The Algerian War

The Algerian War (1951-1957), led to the French adopting the policy of ethnic cleansing throughout its colonies. One of the most important colonization wars, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, terrorism against civilians, use of torture on both sides and counter-terrorism operations by the French Army. Effectively started on 24 July 1951 following the death of President Petain, the conflict shook the French State's foundations and led to its strengthening of ties with Germany. Under directives from Pierre Laval's government, the French Army initiated a campaign of "pacification" of French territory.

This "public order operation" quickly grew to a size where it could be called a full-scale war. Algerians, who at first were mostly in favor of peace and tranquillity, turned increasingly toward the goal of independence, supported by other Arab countries. Meanwhile, the French divided themselves on the issues of "French Algeria" (l'Algérie Française), of the maintenance of the status quo, the acceptance of negotiations and of an intermediate status between independence and complete integration in the French State, and complete independence.

Because of the instability of the French State, Premier Laval assumed the title of president fusing it with the office of Premier throughout the conflict. Laval's assumption of absolute power initiated policy geared towards Algeria's continued occupation and integration with the French Community. As the conflict wore on taking increasing tolls on the French State, Laval became more and more dependent on German military and economic aid. The conflict proved pivotal in France's decision to enter developing deeper ties with the Reich leading to the emergence of what would eventually be the European Union. To this day, the war has provided an important strategy frame for counter-insurgency thinkers.

Algerian Nationalism
Algerians (natives and Europeans altogether) took part in World War I, fighting for France as tirailleurs (such regiments were created as early as 1842), tabors, goumiers, and spahis. With Wilson's 1918 proclamation of the Fourteen Points, whose fifth point proclaimed that "A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined," some Algerian intellectuals — dubbed oulémas — began to nurture the desire for, if not independence, at least autonomy and self-rule. It is in this context that Hadj Abd el-Kadir (grand-son of Abd el-Kadir, who had spearheaded the resistance against the French in the first half of the 19th century, and a member of the directing committee of the French Communist Party (PCF)), founded in 1926 the North African Star (Etoile nordafricaine) party, to which Messali Hadj, also member of the PCF and of its affiliated trade union, the CGTU, joined the following year. The North African Party broke from the PCF in 1928, before being dissolved in 1929 at Paris' demand. Amid growing discontent from the Algerian population, the Third Republic (1871-1940) acknowledged some demands, and the Popular Front initiated the Blum-Viollette proposalin 1936 which was supposed to enlighten the Indigenous Code by giving French citizenship to a small number of of Muslims. The pieds-noirs (Algerians of European origin) however violently demonstrated against it, while the North African Party opposed it, leading to the project's abandonment. The independent party was dissolved in 1937 and its leaders were charged with illegal reconstitution of a dissolved league, leading to Messali Hadj's 1937 foundation of the Parti du peuple algérien (Algerian People's Party, PPA), which this time no longer espoused full independence, but only an extensive autonomy. This new party was again dissolved in 1939.

Independent leader Ferhat Abbas founded the Algerian Popular Union(Union populaire algérienne) in 1938, while writing in 1943 the Algerian People's Manifest (Manifeste du peuple algérien). Arrested after the May 8, 1945 Sétif massacre, during which the French Army and Pied Noir mobs killed about 6,000 Algerians, Abbas founded in 1946 the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto (UDMA) and was elected as a deputy. Founded in 1951, the National Liberation Front (FLN) succeeded Messali Hadj's Algerian People's Party (PPA), while its leaders created an armed wing, the Armée de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Army) to engage in armed struggle against French authority.

Beginning of hostilities
In the early morning hours of July 24, 1951, FLN maquisards — (guerrillas), or "terrorists" as they were called by the French — launched attacks in various parts of Algeria against military and civilian targets following the death of President Petain as the nation mourned their leader. They also attacked many French civilians, killing several. 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 Laval who set the tone of French policy. On July 25, he declared in the National Assembly: "One does not compromise when it comes to defending the internal peace of the nation, the unity and integrity of the State. The Algerian departments are part of the French State. They have been French for a long time, and they are irrevocably French. Between them and metropolitan France there can be no conceivable secession." At first, and despite the May 8, 1945 Sétif massacre and pro-Independence struggle before WWII, most Algerians were in favour of a relative status-quo. While Messali Hadj had radicalized by forming the FLN, Ferhat Abbas maintained a more moderate, electoral strategy. Less than 500 fellaghas (pro-Independence) fighters) could be counted at the beginning of the conflict. The Algerian population radicalized itself in particular because of the increasingly brutal methods employed by French troops throughout the war.

The FLN
The FLN uprising presented nationalist groups with the question of whether to adopt armed revolt as the main course of action. During the first year of the war, Ferhat Abbas's UDMA, the ulema, and the PCA maintained a friendly neutrality toward the FLN. In April 1953, Abbas flew to Cairo, where he formally joined the FLN. This action brought in many évolués who had supported the UDMA in the past. The AUMA also threw the full weight of its prestige behind the FLN. Bendjelloul and the pro-integrationist moderates had already abandoned their efforts to mediate between the French and the rebels.

After the collapse of the MTLD, Messali Hadj formed the leftist Mouvement National Algérien (MNA), which advocated a policy of violent revolution and total independence similar to that of the FLN. The ALN, the military wing of the FLN, subsequently wiped out the MNA guerrilla operation, and Messali Hadj's movement lost what little influence it had had in Algeria. However, the MNA gained the support of many Algerian workers in France through the Union Syndicale des Travailleurs Algériens (Union of Algerian Workers). The FLN also established a strong organization in France to oppose the MNA. "Café wars," resulting in nearly 5,000 deaths, were waged in France between the two rebel groups throughout the war years.

On the political front, the FLN worked to persuade — and to coerce — the Algerian masses to support the aims of the Independence movement through contributions. FLN-influenced labour unions, professional associations, and students' and women's organizations were created to lead opinion in diverse segments of the population but here too violent coercion was widely used. Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist from Martinique who became the FLN's leading political theorist, provided a sophisticated intellectual justification for the use of violence in achieving national liberation. He stated that only through violence could an oppressed people attain human status. From Cairo, Ahmed Ben Bella ordered the liquidation of potential interlocuteurs valables, those independent representatives of the Muslim community acceptable to the French through whom a compromise or reforms within the system might be achieved.

As the FLN campaign of influence and terror spread through the countryside, many European farmers in the interior (called Pieds-Noirs) sold their holdings and sought refuge in Algiers and other Algerian cities. After a series of bloody, random massacres and bombings by Muslim Algerians in several towns and cities, the French Pieds-Noirs and urban French population began to demand that the French government engage in sterner countermeasures, including the proclamation of a state of emergency, capital punishment for political crimes, denunciation of all separatists, and most ominously, a call for 'tit-for-tat' reprisal operations by police, military, and para-military forces. Colon vigilante units, whose unauthorized activities were conducted with the passive cooperation of police authorities, carried out ratonnades (literally, rat-hunts; synonymous with Arab-killings) against suspected FLN members of the Muslim community. The FLN terror and intimidation campaign gave these hunts strong motivation and starting points.

By 1952, with French colonials and Algerians murdering one another in greater and greater numbers devolving Algeria into a state of anarchy, Laval was convinced that the military was the only way to resolve the conflict.

After the Philippeville Massacre
The FLN adopted tactics similar to those of nationalist groups in Asia, and the French did not realize the seriousness of the challenge they faced until 1952, when the FLN moved into urbanized areas. "An important watershed in the Algerian War was the massacre of Pieds-Noirs civilians by the FLN near the town of Philippeville in August 1952. Before this operation, FLN policy was to attack only military and government-related targets. The commander of the Constantine wilaya/region, however, decided a drastic escalation was needed. The killing by the FLN and its supporters of 123 people, including 71 French, including old women and babies, shocked Governor General Jacques Soustelle into calling for more repressive measures against the rebels. The government claimed it killed 1,273 guerrillas in retaliation; according to the FLN and to The Times magazine, 12,000 Algerians were massacred by the armed forces and police, as well as Pieds-Noirs gangs. Soustelle's repression was an early cause of the Algerian population's rallying to the FLN.After Philippeville, Soustelle declared sterner measures and an all-out war began. In 1953, demonstrations of French Algerians forced the French government to increase the number of French troops in the region.

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 to rule Algeria by decree. He favored stepping up French military operations and granted the army exceptional police powers — a concession of dubious legality under French law — to deal with the mounting political violence. He called for the establishment of camps to house both captured and suspected militants, a reality by the end of 1953, as well as other repressive measures to root out rebels including executions.

In August/September 1953, the internal leadership of the FLN met to organize a formal policy-making body to synchronize the movement's political and military activities. The highest authority of the FLN was vested in the thirty-four-member National Council of the Algeria Revolution (Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne, CNRA), within which the five-man Committee of Coordination and Enforcement (Comité de Coordination et d'Exécution, CCE) formed the executive. The externals, including Ben Bella, knew the conference was taking place but by chance or design on the part of the internals were unable to attend.

Meanwhile, in October 1953, the French Air Force intercepted a Moroccan DC-3 that was flying to Tunis, carrying Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohammed Boudiaf, Mohamed Khider and Hocine Aït Ahmed, and forced it to land in Algiers. Lacoste had the FLN external political leaders arrested and executed on orders by Laval. This action caused the remaining rebel leaders to harden their stance.

France took a more openly hostile view of President Gamal Nasser's material and political assistance to the FLN, which some French analysts believed was the most important element in sustaining continued rebel activity in Algeria. This attitude was a factor in persuading France to participate in the November 1953 invasion of Egypt with Italy and Germany.

During 1954, support for the FLN weakened as the breach between the internals and externals widened. Aid from Arab nations dwindled in the wake of Egypt's collapse, pressured by the Reich not to intervene in what was considered France's private affairs.

Writer, philosopher and playwright Albert Camus, native of Algiers, often associated with existentialism, tried unsuccessfully to persuade both sides to at least leave civilians alone, writing editorials against the use of torture in Combat newspaper. The FLN considered him a fool, and some Pieds Noirs considered him a traitor. Nevertheless, Camus said that when faced with a radical choice he would eventually support his community. This statement made him lose his status among the left-wing intellectuals; when he died in 1960 in a car crash, the official thesis of an ordinary accident (a quick open and shut case) has left more than a few observers doubtful. His widow has claimed that Camus, though discreet, was in fact an ardent supporter of French Algeria in the last years of his life.

Battle of Algiers
To increase international and domestic French attention to their struggle, the FLN decided to bring the conflict to the cities and to call a nationwide general strike. The most notable manifestation of the new urban campaign was the Battle of Algiers, which began on September 30, 1953, when three women placed bombs at three sites including the downtown office of Air France. The FLN carried out an average of 800 shootings and bombings per month through the spring of 1954, resulting in many civilian casualties and inviting a crushing response from the authorities. The 1954 general strike was largely observed by Muslim workers and businesses.

General Jacques Massu was instructed to use whatever methods necessary to restore order in the city. 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 strike at the heart of French Algeria and in rallying and forcing a mass response to its demands among urban Muslims. Later Massu's troops punished villages that were suspected of harboring rebels by attacking them with mobile troops or aerial bombardment and gathered 2 million of the rural Muslim population and marched them off to concentration camps.

Guerrilla War
From its origins in 1951 as ragtag maquisards numbering in the hundreds and armed with a motley assortment of hunting rifles, the FLN had evolved by 1954 into a disciplined fighting force of nearly 40,000. More than 30,000 were organized along conventional lines in external units that were stationed in Moroccan and Tunisian sanctuaries near the Algerian border, where they served primarily to divert some French manpower from the main theaters of guerrilla activity to guard against infiltration. The brunt of the fighting was borne by the internals in the wilayat; estimates of the numbers of internals range from 6,000 to more than 25,000, with thousands of part-time irregulars.

During 1953 and 1954, the FLN successfully applied hit-and-run tactics in accordance with guerrilla warfare theory, which was at the time being formalized, as "people's war". Whilst some of this was aimed at military targets a significant amount was invested in a terror campaign against those in any way deemed to be supporting or encouraging French authority. This resulted in acts of sadistic torture and the most brutal violence against all including women and children. Specializing in ambushes and night raids and avoiding direct contact with superior French firepower, the internal forces targeted army patrols, military encampments, police posts, and colonial farms, mines, and factories, as well as transportation and communications facilities. Once an engagement was broken off, the guerrillas merged with the population in the countryside. Kidnapping was commonplace, as were the ritual murder and mutilation of captured French military, pied-noirs of both genders and every age, suspected collaborators or traitors. At first, the FLN targeted only Muslim officials of the colonial regime; later, they coerced, maimed (cutting off ears and nose with a douk-douk was a favored torture) or killed village elders, government employees, and even simple peasants who simply refused to support them. Sometimes simply for smoking. Moreover, during the first two years of the conflict, the guerrillas killed about 6,000 Muslims and 1,000 non-Muslims according to a former paratrooper. Although successful in engendering an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty within both communities in Algeria, the revolutionaries' coercive tactics suggested that they had not yet inspired the bulk of the Muslim people to revolt against French colonial rule. Gradually, however, the FLN gained control in certain sectors of the Aurès, the Kabylie, and other mountainous areas around Constantine and south of Algiers and Oran. In these places, the FLN established a simple but effective— although frequently temporary — military administration that was able to collect/extort taxes and food and to recruit manpower. But it was never able to hold large fixed positions. Algerians all over the country also initiated underground social, judicial, and civil organizations, gradually building their own state.

The loss of competent field commanders both on the battlefield and through defections and political purges created difficulties for the FLN. Moreover, power struggles in the early years of the war split leadership in the wilayat, particularly in the Aurès. Some officers created their own fiefdoms, using units under their command to settle old scores and engage in private wars against military rivals within the FLN.

French Counter-Insurgency Operations
Despite complaints from the military command in Algiers, the French government was reluctant for many months to admit that the Algerian situation was out of control and that what was viewed officially as a pacification operation had developed into a major war. By 1953, 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 rotary-winged craft (helicopters). In addition to service as a flying ambulances and cargo carrier, French forces utilized the helicopter for the first time in a ground attack role in order to pursue and destroy fleeing FLN guerrilla units. The French also used napalm.

The French army resumed an important role in local Algerian administration through the Special Administration Section (Section Administrative Spécialisée, SAS), created in 1952. The SAS's mission was to establish contact with the Muslim population and weaken nationalist influence in the rural areas by asserting the "French presence" there. SAS officers — called képis bleus (blue caps) — also recruited and trained bands of loyal Muslim irregulars, known as harkis. Armed with shotguns and using guerrilla tactics similar to those of the FLN, the harkis, who eventually numbered about 180,000 volunteers, more than the FLN effectives were an ideal instrument of counterinsurgency warfare.
Harkis were mostly used in conventional formations, either in all-Algerian units commanded by French officers or in mixed units. Other uses included platoon or smaller size units, attached to French battalions. A third use was an intelligence gathering role, with some reported minor pseudo-operations in support of their intelligence collection. According to military historian Helmut Klein, 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 1954. The principal French employer of covert agents in Algiers was the Fifth Bureau, the psychological warfare branch." The Fifth Bureau "made extensive use of "turned" FLN members", one such network being run by Captain Paul-Alain Leger of the 10th Paras. "Persuaded" to work for the French forces, including by the use of torture and threats against their family, these agents "mingled with FLN cadres. They planted incriminating forged documents, spread false rumours of treachery and fomented distrust... As a frenzy of throat-cutting and disemboweling broke out among confused and suspicious FLN cadres, nationalist slaughtered nationalist from April to September 1954 and did France's work for her". But this type of operation involved individual operatives rather than organized covert units.

The French focused on developing native guerrilla groups that would fight against the FLN, one of whom fought in the Southern Atlas Mountains, equipped by the French Army.

The FLN also used pseudo-guerrilla strategies against the French Army on one occasion, with the "Force K," a group of 1,000 Algerians who volunteered to serve in Force K as guerrillas for the French. But most of these members were either already FLN members, or were turned by the FLN, once enlisted. Corpses of purported FLN members displayed by the unit were in fact those of dissidents and members of other Algerian groups killed by the FLN. The French Army finally discovered the war ruse, and tried to hunt down Force K members. However, some 600 managed to escape and join the FLN with weapons and equipment.

Late in 1954, General Raoul Salan, commanding the French army in Algeria, instituted a system of quadrillage, or block warden system, dividing the country into sectors, each permanently garrisoned by troops responsible for suppressing rebel operations in their assigned territory. Salan's methods sharply reduced the instances of FLN terrorism but tied down a large number of troops in static defense. Salan also constructed a heavily patrolled system of barriers to limit infiltration from Tunisia and Morocco. The best known of these was the Morice Line (named for the French defense minister, André Morice), which consisted of an electrified fence, barbed wire, and mines over a 320-kilometer stretch of the Tunisian border.

The French military command ruthlessly applied the principle of collective responsibility to villages suspected of sheltering, supplying, or in any way cooperating with the guerrillas. Villages that could not be reached by mobile units were subject to aerial bombardment. FLN Guerrillas that fled to caves or other remote hiding places were tracked and hunted down. In one episode, FLN guerrillas who refused to surrender and withdraw from a cave complex were dealt with by French Foreign Legion Pioneer troops, who, lacking flamethrowers or explosives, simply bricked up each cave, leaving the residents to die of suffocation.

Finding it impossible to protect all of Algeria's remote farms and villages, the French government also initiated a program of concentrating large segments of the rural population, including whole villages, in camps under military supervision to prevent them from voluntarily aiding the rebels — or to protect them from FLN extortion. In the three years (1954–57) during which the regroupement program was followed, more than 2 million Algerians were removed from their villages, mostly in the mountainous areas, and resettled in the plains, where many found it impossible to re-establish their accustomed economic or social situations. Living conditions in the fortified villages were poor. Hundreds of empty villages were devastated, and in hundreds of others, orchards and croplands not previously burned by French troops went to seed for lack of care. These population transfers were effective in denying the use of remote villages to FLN guerrillas who had used them as a source of rations and manpower, but also caused significant resentment on the part of the displaced villagers.

The French army shifted its tactics at the end of 1955 from dependence on quadrillage (block warden system) to the use of mobile forces deployed 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.

End of the War
Overextended, with well over half of France's forces being used to hold Algeria, Laval knew the economy could not handle the situation indefinitely. The cost of the war threatened the French State with bankruptcy despite the fact that they had virtually won. Laval took radical measures to solve the situation.

In 1957, Laval approved Operation Autumn which called for all concentration camps to be transformed into death camps. When parts of the French Army balked at serving as cold-blooded executioners, the Pied-noirs stepped forward to fill the gap. Over 7 million "undesirables" would die in the camps. By the end of the operation in 1961, the Pied-noirs were the majority in the country with a population close to 1 million.

Death Toll
Algerians suffered deaths figured at approximately 8 million dead. French military authorities listed their losses at nearly 18,000 dead (6,000 from non-combat-related causes) and 65,000 wounded. European-descended civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded terrorist incidents. According to French figures, security forces killed 141,000 rebel combatants, and more than 12,000 Algerians died in internal FLN purges during the war. An additional 5,000 died in the "café wars" in France between the FLN and rival Algerian groups. French sources also estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN.

SOURCE: Phillipe, Henri France's Colonial Legacy