab members of the United Nations (UN) to put diplomatic pressureon the French government to negotiate a cease-fire.Writer, philosopher and playwright Albert Camus, native of Algiers, often associated with existentialism, triedunsuccessfully to persuade both sides to at least leave civilians alone, writing editorials against the use of torture inCombat newspaper.The FLN considered him a fool, and some Pied-Noirs considered him a traitor. Nevertheless, in his speech when hereceived the Literature Nobel Prize in Oslo, Camus said that when faced with a radical choice he would eventuallysupport his community. This statement made him lose his status among the left-wing intellectuals; when he died in1960 in a car crash, the official thesis of an ordinary accident (a quick open-and-shut case) has left more than a fewobservers doubtful. His widow has claimed that Camus, though discreet, was in fact an ardent supporter of FrenchAlgeria in the last years of his life.

Battle of AlgiersTo increase international and domestic French attention to their struggle, the FLN decided to bring the conflict to thecities and to call a nationwide general strike and also to plant bombs in public places. The most notablemanifestation of the new urban campaign was the Battle of Algiers, which began on September 30, 1956, when threewomen, including Djamila Bouhired and Zohra Drif, simultaneously placed bombs at three sites including thedowntown office of Air France. The FLN carried out an average of 800 shootings and bombings per month throughthe spring of 1957,[citation needed] resulting in many civilian casualties and inviting a crushing response from theauthorities. The 1957 general strike, timed to coincide with, and influence, the UN debate on Algeria, was largelyobserved by Muslim workers and businesses.[citation needed]

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 then in the succeeding months systematically destroyed the FLN infrastructure in Algiers. But the FLN had succeeded in showing its ability to

Algerian War 8

strike at the heart of French Algeria and to rally and force 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,a strong movement control and curfew called quadrillage and where all authority was under the military, createddoubt in France about its role in Algeria. This doubt was strongly communicated to France by French sympathisersin Algiers who supported the idea of independence morally, financially and materially. What had been originallythought of as a simple "pacification" or "public order operation" had turned into a fully fledged colonial war to blockthe influence of the guerillas and had resulted in the introduction of torture.

Guerrilla warFrom its origins in 1954 as ragtag maquisards numbering in the hundreds and armed with a motley assortment ofhunting rifles and discarded French, German, and American light weapons, the FLN had evolved by 1957 into adisciplined fighting force of 40,000.[citation needed] More than 30,000 were organized along conventional lines inexternal units that were stationed in Moroccan and Tunisian sanctuaries,[citation needed] where they served primarily todivert some French manpower from the main theaters of guerrilla activity to guard against infiltration. The brunt ofthe fighting was borne by the internals in the wilayat; estimates of the numbers of internals range from 6,000 to morethan 25,000.[citation needed]

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 againstthose in any way deemed to be supporting or encouraging French authority. This resulted in acts of sadistic tortureand the most brutal violence against all, including women and children. Specializing in ambushes and night raids andavoiding direct contact with superior French firepower, the internal forces targeted army patrols, militaryencampments, police posts, and colonial farms, mines, and factories, as well as transportation and communicationsfacilities. Once an engagement was broken off, the guerrillas merged with the population in the countryside, inaccordance with Mao's theories. Kidnapping was commonplace, as were the ritual murder and mutilation ofcivilians[18] (see Torture section).Although successful in engendering an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty within both communities in Algeria, therevolutionaries' coercive tactics suggested that they had not yet inspired the bulk of the Muslim people to revoltagainst French colonial rule. Gradually, however, the FLN gained control in certain sectors of the Aurès, theKabylie, and other mountainous areas around Constantine and south of Algiers and Oran. In these places, the FLNestablished a simple but effective— although frequently temporary—military administration that was able tocollect/extort taxes and food and to recruit manpower. But it was never able to hold large fixed positions. Algeriansall over the country also initiated underground social, judicial, and civil organizations, gradually building their ownstate.[citation needed]

The loss of competent field commanders both on the battlefield and through defections and political purges createddifficulties 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 oldscores and engage in private wars against military rivals within the FLN.

French counter-insurgency operationsDespite 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 major war. By 1956 France had committed more than 400,000 troops to 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

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attack role in order to pursue and destroy fleeing FLN guerrilla units. The American military later used the samehelicopter combat methods in Vietnam. The French also used napalm,[19] which was depicted for the first time in the2007 film L'Ennemi intime (Intimate Enemies) by Florent Emilio Siri.[19]

The French army resumed an important role in local Algerian administration through the Special AdministrationSection (Section Administrative Spécialisée, SAS), created in 1955. The SAS's mission was to establish contact withthe 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 asharkis. Armed with shotguns and using guerrilla tactics similar to those of the FLN, the harkis, who eventuallynumbered about 180,000 volunteers, more than the FLN effectives,[20] were an ideal instrument ofcounterinsurgency warfare.Harkis were mostly used in conventional formations, either in all-Algerian units commanded by French officers or inmixed units. Other uses included platoon or smaller size units, attached to French battalions, in a similar way as theKit Carson Scouts by the US in Vietnam. A third use was an intelligence gathering role, with some reported minorpseudo-operations in support of their intelligence collection.[21] According to U.S. military expert Lawrence E.Cline, however: "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 Frenchemployer 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 10thParas. "Persuaded" to work for the French forces included by the use of torture and threats against their family; theseagents "mingled with FLN cadres. They planted incriminating forged documents, spread false rumors of treacheryand fomented distrust.... As a frenzy of throat-cutting and disemboweling broke out among confused and suspiciousFLN cadres, nationalist slaughtered nationalist from April to September 1957 and did France's work for her."[22] Butthis 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 domesticintelligence agency. The Organization of the French Algerian Resistance (ORAF), a group of counter-terrorists hadas its mission to carry out false flag terrorist attacks with the aim of quashing any hopes of political compromise.[23]

But it seemed that, as in Indochina, "the French focused on developing native guerrilla groups that would fightagainst the FLN", one of whom fought in the Southern Atlas Mountains, equipped by the French Army.[24]

The FLN also used pseudo-guerrilla strategies against the French Army on one occasion, with Force K, a group of1,000 Algerians who volunteered to serve in Force K as guerrillas for the French. But most of these members wereeither already FLN members or were turned by the FLN, once enlisted. Corpses of purported FLN membersdisplayed by the unit were in fact those of dissidents and members of other Algerian groups killed by the FLN. TheFrench Army finally discovered the war ruse and tried to hunt down Force K members. However, some 600managed to escape and join the FLN with weapons and equipment.[25]

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 troopsresponsible for suppressing rebel operations in their assigned territory. Salan's methods sharply reduced the instancesof FLN terrorism but tied down a large number of troops in static defense. Salan also constructed a heavily patrolledsystem 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, andmines 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,

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simply bricked up each cave, leaving the residents to die of suffocation.[26]

Finding it impossible to control all of Algeria's remote farms and villages, the French government also initiated aprogram of concentrating large segments of the rural population, including whole villages, in camps under militarysupervision to prevent them from aiding the rebels. In the three years (1957–60) during which the regroupementprogram was followed, more than 2 million Algerians[27] were removed from their villages, mostly in themountainous areas, and resettled in the plains, where many found it impossible to reestablish their accustomedeconomic or social situations. Living conditions in the fortified villages were poor. Hundreds of empty villages weredevastated, [citation needed] and in hundreds of others, orchards and croplands not previously burned by French troopswent to seed for lack of care. These population transfers were effective in denying the use of remote villages to FLNguerrillas, who had used them as a source of rations and manpower, but also caused significant resentment on thepart of the displaced villagers. The disruptive social and economic effects of this massive relocation continued to befelt into a generation later.The French Army shifted its tactics at the end of 1958 from dependence on quadrillage to the use of mobile forcesdeployed on massive search-and-destroy missions against FLN strongholds. Within the next year, Salan's successor,General Maurice Challe, appeared to have suppressed major rebel resistance. But political developments had alreadyovertaken the French Army's successes.

Fall of the Fourth RepublicRecurrent cabinet crises focused attention on the inherent instability of the Fourth Republic and increased themisgivings of the army and of the pied-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 governmentin support of military efforts to end the rebellion. The feeling was widespread that another debacle like that ofIndochina in 1954 was in the offing and that the government would order another precipitate pullout and sacrificeFrench honor to political expediency. Many saw in de Gaulle, who had not held office since 1946, the only publicfigure capable of rallying the nation and giving direction to the French government.

Ex-voto in Notre-Dame de la Garde thanking forthe safe return of a son from Algeria, August

1958

After his tour as governor general, Soustelle had returned to France toorganize support for de Gaulle's return to power, while retaining closeties to the Army and the pied-noirs. By early 1958, he had organized acoup d'état, bringing together dissident Army officers and pied-noirswith sympathetic Gaullists. An Army junta under General Massuseized power in Algiers on the night of May 13, thereafter known asthe May 1958 crisis. General Salan assumed leadership of a Committeeof Public Safety formed to replace the civil authority and pressed thejunta's demands that de Gaulle be named by French president RenéCoty to head a government of national unity invested withextraordinary 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 bloodlessaction, Operation Corse. Subsequently, preparations were made in Algeria for Operation Resurrection, which had asobjectives the seizure of Paris and the removal of the French government. Resurrection was to be implemented if oneof three scenarios occurred: if de Gaulle was not approved as leader of France by the parliament; if de Gaulle askedfor military assistance to take power; or if it seemed that communist forces were making any move to take power inFrance. De Gaulle was approved by the French parliament on May 29, by 329 votes against 224, 15 hours before theprojected launch of Operation Resurrection. This indicated that the Fourth Republic by 1958 no longer had anysupport from the French Army in Algeria and was at its mercy even in civilian political matters. This decisive shift inthe balance of power in civil-military relations in France in 1958, and the threat of force was the main, immediatefactor in the return of de Gaulle to power in France.

Algerian War 11

De GaulleMany people, regardless of citizenship, greeted de Gaulle's return to power as the breakthrough needed to end thehostilities. On his June 4 trip to Algeria, de Gaulle calculatedly made an ambiguous and broad emotional appeal toall the inhabitants, declaring: "Je vous ai compris" ("I have understood you."). De Gaulle raised the hopes of thepied-noir and the professional military, disaffected by the indecisiveness of previous governments, with hisexclamation of "Vive l'Algérie française" ("Long live French Algeria") to cheering crowds in Mostaganem. At thesame 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 wouldbe declared early the next year, with which Algeria would be associated but of which it would not form an integralpart. All Muslims, including women, were registered for the first time on electoral rolls to participate in areferendum to be held on the new constitution in September 1958.De Gaulle's initiative threatened the FLN with the prospect of losing the support of the growing numbers ofMuslims, who were tired of the war and had never been more than lukewarm in their commitment to a totallyindependent Algeria.[citation needed] 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 basedin Tunis. Before the referendum, Abbas lobbied for international support for the GPRA, which was quicklyrecognized by Morocco, Tunisia, several other Arab countries, China, and a number of African and other Asianstates but not by the Soviet Union.ALN commandos committed numerous acts of sabotage in France in August, and the FLN mounted a desperatecampaign of terror in Algeria to intimidate Muslims into boycotting the referendum.[citation needed] Despite threats ofreprisal, however, 80 percent of the Muslim electorate turned out to vote in September,[citation needed] and of these 96percent approved the constitution.[citation needed] In February 1959, de Gaulle was elected president of the new FifthRepublic. He visited Constantine in October to announce a program to end the war and create an Algeria closelylinked to France. De Gaulle's call on the rebel leaders to end hostilities and to participate in elections was met withadamant 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 hadbeen underway were broken off.In 1958–59 the French army had won military control in Algeria and was the closest it would be to victory. In lateJuly 1959, during Operation Jumelles Colonel Bigeard, whose elite paratrooper unit fought at Dien Bien Phu in1954, told journalist Jean Lartéguy (source [28]):

"We are not making war for ourselves, not making a colonialist war, Bigeard wears no shirt (he shows hisopened uniform) as do my officers. We are fighting right here right now for them, for the evolution, to see theevolution 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 beable to talk and to be able to speak for." Col. Bigeard (July 1959)

During this period in France, however, opposition to the conflict was growing among many segments of the population, notably the leftists, with 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. International pressure was also building on France to grant Algeria independence. Annually since 1955 the UN General Assembly had 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

Algerian War 12

source of concern to its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies. In a September 16, 1959, statement, de Gaulledramatically reversed his stand and uttered the words "self-determination" as the third and preferred solution [29],which he envisioned as leading to majority rule in an Algeria formally associated with France. In Tunis, Abbasacknowledged that de Gaulle's statement might be accepted as a basis for settlement, but the French governmentrefused to recognize the GPRA as the representative of Algeria's Muslim community.

The week of barricades

Barricades in Algiers. "Long live Massu" (Vive Massu)is written on the banner, January 1960.

Convinced that de Gaulle had betrayed them, some units ofEuropean volunteers (Unités Territoriales) in Algiers led bystudent leaders Pierre Lagaillarde and Jean-Jacques Susini, caféowner Joseph Ortiz, and lawyer Jean-Baptiste Biaggi staged aninsurrection in the Algerian capital starting on January 24, 1960,and known in France as La semaine des barricades ("the week ofbarricades"). The ultras incorrectly believed that they would besupported by General Massu. The insurrection order was given byColonel Jean Garde of the Fifth Bureau. As the army, police, andsupporters stood by, civilian pied-noirs threw up barricades in thestreets and seized government buildings. General Maurice Challe,responsible for the Army in Algeria, declared Algiers under siegebut forbade the troops from firing on the insurgents. Nevertheless, 20 rioters were killed during a firing on theboulevard Laferrière. Eight arrest warrants were issued in Paris against the initiators of the insurrection. Jean-MarieLe Pen, a member of parliament, who called for the barricades to be extended to Paris, and theorician Georges Saugewere then placed under custody.[30]

In Paris on January 29, 1960, de Gaulle called on the army to remain loyal and rallied popular support for hisAlgerian policy in a televised address:

I took, in the name of France, the following decision — the Algerians will have the free choice of theirdestiny. When, in one way or another – by ceasefire or by complete crushing of the rebels – we willhave put an end to the fighting, when, after a prolonged period of appeasement, the population will havebecome 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 tobe.... Your French of Algeria, how can you listen to the liars and the conspirators who tell you that, ifyou 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 neitherequivocation nor interpretation. You have to liquidate the rebellious forces, which want to oust Francefrom Algeria and impose on this country its dictatorship of misery and sterility.... Finally, I addressmyself to France. Well, well, my dear and old country, here we face together, once again, a seriousordeal. In virtue of the mandate that the people have given me and of the national legitimacy, which Ihave incarned for 20 years, I ask everyone to support me whatever happens.[31]

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 de l'armée secrète (Secret Army Organization, OAS) on December 3, 1960, with the purpose to follow-up 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

Algerian War 13

rebellion against France were added civil wars between extremists in the two communities and between the ultrasand the French government in Algeria.Beside Pierre Lagaillarde, Jean-Baptiste Biaggi was also imprisoned, while Alain de Sérigny got arrested, andJoseph 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 toLouis Terrenoire, who quit RTF (French broadcasting TV). Pierre Messmer, who had been member of the ForeignLegion, was named Minister of Defense, and dissolved the Fifth Bureau, the psychological warfare branch, whichhad ordered the rebellion. These units had theorized the principles of a counter-revolutionary war, including the useof torture. During the Indochina War (1947–54), officers such as Roger Trinquier and Lionel-Max Chassin wereinspired 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 representant of the Opus Dei, under the order of PermanentSecretary General of the National Defense (SGPDN) Geoffroy Chodron de Courcel.[30] The officers were initiallyformed in the Centre d'instruction et de préparation à la contre-guérilla (Arzew). Jacques Chaban-Delmas added tothat the Centre d'entraînement à la guerre subversive Jeanne-d'Arc (Center of Training to Subversive WarJeanne-d'Arc) in Philippeville, Algeria, directed by Colonel Marcel Bigeard. According to the Voltaire Network, theCatholic stay-behind Georges Sauge animated conferences there, and one could read on the walls of the center thefollowing maxim: "This Army must be fanatic, despising luxury, animated by the spirit of the Crusades"[32] PierreMessmer hence dissolved structures which had turned themselves against de Gaulle, leaving the "revolutionary war"to the exclusive responsibility of Gaullist General André Beaufre.[30]

Commandos de Chasse

The French army officers uprising can be understood as following;some officers, most notably from the paratroopers corps, felt betrayedby the government for the second time after Indochina (1947–1954). Insome aspects the Dien Bien Phu garrison was sacrificed with nometropolitan support, order was given to commanding officer Generalde Castries to "let the affair die of its own, in serenity" ("laissezmourrir l'affaire d'elle même en sérénité"[33]).

The opposition of the MNEF student trade-union to the participation ofthe conscripts to the war led to a secession in May 1960, with thecreation of the Fédération des étudiants nationalistes (FEN, Federationof Nationalist Students) around Dominique Venner, a former member of Jeune Nation and of MP-13, Françoisd'Orcival and Alain de Benoist, who would theorize in the 1980s the "New Right" movement. The FEN thenpublished the Manifeste de la classe 60.

A Front national pour l'Algérie française (FNAF, National Front for French Algeria) was created in June 1960 inParis, gathering around former De Gaulle's Secretary Jacques Soustelle Claude Dumont, Georges Sauge, YvonChautard, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour (who would present himself as far-right candidate in the 1965 presidentialelection), Jacques Isorni, Victor Barthélemy, François Brigneau and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Another ultra rebellionoccurred 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,[34] the opponents to the warcreated the Rassemblement de la gauche démocratique (Assembly of the Democratic Left), which included theFrench Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) socialist party, the Radical-Socialist Party, Force ouvrière (FO)trade union, Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens trade-union, FEN trade-union, etc., which supportedde Gaulle against the ultras.

Algerian War 14

Role of womenWomen fulfilled a number of different functions during the Algerian War. The majority of Muslim women whobecame active participants did so on the side of the National Liberation Front (FLN). The French included somewomen, both Muslim and French, in their war effort, but they were not as fully integrated, nor were they chargedwith the same breadth of tasks as their Algerian sisters. The total number of women involved in the conflict, asdetermined by post-war veteran registration, is numbered at 11,000, but it is possible that this number wassignificantly higher due to underreporting.[35]

There exists a distinction between two different types of women who became involved, urban and rural. Urbanwomen, who constituted about twenty percent of the overall force, had received some kind of education and usuallychose to enter on the side of the FLN of their own accord.[36] Largely illiterate rural women, on the other hand, theremaining eighty percent, due to their geographic location in respect to the operations of FLN often became involvedin the conflict as a result of proximity paired with force.[36]

Women operated in a number of different areas during the course of the rebellion. "Women participated actively ascombatants, spies, fundraisers, as well as nurses, launderers, and cooks",[37] "women assisted the male fightingforces in areas like transportation, communication and administration" [38] the range of involvement by a womancould include both combatant and non-combatant roles. While the majority of the tasks that women undertookcentered on the realm of the non-combatant, those that surrounded the limited number that took part in acts ofviolence were more frequently noticed. The reality was that "rural women in maquis [rural areas] support networks"[39] contained the overwhelming majority of those who participated. This is not to marginalize those women who didengage in acts of violence but simply to illustrate that they constituted in the minority.

End of the warDe Gaulle convoked the first referendum on the self-determination of Algeria on January 8, 1961, which 75% of thevoters (both in France and Algeria) approved and De Gaulle's government began secret peace negotiations with theFLN. In the Algerian départements 69.51% voted in favor of self-determination.[]

The "generals' putsch" in April 1961, aimed at canceling the government's negotiations with the FLN, marked theturning point in the official attitude toward the Algerian war. De Gaulle was now prepared to abandon thepieds-noirs, the group that no previous French government was willing to write off. The army had been discreditedby the putsch and kept a low profile politically throughout the rest of France's involvement with Algeria.Talks with the FLN reopened at Évian in May 1961; after several false starts, the French government decreed that aceasefire would take effect on March 18, 1962. In their final form, the Évian Accords allowed the pieds-noirs equallegal protection with Algerians over a three-year period. These rights included respect for property, participation inpublic affairs, and a full range of civil and cultural rights. At the end of that period, however, all Algerian residentswould be obliged to become Algerian citizens or be classified as aliens with the attendant loss of rights. Theagreement also allowed France to establish military bases in Algeria even after the independence (including thenuclear test site of Regghane, the naval base of Mers-el-Kebir and the aerial base of Bou Sfer) and to haveadvantages on the Algerian oil.In the second referendum on the independence of Algeria held in April 1962 the French electorate approved theEvian Accords by an overwhelming 91 percent vote. On July 1, 1962, some 6 million of a total Algerian electorate of6.5 million cast their ballots. The vote was nearly unanimous, with 5,992,115 votes for independence, 16,534against, with most Pied-noirs and Harkis either having fled or abstained from voting.[40] De Gaulle pronouncedAlgeria an independent country on July 3. The Provisional Executive, however, proclaimed July 5, the 132ndanniversary 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 terrorist campaign. The OAS sought to provoke a major breach in the ceasefire by the FLN but the terrorism now

Algerian War 15

was aimed also against the French army and police enforcing the accords as well as against Muslims. It was the mostwanton carnage that Algeria had witnessed in eight years of savage warfare. OAS operatives set off an average of120 bombs per day in March, with targets including hospitals and schools. Ultimately, the terrorism failed in itsobjectives, and the OAS and the FLN concluded a truce on June 17, 1962. In the same month, more than 350,000Pied-noirs left Algeria.Despite the Evian Accords guarantees towards the French citizens, after the end of June civilians became the targetof systematic FLN attacks. It quickly became apparent to Europeans that the new government would not ensure theirsafety or enforce their rights. The Oran massacre of 1962, four days after the vote, is the main example of deliberatestrategy of killing to terrorize pieds-noirs and push them to leave. These tactics proved effective. Summer 1962 sawa rush to France. Within a year, 1.4 million refugees, including almost the entire Jewish community and somepro-French Muslims, had joined the exodus to France. Despite the declaration of Independence on July 5, 1962, thelast French forces did not leave the Naval Base of Mers El Kébir until 1967. (The Evian Accords had permittedFrance to maintain its military presence for fifteen years—the withdrawal in 1967 was significantly ahead ofschedule.)[41]

Pieds-Noirs' and Harkis' exodusPieds-Noirs (including indigenous Mizrachi and Sephardi Jews) and Harkis accounted for 13% of the totalpopulation of Algeria in 1962. For the sake of clarity, each group's exodus is described separately here, althoughtheir fate shared many common elements.

Pieds-noirs

Jewish exodusfrom Arab countries

1947–1972

Main articlesJewish exodus 1947–1972

1948 Arab–Israeli WarOperation Magic Carpet

(Yemen)Operation Ezra and Nehemiah

Operation YakhinExpulsion of Egyptian Jews

Immigrant camps  · MaabarotResolution 194

BackgroundNazi and the Arab worldFarhud  · Tripoli (1945)

Cairo (1945)  · Aliyah Bet

Algerian War 16

Key incidentsAleppo (Syria) · Aden (Yemen)

Oujda and Jerada (Morocco)Tripoli (Libya)

Cairo (Egypt)  · Baghdad (Iraq)Suez Crisis · Algerian War

Six Day War

ArbitrationWOJAC · JIMENAThe David Project

ResettlementAliyah  · Law of Return

Development townsNorth African Jewry in France

Related topicsJewish history · Jewish diaspora

History under Muslim ruleMizrahi Jews · Sephardi Jews

Arab Jews

Pied-noir (literally "black foot") is a term used to name the European-descended population (mostly Catholic), whohad resided in Algeria for generations; it is sometimes used to include the indigenous Sephardi Jewish population aswell, which likewise emigrated after 1962. The Europeans had arrived to Algeria as immigrants from all over thewestern Mediterranean (particularly France, Spain, Italy and Malta), starting in 1830. The Jews had arrived inseveral waves, some coming as early as 600 BC and during the Roman period, known as the Maghrebi Jews. SomeJews were in fact indigenous Berbers who had embraced Judaism before the advent of Christianity.[citation needed] TheMaghrebi Jewish population was overwhelmed with the Sephardic Jews, driven out from Spain in 1492 and wasfurther strengthened by Marranos refugees from the Spanish Inquisition through the 16th century. Algerian Jews hadlargely 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 andSephardi 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 or left the country, the first third prior to the referendum, in the most massive relocation ofpopulation to Europe since the Second World War. A motto used in the FLN propaganda designating the Pied-noirscommunity was "Suitcase or coffin" ("La valise ou le cercueil") – an expropriation of a term first coined yearsearlier by pied-noir "ultras" when rallying the European community to their hardcore line.The French government claimed not to have anticipated that such a massive number would leave; at the most it saidit estimated that perhaps 250–300,000 might choose to go to metropolitan France temporarily. Nothing was plannedfor their move to France, and many had to sleep in streets or abandoned farms on their arrival. A minority ofdeparting pieds-noirs, including soldiers, destroyed their possessions before departure, applying scorched earthpolicy in a sign of protestation and as a desperate symbolic attempt to leave no trace of over a century of Europeanpresence, but the vast majority of their goods and houses were left intact and abandoned to Algerians. Scenes ofthousands of panicked people camping for weeks on the docks of Algerian harbors waiting for a space on a boat toFrance were common from April to August 1962. About 100,000 pieds-noirs chose to remain, but most of thosegradually left over the 1960s and 1970s, primarily due to residual hostility against them, including machine-gunningof public places in Oran.[42]

Algerian War 17

Harkis

Young Harki in uniform, summer1961.

The so-called Harkis, from the Algerian-Arabic dialect word harki (soldier), werethe indigenous Muslim Algerians (as opposed to European-descended Catholics orindigenous Algerian Mizrachi Sephardi Jews) who fought as auxiliaries on theside of the French army. Some of these were veterans of the Free French Forceswho participated in the liberation of France during World War II or in theIndochina War. The term also came to include civilian indigenous Algerians whosupported a French Algeria. According to French government figures, there were236,000 Algerian Muslims serving in the French Army in 1962 (four times morethan in the FLN), either in regular units (Spahis and Tirailleurs) or as irregulars(harkis and moghaznis). Some estimates suggest that, with their families, theindigenous Muslim loyalists may have numbered as many as 1 million[43][44]

In 1962, around 91,000 Harkis took refuge in France, despite French Governmentpolicy against this. Pierre Messmer, minister of the armies and Louis Joxe,minister for Algerian affairs gave orders to this effect. The Harkis were seen astraitors by many Algerians, and many of those who stayed behind suffered severereprisals after independence. French historians estimate that somewhere between50,000 and 150,000 Harkis and members of their families were killed by the FLN or by lynch mobs in Algeria, oftenin atrocious circumstances or after torture. The abandonment of the "Harkis" both in terms of non-recognition ofthose who died defending a French Algeria and the neglect of those who escaped to France, remains an issue thatFrance has not fully resolved—although the government of Jacques Chirac made efforts to give recognition to thesuffering of these former allies.

Death toll

French North African Operationsmedal, 11 January 1958.

While it is admitted that any attempt to estimate casualties in this war is nearlyimpossible, the FLN (National Liberation Front) estimated in 1964 that nearlyeight years of revolution had cost 1.5 million dead from war-related causes.Some other French and Algerian sources later put the figure at approximately960,000 dead, while French officials estimated it at 350,000. French militaryauthorities listed their losses at nearly 25,600 dead (6,000 fromnon-combat-related causes) and 65,000 wounded. European-descended civiliancasualties exceeded 10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded terroristincidents. According to French official figures during the war, the Army, securityforces and militias killed 141,000 presumed rebel combatants. But it is stillunclear whether all the victims were actual fighters or merely civilians.More than 12,000 Algerians died in internal FLN purges during the war. InFrance, an additional 5,000 died in the "café wars" between the FLN and rivalAlgerian groups. French sources also estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilianswere killed or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN.Historians, like Alistair Horne and Raymond Aron, consider the actual number ofwar dead was far greater than the original FLN and official French estimates butwas fewer than the 1 million adopted by the Algerian government. Horne hasestimated Algerian casualties during the span of eight years to be around

Algerian War 18

700,000. Uncounted thousands of Muslim civilians lost their lives in French Army ratissages, bombing raids, orvigilante reprisals. The war uprooted more than 2 million Algerians, who were forced to relocate in French camps orto flee into the Algerian hinterland, where many thousands died of starvation, disease, and exposure. In addition,large numbers of pro-French Muslims were murdered when the FLN settled accounts after independence with30-150,000 allegedly killed in Algeria by FLN in post-war reprisals.[3]

Lasting effects in Algerian politicsAfter Algeria's independence was recognised, Ahmed Ben Bella quickly became more popular and thereby morepowerful. In June 1962, he challenged the leadership of Premier Benyoucef Ben Khedda; this led to several disputesamong his rivals in the FLN, which were quickly suppressed by Ben Bella's rapidly growing support, most notablywithin the armed forces. By September, Bella was in control of Algeria by all but name, was elected as premier in aone-sided election on September 20, and was recognised by the U.S. on September 29. Algeria was admitted as the109th member of the United Nations on October 8, 1962. Afterward, Ben Bella declared that Algeria would follow aneutral course in world politics; within a week he met with U.S. President John F. Kennedy, requesting more aid forAlgeria with Fidel Castro and expressed approval of Castro's demands for the abandonment of Guantanamo Bay.Bella returned to Algeria with another request: that France withdraw from its bases there. In November, hisgovernment banned the party, providing that the FLN would be the only party allowed to function overtly. Shortlythereafter, in 1965, Bella was deposed and placed under house arrest (and later exiled) by Houari Boumédiènne, whoserved as president until his death in 1978. Algeria remained stable, though in a one-party state, until a violent civilwar broke out in the 1990s.For Algerians of many political factions, the legacy of their War of Independence was a legitimization or evensanctification of the unrestricted use of force in achieving a goal deemed to be justified. Once invoked againstforeign colonialists, the same principle could also be turned with relative ease against fellow Algerians. Thedetermination of the FLN to overthrow the colonial rule and the ruthlessness exhibited by both sides in that strugglewere to be mirrored 30 years later by the determination of the FLN government to hold onto power, by the Islamistopposition to overthrow that rule, and by the brutal struggle which ensued.

Torture

French useTorture 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 had also been used on both sides during the First Indochina War(1946–54)[45][46][47] D. Huf, in his seminal work on the subject, has argued that the use of torture was one of themajor factors in developing French opposition to the war.[48] Huf argues that "Such tactics sat uncomfortably withFrance's revolutionary history, and brought unbearable comparisons with Nazi Germany. The French national psychewould not tolerate any parallels between their experiences of occupation and their colonial mastery of Algeria."General Paul Aussaresses admitted in 2000 that the use of systematic torture techniques during the war and justifiedit. He also recognized the assassination of lawyer Ali Boumendjel and the head of the FLN in Algiers, Larbi BenM'Hidi, which had been disguised as suicides.[49] Bigeard, who called FLN activists "savages", claimed torture was a"necessary evil."[50][51] To the contrary, General Jacques Massu denounced it, following Aussaresses's revelationsand, before his death, pronounced himself in favor of an official condemnation of the use of torture during thewar.[52]

Bigeard's justification of torture has been criticized by various people, among whom Joseph Doré, archbishop ofStrasbourg, and Marc Lienhard, president of the Lutheran Church of Augsbourg Confession in Alsace-Lorraine.[53]

Algerian War 19

In June 2000, Bigeard declared that he was based in Sidi Ferruch, known as a torture center and where Algerianswere murdered. Bigeard qualified Louisette Ighilahriz's revelations, published in the Le Monde newspaper on June20, 2000, as "lies." An ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz had been tortured by General Massu. She herself calledBigeard a "liar" and criticized his continuing denial of the use of torture 40 years later.[54][55] However, sinceGeneral Massu's revelations, Bigeard has now admitted the use of torture, although he denies having personally usedit, and has declared: "You are striking the heart of an 84-year-old man." Bigeard also recognized that Larbi BenM'Hidi had been assassinated and that his death had been disguised as a suicide. Paul Teitgen, prefect of Algiers,also revealed that Bigeard's troops threw Algerians in the sea from helicopters, which resulted in brutalized corpses,found in open waters and nicknamed "crevettes Bigeard" ("Bigeard's shrimp"). This tactic was later theorized inArgentina by Admiral Luis María Mendía, as "death flights."[56]

Algerian use

A French Arab mutilated by Algeriannationalists.

Specializing in ambushes and night raids to avoid direct contact withsuperior French firepower, the internal forces targeted Army patrols,military encampments, police posts, and colonial farms, mines, andfactories, as well as transportation and communications facilities.Kidnapping was commonplace, as were the murder and mutilation ofcivilians.[18] At first, the FLN targeted only Muslim officials of thecolonial regime; later, they coerced, maimed, or killed village elders,government employees, and even simple peasants who refused tosupport them. Throat slitting and decapitation were commonly used bythe F.L.N. as part of a deliberate policy of terror.[57] During the firsttwo and a half years of the conflict, the guerrillas killed an estimated 6,352 Muslim and 1,035 non-Muslimcivilians.[58]

"French school"Counter-insurgency tactics developed during the war were used afterward in other contexts, including the Argentine"Dirty War" in the 1970s. In a book, journalist Marie-Monique Robin alleges that French secret agents had taughtArgentine intelligence agents counter-insurgency tactics, including the systemic use of torture, block-warden system,and other techniques, all employed during the 1957 Battle of Algiers. The Battle of Algiers film includes thedocumentation. Robin found the document proving that a secret military agreement tied France to Argentina from1959 until 1981; the later is the date of the election of President François Mitterrand.

HistoriographyAlthough the opening of the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after a 30-year lock-up has enabled somenew 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.[59] This is contrary to theengagement of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's (Socialist Party, PS) on July 27, 1997. The recognition in 1999 by theNational Assembly, in which the PS had obtained a majority during the 1997 legislative elections, permitted theAlgerian War, at last, to enter the syllabi of French schools. The details of the Paris massacre of 1961 has only begunto emerge in the nation's memory, although access to the archives remains strongly restricted. The French state,which finally recognized 40 deaths, is a far way from giving free access to the archives. (In France, there is no suchlaw such as the U.S.'s Freedom of Information Act.) However, it has been proved, including with David Assouline'slimited access to the Paris archives, granted by Socialist Minister of Culture Catherine Trautmann, that at least 70Algerians died during these events and 90 people by the second half of October 1961.[60]

Algerian War 20

The Algerian War remains a contentious event today. According to historian Benjamin Stora — who holds a Ph.D.degree in history and sociology, teaches at Paris VII, and is one of the leading historians on the Algerian war —memories concerning the war remain fragmented, with no common ground to speak of, translated from French:

"There is no such thing as a history of the Algerian War; there is just a multitude of histories andpersonal paths through it. Everyone involved considers that they lived through it in their own way, andany attempt to understand the Algerian War globally is immediately rejected by protagonists."[61]

Even though Stora has counted 3,000 publications in French on the Algerian war, there still is no work producedwith a French person and an Algerian cooperating with one another. Even though, according to Stora there can "nolonger be talk about a 'war without a name'....&nbsp, a number of problems remain, especially the absence of sites inFrance to commemorate" the war. Furthermore, conflicts have arisen on an exact commemoration date to end thewar. Although many sources as well as the French state place it on March 19, 1962, the Evian agreements, otherspoint out that the massacres of harkis and the kidnapping of pied-noirs took place afterwards.Stora further points out: "The phase of memorial reconciliation between the two sides of the sea is still a long wayoff."[61] This was recently illustrated by the Union for a Popular Movement's UMP vote of the February 23, 2005,the law on colonialism, which asserted that colonialism had globally been "positive." Thus, a teacher in one of theelite high schools of Paris has declared:

"Yes, colonization has had positive effects. After all, we did give to Algeria modern infrastructures, asystem of education, libraries, social centers.... There were only 10% Algerian students in 1962? This isnot much, of course, but it is not nothing either!"[62]

Along side a heated debate in France, the February 23, 2005, law had the effect of jeopardizing the treaty offriendship that President Jacques Chirac was supposed to sign with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika — a treaty nolonger 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 institutionalmechanism.Another matter concerns the teaching of the war, as well as of colonialism and decolonization, in particular in Frenchsecondary schools[63] Hence, there is only one reference to racism in a French textbook, one published by Bréalpublishers for terminales students (those passing their baccalauréat). Thus, many are not surprised that the first tospeak about the October 17, 1961, massacre were music bands, including, but not only, hip-hop bands such as thefamous Suprême NTM ("les Arabes dans la Seine") or politically engaged La Rumeur. Indeed, the Algerian War isnot even the subject of a specific chapter in textbook for terminales[59] Henceforth, Benjamin Stora can state that:

"As Algerians do not appear in an "indigenous" condition, and their sub-citizens status, as the history ofnationalist movement, is never evoked as their being one of great figures of the resistance, such asMessali Hadj and Ferhat Abbas. They neither emerge nor are being given attention. No one is explainingto students what colonization has been. We have prevented students from understanding why thedecolonization took place."[59]

The Algerian War and its consequences are thus fundamental to any understanding of the state of 21st-centuryFrance, as well as the social situation in the French suburbs, the conditions of which were brought to world attentionduring the civil unrest in autumn 2005. For the first time since the Algerian war, the head of state, President Chiracof the UMP party, proclaimed a state of emergency, which was confirmed a few weeks later by the NationalAssembly. (The only party to vote against its extension were the Communist Party and the Greens.)In metropolitan France in 1963, 43% of French Algerians lived in bidonvilles (shanty towns).[64] Thus, Azouz Begag, the delegate minister for Equal Opportunities in the government of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of the UMP party, 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

Algerian War 21

criminality", commanded by then Interior Minister Villepin and made by member of parliament Jacques-AlainBénisti, claimed that "Multilingualism (bilinguisme) was a factor of criminality." (sic[65]). Following outcries frommany NGOs and left-wing sectors, the definitive version of the Bénisti report finally made multilingualism an assetrather than a fault.[66]

Thus, the stakes of the contemporary debate on torture clearly appear in full light. After having denied its use during40 years, the French state has finally recognized it; although, there was never an official proclamation about it. PaulAussaresses was sentenced following his justification of the use of torture for "apology of war crimes." But, the sameas during the events of the time, the French state has claimed torture was an isolated act, instead of admitting itsresponsibility in the institutionalization of torture as a standard counter-insurgency method, which was used to breakthe population's morale and not, as Aussaresses has claimed, to "save lives" by gaining short-term information whichwould stop "terrorists".[67] The state now claims that it was a regrettable incident due to the context of the war. Butvarious academic research has proved 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, whodiscuss the phenomena of "human zoos."[68] From the enfumades (smoking parlors) of the Darha caves in 1844 byPélissier 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, andKherrata; they resulted in 103 deaths among the pied-noirs. The suppression of these riots officially saw 1,500 otherdeaths, but N. Bancel, P. Blanchard and S. Lemaire estimate the number to be rather between 6,000 and 8,000.[68]

INA archivesNote: concerning the audio and film archives from the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA), see Benjamin Stora'scomments on their politically oriented creation.[61]

• Cinq Colonnes à la une, Rushes Interview Pied-Noir, ORTF, July 1, 1962 [69]

• Cinq Colonnes à la une, Rétrospective Algérie, ORTF, June 9, 1963 [28] (concerning these INA archives, see alsoBenjamin 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.

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 0-670-61964-7.• 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.

Algerian War 22

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

[70])• 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 DeathSquadron), 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",

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)• 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 Courriére (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)• 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

Algerian War 23

References[1] Martin Windrow, The Algerian War 1954–62. p. 17[2][2] Anthony Clayton, Frontiersmen: Warfare In Africa Since 1950[3][3] Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace (1977)

[4] France remembers the Algerian War, 50 years on (http:/ / www. france24. com/ en/20120316-commemorations-mark-end-algerian-war-independence-france-evian-accords) France 24

[5] Guy Pervillé, Pour une histoire de la guerre d´Algérie, chap. "Une double guerre civile", Picard, 2002, pp.132–139[6] World: Africa, France admits Algerian campaign was 'war' (http:/ / news. bbc. co. uk/ 2/ hi/ africa/ 365868. stm), BBC. Retrieved on

2008-11-16.[7] Alistair Horne, (2006). A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962, New York[8] (quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, Travail sur l'Algérie in Œuvres complètes, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1991, pp 704 and

705./[9] "L'indigène musulman est français; néanmoins il continuera à être régi par la loi musulmane. Il peut être admis à servir dans les armées de

terre et de mer. Il peut être appelé à des fonctions et emplois civils en Algérie. Il peut, sur sa demande, être admis à jouir des droits de citoyenfrançais; dans ce cas, il est régi par les lois civiles et politiques de la France" (article 1 of the 1865 Code de l'indigénat)

[10] le code de l'indigénat dans l'Algérie coloniale (http:/ / www. ldh-toulon. net/ spip. php?article527), Human Rights League (LDH), March 6,2005 – URL accessed on January 17, 2007

[11] Gianluca P. Parolin, Citizenship in the Arab World: Kin, Religion and Nation, Amsterdam University Press, 2009, pp.94–95[12] les tirailleurs, bras armé de la France coloniale (http:/ / www. ldh-toulon. net/ spip. php?article297), Human Rights League (LDH), August

25, 2004 – URL accessed on January 17, 2007[13] Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace, s. 27[14] "Alger-Bagdad", account of Yves Boisset's film documentary, La Bataille d'Algers (2006), in Le Canard enchaîné, January 10, 2007,

n°4498, p.7[15][15] Wretched of the Earth, 1961, Fanon.[16] Number given by the (http:/ / www. gers. pref. gouv. fr/ acvg/ documents/ reperesalger. htm) Préfecture du Gers, French governmental site –

URL accessed on February 17, 2007[17] Philippeville Massacre (http:/ / uk. encarta. msn. com/ sidebar_1461500715/ Philippeville_Massacre_The_Times_Report. html), The Times

Report published on August 22, 1955[18] Globalsecurity.org (http:/ / www. globalsecurity. org/ military/ world/ war/ algeria. htm)[19] Benjamin Stora, "Avoir 20 ans en Kabylie", in L'Histoire n°324, October 2007, pp.28–29[20] Major Gregory D. Peterson, The French Experience in Algeria, 1954–62: Blueprint for U.S. Operations in Iraq, Ft Leavenworth, Kansas:

School of Advanced Military Studies, p.33[21] John Pimlott, "The French Army: From Indochina to Chad, 1946–1984", in Ian F. W. Beckett and John Pimlott, Armed Forces & Modern

Counter-Insurgency, New York: St Martin's Press, 1985, p.66[22] Martin S. Alexander and J. F. V. Kieger, "France and the Algerian War: Strategy, Operations, and Diplomacy", Journal of Strategic Studies,

Vol.25, No. 2, June 2002, pp.6–7[23] Roger Faligot and Pascal Krop, DST, Police Secrète, Flammarion, 1999, p.174[24] Lawrence E. Cline, "Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons From Other Countries", p.8 June 2005, ISBN 1-58487-199-7,

Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) ( available here (http:/ / www. blackwaterusa. com/ btw2005/ articles/ 080105counter. pdf))[25] Lawrence E. Cline, "Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons From Other Countries", p.8 June 2005, ISBN 1-58487-199-7,

Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) ( available here (http:/ / www. blackwaterusa. com/ btw2005/ articles/ 080105counter. pdf) Cline sends formore details to Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–62, London: Mac Millan, 1977, pp.255–257)

[26][26] Leulliette, Pierre, St. Michael and the Dragon: Memoirs of a Paratrooper, Houghton Mifflin, 1964[27] Algeria - The Revolution and Social Change (http:/ / countrystudies. us/ algeria/ 55. htm)[28] http:/ / www. ina. fr/ archivespourtous/ index. php?vue=notice& from=fulltext& full=alg%E9rie+ r%E9trospective& num_notice=1&

total_notices=28[29] http:/ / 123helpme. com/ view. asp?id=22721[30] Quand le stay-behind voulait remplacer De Gaulle (http:/ / www. voltairenet. org/ article8701. html), Thierry Meyssan, September 10, 2001,

Voltaire Network[31] French: "J'ai pris, au nom de la France, la décision que voici: les Algériens auront le libre choix de leur destin. Quand d'une manière ou

d'une autre – conclusion d'un cessez-le-feu ou écrasement total des rebelles – nous aurons mis un terme aux combats, quand, ensuite, après une période prolongée d'apaisement, les populations auront pu prendre conscience de l'enjeu et, d'autre part, accomplir, grâce à nous, les progrès nécessaires dans les domaines, politique, économique, social, scolaire, etc., alors ce seront les Algériens qui diront ce qu'ils veulent être.... Français d'Algérie, comment pouvez-vous écouter les menteurs et les conspirateurs qui vous disent qu'en accordant le libre choix aux Algériens, la France et De Gaulle veulent vous abandonner, se retirer de l'Algérie et vous livrer à la rébellion?.... Je dis à tous nos soldats: votre mission ne comporte ni équivoque, ni interprétation. Vous avez à liquider la force rebelle qui veut chasser la France de l'Algérie et faire régner sur ce pays sa dictature de misère et de stérilité.... Enfin, je m'adresse à la France. Eh bien! mon cher et vieux pays, nous voici donc ensemble, encore une fois, face à une lourde épreuve. En vertu du mandat que le peuple m'a donné et de la légitimité nationale que j'incarne

Algerian War 24

depuis vingt ans (sic), je demande à tous et à toutes de me soutenir quoi qu'il arrive".[32][32] French: "Cette Armée doit être fanatique, méprisant le luxe, animée de l'esprit des croisés".[33] French Army audio archives (http:/ / www. ena. lu/ mce. cfm)[34] Manifeste des 121, transl. in English (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ history/ france/ algerian-war/ 1960/ manifesto-121. htm)[35][35] De Groot, Gerard, Peniston-Bird, Corinna. A Soldier and a Woman: Sexual integration in the Military. New York: Longman, 2000 p. 247[36][36] Lazreg, Marnia. The Eloquence of Silence. London: Routledge, 1994 p. 120[37][37] Turshen, Meredith. "Algerian Women in the Liberation Struggle and the Civil War: From Active Participants to Passive Victims". Social

Research Vol. 69 No. 3 (Fall 2002) p. 889-911, p.890[38][38] De Groot, Gerard, Peniston-Bird, Corinna. A Soldier and a Woman: Sexual integration in the Military. New York: Longman, 2000 p. 223[39] Vince, Natalya "Transgressing Boundaries: Gender, Race, Religion and ‘Fracaises Musulmannes during Algerian War of Independence."

French Historical Studies. Vol. 33 No. 3 (Summer 2010) p. 445-474, p.445[41] Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962.[42] ALGER PANSE SES PLAIES (http:/ / www. ina. fr/ archivespourtous/ index. php?vue=notice& from=fulltext& full=pied+ noir&

datedif_annee1=1962& num_notice=2& total_notices=36)[43][43] Philippe Denoix, "Harkis" in Encyclopædia Universalis, 2010[44] General Maurice Faivre, Les combattants musulmans de la guerre d'Algérie: des soldats sacrifiés, Editions L'Harmattan, 1995, p.124[45] Mohamed Harbi, La guerre d'Algérie[46] Benjamin Stora, La torture pendant la guerre d'Algérie[47] Raphaëlle Branche, La torture et l'armée pendant la guerre d'Algérie, 1954–1962, Paris, Gallimard, 2001 See also The French Army and

Torture During the Algerian War (1954–1962) (http:/ / www. mfo. ac. uk/ Publications/ comptesrendus/ branche. htm), Raphaëlle Branche,Université de Rennes, 18 November 2004

[48] David Huf, Between a rock and a hard place: France and Algeria, 1954-1962[49] L'accablante confession du général Aussaresses sur la torture en Algérie (http:/ / www. lemonde. fr/ cgi-bin/ ACHATS/ acheter.

cgi?offre=ARCHIVES& type_item=ART_ARCH_30J& objet_id=702899), Le Monde, May 3, 2001[50] GUERRE D'ALGÉRIE: le général Bigeard et la pratique de la torture (http:/ / www. lemonde. fr/ web/ recherche_breve/ 1,13-0,37-90746,0.

html), Le Monde, July 4, 2000[51] Torture Bigeard: " La presse en parle trop " (http:/ / www. humanite. presse. fr/ journal/ 2000-12-05/ 2000-12-05-235797), L'Humanité, May

12, 2000[52] La torture pendant la guerre d'Algérie / 1954 – 1962 40 ans après, l'exigence de vérité (http:/ / www. aidh. org/ faits_documents/ algerie/

verite. html), AIDH[53] GUERRE D'ALGÉRIE: Mgr Joseph Doré et Marc Lienhard réagissent aux déclarations du général Bigeard justifiant la pratique de la torture

par l'armée française (http:/ / www. lemonde. fr/ web/ recherche_breve/ 1,13-0,37-92611,0. html), Le Monde, July 15, 2000[54] "Le témoignage de cette femme est un tissu de mensonges. Tout est faux, c'est une manoeuvre" (http:/ / www. lemonde. fr/ cgi-bin/

ACHATS/ acheter. cgi?offre=ARCHIVES& type_item=ART_ARCH_30J& objet_id=88827), Le Monde, June 22, 2000[55] Louisette Ighilahriz: "Massu ne pouvait plus nier l'évidence" (http:/ / www. humanite. presse. fr/ journal/ 2000-11-23/ 2000-11-23-235176),

L'Humanité, November 23, 2000[56] Prise de tête Marcel Bigeard, un soldat propre ? (http:/ / www. humanite. presse. fr/ journal/ 2000-06-24/ 2000-06-24-227522), L'Humanité,

June 24, 2000[57][57] Alistair Horne, pages 134-135 "A Savage War of Peace", ISBN 0-670061964-7[58][58] Alistair Horne, page135, "A Savage War of Peace", ISBN 0-670061964-7[59] Colonialism Through the School Books – The hidden history of the Algerian war (http:/ / mondediplo. com/ 2001/ 04/ 04algeriatorture), Le

Monde diplomatique, April 2001 /[60] Concerning David Assouline's access to part of Paris's archives and the La Monde quotation of the director, see[61] Bringing down the barriers – people's memories of the Algerian War (http:/ / www. ina. fr/ voir_revoir/ algerie/ itv_stora. light. en. html),

interview with Benjamin Stora published on the INA archive Web site[62] French: "Oui, la colonisation a eu du positif ... On a quand même légué à l'Algérie des infrastructures modernes, un système éducatif, des

bibliothèques, des centres sociaux ... Il n'y avait que 10% d'étudiants algériens en 1962 ? C'est peu, bien sûr, mais ce n'est pas rien!", quoted inColonialism Through the School Books – The hidden history of the Algerian war (http:/ / mondediplo. com/ 2001/ 04/ 04algeriatorture), LeMonde diplomatique, April 2001 /

[63] Terminale history class: teaching about torture during the Algerian war (http:/ / www. ingentaconnect. com/ content/ routledg/ cmcf/ 2004/00000012/ 00000001/ art00007), McCormack J. in Modern & Contemporary France review, Volume 12, Number 1, February 2004, pp.75–86(12)

[64] Le Gone du Chaâba (http:/ / www. cndp. fr/ Tice/ Teledoc/ dossiers/ dossier_gone. htm)[65] Rapport préliminaire de la commission prévention du groupe d'études parlementaire sur la sécurité intérieure – Sur la prévention de la

délinquance (http:/ / ecolesdifferentes. free. fr/ rapport_BENISTI_prevention. pdf), presided by MP Jacques-Alain Bénisti, October 2004[66] Analyse de la version finale du rapport Benisti (http:/ / www. ldh-toulon. net/ spip. php?article1084), Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH,

Human Rights League), and Final version (http:/ / www. abri. org/ antidelation/ IMG/ pdf/ RAPPORT_BESNISTI. pdf) of the Bénisti reportgiven to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy

Algerian War 25

[67] The French Army and Torture during the Algerian War (1954–1962) (http:/ / www. mfo. ac. uk/ fr/ node/ 246), Raphaëlle Branche,Université de Rennes, 18 November 2004

[68] TORTURE IN ALGERIA: PAST ACTS THAT HAUNT FRANCE – False memory (http:/ / mondediplo. com/ 2001/ 06/ 10torture), LeMonde diplomatique, June 2001 /

[69] http:/ / www. ina. fr/ archivespourtous/ index. php?vue=notice& from=fulltext& full=pied+ noir& num_notice=4& total_notices=113[70] http:/ / remmm. revues. org/ document2375. html

• Original text: Library of Congress Country Study (http:/ / lcweb2. loc. gov/ frd/ cs/ dztoc. html) of Algeria

External links• " TIME Collection French-Algerian War (http:/ / www. time. com/ time/ archive/ collections/

0,21428,c_algerian_war,00. shtml)." Time.• Algerian War Reading (http:/ / www. usfca. edu/ fac-staff/ webberm/ algeria. htm)• Algerian Independence Archive at marxists.org (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ history/ algeria/ index. htm)• (French) Photos of the Algerian War of Independence (http:/ / www. ecpad. fr/ tag/ fonds-guerre-dalgerie)

(ECPAD)• Algerian National Liberation (http:/ / www. globalsecurity. org/ military/ world/ war/ algeria. htm)• Pacification in Algeria: 1956–1958 by David Galula (http:/ / www. rand. org/ pubs/ monographs/ MG478-1/ )• Audiovisual National Institute's declassified Algeria War archives (http:/ / www. ina. fr/ archivespourtous/ index.

php?full=guerre d'algérie& action=ft& x=0& y=0) (hundreds of free video: news rushes, interviews, officialspeeches, retrospectives, etc.)

• Algerian War Retrospective (http:/ / www. ina. fr/ archivespourtous/ index. php?vue=notice& from=fulltext&full=guerre+ d'algérie& num_notice=7& total_notices=763)

• The African Activist Archive Project (http:/ / africanactivist. msu. edu/ ) website has material related to Algeriaincluding a 1960 photograph of Mary-Louise Hooper with the FLN underground. (http:/ / africanactivist. msu.edu/ image. php?objectid=802) Go to Browse and under Africa Coverage choose Algeria.

• The short film French President Charles De Gaulle and the Six-Year War (1960) (http:/ / www. archive. org/details/ gov. archives. arc. 649319) is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]

• Algeria celebrates 50 years of independence - France keeps mum RFI English (http:/ / www. english. rfi. fr/africa/ 20120705-algeria-celebrates-50-years-independence-france-keeps-mum)

Article Sources and Contributors 26

Article Sources and ContributorsAlgerian War  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=542423684  Contributors: 2A01:E34:EDD5:5ED0:E570:6B03:B6C3:1546, A. Parrot, ALEXF971, Acntx, AdRock, AdamBishop, Adam Keller, AdjustShift, Agamemnus, AgeofEmpire, Ahoerstemeier, Ajo1996, Alan Flynn, Alansohn, Albrecht, Alexander Domanda, AlexanderKaras, Alexiskurien, Amoruso,AndresHerutJaim, Anotherclown, Araignee, Ardfern, Ariobarzan, Arre, Art LaPella, Asn, Astonmartini, Atari400, AtiN, Auntof6, Austriacus, B-Machine, Bahamut Star, BanyanTree, Barryob,Beejaypii, Bender235, Beta m, Bigtimepeace, Biruitorul, Blackcats, BlarghHgralb, Bnynms, Bob247, Bobbythemazarin, Bonadea, BrianGV, Buistr, Bunnyhop11, CComMack, Calabe1992,Calldan, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Caranorn, Carl Logan, Caroldermoid, Cbnowhere, Cencini, Chanting Fox, Charles Essie, Charles Matthews, Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry,Chiller1800, Chris the speller, ChristiaandeWet, Christopher Crossley, Christopher Mahan, Clemwang, Cliché Online, Colonies Chris, CommonsDelinker, Comte0, Cripipper, Crowish, Cryptic,Crystal 1215, Cuaxdon, Czyrko, DIREKTOR, DITWIN GRIM, Dabomb87, DagosNavy, Danrolo, Darkhorse08817, Darklilac, Daveblack, Davecampbell, Davehi1, Debresser, Dekimasu,Demiurge1000, Descendall, Domiciliphile, Dubmill, Dzlinker, ECPADcommunication, EamonnPKeane, Edward, Eiland, EkoGraf, El C, Elitehobo, EnthusiastFRANCE, EricEnfermero, Ericd,Erudy, Esperant, Eumolpo, Evans1982, Everyking, Facius, Factography, FayssalF, Fjl, Flightingirish, FocalPoint, Formeruser-81, Frietjes, Front Runner 8, Frufdo, FunkMonk, Funnyhat, Fuzzie,GGreeneVa, GTIowner3, Gaius Cornelius, Galaxyruin, Gbinal, Geni, GeorgeGriffiths, Glane23, Glossologist, GoingBatty, Gragox, Greghm, Greyshark09, Ground Zero, Grstain, Gsteff, GuyPeters, Gzornenplatz, Hadal, HaleyZZ, HanzoHattori, Hardouin, Harkew, Helixblue, Herzliyya, Hibernian, Hinrichschuetze, Hmains, Homeboy88, Hq3473, IR393TheSituation, IZAK, In ictuoculi, Intangible, Interiot, IronGargoyle, Italik, J d noonan, JDP90, JaGa, Jaanko, Jackbrown, Jackmitchell, Jalal nali, Jauerback, Jdorney, Jean-Jacques Georges, Jeanfi, Jersey Devil, JesseW,Jesusfreak4life, Jiang, Jjjoeyjoseph, Jmajeremy, Jmj713, John Chamberlain, John Riemann Soong, John Z, JohnInDC, Johnondelaware, Johnpseudo, JonathanDP81, Jonel, Joseph Solis inAustralia, Junes, Justjeshb, Jwwarren, KAMTCHO, KI, Kansas Bear, Karl-Henner, Katangais, Kay tseyantong, KazakhPol, Kelisi, Ker3a, Khazar2, Killerman2, Kingturtle, Klemen Kocjancic,Korg, Kralizec!, Kungfuadam, LKBOLAND, Lander56, Languagehat, Lapaz, Le Question, LeRoux13, Leandrod, Ledenierhomme, Levybros, Lightmouse, LittleOldMe, Localzuk, Locke3820,Looxix, Lothar von Richthofen, Lugia2453, M4-10, MK8, MONGO, Maltelauridsbrigge, Mark Foskey, Marte010, MartinCollin, Mashford, Materialscientist, Mathglot, Matthew Fennell,Maurice Carbonaro, Mav, MayerG, Med, Medo9, Mervyn, Messir, Micahbrwn, Michaelas10, Michaeldsuarez, Mikelo.Arbaro, Mikus, Mkmcconn, Mmm333k, Modulatum, Monty Cantsin,Morning star, Mowsbury, Mr Minchin, Mr Psi, Mr.Clown, Mr.Z-man.sock, Mussav, Mustafaa, Naraht, Neckro, Necromancer44, Nick Number, Night Gyr, Nihiletnihil, Nihonjoe, Nikofeelan,Nishkid64, Noaim, Nodulation, Nogin001, Noob25, Noon, Odie5533, Olivier, Omar-Toons, Open2universe, Orenburg1, OwenBlacker, PBS, Palmiro, Panarjedde, Paris By Night, Parnellg,Patstuart, Paul A, Pax:Vobiscum, Paxse, Pdcook, Pehlakas, Per Honor et Gloria, Perspicacite, Petri Krohn, PhnomPencil, Piano non troppo, Picaroon, Pjwolfe, Polocrunch, Populus, Pratiproy,Publicus, Quadduc, R'n'B, R3s3nt, RJFF, RainbowOfLight, Rama, Rbrwr, Rcoo86, Reenem, Reid1867, Rich Farmbrough, Rjanag, Rjp422, Rjwilmsi, Rklawton, Robert1947, RomeW,RottweilerCS, Rune.welsh, Rvknight, Ryanaxp, SDC, SGGH, Samiorocks, SamuelTheGhost, Sannse, Schrei, Scooteristi, Scoutersig, Sergeantgiggles, Serpent656, Sertrel, Severino, Shafei,Shame On You, ShelfSkewed, Shlensky, Shyam, Siafu, Skaakt, Skysmith, Smmurphy, Snoyes, Some jerk on the Internet, SquidSK, Swordhunter0690, T L Miles, Tachfin, Tazmaniacs, ThatAsian Guy, The Anome, TheEarth1974, TheProtector, Themightyquill, Tide rolls, Tiger Khan, Tim1357, Tnxman307, Tobby72, Tony1, Tony360X, Topbanana, Tothebarricades.tk, Treisijs,Trevor MacInnis, Trivelt, UberCryxic, UltimaRatio, Varlaam, Velella, Vidboy10, Vino s, Vis-a-visconti, WereSpielChequers, WhisperToMe, Who, Whoop whoop pull up, Wikieditoroftoday,Woohookitty, Xhienne, Yasis, YellowMonkey, Yosy, Yurochka, Zalali, Zdravko mk, Zenshine, Zumbo, Zvar, 722 ,05ترجمان anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and ContributorsFile:Algerian war collage wikipedia.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Algerian_war_collage_wikipedia.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: MadameGrindercheFile:Flag of Algeria (1958-1962).svg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of_Algeria_(1958-1962).svg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: User:EsconditesFile:Flag of Parti communiste algérien.gif  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of_Parti_communiste_algérien.gif  License: GNU Free Documentation License Contributors: Jaume OlléFile:Flag of France.svg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of_France.svg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: AnomieFile:Oas logo public.svg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Oas_logo_public.svg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Oas_logo_public.png: Shame On You derivativework: Germo (talk)File:History_Of_Algeria.jpeg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:History_Of_Algeria.jpeg  License: Creative Commons Zero  Contributors: Denniss, FxHrootRunDevilRunfile:Flag of Algeria.svg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of_Algeria.svg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: This graphic was originaly drawn by User:SKopp.File:Six chefs FLN - 1954.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Six_chefs_FLN_-_1954.jpg  License: unknown  Contributors: -File:Ex voto mg 6329.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Ex_voto_mg_6329.jpg  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0  Contributors: RamaImage:Semaine des barricades Alger 1960 Haute Qualité.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Semaine_des_barricades_Alger_1960_Haute_Qualité.jpg  License:Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0  Contributors: User:Christophe MarcheuxFile:Commando de chasse V66 du 4me Zouaves.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Commando_de_chasse_V66_du_4me_Zouaves.jpg  License: Public Domain Contributors: photographe inconnuImage:Yemenites go to Aden.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Yemenites_go_to_Aden.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Kluger ZoltanFile:Harki-j.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Harki-j.jpg  License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported  Contributors: User:Poussin jeanFile:French North African Operations medal law of 11 January 1958.jpg  Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:French_North_African_Operations_medal_law_of_11_January_1958.jpg  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0  Contributors:PHGCOMFile:20 Août 1955 EL HALIA.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:20_Août_1955_EL_HALIA.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: DenghiùComm, Dzlinker, 2anonymous edits

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