Algerian War

TheAlgerian War(also known as theAlgerian Revolutionor theAlgerian War of Independence)was a major armed conflict betweenFranceand the AlgerianNational Liberation Front(FLN) from 1954 to 1962, which led toAlgeriawinning its independence from France.An importantdecolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized byguerrilla warfareand war crimes. The conflict also became acivil warbetween the different communities and within the communities.The war took place mainly on the territory ofAlgeria, with repercussions inmetropolitan France.
Effectively started by members of the FLN on 1 November 1954, during theToussaint Rouge("RedAll Saints' Day"), the conflict led to serious political crises in France, causing the fall of theFourth Republic(1946–58), to be replaced by theFifth Republicwith a strengthened presidency. The brutality of the methods employed by the French forces failed towin hearts and mindsin Algeria, alienated support in metropolitan France, and discredited French prestige abroad.As the war dragged on, the French public slowly turned against itand many of France's key allies, including the United States, switched from supporting France to abstaining in the UN debate on Algeria.After major demonstrations inAlgiersand several other cities in favor of independence (1960)and a United Nations resolution recognizing the right to independence,Charles de Gaulle, the firstpresidentof the Fifth Republic, decided to open a series of negotiations with the FLN. These concluded with the signing of theÉvian Accordsin March 1962. Areferendumtook place on 8 April 1962 and the French electorate approved the Évian Accords. The final result was 91% in favor of the ratification of this agreementand on 1 July, the Accords were subject to asecond referendumin Algeria, where 99.72% voted for independence and just 0.28% against.
The planned French withdrawal led to a state crisis. This included variousassassinationattempts on de Gaulle as well as some attempts atmilitary coups. Most of the former were carried out by theOrganisation armée secrète(OAS), an underground organization formed mainly from French military personnel supporting a French Algeria, which committed a large number of bombings and murders both in Algeria and in the homeland to stop the planned independence.
The war caused the deaths of between 400,000 and 1.5 million Algerians,25,600 French soldiers,and 6,000 Europeans.War crimescommitted during the war included massacres of civilians, rape, andtorture; the French destroyed over 8,000 villages and relocated over 2 million Algerians toconcentration camps.Upon independence in 1962, 900,000 European-Algerians (Pieds-noirs) fled to France within a few months for fear of the FLN's revenge. The French government was unprepared to receive such a vast number of refugees, which caused turmoil in France. The majority of Algerian Muslims who had worked for the French were disarmed and left behind, as theagreementbetween French and Algerian authorities declared that no actions could be taken against them.However, theHarkisin particular, having served as auxiliaries with the French army, were regarded as traitors andmany were murdered[fr]by the FLN or by lynch mobs, often after being abducted and tortured.About 20,000 Harki families (around 90,000 people) managed to flee to France, some with help from their French officers acting against orders, and today they and their descendants form a significant part of the population ofAlgerians in France.
The decision to capture Algiers was made byCharles Xand his ministers in January 1830. An invasion had already been discussed in 1827 in part in reaction toBarbary piratesactivities and their ransoming of Christian captives and slaves, and the refusal of Marseilles merchants to pay their debts to theDeyof Algiers. By early 1830 however, the real motive was to distract and assuage with a foreign conquest French opinion hostile to the increasingly authoritarian king.
On the pretext of a slight to their consul, theFrench attacked and captured Algiersin June 1830. In following years the conquest spread to the interior.Directed byMarshall Bugeaud, who became the firstGovernor-General of Algeria, the conquest was violent and marked by a "scorched earth" policy designed to reduce the power of the native rulers, theDey, including massacres, mass rapes and other atrocities.Between 500,000 and 1,000,000, from approximately 3 million Algerians, were killed in the first three decades of the conquest.French losses from 1830 to 1851 were 3,336killed in actionand 92,329 dying in hospital.
In 1834, Algeria became a French military colony. It was declared by theConstitution of 1848to be an integral part of France and was divided into threedepartments:Alger,OranandConstantine. Many French and other Europeans (Spanish, Italians, Maltese and others) later settled in Algeria.
Under theSecond Empire(1852–1871), theCode de l'indigénat(Indigenous Code) was implemented by thesénatus-consulteof 14 July 1865. It allowed Muslims to apply for full French citizenship, a measure that few took since it involved renouncing the right to be governed bysharialaw in personal matters and was widely considered to beapostasy. Its first article stipulated:
Prior to 1870, fewer than 200 demands were registered by Muslims and 152 by Jewish Algerians.The 1865 decree was then modified by the 1870Crémieux Decree, which grantedFrench nationalityto Jews living in one of the three Algerian departments. In 1881, theCode de l'Indigénatmade the discrimination official by creating specific penalties forindigènesand organising the seizure or appropriation of their lands.
AfterWorld War II, equality of rights was proclaimed by theordonnanceof 7 March 1944 and later confirmed by theloi Lamine Guèyeof 7 May 1946, which granted French citizenship to all subjects of France's territories and overseas departments, and by the 1946 Constitution. The Law of 20 September 1947 granted French citizenship to all Algerian subjects, who were not required to renounce their Muslim personal status.
Algeria was unique to France because unlike all other overseas possessions acquired by France during the 19th century, Algeria was considered and legally classified to be an integral part of France.
Both Muslim and European Algerians took part in World War II and fought for France. Algerian Muslims served astirailleurs(such regiments were created as early as 1842) andspahis; and French settlers asZouavesorChasseurs d'Afrique. US PresidentWoodrow Wilson's 1918Fourteen Pointshad the fifth read: "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 ofsovereigntythe 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, dubbedoulémas, began to nurture the desire for independence or, at the very least, autonomy andself-rule.
Within that context,Khalid ibn Hashim, a grandson ofAbd el-Kadir, spearheaded the resistance against the French in the first half of the 20th century and was a member of the directing committee of theFrench Communist Party. In 1926, he founded theÉtoile Nord-Africaine("North African Star"), to whichMessali Hadj, also a member of the Communist Party and of its affiliated trade union, theConfédération générale du travail unitaire(CGTU), joined the following year.
The North African Star broke from the Communist Party in 1928, before being dissolved in 1929 at Paris's demand. Amid growing discontent from the Algerian population, theThird Republic(1871–1940) acknowledged some demands, and thePopular Frontinitiated theBlum-Viollette proposalin 1936, which was supposed to enlighten the Indigenous Code by giving French citizenship to a small number of Muslims. Thepieds-noirs(Algerians of European origin) violently demonstrated against it and the North African Party also opposed it, leading to its abandonment. The pro-independence party was dissolved in 1937, and its leaders were charged with the illegal reconstitution of a dissolved league, leading to Messali Hadj's 1937 founding of theParti du peuple algérien(Algerian People's Party, PPA), which no longer espoused full independence but only extensive autonomy. This new party was dissolved in 1939. UnderVichy France, the French State attempted to abrogate the Crémieux Decree to suppress the Jews' French citizenship, but the measure was never implemented.
On the other hand, the nationalist leaderFerhat Abbasfounded the Algerian Popular Union (Union populaire algérienne) in 1938. In 1943, Abbas wrote the Algerian People's Manifesto (Manifeste du peuple algérien). Arrested after theSétif and Guelma massacreof May 8, 1945, when the French Army and pieds-noirs mobs killed between 6,000 and 30,000 Algerians,Abbas founded theDemocratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto(UDMA) in 1946 and was elected as a deputy. Founded in 1954, theNational Liberation Front(FLN) created an armed wing, theArmée de Libération Nationale(National Liberation Army) to engage in anarmed struggleagainst French authority. Many Algerian soldiers who served for the French Army in theFirst Indochina Warhad strong sympathy for the Vietnamese fighting against France and took up their experience to support the ALN.
France, which had just lostFrench Indochina, was determined not to lose the next colonial war, particularly in its oldest and nearest major colony, which was regarded as a part ofMetropolitan France(rather than a colony), by French law.
In the early morning hours of 1 November 1954, FLNmaquisards(guerrillas) attacked military and civilian targets throughout Algeria in what became known as theToussaint Rouge(RedAll-Saints' Day). FromCairo, the FLN broadcast thedeclaration of 1 November 1954written by the journalistMohamed Aïchaouicalling 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 PremierPierre Mendès France(Radical-Socialist Party), who only a few months before had completed the liquidation of France's tete empire inIndochina, which set the tone of French policy for five years. He declared in the National Assembly, "One does not compromise when it comes to defending the internal peace of the nation, the unity and integrity of the Republic. The Algerian departments are part of the French Republic. They have been French for a long time, and they are irrevocably French. ... Between them and metropolitan France there can be no conceivable secession." At first, and despite theSétif massacreof 8 May 1945, and the pro-Independence struggle before World War II, most Algerians were in favor of a relative status-quo. While Messali Hadj had radicalized by forming the FLN, Ferhat Abbas maintained a more moderate, electoral strategy. Fewer than 500fellaghas(pro-Independence fighters) could be counted at the beginning of the conflict.The Algerian population radicalized itself in particular because of the terrorist acts of French-sponsoredMain Rouge(Red Hand) group, which targeted anti-colonialists in all of theMaghrebregion (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), killing, for example, Tunisian activistFarhat Hachedin 1952.
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'sDemocratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto(UDMA), theulema, and theAlgerian Communist Party(PCA) maintained a friendly neutrality toward the FLN. Thecommunists, who had made no move to cooperate in the uprising at the start, later tried to infiltrate the FLN, but FLN leaders publicly repudiated the support of the party. In April 1956, Abbas flew toCairo, where he formally joined the FLN. This action brought in manyévoluéswho had supported the UDMA in the past. TheAUMAalso 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 theMTLD, the veteran nationalistMessali Hadjformed theleftistMouvement National Algérien(MNA), which advocated a policy of violent revolution and total independence similar to that of the FLN, but aimed to compete with that organisation. TheArmée de Libération Nationale(ALN), the military wing of the FLN, subsequently wiped out the MNAguerrillaoperation in Algeria, and Messali Hadj's movement lost what weak influence it had had there. However, the MNA retained the support of many Algerian workers in France through theUnion Syndicale des Travailleurs Algériens(theUnionof Algerian Workers). The FLN also established a strong organization in France to oppose the MNA. The "Café wars", resulting in nearly 5,000 deaths, were waged in France between the two rebel groups throughout the years of the War of Independence.
On the political front, the FLN worked to persuade—and to coerce—the Algerian masses to support the aims of the independence movement through contributions. FLN-influenced labor unions, professional associations, and students' and women's organizations were created to lead opinion in diverse segments of the population, but here too, violent coercion was widely used.Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist fromMartiniquewho became the FLN's leading political theorist, provided a sophisticated intellectual justification for the use of violence in achieving national liberation.FromCairo,Ahmed Ben Bellaordered the liquidation of potentialinterlocuteurs valables, those independent representatives of theMuslimcommunity acceptable to the French through whom a compromise or reforms within the system might be achieved.
As the FLN campaign of influence spread through the countryside, many European farmers in the interior (calledPieds-Noirs), many of whom lived on lands taken from Muslim communities during the nineteenth century,sold their holdings and sought refuge inAlgiersand other Algerian cities. After a series of bloody, random massacres and bombings by Muslim Algerians in several towns and cities, the FrenchPieds-Noirsand urban French population began 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, a call for 'tit-for-tat' reprisal operations by police, military, and para-military forces.Colonvigilante units, whose unauthorized activities were conducted with the passive cooperation of police authorities, carried outratonnades(literally,rat-hunts,ratonbeing a racist term for denigrating Muslim Algerians) against suspected FLN members of the Muslim community.
By 1955, effective political action groups within the Algerian colonial community succeeded in convincing many of the Governors General sent by Paris that the military was not the way to resolve the conflict. A major success was the conversion ofJacques Soustelle, who went to Algeria as governor general in January 1955 determined to restore peace. Soustelle, a one-time leftist and by 1955 an ardent Gaullist, began an ambitious reform program (theSoustelle Plan) aimed at improving economic conditions among the Muslim population.
The FLN adopted tactics similar to those of nationalist groups in Asia, and the French did not realize the seriousness of the challenge they faced until 1955, when the FLN moved into urbanized areas. An important watershed in the War of Independence wasthe massacre of Pieds-Noirs civiliansby the FLN near the town ofPhilippeville(now known asSkikda) in August 1955. Before this operation, FLN policy was to attack only military and government-related targets. The commander of theConstantinewilaya/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, shockedJacques Soustelleinto calling for more repressive measures against the rebels. The French authorities stated that 1,273 guerrillas died in what Soustelle admitted were "severe" reprisals. The FLN subsequently claimed that 12,000 Muslims were killed.Soustelle's repression was an early cause of the Algerian population's rallying to the FLN.After Philippeville, Soustelle declared sterner measures and an all-out war began. In 1956, demonstrations by French Algerians caused the French government to not make reforms.
Soustelle's successor, Governor GeneralRobert Lacoste, a socialist, abolished theAlgerian Assembly. Lacoste saw the assembly, which was dominated bypieds-noirs, as hindering the work of his administration, and he undertook the rule of Algeria by decree. He favored stepping up French military operations and granted the army exceptional police powers—a concession of dubious legality under French law—to deal with the mounting political violence. At the same time, Lacoste proposed a new administrative structure to give Algeria some autonomy and a decentralized government. Whilst remaining an integral part of France, Algeria was to be divided into five districts, each of which would have a territorial assembly elected from a single slate of candidates. Until 1958, deputies representing Algerian districts were able to delay the passage of the measure by theNational Assembly of France.
In August and September 1956, the leadership of the FLN guerrillas operating within Algeria (popularly known as "internals") met to organize a formal policy-making body to synchronize the movement's political and military activities. The highest authority of the FLN was vested in the thirty-four memberNational Council of the Algerian Revolution(Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne, CNRA), within which the five-man Committee of Coordination and Enforcement (Comité de Coordination et d'Exécution, CCE) formed the executive. The leadership of the regular FLN forces based in Tunisia and Morocco ("externals"), including Ben Bella, knew the conference was taking place but by chance or design on the part of the "internals" were unable to attend.
In October 1956, theFrench Air Force intercepted a Moroccan DC-3 planebound forTunis, carryingAhmed Ben Bella,Mohammed Boudiaf,Mohamed KhiderandHocine Aït Ahmed, and forced it to land in Algiers. Lacoste had the FLN external political leaders arrested and imprisoned for the duration of the war. This action caused the remaining rebel leaders to harden their stance.
France opposedEgyptianPresidentGamal Abdel Nasser's material and political assistance to the FLN, which some French analysts believed was the revolution's main sustenance. This attitude was a factor in persuading France to participate in the November 1956 attempt to seize theSuez Canalduring theSuez Crisis.
During 1957, support for the FLN weakened as the breach between the internals and externals widened. To halt the drift, the FLN expanded its executive committee to include Abbas, as well as imprisoned political leaders such as Ben Bella. It also convinced communist and Arab members of theUnited Nations(UN) to put diplomatic pressure on the French government to negotiate a cease-fire. In 1957, it became common knowledge in France that the French Army was routinely using torture to extract information from suspected FLN members.Hubert Beuve-Méry, the editor ofLe Monde, declared in an edition on 13 March 1957: "From now on, Frenchman must know that they don't have the right to condemn in the same terms as ten years ago thedestruction of Oradourand the torture by theGestapo."Another case that attracted much media attention was the murder ofMaurice Audin, a member of the outlawed Algerian Communist party,mathematics professor at the University of Algiers and a suspected FLN member whom the French Army arrested in June 1957.Audin was tortured and killed and his body was never found.As Audin was French rather than Algerian, his "disappearance" while in the custody of the French Army led to the case becoming acause célèbreas his widow aided by the historianPierre Vidal-Naquetdeterminedly sought to have the men responsible for her husband's death prosecuted.
Existentialistwriter, philosopher and playwrightAlbert Camus, native of Algiers, tried unsuccessfully to persuade both sides to at least leave civilians alone, writing editorials against the use of torture inCombatnewspaper. The FLN considered him a fool, and somePieds-Noirsconsidered him a traitor. Nevertheless, in his speech when he received theNobel Prize in Literature, Camus said that when faced with a radical choice he would eventually support his community. This statement made him lose his status among left-wing intellectuals; when he died in 1960 in a car crash, the official thesis of an ordinary accident (a quick open-and-shut case) left more than a few observers doubtful. His widow claimed that Camus, though discreet, was in fact an ardent supporter of French Algeria in the last years of his life.
To increase international and domestic French attention to their struggle, the FLN decided to bring the conflict to the cities and to call a nationwidegeneral strikeand also to plant bombs in public places. The most notable instance was the Battle of Algiers, which began on September 30, 1956, when three women, includingDjamila BouhiredandZohra Drif, simultaneously placed bombs at three sites including the downtown office ofAir France. The FLN carried out shootings and bombings in the spring of 1957, resulting in civilian casualties and a crushing response from the authorities.
GeneralJacques Massuwas instructed to use whatever methods deemed necessary to restore order in the city and to find and eliminate terrorists. Using paratroopers, he broke the strike and, in the succeeding months, destroyed the FLN infrastructure in Algiers. But the FLN had succeeded in showing its ability to strike at the heart of French Algeria and to assemble a mass response to its demands among urban Muslims. The publicity given to the brutal methods used by the army to win the Battle of Algiers, including the use of torture, strong movement control and curfew calledquadrillageand where all authority was under the military, created doubt in France about its role in Algeria. What was originally "pacification" or a "public order operation" had turned into acolonial waraccompanied by torture.
During 1956 and 1957, the FLN successfully appliedhit-and-run tacticsin accordance withguerrilla warfaretheory. Whilst some of this was aimed at military targets, a significant amount was invested in a terror campaign against those in any way deemed to support or encourage French authority. This resulted in acts of sadistic torture and brutal violence against all, including women and children. Specializing in ambushes and night raids and avoiding direct contact with superior French firepower, the internal forces targeted army patrols, military encampments, police posts, and colonial farms, mines, and factories, as well as transportation and communications facilities. Once an engagement was broken off, the guerrillas merged with the population in the countryside, in accordance with Mao's theories.
Although successfully provoking fear and uncertainty within both communities in Algeria, the revolutionaries' coercive tactics suggested that they had not yet inspired the bulk of the Muslim people to revolt against French colonial rule. Gradually, however, the FLN gained control in certain sectors of theAurès, theKabylie, and other mountainous areas around Constantine and south of Algiers andOran. In these places, the FLN established a simple but effective—although frequently temporary—military administration that was able to collect taxes and food and to recruit manpower.But it was never able to hold large, fixed positions.
The loss of competent field commanders both on the battlefield and through defections and political purges created difficulties for the FLN. Moreover, power struggles in the early years of the war split leadership in the wilayat, particularly in the Aurès. Some officers created their own fiefdoms, using units under their command to settle old scores and engage in private wars against military rivals within the FLN.
Despite complaints from the military command in Algiers, the French government was reluctant for many months to admit that the Algerian situation was out of control and that what was viewed officially as a pacification operation had developed into a war. By 1956, there were more than 400,000 French troops in Algeria. Although the elite airborne infantry units of theTroupes colonialesand theForeign Legionbore 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 thehelicopterfor the first time in a ground attack role in order to pursue and destroy fleeing FLN guerrilla units. The American military later used the same helicopter combat methods in theVietnam War. The French also usednapalm.
The French army resumed an important role in local Algerian administration through the Special Administration Section (Section Administrative Spécialisée, SAS), created in 1955. The SAS's mission was to establish contact with the Muslim population and weaken nationalist influence in the rural areas by asserting the "French presence" there. SAS officers—calledképis 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, theharkis, who eventually numbered about 180,000 volunteers, more than the FLN activists,were an ideal instrument of counterinsurgency warfare.
Harkiswere mostly used in conventional formations, either in all-Algerian units commanded by French officers or in mixed units. Other uses includedplatoonor smaller size units, attached to French battalions, in a similar way as theKit Carson Scoutsby the U.S. in Vietnam. A third use was anintelligence gatheringrole, with some reported minorpseudo-operationsin support of their intelligence collection.U.S. military expertLawrence E. Clinestated, "The extent of these pseudo-operations appears to have been very limited both in time and scope. ... The most widespread use of pseudo type operations was during the 'Battle of Algiers' in 1957. The principal French employer ofcovert agentsin Algiers was the Fifth Bureau, thepsychological warfarebranch. "The Fifth Bureau" made extensive use of 'turned' FLN members, one such network being run by Captain Paul-Alain Leger of the 10th Paras. "Persuaded" to work for the French forces included by the use of torture and threats against their family; these agents "mingled with FLN cadres. They planted incriminating forged documents, spread false rumors of treachery and fomented distrust. ... As a frenzy of throat-cutting and disemboweling broke out among confused and suspicious FLN cadres, nationalist slaughtered nationalist from April to September 1957 and did France's work for her."But this type of operation involved individual operatives rather than organized covert units.
One organized pseudo-guerrilla unit, however, was created in December 1956 by the FrenchDSTdomestic intelligence agency. TheOrganization of the French Algerian Resistance(ORAF), a group of counter-terrorists had as its mission to carry outfalse flagterrorist attacks with the aim of quashing any hopes of political compromise.But it seemed that, as in Indochina, "the French focused on developing native guerrilla groups that would fight against the FLN", one of whom fought in the SouthernAtlas Mountains, equipped by the French Army.
The FLN also used pseudo-guerrilla strategies against the French Army on one occasion, with Force K, a group of 1,000 Algerians who volunteered to serve in Force K as guerrillas for the French. But most of these members were either already FLN members or were turned by the FLN once enlisted. Corpses of purported FLN members displayed by the unit were in fact those of dissidents and members of other Algerian groups killed by the FLN. The French Army finally discovered the war ruse and tried to hunt down Force K members. However, some 600 managed to escape and join the FLN with weapons and equipment.
Late in 1957, GeneralRaoul Salan, commanding the French Army in Algeria, instituted a system ofquadrillage(surveillance using a grid pattern), dividing the country into sectors, each permanently garrisoned by troops responsible for suppressing rebel operations in their assigned territory. Salan's methods sharply reduced the instances of FLN terrorism but tied down a large number of troops in static defense. Salan also constructed a heavily patrolled system of barriers to limit infiltration from Tunisia and Morocco. The best known of these was theMorice 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. Despite ruthless clashes during theBattle of the borders, the ALN failed to penetrate these defence lines.
The French military command ruthlessly applied the principle of collective responsibility to villages suspected of sheltering, supplying, or in any way cooperating with the guerrillas. Villages that could not be reached by mobile units were subject to aerial bombardment. FLN guerrillas that fled to caves or other remote hiding places were tracked and hunted down. In one episode, FLN guerrillas who refused to surrender and withdraw from a cave complex were dealt with by French Foreign Legion Pioneer troops, who, lacking flamethrowers or explosives, simply bricked up each cave, leaving the residents to die of suffocation.
Finding it impossible to control all of Algeria's remote farms and villages, the French government also initiated a program of concentrating large segments of the rural population, including whole villages, in camps under military supervision to prevent them from aiding the rebels. In the three years (1957–60) during which theregroupementprogram was followed, more than 2 million Algerianswere removed from their villages, mostly in themountainous areas, and resettled in the plains, where it was difficult to reestablish their previous economic and social systems. Living conditions in the fortified villages were poor. In hundreds of villages, orchards and croplands not already burned by French troops went to seed for lack of care. Thesepopulation transferseffectively denied the use of remote villages to FLN guerrillas, who had used them as a source of rations and manpower, but also caused significant resentment on the part of the displaced villagers. Relocation's social and economic disruption continued to be felt a generation later.At the same time, the French tried to gain support from the civilian population by providing money, jobs and housing to farmers
The French Army shifted its tactics at the end of 1958 from dependence onquadrillageto the use of mobile forces deployed on massivesearch-and-destroymissions against FLN strongholds. In 1959, Salan's successor, GeneralMaurice Challe, appeared to have suppressed major rebel resistance, but political developments had already overtaken the French Army's successes.
Recurrent cabinet crises focused attention on the inherent instability of theFourth Republicand increased the misgivings of the army and of the pieds-noirs that the security of Algeria was being undermined by party politics. Army commanders chafed at what they took to be inadequate and incompetent political initiatives by the government in support of military efforts to end the rebellion. The feeling was widespread that another debacle like that of Indochina in 1954 was in the offing and that the government would order another precipitate pullout and sacrifice French honor to political expediency. Many saw in de Gaulle, who had not held office since 1946, the only public figure capable of rallying the nation and giving direction to the French government.
After his time as governor general, Soustelle returned to France to organize support for de Gaulle's return to power, while retaining close ties to the army and thepieds-noirs. By early 1958, he had organized acoup d'état, bringing together dissident army officers andpieds-noirswith sympathetic Gaullists. An army junta under General Massu seized power in Algiers on the night of May 13, thereafter known as theMay 1958 crisis. General Salan assumed leadership of a Committee of Public Safety formed to replace the civil authority and pressed the junta's demands that de Gaulle be named by French presidentRené Cotyto head a government of national unity invested with extraordinary powers to prevent the "abandonment of Algeria".
On May 24, French paratroopers from the Algerian corps landed onCorsica,taking the French islandin a bloodless action. Subsequently, preparations were made in Algeria forOperation Resurrection, which had as its objectives the seizure of Paris and the removal of the French government. Resurrection was to be implemented in the event of one of three following scenarios: Were de Gaulle not approved as leader of France by the parliament; were de Gaulle to ask for military assistance to take power; or if it seemed that communist forces were making any move to take power in France. De Gaulle was approved by the French parliament on May 29, by 329 votes against 224, 15 hours before the projected launch of Operation Resurrection. This indicated that the Fourth Republic by 1958 no longer had any support from the French Army in Algeria and was at its mercy even in civilian political matters. This decisive shift in the balance of power in civil-military relations in France in 1958, and the threat of force, was the primary factor in the return of de Gaulle to power in France.
Many people, regardless of citizenship, greeted de Gaulle's return to power as the breakthrough needed to end the hostilities. On his trip to Algeria on 4 June 1958, de Gaulle calculatedly made an ambiguous and broad emotional appeal to all the inhabitants, declaring, "Je vous ai compris" ("I have understood you"). De Gaulle raised the hopes of thepied-noirand the professional military, disaffected by the indecisiveness of previous governments, with his exclamation of "Vive l'Algérie française[fr]" ("Long live French Algeria") to cheering crowds in Mostaganem. At the same time, he proposed economic, social, and political reforms to improve the situation of the Muslims. Nonetheless, de Gaulle later admitted to having harbored deep pessimism about the outcome of the Algerian situation even then. Meanwhile, he looked for a "third force" among the population of Algeria, uncontaminated by the FLN or the "ultras" (colonextremists), through whom a solution might be found.
De Gaulle immediately appointed a committee to draft a new constitution for France's Fifth Republic, which would be declared early the next year, with which Algeria would be associated but of which it would not form an integral part. All Muslims, including women, were registered for the first time on electoral rolls to participate in a referendum to be held on the new constitution in September 1958.
De Gaulle's initiative threatened the FLN with decreased support among Muslims. In reaction, the FLN set up theProvisional Government of the Algerian Republic(Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne, GPRA), a government-in-exile headed byAbbasand based in Tunis. Before the referendum, Abbas lobbied for international support for the GPRA, which was quickly recognized byMorocco,Tunisia, China, and several other African, Arab, and Asian countries, but not by the Soviet Union.
In February 1959, de Gaulle was elected president of the new Fifth Republic. He visited Constantine in October to announce a program to end the war and create an Algeria closely linked to France. De Gaulle's call on the rebel leaders to end hostilities and to participate in elections was met with adamant refusal. "The problem of a cease-fire in Algeria is not simply a military problem", said the GPRA's Abbas. "It is essentially political, and negotiation must cover the whole question of Algeria." Secret discussions that had been underway were broken off.
From 1958 to 1959, the French army won military control in Algeria and was the closest it would be to victory. In late July 1959, duringOperation Jumelles,Colonel Bigeard, whose elite paratrooper unit fought atDien Bien Phuin 1954, told journalistJean Lartéguy, (source)
During this period in France, however, popular opposition to the conflict was growing, notably in theFrench Communist Party, then one of the country's strongest political forces, which supported the Algerian Revolution. Thousands of relatives of conscripts and reserve soldiers suffered loss and pain; revelations of torture and the indiscriminate brutality of the army against the Muslim population prompted widespread revulsion, and a significant constituency supported the principle of national liberation. By 1959, it was clear that the status quo was untenable and France could either grant Algeria independence or allow real equality with the Muslims. De Gaulle told an advisor: "If we integrate them, if all the Arabs and the Berbers of Algeria were considered French, how could they be prevented from settling in France, where the living standard is so much higher? My village would no longer be called Colombey-les-Deux-Églises but Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées".
International pressure was also building on France to grant Algeria independence. Since 1955, theUN General Assemblyannually considered the Algerian question, and the FLN position was gaining support. France's seeming intransigence in settling a colonial war that tied down half the manpower of its armed forces was also a source of concern to itsNorth Atlantic Treaty Organizationallies. In a 16 September 1959 statement, de Gaulle dramatically reversed his stand and uttered the words "self-determination" as the third and preferred solution, which he envisioned as leading to majority rule in an Algeria formally associated with France. In Tunis, Abbas acknowledged that de Gaulle's statement might be accepted as a basis for settlement, but the French government refused to recognize the GPRA as the representative of Algeria's Muslim community.
Convinced that de Gaulle had betrayed them, some units of European volunteers (Unités Territoriales) in Algiers led by student leadersPierre LagaillardeandJean-Jacques Susini, café owner Joseph Ortiz, and lawyerJean-Baptiste Biaggistaged an insurrection in the Algerian capital starting on 24 January 1960, and known in France asLa semaine des barricades[fr]("the week of barricades"). Theultrasincorrectly believed that they would be supported by General Massu. The insurrection order was given by Colonel Jean Garde of the Fifth Bureau. As the army, police, and supporters stood by, civilianpieds-noirsthrew up barricades in the streets and seized government buildings. General Maurice Challe, responsible for the army in Algeria, declared Algiers undersiege, but forbade the troops to fire on the insurgents. Nevertheless, six rioters were killed during shooting onBoulevard Laferrière.
In Paris on 29 January 1960, de Gaulle called on his ineffective army to remain loyal and rallied popular support for his Algerian policy in a televised address:
Most of the Army heeded his call, and the siege of Algiers ended on 1 February with Lagaillarde surrendering to General Challe's command of the French Army in Algeria. The loss of manyultraleaders 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 enteredclandestinely, and with Jean-Jacques Susini, he created theOrganisation armée secrète(Secret Army Organization, OAS) on December 3, 1960, with the purpose of continuing the fight for French Algeria. Highly organized and well-armed, the OAS stepped up its terrorist activities, which were directed against both Algerians and pro-government French citizens, as the move toward negotiated settlement of the war and self-determination gained momentum. To the FLN rebellion against France were added civil wars between extremists in the two communities and between theultrasand the French government in Algeria.
Beside Pierre Lagaillarde, Jean-Baptiste Biaggi was also imprisoned, whileAlain de Sérignywas arrested, andJoseph Ortiz'sFNFdissolved, as well as GeneralLionel Chassin'sMP-13. De Gaulle also modified the government, excludingJacques Soustelle, believed to be too pro-French Algeria, and granting the Minister of Information toLouis Terrenoire, who quitRTF(French broadcasting TV).Pierre Messmer, who had been a member of theForeign Legion, was named Minister of Defense, and dissolved the Fifth Bureau, thepsychological warfarebranch, which had ordered the rebellion. These units had theorized the principles of acounter-revolutionary war, including the use of torture. During theIndochina War(1947–54), officers such asRoger TrinquierandLionel-Max Chassinwere inspired byMao Zedong's strategic doctrine and acquired knowledge ofconvince the populationto support the fight. The officers were initially trained in theCentre d'instruction et de préparation à la contre-guérilla(Arzew).Jacques Chaban-Delmasadded to that theCentre d'entraînement à la guerre subversive Jeanne-d'Arc(Center of Training to Subversive War Joan of Arc) inPhilippeville, Algeria, directed by Colonel Marcel Bigeard.
The French army officers' uprising was due to a perceived second betrayal by the government, the first having beenIndochina(1947–1954). In some aspects the Dien Bien Phu garrison was sacrificed with no metropolitan support, order was given to commanding officerGeneral de Castriesto "let the affair die of its own, in serenity" ("laissez mourir l'affaire d'elle même en sérénité").
The opposition of theUNEFstudent trade-union to the participation of conscripts in the war led to a secession in May 1960, with the creation of theFédération des étudiants nationalistes(FEN, Federation of Nationalist Students) aroundDominique Venner, a former member ofJeune Nationand ofMP13,François d'OrcivalandAlain de Benoist, who would theorize in the 1980s the "New Right" movement. The FEN then published theManifeste de la classe 60.
AFront national pour l'Algérie française(FNAF, National Front for French Algeria) was created in June 1960 in Paris, gathering around de Gaulle's former Secretary Jacques Soustelle,Claude Dumont,Georges Sauge,Yvon Chautard,Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour(who later competed in the1965 presidential election),Jacques Isorni,Victor Barthélemy,François Brigneauand Jean-Marie Le Pen. Anotherultrarebellion occurred in December 1960, which led de Gaulle to dissolve the FNAF.
After the publication of theManifeste des 121against the use of torture and the war,the opponents to the war created theRassemblement de la gauche démocratique(Assembly of the Democratic Left), which included theFrench Section of the Workers' International(SFIO) socialist party, theRadical-Socialist Party,Force ouvrière(FO) trade union,Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétienstrade-union, UNEF trade-union, etc., which supported de Gaulle against theultras.
De Gaulle convoked the firstreferendum on the self-determination of Algeriaon 8 January 1961, which 75% of the voters (both in France and Algeria) approved and de Gaulle's government began secret peace negotiations with the FLN. In the Algeriandépartements69.51% voted in favor of self-determination.The talks that began in March 1961 broke down when de Gaulle insisted on including the much smallerMouvement national algérien(MNA), which the FLN objected to.Since the FLN was the by far stronger movement with the MNA almost wiped out by this time, the French were finally forced to exclude the MNA from the talks after the FLN walked out for a time.
Thegenerals' putschin April 1961, aimed at canceling the government's negotiations with the FLN, marked the turning point in the official attitude toward the Algerian war. Leading the coup attempt to depose de Gaulle wereGeneral Raoul Salan,General André Zeller,General Maurice Challe, andGeneral Edmond Jouhaud.Only the paratroop divisions and the Foreign Legion joined the coup, while the Air Force, Navy and most of the Army stayed loyal to General de Gaulle, but at one moment de Gaulle went on French television to ask for public support with the normally lofty de Gaulle saying "Frenchmen, Frenchwomen, help me!"De Gaulle was now prepared to abandon thePied-Noirs, which no previous French government was willing to do. The army had been discredited by the putsch and kept a low profile politically throughout the rest of France's involvement with Algeria. The OAS was to be the main standard bearer for thePied-Noirsfor the rest of the war.
Talks with the FLN reopened atÉvianin May 1961; after several false starts, the French government decreed that a ceasefire would take effect on March 18, 1962. A major difficulty at the talks was de Gaulle's decision to grant independence only to the coastal regions of Algeria, where the bulk of the population lived, while hanging onto the Sahara, which happened to be rich in oil and gas, while the FLN claimed all of Algeria.During the talks, thePied-Noirsand Muslim communities engaged in a low level civil war with bombings, shootings, throat-cutting and assassinations being the preferred methods.The Canadian historian John Cairns wrote at times it seemed like both communities were "going berserk" as everyday "murder was indiscriminate".
On 29 June 1961, de Gaulle announced on TV that fighting was "virtually finished" and afterwards there were no major battles between the French Army and the FLN. During the summer of 1961 the OAS and the FLN engaged in a civil war, in which the greater numbers of the Muslims predominated.To pressure de Gaulle to give up claims to the Sahara, the FLN organized demonstrations by Algerians living in France during the fall of 1961, which the French police crushed.At a demonstration on 17 October 1961,Maurice Paponordered an attack that became a massacre of Algerians. On 10 January 1962, the FLN started a "general offensive" to pressure the OAS in Algeria, staging a series of attacks on thePied-Noirscommunities.On 7 February 1962, the OAS attempted to assassinate Culture MinisterAndré Malrauxwith a bomb in his apartment building; it failed to kill him, but left a four-year girl in the adjoining apartment blinded by shrapnel.The incident did much to turn French opinion against the OAS.
On 20 February 1962, a peace accord was reached granting independence to all of Algeria.In their final form, theÉvian Accordsallowed thePied-Noirsequal legal protection with Algerians over a three-year period. These rights included respect for property, participation in public affairs, and a full range of civil and cultural rights. At the end of that period, however, all Algerian residents would be obliged to become Algerian citizens or be classified as aliens with the attendant loss of rights. The agreement also allowed France to establish military bases in Algeria even after independence (including the nuclear test site of Regghane, the naval base of Mers-el-Kebir and the air base of Bou Sfer) and to have privileges vis-à-vis Algerian oil.
The OAS started a campaign of spectacular terrorist attacks to sabotage the Évian Accords, hoping that if enough Muslims were killed, a general pogrom against thePied-Noirswould break out, leading the French Army to turn its guns against the government.Despite ample provocation with OAS lobbing mortar shells into thecasbahof Algiers, the FLN gave orders for no retaliatory attacks.In the spring of 1962, the OAS turned to bank robbery to finance its war against both the FLN and the French state, and bombed special units sent by Paris to hunt them down.Only eighty deputies voted against the Évian Accords in the National Assembly. Cairns wrote that the fulminations ofJean-Marie Le Penagainst de Gaulle were only "...the traditional verbal excesses of third-rate firebrands without a substantial following and without a constructive idea".
Following the cease fire, tensions developed between thePied-Noirscommunity and their former protectors in the French Army. An OAS ambush of French troops on 20 March was followed by 20,000 gendarmes and soldiers being ordered to occupy the predominantly-Pied-Noirdistrict ofBab El Ouedin Algiers.A week later, French soldiers from the4th Tirailleur Regiment(an 80% Muslim unit with French officers)opened fire on a crowd ofPied-Noirdemonstrators in Algiers,killing between 50 and 80 civilians.Total casualties in these three incidents were 326 killed and wounded amongst thePied-Noirsand 110 French military personnel dead or injured.A journalist who saw the massacre on 26 March 1962, Henry Tanner, described the scene: "When the shooting stopped, the street was littered with bodies, of women, as well as men, dead, wounded or dying. The black pavement looked grey, as if bleached by fire. Crumpled French flags were lying in pools of blood. Shattered glass and spent cartridges were everywhere".A number of shockedPied-Noirscreamed that they were not French anymore.One woman screamed "Stop firing! My God, we're French..." before she was shot down.The massacre served to greatly embitter thePied-Noircommunity and led to a massive surge of support for the OAS.
In the secondreferendum on the independence of Algeria, held in April 1962, 91 percent of the French electorate approved the Evian Accords. On 1 July 1962, some 6 million of a total Algerian electorate of 6.5 million cast their ballots. The vote was nearly unanimous, with 5,992,115 votes for independence, 16,534 against, with mostPied-Noirsand Harkis either having fled or abstaining.De Gaulle pronounced Algeria an independent country on 3 July. The Provisional Executive, however, proclaimed 5 July, the 132nd anniversary of the French entry into Algeria, as the day of national independence.
During the three months between the cease-fire and the French referendum on Algeria, the OAS unleashed a new campaign. The OAS sought to provoke a major breach in the ceasefire by the FLN, but the attacks now were aimed also against the French army and police enforcing the accords as well as against Muslims. It was the most wanton carnage that Algeria had witnessed in eight years of savage warfare. OAS operatives set off an average of 120 bombs per day in March, with targets including hospitals and schools. On June 7, 1962 the University of Algiers Library was burned by the OAS. This cultural devastation was commemorated by Muslim countries issuing postage stamps commemorating the tragic event.  These included Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.
During the summer of 1962, a rush ofPied-Noirsfled to France. Within a year, 1.4 million refugees, including almost the entireJewishcommunity, had joined the exodus. Despite the declaration of independence on 5 July 1962, the last French forces did not leave the naval base ofMers El Kébiruntil 1967. (The Evian Accords had permitted France to maintain its military presence for fifteen years, so the withdrawal in 1967 was significantly ahead of schedule.) Cairns writing from Paris in 1962 declared: "In some ways the last year has been the worse. Tension has never been higher. Disenchantment in France at least has never been greater. The mindless cruelty of it all has never been more absurd and savage. This last year, stretching from the hopeful spring of 1961 to the ceasefire of 18 March 1962 spanned a season of shadow boxing, false threats, capitulation and murderous hysteria. French Algeria died badly. Its agony was marked by panic and brutality as ugly as the record of European imperialism could show. In the spring of 1962 the unhappy corpse of empire still shuddered and lashed out and stained itself in fratricide. The whole episode of its death, measured at least seven and half years, constituted perhaps the most pathetic and sordid event in the entire history of colonialism. It is hard to see how anybody of importance in the tangled web of the conflict came out looking well. Nobody won the conflict, nobody dominated it."
At the beginning of the war, on the Algerian side, it was necessary to compensate for military weakness with political and diplomatic struggle. In the asymmetric conflict betweenFranceand theFLNat this time, victory seemed extremely difficult.
The Algerian revolution began with the insurrection of November 1, when the FLN organized a series of attacks against the French army and military infrastructure, and published a statement calling on Algerians to get involved in the revolution. This initial campaign had limited impact: the events remained largely unreported, especially by the French press (only two newspaper columns inLe Mondeand one inl'Express), and the insurrection all but subsided. Nevertheless,François Mitterrand, the French Minister of the Interior, sent 600 soldiers to Algeria.
Furthermore, the FLN was weak militarily at the beginning of the war. It was created in 1954 and had few members, and its ally theALNwas also underdeveloped, having only 3,000 men badly equipped and trained, unable to compete with the French army. The nationalist forces also suffered from internal divisions.
As proclaimed in the statement of 1954, the FLN developed a strategy to avoid large-scale warfare and internationalize the conflict, appealing politically and diplomatically to influence French and world opinion.This political aspect would reinforce the legitimacy of the FLN in Algeria, which was all the more necessary since Algeria, unlike other colonies, had been formally incorporated as a part ofmetropolitan France. The French counter-strategy aimed to keep the conflict internal and strictly French to maintain its image abroad. The FLN succeeded, and the conflict rapidly became international, embroiled with the tensions of theCold Warand the emergence of theThird World.
Firstly, the FLN exploited the tensions between the American-ledWestern Blocand the Soviet-ledCommunist bloc. FLN sought material support from the Communists, goading the Americans to support Algerian independence to keep the country on the western side. Furthermore, the FLN used the tensions within each bloc, including between France and the US and between the USSR and Mao's China. The US, which generally opposedcolonisation, had every interest in pushing France to give Algeria its independence.
Secondly, the FLN could count on Third World support. AfterWorld War II, many new states were created in the wave ofdecolonization: in 1945 there were 51 states in theUN, but by 1965 there were 117. This upturned the balance of power in the UN, with the recently decolonized countries now a majority with great influence. Most of the new states were part of the Third-World movement, proclaiming a third, non-aligned path in a bipolar world, and opposing colonialism in favor of national renewal and modernization.They felt concerned in the Algerian conflict and supported the FLN on the international stage. For example, a few days after the first insurrection in 1954, RadioYugoslavia(Third-Worldist) begun to vocally support the struggle of Algeria;the 1955Bandung conferenceinternationally recognized the FLN as representing Algeria;and Third-World countries brought up the Algerian conflict at theUN general assembly.The French government grew more and more isolated.
After the Battle of Algiers greatly weakened the FLN, it was forced to accept more direct support from abroad. Financial and military support fromChinahelped to rebuild the ALN to 20 000 men.TheUSSRcompeted with China, andKhrushchevintensified moral support for the Algerian rebellion, which in turn pushed the USA to react.In 1958, theProvisional Government of the Algerian Republic(PGAR) was created, naming official representatives to negotiate with France.Tense negotiations lasted three years, eventually turning to Algeria's advantage. The PGAR was supported by the Third World and the communist bloc, while France had few allies. Under pressure from the UN, the USA, and a war-weary public, France eventually conceded in theEvian agreements. According toMatthew Connelly, this strategy of internationalization became a model for other revolutionary groups such as thePalestine Liberation OrganizationofYasser Arafat, and theAfrican National CongressofNelson Mandela.
Women participated in a variety of roles during the Algerian War. The majority of Muslim women who became active participants did so on the side of the National Liberation Front (FLN). The French included some women, both Muslim and French, in their war effort, but they were not as fully integrated, nor were they charged with the same breadth of tasks as the women on the Algerian side. The total number of women involved in the conflict, as determined by post-war veteran registration, is numbered at 11,000, but it is possible that this number was significantly higher due to underreporting.
Urban and rural women's experiences in the revolution differed greatly. Urban women, who constituted about twenty percent of the overall force, had received some kind of education and usually chose to enter on the side of the FLN of their own accord.Largely illiterate rural women, on the other hand, the remaining eighty percent, due to their geographic location in respect to the operations of FLN often became involved in the conflict as a result of proximity paired with force.
Women operated in a number of different areas during the course of the rebellion. "Women participated actively as combatants, spies, fundraisers, as well as nurses, launderers, and cooks","women assisted the male fighting forces in areas like transportation, communication and administration"the range of involvement by a woman could include both combatant and non-combatant roles.Eveline Safir Lavalettewas a notable contributor to the Revolution as a distributor of pamphlets for the FLN's underground newspaper. While most women's tasks were non-combatant, their less frequent, violent acts were more noticed. The reality was that "rural women in maquisrural areassupport networks"contained the overwhelming majority of those who participated; female combatants were in the minority.
Perhaps the most famous incident involving Algerian women revolutionaries was the Milk Bar Café bombing of 1956, whenZohra DrifandYacef Saâdiplanted three bombs: one in theAir Franceoffice in the Mauritania building in Algiers,which did not explode, one in a cafeteria on the Rue Michelet, and another at the Milk Bar Café, which killed 3 young women and injured multiple adults and children.Algerian Communist Party-memberRaymonde Peschardwas initially accused of being an accomplice to the bombing and was forced to flee from the colonial authorities.In September 1957, though, Drif and Saâdi were arrested and sentenced to twenty years hard labor in theBarbarossa prison.Drif was pardoned byCharles de Gaulleon the anniversary ofAlgerian independencein 1962.
Pieds-Noirs(including indigenousMizrachiandSephardi Jews) andHarkisaccounted for 13% of the total population of Algeria in 1962. For the sake of clarity, each group's exodus is described separately here, although their fate shared many common elements.
Pied-noir(literally "black foot") is a term used to name the European-descended population (mostlyCatholic), who had resided in Algeria for generations; it is sometimes used to include the indigenousMaghrebi Jewishpopulation as well, which likewise emigrated after 1962. Europeans arrived in Algeria as immigrants from all over the western Mediterranean (particularly France, Spain, Italy andMalta), starting in 1830. The Jews arrived in several waves, some coming as early as 600 BC and during the Roman period, known as theMaghrebi Jewsor Berber Jews. The Maghrebi Jewish population was outnumbered by the Sephardic Jews, who were driven out of Spain in 1492, and was further strengthened by Marrano refugees from theSpanish Inquisitionthrough the 16th century. Algerian Jews largely embraced French citizenship after thedécret Crémieuxin 1871.
In 1959, thepieds-noirsnumbered 1,025,000 (85% of European Christian descent, and 15% were made up of the indigenous Algerian population ofMaghrebiand Sephardi Jewish descent), and accounted for 10.4% of the total population of Algeria. In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 of them fled, the first third prior to the referendum, in the largest relocation of population to Europe since the Second World War. A motto used in the FLN message to the pieds-noirs was "a suitcase or a coffin" ("La valise ou le cercueil"), repurposing a slogan first coined years earlier bypied-noir"ultras" when rallying the European community to their hardcore line.
The French government claimed not to have anticipated such a massive exodus; it estimated that a maximum of 250–300,000 might enter metropolitan France temporarily. Nothing was planned for their move to France, and many had to sleep in the streets or abandoned farms on their arrival. A minority of departingpieds-noirs, including soldiers, destroyed their property before departure, to protest and as a desperate symbolic attempt to leave no trace of over a century of European presence, but the vast majority of their goods and houses were left intact and abandoned. A large number of panicked people camped for weeks on the docks of Algerian harbors, waiting for a space on a boat to France. About 100,000pieds-noirschose to remain, but most of those gradually left in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily due to residual hostility against them, including machine-gunning of public places inOran.
The so-calledHarkis, from the Algerian-Arabic dialect wordharki(soldier), were indigenous Muslim Algerians (as opposed to European-descended Catholics or indigenous AlgerianMaghrebi Jews) who fought as auxiliaries on the French side. Some of these were veterans of theFree 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 who supported a French Algeria. According to French government figures, there were 236,000 Algerian Muslims serving in the French Army in 1962 (four times more than in the FLN), either in regular units (SpahisandTirailleurs) or as irregulars (harkis and moghaznis). Some estimates suggest that, with their families, the indigenous Muslim loyalists may have numbered as many as 1 million.
In 1962, around 90,000Harkistook refuge in France, despite French government policy against this. Pierre Messmer, Minister of the Armies, andLouis Joxe, Minister for Algerian Affairs, gave orders to this effect.TheHarkiswere seen as traitors by many Algerians, and many of those who stayed behind suffered severe reprisals after independence.French historiansestimate that somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000Harkisand members of their families were killed by the FLN or by lynch mobs in Algeria, often in atrocious circumstances or after torture.The abandonment of the "Harkis" both the lack of recognition of those who died defending French Algeria and the neglect of those who escaped to France, remains an issue that France has not fully resolved—although the government ofJacques Chiracmade efforts to recognize the suffering of these former allies.
Death toll estimates vary. Algerian historians and the FLN estimated that nearly eight years of revolution caused 1.5 million Algerian deaths.Some other French and Algerian sources later put the figure at approximately 960,000 dead, while French officials and historians estimated it at around 350,000,but this was regarded by manyas an underestimate. French military authorities listed their losses at nearly 17,456 dead (5,966 from accidents) and 65,000 wounded. European-descended civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded violent incidents. According to French official figures during the war, the army, security forces and militias killed 141,000 presumed rebel combatants.But it is still unclear whether this includes some civilians.
More than 12,000 Algerians died in internal FLN purges during the war. In France, an additional 5,000 died in the "café wars" between the FLN and rival Algerian groups. French sources also estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN.
Martin Evansciting Gilert Meyinier implies at least 55,000 to up to 60,000 non-Harki Algerian civilians were killed during the conflict without specifying which side killed them.Rudolph Rummelattributes at least 100,000deaths in what he callsdemocideto French repression; and estimates an additional to 50,000 to 150,000 democides committed by Algerian independence fighters.6,000 to 20,000 Algerians were killedin the 1945Sétif and Guelma massacrewhich is considered by some historians to have been a cause of the war.
Horne estimated Algerian casualties during the span of eight years to be around 1 million.Uncounted thousands of Muslim civilians died in French Army ratissages, bombing raids, or vigilante reprisals. The war uprooted more than 2 million Algerians, who were forced to relocate in French camps or to flee into the Algerian hinterland, where many thousands died of starvation, disease, and exposure. One source estimates 300,000 Algerians civilians perished of starvation, depredation, and disease inside and outside the camps.
In addition, large numbers of Harkis were murdered when the FLN settled accounts after independence,with 30,000 to 150,000 killed in Algeria inpost-war reprisals[fr].
After Algeria's independence was recognised,Ahmed Ben Bellaquickly became more popular and thereby more powerful. In June 1962, he challenged the leadership of PremierBenyoucef Ben Khedda; this led to several disputes among his rivals in the FLN, which were quickly suppressed by Ben Bella's rapidly growing support, most notably within the armed forces. By September, Bella was inde factocontrol of Algeria and was elected premier in a one-sided election on September 20, and was recognised by the U.S. on September 29. Algeria was admitted as the 109th member of theUnited Nationson October 8, 1962. Afterward, Ben Bella declared that Algeria would follow a neutral course in world politics; within a week he met withU.S. PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, requesting more aid for Algeria withFidel Castroand expressed approval of Castro's demands for the abandonment ofGuantanamo Bay. Bella returned to Algeria and requested that France withdraw from its bases there. In November, his government banned political parties, providing that the FLN would be the only party allowed to function overtly. Shortly thereafter, in 1965, Bella was deposed and placed under house arrest (and later exiled) byHouari Boumédiènne, who served as president until his death in 1978. Algeria remained stable, though in aone-party state, until a violentcivil warbroke out in the 1990s.
For Algerians of many political factions, the legacy of their War of Independence was a legitimization or even sanctification of the unrestricted use of force in achieving a goal deemed to be justified. Once invoked against foreign colonialists, the same principle could also be turned with relative ease against fellow Algerians.The FLN's struggle to overthrow colonial rule and the ruthlessness exhibited by both sides in that struggle were mirrored 30 years later by the passion, determination, and brutality of the conflict between the FLN government and the Islamist opposition. The American journalist Adam Shatz wrote that much of the same methods employed by the FLN against the French such as "the militarization of politics, the use of Islam as a rallying cry, the exaltation of jihad" to create an essentially secular state in 1962, were used by Islamic fundamentalists in their efforts to overthrow the FLN regime in the 1990s.
Massacres and torture were frequent from the beginning of thecolonization of Algeria, which started in 1830.Atrocities committed against Algerians by the French army during the war included indiscriminate shootings into civilian crowds (such as during theParis massacre of 1961), execution of civilians when rebel attacks occurred,bombings of villages suspected of helping the FLN,rape,disembowelmentof pregnant women,imprisonmentwithout foodin small cells (some of which were small enough to impede lying down),throwing detainees from helicoptersand into the sea with concrete on their feet, andburying people alive.Torture methods included beatings, mutilations, burning, hanging by the feet or hands, torture by electroshock,waterboarding, sleep deprivation and sexual assaults.
During the war, the French military relocated entire villages  tocentres de regroupements(regrouping centres), which were built for forcibly displaced civilian populations, in order to separate them from FLN guerrilla combatants. Over 8,000 villages were destroyed.Over 2 million Algerians were resettled in regrouping internment camps, with some beingforced into labour.
A notable instance of rape was that ofDjamila Boupacha, a 23-years old Algerian woman who was arrested in 1960, accused of attempting to bomb a cafe in Algiers. Her confession was obtained through torture and rape. Her subsequent trial affected French public opinion about the French army's methods in Algeria after publicity of the case bySimone de BeauvoirandGisèle Halimi.
Torture was also used by both sides during theFirst Indochina War(1946–54).Claude Bourdetdenounced acts of torture in Algeria on 6 December 1951, in the magazineL'Observateur, rhetorically asking, "Is there aGestapoin Algeria?". D. Huf, in his seminal work on the subject, argued that the use of torture was one of the major factors in developing French opposition to the war.Huf argued, "Such tactics sat uncomfortably with France's revolutionary history, and brought unbearable comparisons withNazi Germany. The French national psyche would not tolerate any parallels between their experiences of occupation and their colonial mastery of Algeria." GeneralPaul Aussaressesadmitted in 2000 that systematic torture techniques were used during the war and justified them. He also recognized the assassination of lawyerAli Boumendjeland the head of the FLN in Algiers,Larbi Ben M'Hidi, which had been disguised as suicides.Marcel Bigeard, who called FLN activists "savages", claimed torture was a "necessary evil".To the contrary, GeneralJacques Massudenounced it, following Aussaresses's revelations and, before his death, pronounced himself in favor of an official condemnation of the use of torture during the war.
Bigeard's justification of torture has been criticized byJoseph Doré, archbishop of Strasbourg,Marc Lienhard, president of the Lutheran Church of Augsbourg Confession in Alsace-Lorraine, and others.In June 2000, Bigeard declared that he was based inSidi Ferruch, a torture center where Algerians were murdered. Bigeard qualifiedLouisette Ighilahriz's revelations, published in theLe Mondenewspaper on June 20, 2000, as "lies". An ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz had been tortured by General Massu.However, since General Massu's revelations, Bigeard has admitted the use of torture, although he denies having personally used it, and has declared, "You are striking the heart of an 84-year-old man." Bigeard also recognized that Larbi Ben M'Hidi was assassinated and that his death was disguised as a suicide.
In 2018 France officially admitted that torture was systematic and routine.
Specializing in ambushes and night raids to avoid direct contact with superior French firepower, the internal forces targeted army patrols, military encampments, police posts, and colonial farms, mines, and factories, as well as transportation and communications facilities. At first, the FLN targeted only Muslim officials of the colonial regime; later, they coerced, maimed, or killed village elders, government employees, and even simple peasants who refused to support them. Throat slitting and decapitation were commonly used by the FLN as mechanisms of terror.Some other atrocities were committed by the more militant sections of the FLN as collective reprisals against the pieds-noirs population in response to French repression. The more extreme cases occurred in places like the town of Al-Halia, where some European residents were raped anddisemboweled, while children had been murdered by slitting their throats or banging their heads against walls.
During the first two and a half years of the conflict, the guerrillas killed an estimated 6,352 Muslim and 1,035 non-Muslim civilians.
Although the opening of the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after a 30-year lock-up enabled some newhistorical researchon the war, includingJean-Charles Jauffret's book,La Guerre d'Algérie par les documents(The Algerian War According to the Documents), many remain inaccessible.The recognition in 1999 by theNational Assemblypermitted the Algerian War to enter the syllabi of French schools. In France, the war was known as "la guerre sans nom" ("the war without a name") while it was being fought. The government variously described the war as the "Algerian events", the "Algerian problem" and the "Algerian dispute"; the mission of the French Army was "ensuring security", "maintaining order" and "pacification" but was never described as fighting a war. The FLN were referred to as "criminals", "bandits", "outlaws", "terrorists" and "fellagha" (a derogatory Arabic word meaning "road-cutters" but often mistranslated as "throat-cutters" in reference to the FLN's frequent method of execution, which made people wear the "Kabylian smile" by cutting their throats, pulling their tongues out, and leaving them to bleed to death).After reports of the widespread use of torture by French forces started to reach France in 1956–57, the war become commonly known asla sale guerre("the dirty war"), a term that is still used today and reflects the very negative memory of the war in France.
As the war was officially a "police action", no monuments were built for decades to honour the about 25,000 French soldiers killed in the war, and the Defense Ministry refused to classify veterans as veterans until the 1970s.When a monument to the Unknown Soldier of the Algerian War was erected in 1977, French PresidentValéry Giscard d'Estaing, in his dedication speech, refused to use the words war or Algeria but instead used the phrase "the unknown soldier of North Africa".A national monument to the French war dead was not built until 1996 and, even then spoke only of those killed fighting inAfrique du nordand was located in a decrepit area of Paris rarely visited by tourists, as if to hide the monument.Further adding to the silence were the vested interests of French politicians. François Mitterrand, the French president 1981 to 1995, had been the Interior Minister from 1954 to 1955 and the Justice Minister from 1955 to 1957, when he had been deeply involved in the repression of the FLN, and it was only after Mitterrand's death in 1996, that hisFrench Socialist Partystarted to become willing to talk about the war and, even then, remained very guarded about his role.Likewise, de Gaulle had promised in the Évian Agreements that thepieds-noirscould remain in Algeria, but after independence, the FLN freely violated the accords and led to the entirepied-noirpopulation fleeing to France, usually with only the clothes they were wearing, as they had lost everything they had in Algeria, a circumstance further embarrassing the defeated nation.
One of the first books about the war in English,A Scattering of Dustby the American journalist Herb Greer in 1962, depicted very favorably the Algerian struggle for independence.Most work in English in the 1960s and 1970s were the work of left-wing scholars, who were focused on explaining the FLN as a part of a generational change in Algerian nationalism and depicted the war as a reaction to intolerable oppression and/or an attempt by the peasants, impoverished by French policies, to improve their lot.One of the few military histories of the war wasThe Algerian Insurrection, by the retired British Army officerEdgar O'Ballance, who wrote with unabashed admiration for French high command during the war and saw the FLN as a terrorist group. O'Ballance concluded that the tactics which won the war militarily for the French lost the war for them politically.
In 1977, the British journalistAlistair HornepublishedA Savage War of Peace, regarded by some authors as the leading book written on the subject in English, though written from a French, rather than Algerian perspective.Fifteen years after the end of the war, Horne was accused of not being concerned about "right or wrong" but rather about "cause and effect".Living in Paris at the time of the war, Horne had condemned French intervention during theSuez Crisisand the French bombing of the Tunisian village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef in 1958. He'd argued that the "inflexibility" of the FLN had won Algeria independence, creating a sense of Algerian national identity, and leading the Front to rule over authoritarian but "progressive" FLN regime.
In a 1977 column published inThe Times Literary Supplementreviewing the bookA Savage War of Peace, Iraqi-born British historianElie Kedourieattacked Horne as an "apologist for terrorism" and accused him of engaging in the "cosy pieties" ofbien-pensants. Kedorie condemned the Western intellectuals who excuse terrorism when committed by Third World revolutionaries.Kedourie claimed that far from a mass movement, the FLN were a "small gang" of "murderous intellectuals" who used brutal, terrorist tactics against the French citizens and military, and against any Muslim loyal to the French. He further claimed that the Front had been beaten by 1959.Kedourie charged that de Gaulle had cynically sacrificed thecolonsand theharkis, as he had chosen to disregard his constitutional oath as president to protect all Frenchmen and ensure that "the French withdrew and handed over power to the only organized body of armed men who were on the scene – a civilized government, thus, acting for all the world like the votary of some Mao or Ho, in the barbarous belief that legitimacy comes from the power of the gun".
In 1992, American historian John Ruedy, the focus of whose research was the history of theMaghreband French colonialism in Algeria, publishedModern Algeria: Origins and Development of a Nation.Ruedy wrote that under French rule the traditional social structure had been so completely destroyed that when the FLN launched its independence struggle in 1954, the only way of asserting one's interests was through "the law of the gun", which explains why the FLN was so violent not only in regards to its enemies but also within the movement. The FLN, thus, according to Ruedy, formed the basis of an "alternative political culture", based on "brute force" that has persisted ever since.
Before the war, Algeria was a popular setting for French films; the British professor Leslie Hill having written: "In the late 1920s and 1930s, for instance, North Africa provided film-makers in France with a ready fund of familiar images of the exotics, mingling, for instance, the languid eroticism of Arabian nights with the infinite and hazy vistas of the Sahara to create a powerful confection of tragic heroism and passionate love."During the war itself, French censors banned the entire subject of the war.Since 1962, when film censorship relating to the war eased, French films dealing with the conflict have consistently portrayed the war as a set of conflicting memories and rival narratives (which ones being correct are left unclear), with most films dealing with the war taking a disjointed chronological structure in which scenes before, during and after the war are juxtaposed out of sequence with one film critic referring to the cinematic Algeria as "an ambiguous world marked by the displacements and repetitions of dreams".The consistent message of French films dealing with the war is that something horrible happened, but what happened, who was involved and why are left unexplained.Atrocities, especially torture by French forces are acknowledged, the French soldiers who fought in Algeria were and are always portrayed in French cinema as the "lost soldiers" and tragic victims of the war who are more deserving of sympathy than the FLN people they tortured, which are almost invariably portrayed as vicious, psychopathic terrorists, an approach to the war that has raised anger in Algeria.
From time to time, the memory of the Algerian War surfaced in France. In 1987, when SS-HauptsturmführerKlaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon", was brought to trial for crimes against humanity, graffiti appeared on the walls of thebanlieues, the slum districts in which most Algerian immigrants in France live, reading: "Barbie in France! When will Massu be in Algeria!".Barbie's lawyer,Jacques Vergès, adopted atu quoquedefence that asked the judges "is a crime against humanity is to be defined as only one of Nazis against the Jews or if it applies to more seriously crimes... the crimes of imperialists against people struggling for their independence?". He went on to say that nothing that his client had done against the French Resistance that was not done by "certain French officers in Algeria" who, Vergès noted, could not be prosecuted because of de Gaulle's amnesty of 1962.In 1997, whenMaurice Papon, a career French civil servant was brought to trial for crimes against humanity for sending 1600 Jews from Bordeaux to be killed at Auschwitz in 1942, it emerged over the course of the trial that on 17 October 1961, Papon had organized amassacre of between 100 and 200 Algeriansin central Paris, which was the first time that most French had ever heard of the massacre.The revelation that hundreds of people had been killed by the ParisSûretéwas a great shock in France and led to uncomfortable questions being raised about what had happened during the Algerian War.The American historian William Cohen wrote that the Papon trial "sharpened the focus" on the Algerian War but not provide "clarity", as Papon's role as a civil servant under Vichy led to misleading conclusions in France that it was former collaborators who were responsible for the terror in Algeria, but most of the men responsible, like Guy Mollet, General Marcel Bigeard, Robert Lacoste, General Jacques Massu and Jacques Soustelle, had actually all beenrésistantsin World War II, which many French historians found to be very unpalatable.
On 15 June 2000,Le Mondepublished an interview with Louisette Ighilahriz, a former FLN member who described in graphic detail her torture at the hands of the French Army and made the sensational claim that the war heroes General Jacques Massu and General Marcel Bigeard had personally been present when she was being tortured for information.What made the interview very touching for many French people was that Ighilahriz was not demanding vengeance but wished to express thanks to Dr. François Richaud, the army doctor who extended her much kindness and who, she believed, saved her life by treating her every time she was tortured. She asked if it were possible for her to see Dr. Richaud one last time to thank him personally, but it later turned out that Dr. Richaud had died in 1997.As Ighilahriz had been an attractive woman in her youth, university-educated, secular, fluent in French and fond of quotingVictor Hugo, and her duties in the FLN had been as an information courier, she made for a most sympathetic victim since she was a woman who did not come across as Algerian.William Cohen commented that had she been an uneducated man who had been involved in killings and was not coming forward to express thanks for a Frenchman, her story might not have resonated the same way.The Ighiahriz case led to a public letter signed by 12 people who been involved in the war to PresidentJacques Chiracto ask October 31 be made a public day of remembrance for victims of torture in Algeria.
In response to the Ighilahriz case, General Paul Aussaresses gave an interview on 23 November 2000 in which he candidly admitted to ordering torture and extrajudicial executions and stated he had personally executed 24fellagha. He argued that they were justified, as torture and extrajudicial executions were the only way to defeat the FLN.In May 2001, Aussaresses published his memoirs,Services spéciaux Algérie 1955–1957, in which he presented a detailed account of torture and extrajudicial killings in the name of the republic, which he wrote were all done under orders from Paris; that confirmed what had been long suspected.As a result of the interviews and Aussaresses's book, the Algerian War was finally extensively discussed by the French media, which had ignored the subject as much as possible for decades, but no consensus emerged about how to best remember the war.Adding to the interest was the decision by one war veteran, Georges Fogel, to come forward to confirm that he had seen Ighiahriz and many others tortured in 1957, and the politician and war veteran Jean Marie Faure decided in February 2001 to release extracts from the diary that he had kept and showed "acts of sadism and horror" that he had witnessed.The French historianPierre Vidal-Naquetcalled that a moment of "catharsis" that was "explainable only in near-French terms: it is the return of the repressed".
In 2002,Une Vie Debout: Mémoires Politiquesby Mohammed Harbi, a former advisor to Ben Bella, was published in which Harbi wrote: "Because they [the FLN leaders] weren't supported at the moment of their arrival on the scene by a real and dynamic popular movement, they took power of the movement by force and they maintained it by force. Convinced that they had to act with resolution in order to protect themselves against their enemies, they deliberately chose an authoritarian path."
The Algerian War remains a contentious event. According to the historianBenjamin Stora, one of the leading historians on the war, memories concerning the war remain fragmented, with no common ground to speak of:
Even though Stora has counted 3,000 publications in French on the war, there still is no work produced by French and Algerian authors co-operating with each other. Although according to Stora, there can "no longer be talk about a 'war without a name', a number of problems remain, especially the absence of sites in France to commemorate" the war. Furthermore, conflicts have arisen on an exact commemoration date to end the war. Although many sources as well as the French state place it on 19 March 1962, theÉvian Agreements, others point out that massacres of harkis and the kidnapping ofpieds-noirstook place later. Stora further points out, "The phase of memorial reconciliation between the two sides of the sea is still a long way off."That was evidenced by theNational Assembly's creation of thelaw on colonialismon 23 February 2005 that asserted that colonialism had overall been "positive".
Alongside a heated debate in France, the February 23, 2005, law had the effect of jeopardising the treaty of friendship that President Chirac was supposed to sign with PresidentAbdelaziz Bouteflika, which was no longer on the agenda. Following that controversial law, Bouteflika has talked about a culturalgenocide, particularly referring to the 1945Sétif massacre. Chirac finally had the law repealed by a complex institutional mechanism.
Another matter concerns the teaching of the war as well as of colonialism and decolonization, particularly inFrench secondary schools.Hence, there is only one reference toracismin a French textbook, one published byBréalpublishers forterminalesstudents, those passing theirbaccalauréat. Thus, many are not surprised that the first to speak about theParis massacre of 1961were music bands, including hip-hop bands such as the famousSuprême NTM(les Arabes dans la Seine) or politically-engagedLa Rumeur. Indeed, the Algerian War is not even the subject of a specific chapter in the textbook forterminales.Henceforth, Benjamin Stora stated:
InMetropolitan Francein 1963, 43% of French Algerians lived inbidonvilles(shanty towns).Thus,Azouz Begag, the delegate Minister for Equal Opportunities, wrote an autobiographic novel,Le Gone du Chaâba, about his experiences while living in abidonvillein the outskirts of Lyon. It is impossible to understand the third-generation of Algerian immigrants to France without recalling thebiculturalexperience. An official parliamentary report on the "prevention of criminality", commanded by Interior MinisterPhilippe de Villepinand made by the deputyJacques-Alain Bénisti, claimed, "Bilingualism(bilinguisme) was a factor of criminality" (sic). Following outcries, the definitive version of the report finally made bilingualism an asset, rather than a fault.
After having denied or downplayed its use for 40 years, France has finally recognized its history of torture, but there was never an official proclamation about it. GeneralPaul Aussaresseswas sentenced following his justification of the use of torture for "apology of war crimes". As they occurred duringwartime, France claimed torture to be isolated acts, instead of admitting its responsibility for the frequent use of torture to break the insurgents' morale, not, as Aussaresses had claimed, to "save lives" by gaining short-term information which would stop "terrorists".The state now claims that torture was a regrettable aberration because of the context of the exceptionally-savage war. However, academic research has proved both theses to be false. "Torture in Algeria was engraved in the colonial act; it is a 'normal' illustration of an abnormal system", wrote Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, who discussed the phenomena of "human zoos".From theenfumades(slaughter by smoke inhalation) of the Darha caves in 1844 byAimable Pélissierto the 1945 riots in Sétif,GuelmaandKherrata, the repression in Algeria used the same methods. Following the Sétif massacres, other riots against the European presence occurred in Guelma, Batna, Biskra, and Kherrata that resulted in 103 deaths among thepieds-noirs. The suppression of the riots officially saw 1,500 other deaths, but N. Bancel, P. Blanchard and S. Lemaire estimate the number to be between 6,000 and 8,000.
Note: concerning the audio and film archives from theInstitut national de l'audiovisuel(INA),see Benjamin Stora's comments on their politically-oriented creation.
Translations may be available for some of these works. See specific cases.