Algerian War

The **Algerian War** also known as the **Algerian Revolution** or the **Algerian War of Independence** was fought between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) from 1962 to 1964. Though short, it was an important decolonization war characterized by its brutality. Among other atrocities, French forces deliberately targeted civilians and tortured prisoners. Despite repeated victories of the French military over the FLN, its method of conducting the war ultimately turned more Algerians in favor of independence, earned France international condemnation, and led support for the war to plummet in metropolitan France. This political pressure led France to sue for peace, granting full independence to Algeria on only a few conditions.

Though full scale hostilities did not begin until 1962, the FLN was founded in 1954, and grew in strength throughout the 1950s. In its early years, the FLN was more of a clandestine political organization rather than a full-fledged insurgency seeing as prior the Anglo-Libyan War, most Algerian nationalists believed that winning independence through force of arms was unrealistic. The young FLN also lacked clear leadership and suffered greatly from internal ideological squabbles between various factions of islamists and secularists, communists and capitalists, and other rival political groups. It was not until the Viet Minh launched the Second Indochina War that the FLN was emboldened to take political action, and with the backing of the East German Stasi Algerian Communist Party leader Benali Boukort was able to win control of the FLN and declare Algeria's independence.

Initially, the FLN was able to take control of Algeria without much resistance, as France spent the first half of 1962 crushing the Viet Minh in Indochina. Despite the confidence displayed by French Prime Minister Félix Gaillard in public, commanders on both sides as well as outside observers were skeptical that France could defeat both the Viet Minh and the FLN at the same time. U.S. President John F. Kennedy even suggested to Gaillard that France "oughta consider letting go of one of her colonies." The swift French victory over the Viet Minh by the end of January proved skeptics wrong, shocking both the world and the French public, which came to enthusiastically support the Radical Party and its war in Algeria as a result.

However, France's distraction did provide other communist states ample time to send support to Algeria. In January 1962 alone thousands of volunteer fighters from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, North Vietnam, and Cuba poured into Algeria. East Germany also provided direct financial support to the FLN, and Czechoslovakia donated aircraft. In July combat began in earnest with French amphibious assault on Constantine, which failed miserably. Despite the embarrasing setback, the Radical Party's momentum from the victory in Indochina carried them to historic victory in the November 1962 election, resulting in Maurice Faure becoming France's Prime Minister. Though it is debatable how much influence Faure had on the decision, it was shortly after his government was formed that the French high command made ruled that any Algerian casualities should be counted as FLN - even women and children. For this reason, Faure would be blamed for most of the atrocities the French military comitted during the war.

In January 1963, the French launched a renewed offensive against the FLN, this time making a successful landing at Constantine. Upon capturing the city, French forces rounded up suspected FLN sympathizers and summarily executed them, looted and burned entire neighborhoods, and imprisoned and tortured any who did not cooperate with the occupiers. As French forces continued to Oran and Touggourt, they left a path of death and destruction behind them. Many French commanders believed that the only way to ensure that a settlement affiliated with a guerrilla army such as the FLN had been completely secured was to annihilate it. In the January campaign alone at least 9 towns and cities were destroyed by French forces along with countless villages. This is not including the additional population centers destroyed by French bomber jets, which targeted communities deeper in the Sahara desert, even Berber camps unaffiliated with the FLN. Though news of the atrocities was censored in France, it reached the governments of other major powers rather quickly. In a private call, U.S. President John F. Kennedy advised Faure against brutality, warning him that indiscriminate killing harmed loyalists just as much as FLN supporters, that it would leave Algeria in ruins if France were to win, and that the U.S. would take action if further war crimes were committed. A furious Faure warned Kennedy to stay out of French internal affairs.

Against all odds, the FLN was able to recapture Constantine from the French, but nevertheless remained in a dire position going into July 1963. By then, either publicly or privately, most of the international community had become sympathetic to the FLN, or at least to the Algerian people. Though a United Nations resolution forwarded by Cuba to condemn French atrocities failed to secure enough votes to pass, most of the Western bloc abstained; an unprecedented refusal to support France. Despite the UN's inability to take action, foreign support for Algeria increased in July. The Soviet Union sent dozens of MiG-19s to the FLN, and China provided financial support as well as logistical and tactical advisors. Despite the aid, the FLN continued to suffer on the battlefield, as the French recaptured Constantine and pushed into the Sahara desert, continuing to loot and burn towns and villages along the way. Though the FLN had been provided a large number of aircraft from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, it lacked the pilots to field a large enough squadron to successfully intercept French bombers, which proceeded to destroy any grounded fighters and lay waste to more towns and villages. The FLN soon launched another counterattack on Touggourt, but the siege failed, resulting only in a French crackdown on civilians in the area.

Though the FLN had lost control of most of Algeria by the end of July 1963, France was winning only on the battlefield. Resistance in occupied cities was fierce, even in the face of brutal repression. Perhaps even more concerning to the French government, however, was the chaos that engulfed the cities of metropolitan France. Though the French government continued to censor the press and the media, it did not take long for French citizens to learn of their military's atrocities from foreign news sources. A strong anti-war movement grew out of this, and by the end of the summer demonstrations against the war could be seen in nearly every city in France. Throughout the country, local police forces responded with brutality, especially towards protestors of African or Middle Eastern heritage. The worst instance of French police brutality related to the Algerian War occurred in October 1963, when Paris Police Prefect Maurice Papon ordered a crackdown on a group of Algerian protestors who he claimed had violated curfew. The police beat over 200 unarmed demonstrators to death and disposed their bodies in the Seine River. The incident only intensified unrest in France; a month later French President Georges Marrane, a member of the Communist Party, was beaten by police and nearly arrested after joining a protest in Paris. Despite the mass unrest, French Prime Minister Maurice Faure repeatedly claimed that a "silent majority" of Frenchmen supported the war in Algeria.

Though members of the Western bloc originally dragged their feet on condemning France's actions, by the end of 1963 British Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home believed it was necessary to take action as France would never listen to Communists. In a meeting with recently sworn-in U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Douglas-Home raised the possibility of providing support to the Union for the New Republic (UNR), a French political party led by Charles de Gaulle, who had begun promising an end to the war in Algeria in his political campaigns. Though the plan would not be fully enacted by the United States until after the war, it was approved on the spot by Johnson, who ordered the CIA to begin funding UNR. On December 4, 1963; Alec-Douglas Home shocked the world by appearing on national British television to openly condemn French atrocities in Algeria, announcing an embargo on all trade between the United Kingdom and France and going so far as to say "It is time for the French Empire to end." The very next day, West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard punliclycondemned France as well, leading the French National Assembly to pass a vote of no confidence against Prime Minister Maurice Faure on December 6. Faure was succeeded by fellow Radical Party member René Billères, who upon taking office pledged to seek an armistice with the FLN, remove French troops from Indochina, and support future decolonization efforts around the world, particularly in French Africa.

Once his government was formed, Billères ordered an immediate ceasefire and held talks with the FLN. In January, 1964, the Évian Accords were signed, bringing the Algerian War to an official end. Though negotiators from both sides were firm in their demands, privately both the FLN and the French government felt things had gone far enough. Because of the de facto French military victory, the Accords granted France a number of privileges, such as basing rights and military access in Algeria for a period of fifteen years as well as the right to conduct "scientific research" (nuclear testing) in Algerian territory and pardon from any atrocities. In return, Algeria was entitled to full sovereignty, independence, and self-determination. A victorious Benali Boukort was "elected" Algeria's first President, ruling a one-party state which joined the United Nations shortly thereafter. The war forever changed French politics, the lingering unrest combined with American support allowing Charles de Gaulle's UNR to grow into a legitimate challenge to the established Radical Party. The war had global consequences as well. As British Prime Minister Douglas-Home had called for, Billères began to dismantle the French colonial empire, pulling French troops out of Indochina and leaving the independent states of North and South Vietnam where the French colony once stood. Billères' government also saw the independence of Guinea and Mali in 1966. The distraction of the Algerian War also provided China an opportunity to invade and annex Tibet, and some have theorized that it may have emboldened the Australian government to behave the way it did in the New Zealand Crisis. An estimated 500,000 people were killed in the Algerian War, and an additional 600,000 Algerians were displaced. Because of the terms of the Évian Accords, the French officers responsible for the atrocities were never prosecuted, and foreign sanctions against France were lifted by 1965.