Algerian War
Algerian War ثورة التحرير الجزائرية Guerre d'Algérie | ||||||||||
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Part of the Cold War and the decolonisation of Africa | ||||||||||
Collage of the French war in Algeria | ||||||||||
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Belligerents | ||||||||||
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Commanders and leaders | ||||||||||
Politicians:
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Politicians:
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Strength | ||||||||||
300,000 identified 40,000 civilian support | 3,000 (OAS) | |||||||||
Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
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~1,500,000 total Algerian deaths (Algerian historians' estimate)[29]
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History of Algeria |
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The Algerian War (also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence)
Effectively started by members of the
The planned French withdrawal led to a state crisis. This included various assassination attempts on de Gaulle as well as some attempts at military coups. Most of the former were carried out by the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), an underground organization formed mainly from French military personnel supporting a French Algeria, which committed a large number of bombings and murders both in Algeria and in the homeland to stop the planned independence.
The war caused the deaths of between 400,000 and 1,500,000 Algerians,
Background
Conquest of Algeria
On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the
In 1834, Algeria became a French military colony. It was declared by the
Under the Second Empire (1852–1871), the Code de l'indigénat (Indigenous Code) was implemented by the sénatus-consulte of 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 by sharia law in personal matters and was widely considered to be apostasy. Its first article stipulated:
The indigenous Muslim is French; however, he will continue to be subjected to Muslim law. He may be admitted to serve in the army (armée de terre) and the navy (armée de mer). He may be called to functions and civil employment in Algeria. He may, on his demand, be admitted to enjoy the rights of a French citizen; in this case, he is subjected to the political and civil laws of France.[55]
Prior to 1870, fewer than 200 demands were registered by Muslims and 152 by Jewish Algerians.
After World War II, equality of rights was proclaimed by the ordonnance of 7 March 1944 and later confirmed by the loi Lamine Guèye of 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.[57][dubious ]
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.
Algerian Nationalism
Both Muslim and European Algerians took part in World War II and fought for France. Algerian Muslims served as
Within that context, Khalid ibn Hashim, a grandson of Abd 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 the French Communist Party. In 1926, he founded the Étoile Nord-Africaine ("North African Star"), to which Messali Hadj, also a member of the Communist Party and of its affiliated trade union, the Confédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU), joined the following year.[60]
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, the
On the other hand, the nationalist leader
France, which had just lost French Indochina, was determined not to lose the next colonial war, particularly in its oldest and nearest major colony, which was regarded as a part of Metropolitan France (rather than a colony), by French law.[64]
War chronology
Beginning of hostilities
In the early morning hours of 1 November 1954, FLN maquisards (guerrillas) attacked military and civilian targets throughout Algeria in what became known as the
FLN
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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,
After the collapse of the
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.
As the FLN campaign of influence spread through the countryside, many European farmers in the interior (called
By 1955, effective political action groups within the Algerian colonial community succeeded in convincing many of the Governors General sent by Paris that the military was not the way to resolve the conflict. A major success was the conversion of Jacques Soustelle, who went to Algeria as governor general in January 1955 determined to restore peace. Soustelle, a one-time leftist and by 1955 an ardent Gaullist, began an ambitious reform program (the Soustelle Plan) aimed at improving economic conditions among the Muslim population.
After the Philippeville massacre
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The FLN adopted tactics similar to those of nationalist groups in Asia, and the French did not realize the seriousness of the challenge they faced until 1955, when the FLN moved into urbanized areas. An important watershed in the War of Independence was
Soustelle's successor, Governor General
In August and September 1956, the leadership of the FLN guerrillas operating within Algeria (popularly known as "internals") met to organize a formal policy-making body to synchronize the movement's political and military activities. The highest authority of the FLN was vested in the thirty-four member National Council of the Algerian Revolution (Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne, CNRA), within which the five-man Committee of Coordination and Enforcement (Comité de Coordination et d'Exécution, CCE) formed the executive. The leadership of the regular FLN forces based in Tunisia and Morocco ("externals"), including Ben Bella, knew the conference was taking place but by chance or design on the part of the "internals" were unable to attend.
In October 1956, the
France opposed Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's material and political assistance to the FLN, which some French analysts believed was the revolution's main sustenance. This attitude was a factor in persuading France to participate in the November 1956 attempt to seize the Suez Canal during the Suez Crisis.
During 1957, support for the FLN weakened as the breach between the internals and externals widened. To halt the drift, the FLN expanded its executive committee to include Abbas, as well as imprisoned political leaders such as Ben Bella. It also convinced communist and Arab members of the United Nations (UN) to put diplomatic pressure on the French government to negotiate a cease-fire. In 1957, it became common knowledge in France that the French Army was routinely using torture to extract information from suspected FLN members.[69] Hubert Beuve-Méry, the editor of Le Monde, declared in an edition on 13 March 1957: "From now on, Frenchman must know that they don't have the right to condemn in the same terms as ten years ago the destruction of Oradour and the torture by the Gestapo."[69] Another case that attracted much media attention was the murder of Maurice Audin, a member of the outlawed Algerian Communist party,[70] mathematics professor at the University of Algiers and a suspected FLN member whom the French Army arrested in June 1957.[69]: 224 Audin was tortured and killed and his body was never found.[69] As Audin was French rather than Algerian, his "disappearance" while in the custody of the French Army led to the case becoming a cause célèbre as his widow aided by the historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet determinedly sought to have the men responsible for her husband's death prosecuted.[69]
Battle of Algiers
To increase international and domestic French attention to their struggle, the FLN decided to bring the conflict to the cities and to call a nationwide general strike and also to plant bombs in public places. The most notable instance was the Battle of Algiers, which began on September 30, 1956, when three women, including Djamila Bouhired and Zohra Drif, simultaneously placed bombs at three sites including the downtown office of Air France. The FLN carried out shootings and bombings in the spring of 1957, resulting in civilian casualties and a crushing response from the authorities.
General Jacques Massu was instructed to use whatever methods deemed necessary to restore order in the city and to find and eliminate terrorists. Using paratroopers, he broke the strike and, in the succeeding months, destroyed the FLN infrastructure in Algiers. But the FLN had succeeded in showing its ability to strike at the heart of French Algeria and to assemble a mass response to its demands among urban Muslims. The publicity given to the brutal methods used by the army to win the Battle of Algiers, including the use of torture, strong movement control and curfew called quadrillage and where all authority was under the military, created doubt in France about its role in Algeria. What was originally "pacification" or a "public order operation" had turned into a colonial war accompanied by torture.
Guerrilla war
During 1956 and 1957, the FLN successfully applied hit-and-run tactics in accordance with guerrilla warfare theory. Whilst some of this was aimed at military targets, a significant amount was invested in a terror campaign against those in any way deemed to support or encourage French authority. This resulted in acts of sadistic torture and brutal violence against all, including women and children. Specializing in ambushes and night raids and avoiding direct contact with superior French firepower, the internal forces targeted army patrols, military encampments, police posts, and colonial farms, mines, and factories, as well as transportation and communications facilities. Once an engagement was broken off, the guerrillas merged with the population in the countryside, in accordance with Mao's theories.
Although successfully provoking fear and uncertainty within both communities in Algeria, the revolutionaries' coercive tactics suggested that they had not yet inspired the bulk of the Muslim people to revolt against French colonial rule. Gradually, however, the FLN gained control in certain sectors of the
The loss of competent field commanders both on the battlefield and through defections and political purges created difficulties for the FLN. Moreover, power struggles in the early years of the war split leadership in the wilayat, particularly in the Aurès. Some officers created their own fiefdoms, using units under their command to settle old scores and engage in private wars against military rivals within the FLN.
French counter-insurgency operations
Despite complaints from the military command in Algiers, the French government was reluctant for many months to admit that the Algerian situation was out of control and that what was viewed officially as a pacification operation had developed into a war. By 1956, there were more than 400,000 French troops in Algeria. Although the elite airborne infantry units of the Troupes coloniales and the Foreign Legion bore the brunt of offensive counterinsurgency combat operations, approximately 170,000 Muslim Algerians also served in the regular French army, most of them volunteers. France also sent air force and naval units to the Algerian theater, including helicopters. In addition to service as a flying ambulance and cargo carrier, French forces utilized the helicopter for the first time in a ground attack role in order to pursue and destroy fleeing FLN guerrilla units. The American military later used the same helicopter combat methods in the Vietnam War. The French also used napalm.[72]
The French army resumed an important role in local Algerian administration through the Special Administration Section (Section Administrative Spécialisée, SAS), created in 1955. The SAS's mission was to establish contact with the Muslim population and weaken nationalist influence in the rural areas by asserting the "French presence" there. SAS officers—called képis bleus (blue caps)—also recruited and trained bands of loyal Muslim irregulars, known as harkis. Armed with shotguns and using guerrilla tactics similar to those of the FLN, the harkis, who eventually numbered about 180,000 volunteers, more than the FLN activists,[15] were an ideal instrument of counterinsurgency warfare.
Harkis were mostly used in conventional formations, either in all-Algerian units commanded by French officers or in mixed units. Other uses included
One organized pseudo-guerrilla unit, however, was created in December 1956 by the French DST domestic intelligence agency. The Organization of the French Algerian Resistance (ORAF), a group of counter-terrorists had as its mission to carry out false flag terrorist attacks with the aim of quashing any hopes of political compromise.[75] But it seemed that, as in Indochina, "the French focused on developing native guerrilla groups that would fight against the FLN", one of whom fought in the Southern Atlas Mountains, equipped by the French Army.[76]
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.[76][20]: 255–7
Late in 1957, General
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.[77]
Finding it impossible to control all of Algeria's remote farms and villages, the French government also initiated a program of concentrating large segments of the rural population, including whole villages, in camps under military supervision to prevent them from aiding the rebels. In the three years (1957–60) during which the regroupement program was followed, more than 2 million Algerians
The French Army shifted its tactics at the end of 1958 from dependence on quadrillage to the use of mobile forces deployed on massive
Fall of the Fourth Republic
Recurrent cabinet crises focused attention on the inherent instability of the
After his time as governor general, Soustelle returned to France to organize support for de Gaulle's return to power, while retaining close ties to the army and the pieds-noirs. By early 1958, he had organized a
On May 24, French paratroopers from the Algerian corps landed on Corsica, taking the French island in a bloodless action. Subsequently, preparations were made in Algeria for Operation Resurrection, which had as its objectives the seizure of Paris and the removal of the French government. Resurrection was to be implemented in the event of one of three following scenarios: Were de Gaulle not approved as leader of France by the parliament; were de Gaulle to ask for military assistance to take power; or if it seemed that communist forces were making any move to take power in France. De Gaulle was approved by the French parliament on May 29, by 329 votes against 224, 15 hours before the projected launch of Operation Resurrection. This indicated that the Fourth Republic by 1958 no longer had any support from the French Army in Algeria and was at its mercy even in civilian political matters. This decisive shift in the balance of power in civil-military relations in France in 1958, and the threat of force, was the primary factor in the return of de Gaulle to power in France.
De Gaulle
Many people, regardless of citizenship, greeted de Gaulle's return to power as the breakthrough needed to end the hostilities. On his 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 the pied-noir and the professional military, disaffected by the indecisiveness of previous governments, with his exclamation of "Vive l'Algérie française " ("Long live French Algeria") to cheering crowds in Mostaganem. At the same time, he proposed economic, social, and political reforms to improve the situation of the Muslims. Nonetheless, de Gaulle later admitted to having harbored deep pessimism about the outcome of the Algerian situation even then. Meanwhile, he looked for a "third force" among the population of Algeria, uncontaminated by the FLN or the "ultras" (colon extremists), through whom a solution might be found.
De Gaulle immediately appointed a committee to draft a new constitution for France's Fifth Republic, which would be declared early the next year, with which Algeria would be associated but of which it would not form an integral part. All Muslims, including women, were registered for the first time on electoral rolls to participate in a referendum to be held on the new constitution in September 1958.
De Gaulle's initiative threatened the FLN with decreased support among Muslims. In reaction, the FLN set up the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne, GPRA), a government-in-exile headed by Abbas and based in Tunis. Before the referendum, Abbas lobbied for international support for the GPRA, which was quickly recognized by Morocco, Tunisia, China, and several other African, Arab, and Asian countries, but not by the Soviet Union.
In February 1959, de Gaulle was elected president of the new Fifth Republic. He visited Constantine in October to announce a program to end the war and create an Algeria closely linked to France. De Gaulle's call on the rebel leaders to end hostilities and to participate in elections was met with adamant refusal. "The problem of a cease-fire in Algeria is not simply a military problem", said the GPRA's Abbas. "It is essentially political, and negotiation must cover the whole question of Algeria." Secret discussions that had been underway were broken off.
From 1958 to 1959, the French army won military control in Algeria and was the closest it would be to victory. In late July 1959, during Operation Jumelles, Colonel Bigeard, whose elite paratrooper unit fought at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, told journalist Jean Lartéguy, (source)
We are not making war for ourselves, not making a colonialist war, Bigeard wears no shirt (he shows his opened uniform) as do my officers. We are fighting right here right now for them, for the evolution, to see the evolution of these people and this war is for them. We are defending their freedom as we are, in my opinion, defending the West's freedom. We are here ambassadors, Crusaders, who are hanging on in order to still be able to talk and to be able to speak for.
— Col. Bigeard (July 1959)
During this period in France, however, popular opposition to the conflict was growing, notably in the French 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".[78]
International pressure was also building on France to grant Algeria independence. Since 1955, the
Week of barricades
Convinced that de Gaulle had betrayed them, some units of European volunteers (Unités Territoriales) in Algiers led by student leaders Pierre Lagaillarde and Jean-Jacques Susini, café owner Joseph Ortiz, and lawyer Jean-Baptiste Biaggi staged an insurrection in the Algerian capital starting on 24 January 1960, and known in France as La semaine des barricades ("the week of barricades"). The ultras incorrectly believed that they would be supported by General Massu. The insurrection order was given by Colonel Jean Garde of the Fifth Bureau. As the army, police, and supporters stood by, civilian pieds-noirs threw up barricades in the streets and seized government buildings. General Maurice Challe, responsible for the army in Algeria, declared Algiers under siege, but forbade the troops to fire on the insurgents. Nevertheless, six rioters were killed during shooting on Boulevard 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:
I took, in the name of France, the following decision—the Algerians will have the free choice of their destiny. When, in one way or another – by ceasefire or by complete crushing of the rebels – we will have put an end to the fighting, when, after a prolonged period of appeasement, the population will have become conscious of the stakes and, thanks to us, realised the necessary progress in political, economic, social, educational, and other domains. Then it will be the Algerians who will tell us what they want to be.... Your French of Algeria, how can you listen to the liars and the conspirators who tell you that, if you grant free choice to the Algerians, France and de Gaulle want to abandon you, retreat from Algeria, and deliver you to the rebellion?.... I say to all of our soldiers: your mission comprises neither equivocation nor interpretation. You have to liquidate the rebellious forces, which want to oust France from Algeria and impose on this country its dictatorship of misery and sterility.... Finally, I address myself to France. Well, well, my dear and old country, here we face together, once again, a serious ordeal. In virtue of the mandate that the people have given me and of the national legitimacy, which I have embodied for 20 years, I ask everyone to support me whatever happens.[79]
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 many ultra leaders who were imprisoned or transferred to other areas did not deter the French Algeria militants. Sent to prison in Paris and then paroled, Lagaillarde fled to Spain. There, with another French army officer, Raoul Salan, who had entered clandestinely, and with Jean-Jacques Susini, he created the Organisation armée secrète (Secret Army Organization, OAS) on December 3, 1960, with the purpose of continuing the fight for French Algeria. Highly organized and well-armed, the OAS stepped up its terrorist activities, which were directed against both Algerians and pro-government French citizens, as the move toward negotiated settlement of the war and self-determination gained momentum. To the FLN rebellion against France were added civil wars between extremists in the two communities and between the ultras and the French government in Algeria.
Beside Pierre Lagaillarde, Jean-Baptiste Biaggi was also imprisoned, while
The opposition of the UNEF student trade-union to the participation of conscripts in the war led to a secession in May 1960, with the creation of the Fédération des étudiants nationalistes (FEN, Federation of Nationalist Students) around Dominique Venner, a former member of Jeune Nation and of MP13, François d'Orcival and Alain de Benoist, who would theorize in the 1980s the "New Right" movement. The FEN then published the Manifeste de la classe 60.
A Front national pour l'Algérie française (FNAF, National Front for French Algeria) was created in June 1960 in Paris, gathering around de Gaulle's former Secretary Jacques Soustelle, Claude Dumont, Georges Sauge, Yvon Chautard, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour (who later competed in the 1965 presidential election), Jacques Isorni, Victor Barthélemy, François Brigneau and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Another ultra rebellion occurred in December 1960, which led de Gaulle to dissolve the FNAF.
After the publication of the
End of the war
De Gaulle convoked the first
The
Talks with the FLN reopened at Évian in May 1961; after several false starts, the French government decreed that a ceasefire would take effect on March 18, 1962. A major difficulty at the talks was de Gaulle's decision to grant independence only to the coastal regions of Algeria, where the bulk of the population lived, while hanging onto the Sahara, which happened to be rich in oil and gas, while the FLN claimed all of Algeria.[83] During the talks, the Pied-Noirs and Muslim communities engaged in a low level civil war with bombings, shootings, throat-cutting and assassinations being the preferred methods.[83]: 90 The Canadian historian John Cairns wrote at times it seemed like both communities were "going berserk" as everyday "murder was indiscriminate".[83]: 90
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.[83]: 90 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.[83]: 91 At a demonstration on 17 October 1961, Maurice Papon ordered 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 the Pied-Noirs communities.[83]: 91 On 7 February 1962, the OAS attempted to assassinate Culture Minister André Malraux with a bomb in his apartment building; it failed to kill him, but left a four-year girl in the adjoining apartment blinded by shrapnel.[84] 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.[83]: 87 In their final form, the Évian Accords allowed the Pied-Noirs equal legal protection with Algerians over a three-year period. These rights included respect for property, participation in public affairs, and a full range of civil and cultural rights. At the end of that period, however, all Algerian residents would be obliged to become Algerian citizens or be classified as aliens with the attendant loss of rights. The agreement also allowed France to establish military bases in Algeria even after independence (including the nuclear test site of Regghane, the naval base of Mers-el-Kebir and the air base of Bou Sfer) and to have privileges vis-à-vis Algerian oil.
The OAS started a campaign of spectacular terrorist attacks to sabotage the Évian Accords, hoping that if enough Muslims were killed, a general pogrom against the Pied-Noirs would break out, leading the French Army to turn its guns against the government.[83]: 87 Despite ample provocation with OAS lobbing mortar shells into the casbah of Algiers, the FLN gave orders for no retaliatory attacks.[83]: 87 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.[83]: 93 Only eighty deputies voted against the Évian Accords in the National Assembly. Cairns wrote that the fulminations of Jean-Marie Le Pen against de Gaulle were only "...the traditional verbal excesses of third-rate firebrands without a substantial following and without a constructive idea".[83]
Following the cease fire, tensions developed between the Pied-Noirs community 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-Noir district of Bab El Oued in Algiers.[20]: 524 A week later, French soldiers from the 4th Tirailleur Regiment (an 80% Muslim unit with French officers)[85] opened fire on a crowd of Pied-Noir demonstrators in Algiers, killing between 50 and 80 civilians.[86] Total casualties in these three incidents were 326 killed and wounded amongst the Pied-Noirs and 110 French military personnel dead or injured.[20]: 524–5 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".[83]: 94 A number of shocked Pied-Noir screamed that they were not French anymore.[83]: 95 One woman screamed "Stop firing! My God, we're French..." before she was shot down.[83]: 95 The massacre served to greatly embitter the Pied-Noir community and led to a massive surge of support for the OAS.[83]: 95
In the second referendum 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 most Pied-Noirs and Harkis either having fled or abstaining.[87] 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.[88]
During the summer of 1962, a rush of Pied-Noirs fled to France. Within a year, 1.4 million refugees, including almost the entire Jewish community, had joined the exodus. Despite the declaration of independence on 5 July 1962, the last French forces did not leave the naval base of Mers El Kébir until 1967. (The Evian Accords had permitted France to maintain its military presence for fifteen years, so the withdrawal in 1967 was significantly ahead of schedule.[20]) 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."[83]: 87
Strategy of internationalisation of the Algerian War led by the FLN
At the beginning of the war, on the Algerian side, it was necessary to compensate for military weakness with political and diplomatic struggle. In the asymmetric conflict between France and the FLN at this time, victory seemed extremely difficult.[89]
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 in Le Monde and one in l'Express), and the insurrection all but subsided. Nevertheless, François Mitterrand, the French Minister of the Interior, sent 600 soldiers to Algeria.
Furthermore, the FLN was weak militarily at the beginning of the war. It was created in 1954 and had few members, and its ally the ALN was 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.
Firstly, the FLN exploited the tensions between the American-led
Secondly, the FLN could count on Third World support. After World War II, many new states were created in the wave of decolonization: in 1945 there were 51 states in the UN, 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.[92] 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, Radio Yugoslavia (Third-Worldist) begun to vocally support the struggle of Algeria;[93] the 1955 Bandung conference internationally recognized the FLN as representing Algeria;[94] and Third-World countries brought up the Algerian conflict at the UN general assembly.[95] 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 from China helped to rebuild the ALN to 20 000 men.[95] The USSR competed with China, and Khrushchev intensified moral support for the Algerian rebellion, which in turn pushed the USA to react.[95] In 1958, the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (PGAR) was created, naming official representatives to negotiate with France.[96] 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 the Evian agreements. According to Matthew Connelly, this strategy of internationalization became a model for other revolutionary groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat, and the African National Congress of Nelson Mandela.[94]
Role of women
Women participated in a variety of roles during the Algerian War. The majority of Muslim women who became active participants did so on the side of the National Liberation Front (FLN). The French included some women, both Muslim and French, in their war effort, but they were not as fully integrated, nor were they charged with the same breadth of tasks as the women on the Algerian side. The total number of women involved in the conflict, as determined by post-war veteran registration, is numbered at 11,000, but it is possible that this number was significantly higher due to underreporting.[97]
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.[98] 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.[98]
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",
Perhaps the most famous incident involving Algerian women revolutionaries was the Milk Bar Café bombing of 1956, when
Exodus of the Pieds-Noirs and Harkis
Pieds-noirs
Pied-noir (literally "black foot") is a term used to name the European-descended population (mostly
In 1959, the pieds-noirs numbered 1,025,000 (85% of European Christian descent, and 15% were made up of the indigenous Algerian population of
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 departing pieds-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 100,000 pieds-noirs chose to remain, but most of those gradually left in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily due to residual hostility against them, including machine-gunning of public places in Oran.[106]
Harkis
The so-called
In 1962, around 90,000 Harkis took refuge in France, despite French government policy against this. Pierre Messmer, Minister of the Armies, and
Death toll
Death toll estimates vary. Algerian historians and the FLN estimated that nearly eight years of revolution caused 1.5 million Algerian deaths.[29][111][112] 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,[113][114] but this was regarded by many[who?] as an underestimate. French military authorities listed their losses at nearly 25,600 dead (6,000 from non-combat-related causes) and 65,000 wounded. European-descended civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded violent incidents. According to French official figures during the war, the army, security forces and militias killed 141,000 presumed rebel combatants.[20]: 538 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.[20]: 538
Horne estimated Algerian casualties during the span of eight years to be around 1 million.[116][117] Uncounted thousands of Muslim civilians lost their lives in French Army ratissages, bombing raids, or vigilante reprisals. The war uprooted more than 2 million Algerians, who were forced to relocate in French camps or to flee into the Algerian hinterland, where many thousands died of starvation, disease, and exposure. One source estimates 300,000 Algerians civilians perished of starvation, depredation, and disease inside and outside the camps.[118]
In addition, large numbers of Harkis were murdered when the FLN settled accounts after independence,[1]: 13 with 30,000 to 150,000 killed in Algeria in post-war reprisals .[20]: 538
Lasting effects in Algerian politics
After Algeria's independence was recognised,
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.[119] 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.[78]
Atrocities and war crimes
French atrocities and use of torture
Massacres and torture were frequent from the beginning of the colonization of Algeria, which started in 1830.[53] Atrocities committed against Algerians by the French army during the war included indiscriminate shootings into civilian crowds (such as during the Paris massacre of 1961), execution of civilians when rebel attacks occurred,[120] bombings of villages suspected of helping the FLN,[47] rape,[121] disembowelment of pregnant women,[122] imprisonment without food in small cells (some of which were small enough to impede lying down),[123] throwing detainees from helicopters and into the sea with concrete on their feet, and burying people alive.[124][125][126][127] Torture methods included beatings, mutilations, burning, hanging by the feet or hands, torture by electroshock, waterboarding, sleep deprivation and sexual assaults.[121][124][128][129][130]
During the war, the French military relocated entire villages to centres de regroupements (regrouping centres), which were built for forcibly displaced civilian populations, in order to separate them from FLN guerilla combatants. Over 8,000 villages were destroyed.
A notable instance of rape was that of Djamila 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 by Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi.[133]
Torture was also used by both sides during the
Bigeard's justification of torture has been criticized by
In 2018 France officially admitted that torture was systematic and routine.[143][144][145]
-
L'Express newspaper of December 29, 1955, reading "Terrible facts that should be known", condemning the censorship of the Constantine massacres in August of the same year.
-
Camp de Thol, one of the French concentration camps for Algerians used during the war.[146]
-
Marcel Bigeard's troops were accused of practicing "death flights", whose victims were called crevettes Bigeard (fr), "Bigeard shrimp".[147]
-
"Gégène", a device used by the French forces to generate electricity; electrodes would then be attached to the victim's body parts for electric torture
Algerian use of terror
Specializing in ambushes and night raids to avoid direct contact with superior French firepower, the internal forces targeted army patrols, military encampments, police posts, and colonial farms, mines, and factories, as well as transportation and communications facilities. 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.[20]: 134–5 Some other atrocities were committed by the more militant sections of the FLN as collective reprissals 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 and disemboweled, while children had been murdered by slitting their throats or banging their heads against walls.[148]
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.[20]: 135
Historiography
Although the opening of the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after a 30-year lock-up enabled some new historical research on the war, including Jean-Charles Jauffret's book, La Guerre d'Algérie par les documents (The Algerian War According to the Documents), many remain inaccessible.[149] The recognition in 1999 by the National Assembly permitted 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).[150] After reports of the widespread use of torture by French forces started to reach France in 1956–57, the war become commonly known as la sale guerre ("the dirty war"), a term that is still used today and reflects the very negative memory of the war in France.[150]: 145
Lack of commemoration
As the war was officially a "
English-language historiography
One of the first books about the war in English, A Scattering of Dust by the American journalist Herb Greer, depicted very favorably the Algerian struggle for independence.[151] 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.[151]: 222–5 One of the few military histories of the war was The Algerian Insurrection, by the retired British Army officer Edgar 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.[151]: 225–6
In 1977, the British journalist Alistair Horne published A 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.[151]: 226 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."[151]: 217–35 Living in Paris at the time of the war, Horne had condemned French intervention during the Suez Crisis and 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.[151]: 217–35
In a 1977 column published in The Times Literary Supplement reviewing the book A Savage War of Peace, Iraqi-born British historian Elie Kedourie attacked Horne as an "apologist for terrorism" and accused him of engaging in the "cosy pieties" of bien-pensants. Kedorie condemned the Western intellectuals who excuse terrorism when committed by Third World revolutionaries.[151]: 217–35 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.[151]: 217–235 Kedourie charged that de Gaulle had cynically sacrificed the colons and the harkis, 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".[151]: 227
In 1992, American historian John Ruedy, the focus of whose research was the history of the Maghreb and French colonialism in Algeria, published Modern Algeria: Origins and Development of a Nation.[151]: 232–3 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.[151]: 233
In film
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".[150]: 147 During the war itself, French censors banned the entire subject of the war.[150]: 147–8 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".[150]: 142–58 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.[150]: 142–158 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.[150]: 151–6
Reminders
From time to time, the memory of the Algerian War surfaced in France. In 1987, when SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon", was brought to trial for crimes against humanity, graffiti appeared on the walls of the banlieues, the slum districts in which most Algerian immigrants in France live, reading: "Barbie in France! When will Massu be in Algeria!"[69]: 230 Barbie's lawyer, Jacques Vergès, adopted a tu quoque defence 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.[69]: 230 In 1997, when Maurice 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 a massacre of between 100 and 200 Algerians in central Paris, which was the first time that most French had ever heard of the massacre.[69]: 231 The revelation that hundreds of people had been killed by the Paris Sûreté was a great shock in France and led to uncomfortable questions being raised about what had happened during the Algerian War.[69]: 231 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 been résistants in World War II, which many French historians found to be very unpalatable.[69]: 231
On 15 June 2000, Le Monde published an interview with Louisette Ighilahriz, a former FLN member who described in graphic detail her torture at the hands of the French Army and made the sensational claim that the war heroes General Jacques Massu and General Marcel Bigeard had personally been present when she was being tortured for information.[69]: 233 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.[69]: 233 As Ighilahriz had been an attractive woman in her youth, university-educated, secular, fluent in French and fond of quoting Victor Hugo, and her duties in the FLN had been as an information courier, she made for a most sympathetic victim since she was a woman who did not come across as Algerian.[69]: 234 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 had resonated the same way.[69]: 234 The Ighiahriz case led to a public letter signed by 12 people who been involved in the war to President Jacques Chirac to ask October 31 be made a public day of remembrance for victims of torture in Algeria.[69]: 234
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 24 fellagha. He argued that they were justified, as torture and extrajudicial executions were the only way to defeat the FLN.[69]: 235 In May 2001, Aussaresses published his memoirs, Services spéciaux Algérie 1955–1957, in which presented a detailed account of torture and extrajudicial killings in the name of the republic, which he wrote were all done under orders from Paris; that confirmed what had been long suspected.[69]: 239 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.[69]: 235 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.[69]: 235 The French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet called that a moment of "catharsis" that was "explainable only in near-French terms: it is the return of the repressed".[69]: 235–6
In 2002, Une Vie Debout: Mémoires Politiques by Mohammed Harbi, a former advisor to Ben Bella, was published in which Harbi wrote: "Because they [the FLN leaders] weren't supported at the moment of their arrival on the scene by a real and dynamic popular movement, they took power of the movement by force and they maintained it by force. Convinced that they had to act with resolution in order to protect themselves against their enemies, they deliberately chose an authoritarian path".[78]
Continued controversy in France
The Algerian War remains a contentious event. According to the historian Benjamin Stora, one of the leading historians on the war, memories concerning the war remain fragmented, with no common ground to speak of:
There is no such thing as a history of the Algerian War; there is just a multitude of histories and personal paths through it. Everyone involved considers that they lived through it in their own way, and any attempt to understand the Algerian War globally is immediately rejected by protagonists.[152]
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. Though according to Stora, there can "no longer be talk about a 'war without a name', a number of problems remain, especially the absence of sites in France to commemorate" the war. Furthermore, conflicts have arisen on an exact commemoration date to end the war. Although many sources as well as the French state place it on 19 March 1962, the Évian Agreements, others point out that massacres of harkis and the kidnapping of pieds-noirs took place later. Stora further points out, "The phase of memorial reconciliation between the two sides of the sea is still a long way off".[152] That was evidenced by the National Assembly's creation of the law on colonialism on 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 President
Another matter concerns the teaching of the war as well as of colonialism and decolonization, particularly in French secondary schools.[153] Hence, there is only one reference to racism in a French textbook, one published by Bréal publishers for terminales students, those passing their baccalauréat. Thus, many are not surprised that the first to speak about the October 17, 1961 massacre were music bands, including hip-hop bands such as the famous Suprême NTM (les Arabes dans la Seine) or politically-engaged La Rumeur. Indeed, the Algerian War is not even the subject of a specific chapter in the textbook for terminales[149] Henceforth, Benjamin Stora stated:
As Algerians do not appear in an "indigenous" condition, and their sub-citizens status, as the history of nationalist movement, is never evoked as their being one of great figures of the resistance, such as Messali Hadj and Ferhat Abbas. They neither emerge nor are being given attention. No one is explaining to students what colonization has been. We have prevented students from understanding why the decolonization took place.[149]
Socioeconomic situation of French Algerians
In
French recognition of historical use of torture
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. General Paul Aussaresses was sentenced following his justification of the use of torture for "apology of war crimes". As they occurred during wartime, 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".[157] 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."[158] From the enfumades (slaughter by smoke inhalation) of the Darha caves in 1844 by Aimable Pélissier to the 1945 riots in Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata, 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 the pieds-noirs. The suppression of the riots officially saw 1500 other deaths, but N. Bancel, P. Blanchard and S. Lemaire estimate the number to be between 6000 and 8000.[159]
INA archives
Note: concerning the audio and film archives from the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA), see Benjamin Stora's comments on their politically-oriented creation.[152]
- Cinq Colonnes à la une, Rushes Interview Pied-Noir, ORTF, July 1, 1962
- Cinq Colonnes à la une, Rétrospective Algérie, ORTF, June 9, 1963 (concerning these INA archives, see also Benjamin Stora's warning about the conditions of creation of these images)
Contemporary publications
- Trinquier, Roger. Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, 1961.
- Leulliette, Pierre, St. Michael and the Dragon: Memoirs of a Paratrooper, Houghton Mifflin, 1964.
- Galula, David, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, 1964.
- Jouhaud, Edmond. O Mon Pays Perdu: De Bou-Sfer a Tulle. Paris: Librarie Artheme Fayard, 1969.
- Maignen, Etienne Treillis au djebel – Les Piliers de Tiahmaïne Yellow Concept, 2004.
- Derradji, Abder-Rahmane, The Algerian Guerrilla Campaign Strategy & Tactics, The Edwin Mellen Press, New York, 1997.
- Feraoun, Mouloud, Journal 1955–1962, University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
- Pečar, Zdravko, Alžir do nezavisnosti. Beograd: Prosveta; Beograd: Institut za izučavanje radničkog pokreta, 1967.
Other publications
English-language
- Aussaresses, General Paul. The Battle of the Casbah, New York: Enigma Books, 2010, ISBN 978-1-929631-30-8.
- ISBN 978-0-670-61964-1.
- Maran, Rita (1989). Torture: The Role of Ideology in the French-Algerian War, New York: Prager Publishers.
- ISBN 1-85532-658-2
- Arslan Humbaraci. Algeria: a revolution that failed. London: Pall mall Press Ltd, 1966.
- Samia Henni: Architecture of Counterrevolution. The French Army in Northern Algeria, gta Verlag, Zürich 2017, ISBN 978-3-85676-376-3
- Pečar, Zdravko, Algeria to Independence. Currently being translated into English by Dubravka Juraga at: Zdravko Pečar: Alžir do nezavisnosti
French language
Translations may be available for some of these works. See specific cases.
- Benot, Yves (1994). Massacres coloniaux, La Découverte, coll. "Textes à l'appui", Paris.
- Jauffret, Jean-Charles. La Guerre d'Algérie par les documents (first tome, 1990; second tome, 1998; account here)
- Rey-Goldzeiguer, Annie (2001). Aux origines de la guerre d'Algérie, La Découverte, Paris.
- ISBN 950-07-2684-X)
- Mekhaled, Boucif (1995). Chroniques d'un massacre. 8 mai 1945. Sétif, Guelma, Kherrata, Syros, Paris, 1995.
- Slama, Alain-Gérard (1996). La Guerre d'Algérie. Histoire d'une déchirure, Gallimard, coll. "Découvertes Gallimard" (n° 301), Paris.
- Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. La Torture sous la République (1970) and many others, more recent (see entry).
- Roy, Jules (1960). "La guerre d'Algérie" ("The War in Algeria", 1961, Grove Press)
- Etienne Maignen. Treillis au djebel- Les Piliers de Tiahmaïne Yellow Concept 2004.
- Gilbert Meynier. Histoire intérieure du FLN 1954–1962 Fayard 2004.
Films
- Jamila, the Algerian (1958). Egyptian film by Youssef Chahine; about Djamila Bouhired.
- . The title translates to "The Little Soldier".
- Octobre à Paris by Jacques Panijel (1961). The title translates to "October in Paris".
- Muriel (film) by Alain Resnais (1962). "Muriel" is a character's name.
- Lost Command by Mark Robson (film director) (1966). The French title, Les Centurions, translates to "The Centurions".
- The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo(1966). It was banned in France for five years.
- Elise ou la vraie vie by Michel Drach (1970).
- Avoir 20 ans dans les Aurès by René Vautier (1972).
- La Guerre d'Algérie, a documentary film by Yves Courrière (1972). The title translates to "The Algerian War".
- R.A.S by Yves Boisset (1973)
- Wild Reeds by André Téchiné (1994)
- "Deserter" by Martin Huberty (2002)
- La Trahison by Philippe Faucon (2005). Adapted from a novel by Claude Sales on the presence of Muslim soldiers in the French Army. The title translates to, "The Treason".
- Nuit noire by Alain Tasma (2005). On the Paris massacre of 1961. The title translates to "Black Night".
- Caché by Michael Haneke (2005) On the Paris massacre of 1961. The movie is often known in English by its French name's translation, "Hidden".
- Harkis by Alain Tasma (2006). The title refers to military auxiliaries.
- Mon colonel by Laurent Herbier (2007). The title translates to "My Colonel".
- Cartouches Gauloisesby Mehdi Charef (2007)
- Balcon sur la mer by Nicole Garcia (2010). About the adult lives of two children who survive the siege of Oran. The title translates to, "Balcony on the Ocean".
- Outside the Law by Rachid Bouchareb (2010)
- La Valise ou le Cercueil (2011). French documentary film.
- Ce que le jour doit à la nuit by Alexandre Arcady(2012)
- Far from Men by David Oelhoffen (2014). Based on the short story The Guest, by Albert Camus.
See also
- Adolfo Kaminsky (b. 1925), famous forger who worked for FLN, draft dodgers, etc., to make false ID
- Cameroon War
- France and weapons of mass destruction
- Frantz Fanon
- History of the Armée de l'Air in the colonies (1939–1962)
- Independence Day (Algeria)
- Manifesto of the 121
- Mokrani Revolt
- List of French governors of Algeria
- Year of Africa
Notes
- : Guerre d'Algérie (and sometimes in Algeria as the War of 1 November)
References
- ^ ISBN 9781855326583.
- ^ Introduction to Comparative Politics, by Mark Kesselman, Joel Krieger, William Joseph, page 108
- ^ Alexander Cooley, Hendrik Spruyt. Contracting States: Sovereign Transfers in International Relations. Page 63.
- ^ George Bernard Noble. Christian A. Herter: The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy. Page 155.
- ISBN 978-1-118-89685-3.
the French lost their Algerian empire in military and political defeat by the FLN, just as they lost their empire in China in defeat by Giap and Ho Chi Minh.
- ISBN 978-0-230-00552-5.
For the [French] nation as a whole, commemoration of the Franco-Algerian War is complicated since it ended in defeat (politically, if not strictly militarily) rather than victory.
- ISBN 978-0-7391-0821-5.
The death knell of the French empire was sounded by the bitterly fought Algerian war of independence, which ended in 1962.
- ^ "The French defeat in the war effectively signaled the end of the French Empire". Jo McCormack (2010). Collective Memory: France and the Algerian War (1954–1962).
- ISBN 978-90-420-2406-9.
The Algerian War came to an end in 1962, and with it closed some 130 years of French colonial presence in Algeria (and North Africa). With this outcome, the French Empire, celebrated in pomp in Paris in the Exposition coloniale of 1931 ... received its decisive death blow.
- ISBN 978-90-04-15329-5.
The independence of Algeria in 1962, after a long and bitter war, marked the end of the French Empire.
- ISBN 978-1-78316-585-8.
The difficult relationship which France has with the period of history dominated by the Algerian war has been well documented. The reluctance, which ended only in 1999, to acknowledge 'les évenements' as a war, the shame over the fate of the harki detachments, the amnesty covering many of the deeds committed during the war and the humiliation of a colonial defeat which marked the end of the French empire are just some of the reasons why France has preferred to look towards a Eurocentric future, rather than confront the painful aspects of its colonial past.
- ISBN 978-0-520-35711-2.
- ISBN 0-8014-8916-4.
- ^ General Faivre, Les combatants musulmans de la guerre d'Algérie, L'Harmattan, 1995, p.125
- ^ a b Major Gregory D. Peterson, The French Experience in Algeria, 1954–62: Blueprint for U.S. Operations in Iraq, p.33
- ^ "Algérie : Une guerre d'appelés". Le Figaro. 19 March 2012.
- ^ Travis, Hannibal (2013). Genocide, Ethnonationalism, and the United Nations: Exploring the Causes of Mass Killing Since 1945. Routledge. p. 137.
- ISBN 978-0333774564.
The Algerian Ministry of War Veterans gives the figure of 152,863 FLN killed.
- ^ Katherine Draper (2013). "Why a War Without a Name May Need One: Policy-Based Application of International Humanitarian Law in the Algerian War" (PDF). Texas International Law Journal. 48 (3): 576. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 November 2016.
The Algerian Ministry of War Veterans calculates 152,863 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) deaths (French sources), and although the death toll among Algerian civilians may never be accurately known estimate of 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 were killed.
- ^ ISBN 9781590172186.
- ISBN 978-90-474-1070-6.
- ^ "Déclaration de M. Emmanuel Macron, président de la République, sur le 60ème anniversaire des accords d'Évian et la guerre d'Algérie, à Paris le 19 mars 2022".
- ISBN 9780313395703. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ISBN 9780122270109, lire en ligne [archive]), p. 86.
- ISBN 9781139915823, lire en ligne [archive]), p. 184.
- ^ a b
From "Algeria: War of independence". Mass Atrocity Endings.:
He also argues that the least controversial of all the numbers put forward by various groups are those concerning the French soldiers, where government numbers are largely accepted as sound. Most controversial are the numbers of civilians killed. On this subject, he turns to the work of Meynier, who, citing French army documents (not the official number) posits the range of 55,000–60,000 deaths. Meynier further argues that the best number to capture the harkis deaths is 30,000. If we add to this, the number of European civilians, which government figures posit as 2,788.
Meynier's work cited was: Meynier, Gilbert. "Histoire intérieure du FLN. 1954–1962".
- ^ a b c Rummel, Rudolph J. "STATISTICS OF DEMOCIDE Chapter 14 THE HORDE OF CENTI-KILO MURDERERS Estimates, Calculations, And Sources". Table 14.1 B; row 664.
- ^ a b Rummel, Rudolph J. "STATISTICS OF DEMOCIDE Chapter 14 THE HORDE OF CENTI-KILO MURDERERS Estimates, Calculations, And Sources". Table 14.1 B; row 694.
- ^ a b c d "France remembers the Algerian War, 50 years on". 16 March 2012.
- ISBN 9780199241040. Retrieved 13 January 2017. Referring to Evans, Martin. 2012. Algeria: France's Undeclared War. New York: Oxford University Press.
- .
- ^ a b SACRISTE Fabien, « Les « regroupements » de la guerre d’Algérie, des « villages stratégiques » ? », Critique internationale, 2018/2 (N° 79), p. 25-43. DOI : 10.3917/crii.079.0025. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-critique-internationale-2018-2-page-25.htm
- ^ a b "Algeria – The Revolution and Social Change". countrystudies.us. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ISBN 978-1-135-92311-2.
During this war of independence, Algeria was at the center of world politics. The FLN's victory made the country one of the most prominent in the Third World during the 1960s and 1970s.
- ^ Guy Pervillé, Pour une histoire de la guerre d´Algérie, chap. "Une double guerre civile", Picard, 2002, pp.132–139
- University of North Carolina Asheville. Archived from the original(PDF) on 26 October 2014.
- ISBN 9780520925687.
- ISBN 0-8014-8916-4.
- ISBN 978-1-107-08859-7.
- ISBN 978-0801489167.
- ISBN 9782200281977. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ^ "Document officiel des Nations Unies". un.org. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ^ "référendum 1962 Algérie". france-politique.fr. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ^ "Proclamation des résultats du référendum d'autodétermination du 1er juillet 1962" (PDF). Journal Officiel de l'État Algérien. 6 July 1962. Retrieved 8 April 2009.
- ^ "Ombres et lumières de la révolution algérienne". Le Monde diplomatique (in French). 1 November 1982. Retrieved 9 February 2018.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-135-45670-2.
The Algerian war for independence had lasted eight years. More than 8,000 villages had been destroyed in the fighting. Some three million people were displaced, and more than one million Algerians and some 10,000 colons lost their lives.
- ^ ISBN 9781433110740.
From 1957 to 1960 more than two million Algerians were thus relocated, leaving behind their houses. crops, and livestock, and over 800 villages were destroyed.
- ^ Évian accords, Chapitre II, partie A, article 2
- ^ See http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/qa-happened-algeria-harkis-150531082955192.html and Pierre Daum's "The Last Taboo: Harkis Who Stayed in Algeria After 1962". November 2017
- ^ Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (June 2001). "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France – Liberty, Equality and Colony". Le Monde diplomatique. (quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, Travail sur l'Algérie in Œuvres complètes, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1991, pp 704 and 705.(in English and French)
- ISBN 978-0-19-923211-6.
- ISBN 978-1-137-55234-1.
Within the first three decades, the French military massacred between half a million to one million from approximately three million Algerian people.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-300-10098-3.
In Algeria, colonization and genocidal massacres proceeded in tandem. From 1830 to 1847, its European settler population quadrupled to 104,000. Of the native Algerian population of approximately 3 million in 1830, about 500,000 to 1 million perished in the first three decades of French conquest.
- ISBN 9780521524322.
- Code de l'indigénat)
- ^ a b le code de l'indigénat dans l'Algérie coloniale Archived 2007-03-14 at the Wayback Machine, Human Rights League (LDH), March 6, 2005 – URL accessed on January 17, 2007 (in French)
- ^ Gianluca P. Parolin, Citizenship in the Arab World: Kin, Religion and Nation, Amsterdam University Press, 2009, pp. 94–95
- ^ les tirailleurs, bras armé de la France coloniale Archived 2007-03-14 at the Wayback Machine, Human Rights League (LDH), August 25, 2004 – URL accessed on January 17, 2007 (in French)
- ^ "Interpretation of President Wilson's Fourteen Points". Archived from the original on 1 May 1997. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
- ISBN 9780313264566.
- ^ a b Peyroulou, Jean-Pierre (21 March 2008). "Le cas de Sétif-Kherrata-Guelma (Mai 1945)". Violence de masse et Résistance - Réseau de recherche.
- ^ Ngoc H. Huynh (5 January 2016). "The Time-Honored Friendship: A History of Vietnamese-Algerian Relations (1946-2015) Relations (1946-2015)". University of Pennsylvania.
- ^ "UQAM | Guerre d'Indochine | ALGERIAN WAR".
- ^ "Colonial Empires after the War/Decolonization | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)".
- ^ La Bataille d'Algers (2006), in Le Canard enchaîné, January 10, 2007, n°4498, p.7
- ^ Frantz Fanon (1961). Wretched of the Earth. François Maspero.
- ^ Hussey, Andrew (27 January 2013). "Algiers: a city where France is the promised land – and still the enemy". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 July 2013.
Meanwhile, Muslim villages were destroyed and whole populations forced to move to accommodate European farms and industry. As the pieds-noirs grew in number and status, the native Algerians, who had no nationality under French law, did not officially exist.
- ^ a b Number given by the Archived February 19, 2007, at the Wayback Machine Préfecture du Gers, French governmental site – URL accessed on February 17, 2007
- ^ JSTOR 41299235.
- TheGuardian.com. 16 September 2018.
- JSTOR 10.7249/j.ctt5hhsjk.16, retrieved 21 March 2023
- ^ a b Benjamin Stora, "Avoir 20 ans en Kabylie", in L'Histoire n°324, October 2007, pp.28–29 (in French)
- ISBN 978-0-312-04924-9.
- S2CID 154354671.
- ^ Roger Faligot and Pascal Krop, DST, Police Secrète, Flammarion, 1999, p. 174
- ^ ISBN 978-1584871996. Archived from the original(PDF) on 16 November 2016. Retrieved 14 February 2007.
- ^ Leulliette, Pierre (1964). St. Michael and the Dragon: Memoirs of a Paratrooper. Houghton Mifflin.
- ^ a b c Shatz, Adam (21 November 2002). "The Torture of Algiers". Algeria-Watch. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
- ^ French: "J'ai pris, au nom de la France, la décision que voici: les Algériens auront le libre choix de leur destin. Quand d'une manière ou d'une autre – conclusion d'un cessez-le-feu ou écrasement total des rebelles – nous aurons mis un terme aux combats, quand, ensuite, après une période prolongée d'apaisement, les populations auront pu prendre conscience de l'enjeu et, d'autre part, accomplir, grâce à nous, les progrès nécessaires dans les domaines, politique, économique, social, scolaire, etc., alors ce seront les Algériens qui diront ce qu'ils veulent être. ... Français d'Algérie, comment pouvez-vous écouter les menteurs et les conspirateurs qui vous disent qu'en accordant le libre choix aux Algériens, la France et De Gaulle veulent vous abandonner, se retirer de l'Algérie et vous livrer à la rébellion? ... Je dis à tous nos soldats: votre mission ne comporte ni équivoque, ni interprétation. Vous avez à liquider la force rebelle qui veut chasser la France de l'Algérie et faire régner sur ce pays sa dictature de misère et de stérilité. ... Enfin, je m'adresse à la France. Eh bien! mon cher et vieux pays, nous voici donc ensemble, encore une fois, face à une lourde épreuve. En vertu du mandat que le peuple m'a donné et de la légitimité nationale que j'incarne depuis vingt ans (sic), je demande à tous et à toutes de me soutenir quoi qu'il arrive".
- ^ "Accueil – CVCE Website - French Army audio archives". ena.lu. Archived from the original on 23 October 2006. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
- ^ Jean-Paul Sartre; Henri Curiel; et al. "Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the War in Algeria by 121 French citizens - Manifeste des 121, transl. in English". marxists.org. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ^ "Référendum sur l'autodétermination en Algérie". Université Perpignan. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 5 September 2011.
- ^ S2CID 144891906.
- ^ Shepard, Todd The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008 page 183.
- ISBN 978-2-7564-0574-2.
- ISBN 978-0-670-61964-1.
- ^ "Proclamation des résultats du référendum d'autodétermination du 1er juillet 1962" (PDF). Journal Officiel de l'État Algérien. 6 July 1962. Retrieved 8 April 2009.
Total d'inscrits dans les 15 départements : 6.549.736 — Votants : 6.017.800 — Blancs ou nul : 25.565 — Suffrages exprimés : 5.992.115 — OUI : 5.975.581 — NON : 16.534
- ^ Eberhart, George M. “Biblio-Philately: Libraries and Librarians on World Postage Stamps.” American Libraries, vol. 13, no. 6, 1982, pp. 382–386.
- ^ Stora, Benjamin (1993). Histoire de la guerre d'Algérie. La Découverte.
- .
- ^ Bouchène, Abderrahmane (2014). "La Guerre d'Algérie, facteur de changement du système international" de Jeffrey James Byrne dans Histoire de l'Algérie à la période coloniale. La Découverte.
- ^ Westad, Odd Warne (2007). La guerre froide globale. Payot.
- ^ Kadri, Aïssa (2015). La guerre d'Algérie revisitée : nouvelles générations, nouveaux regards. Karthala.
- ^ a b Connelly, Matthew (2002). A diplomatic revolution : Algeria's fight for independence and the origins of the post-cold war era. Oxford University Press.
- ^ a b c Bouchène, Abderrahmane (2014). "L'action internationale du FLN" of Jeffrey James Byrne in Histoire de l'Algérie à la période coloniale. La Découverte.
- ^ a b Benjamin Stora, La torture pendant la guerre d'Algérie
- ^ ISBN 9780582414396.
- ^ a b Lazreg, Marnia. The Eloquence of Silence. London: Routledge, 1994 p. 120
- ^ Turshen, Meredith. "Algerian Women in the Liberation Struggle and the Civil War: From Active Participants to Passive Victims". Social Research Vol. 69 No. 3 (Fall 2002) p. 889-911, p.890
- ^ Vince, Natalya "Transgressing Boundaries: Gender, Race, Religion and 'Fracaises Musulmannes during Algerian War of Independence." French Historical Studies. Vol. 33 No. 3 (Summer 2010) pp. 445–474, p.445
- ^ Vlazna, Vacy (9 November 2017). "Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter – Book Review". Palestine Chronicle. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
- ISBN 978-1682570753.
- ISBN 9781847799203.
- ISBN 978-1317132288.
- ^ Rohlof, Caroline (2012). "Reality and Representation of Algerian Women: The Complex Dynamic of Heroines and Repressed Women". Illinois Wesleyan University.
- ^ "Alger Panse Ses Plaies". ina.fr. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ^ Philippe Denoix, "Harkis" in Encyclopædia Universalis, 2010
- ^ General Maurice Faivre, Les combattants musulmans de la guerre d'Algérie: des soldats sacrifiés, Editions L'Harmattan, 1995, p.124
- ^ On 19 March 1962 Joxe ordered attempts by French officers to transfer Harkis and their families to France to cease, followed by a statement that "the Auxiliary troops landing in the Metropolis in deviation from the general plan will be sent back to Algeria".
- ^ "Chirac hails Algerians who fought for France", The Telegraph 26 September 2001
- ^ "France returns Algerian remains as nations mend ways". www.aa.com.tr.
- ^ "France admits torture during Algeria's war of independence". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
- ^ Guy Pervillé, La Guerre d'Algérie, PUF, 2007, p. 115.
- ^ Voir « Mémoire et histoire de la guerre d’Algérie, de part et d’autre de la Méditerranée », Guy Pervillé, page 157-68 in Confluences Méditerranée (No. 19), automne 1996.
- ISBN 978-0-06-085224-5.
- ISBN 978-1-4472-3343-5.
It was undeniably and horribly savage , bringing death to an estimated one million Muslim Algerians and the expulsion from their homes of approximately the same number of European settlers.
- ISBN 978-0-19-533402-9.
Alistair Horne estimates one million Algerians and twenty thousand French were casualties of the war.
- ^ Clayton, Anthony (2001). Frontiersmen: Warfare In Africa Since 1950. p. 34.
- .
- ISBN 9780415531252.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-165279-0.
- ISBN 9781134713301.
Reports of French soldiers, especially members from the French Legion, cutting up pregnant women's bellies were not uncommon during the war
- ISBN 978-2-7071-8309-5.
- ^ a b "Prise de tête Marcel Bigeard, un soldat propre ?". L'Humanité (in French). 24 June 2000. Retrieved 15 February 2007.
- ]
- ^ Henri Pouillot, mon combat contre la torture Archived 2007-10-20 at the Wayback Machine, El Watan, 1 November 2004.
- Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League), 10 January 2007. Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ THE FRENCH ARMY AND TORTURE DURING THE ALGERIAN WAR (1954–1962), Raphaëlle Branche, Université de Rennes, 18 November 2004
- ISBN 978-1-59017-218-6.
- ^ Text published in Vérité Liberté n°9 May 1961.
- ISBN 978-1-58826-608-8.
- ISBN 9782914968409.
- ISBN 9780252036941.
- ^ Mohamed Harbi, La guerre d'Algérie
- ^ Raphaëlle Branche, La torture et l'armée pendant la guerre d'Algérie, 1954–1962, Paris, Gallimard, 2001 See also The French Army and Torture During the Algerian War (1954–1962) Archived 2007-10-20 at the Wayback Machine, Raphaëlle Branche, Université de Rennes, 18 November 2004 (in English)
- ^ David Huf, Between a Rock and a Hard Place: France and Algeria, 1954–1962
- ^ "L'accablante confession du général Aussaresses sur la torture en Algérie". Le Monde. 3 May 2001.
- ^ "Guerre d'Algérie: le général Bigeard et la pratique de la torture". Le Monde. 4 July 2000. Archived from the original on 19 February 2010.
- ^ Torture Bigeard: " La presse en parle trop " Archived June 24, 2005, at the Wayback Machine, L'Humanité, May 12, 2000 (in French)
- ^ La torture pendant la guerre d'Algérie / 1954 – 1962 40 ans après, l'exigence de vérité Archived 2007-02-09 at the Wayback Machine, AIDH
- ^ Guerre d'Algérie: Mgr Joseph Doré et Marc Lienhard réagissent aux déclarations du général Bigeard justifiant la pratique de la torture par l'armée française Archived 2007-11-05 at the Wayback Machine, Le Monde, July 15, 2000 (in French)
- Archive-It
- ^ "France admits systematic torture during Algeria war for first time". The Guardian. 13 September 2018.
- ^ Genin, Aaron (30 April 2019). "France Resets African Relations: a Potential Lesson for President Trump". The California Review. Retrieved 1 May 2019.
- ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 1 May 2019.
- S2CID 162123460.
- ISBN 9781101638033.
- ISBN 9780313353826.
- ^ a b c Colonialism Through the School Books – The hidden history of the Algerian war, Le Monde diplomatique, April 2001 (in English and French)
- ^ a b c d e f g Dine, Philip (2000). France At War In the Twentieth Century A la recherche du soldat perdu: Myth, Metaphor and Memory in the French Cinema of the Algerian War. Berghahan Books. p. 144.
- ^ S2CID 154576215.
- ^ a b c Bringing down the barriers – people's memories of the Algerian War Archived July 5, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, interview with Benjamin Stora published on the Institut national de l'audiovisuel archive website (in English)
- S2CID 145083214.
- ^ "Français, histoire - Écoles, collège". Archived from the original on 17 February 2001. Retrieved 19 February 2007.
- ^ Rapport préliminaire de la commission prévention du groupe d'études parlementaire sur la sécurité intérieure – Sur la prévention de la délinquance, presided by the deluty Jacques-Alain Bénisti, October 2004 (in French)
- Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League), and Final version of the Bénisti report given to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy(in French)
- ^ The French Army and Torture during the Algerian War (1954–1962) Archived 2008-12-11 at the Wayback Machine, Raphaëlle Branche, Université de Rennes, 18 November 2004 (in English)
- ^ "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France – False memory", Le Monde diplomatique, June 2001 (in English and French)
- ^ Bancel, Blanchard and Lemaire (op.cit.) quote **Boucif Mekhaled, Chroniques d'un massacre. 8 mai 1945. Sétif, Guelma, Kherrata, Syros, Paris, 1995 **Yves Benot, Massacres coloniaux, La Découverte, coll. "Textes à l'appui", Paris, 1994
- Annie Rey-Goldzeiguer, Aux origines de la guerre d'Algérie, La Découverte, Paris, 2001.
- .
Sources
- Library of Congress Country Study of Algeria
Further reading
- Bradby, David. "Images of the Algerian war on the French stage 1988-1992." French Cultural Studies 5.14 (1994): 179-189.
- Clayton, Anthony. The wars of French decolonization (1994).
- Dine, Philip. Images of the Algerian War: French fiction and film, 1954-1992 (Oxford UP, 1994).
- Galula, David (1963). Pacification in Algeria: 1956–1958. OCLC 227297246. Primary source
- A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962(1978). In-depth narrative.
- LeJeune, John. "Revolutionary Terror and Nation-Building: Frantz Fanon and the Algerian Revolution." Journal for the Study of Radicalism 13.2 (2019): 1-44. online
- McDougall, James (2017). "The Impossible Republic: The Reconquest of Algeria and the Decolonization of France, 1945–1962". S2CID 148602270.
- McDougall, James (2006). ISBN 0-521-84373-1.
- McDougall, James (2017), A History of Algeria, Cambridge University Press
- Sartre, Jean-Paul (1968). On genocide.: And a summary of the evidence and the judgments of the International War Crimes Tribunal. Boston: Beacon Press. OL 5629332M.
- Shepard, Todd (2006). The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-4360-1.
- Charles R. Shrader, "The First Helicopter War: Logistics and Mobility in Algeria 1954-62," Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999.
Primary sources
- Camus, Albert. Resistance, rebellion, and death (1961); Essays from the pied noirs viewpoint
- De Gaulle, Charles. Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor (1971).
- Maier, Charles S., and Dan S. White, eds. The thirteenth of May: the advent of De Gaulle's Republic (Oxford University Press, 1968), French documents translated in English, plus excerpts from French and Algerian newspapers..
- Servan-Schreiber, Jean Jacques. Lieutenant in Algeria (1957). On French draftees viewpoint.
External links
- Algerian War Reading
- Algerian Independence Archive at marxists.org
- The short film French President Charles De Gaulle and the Six-Year War (1960) is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
- Algeria celebrates 50 years of independence – France keeps mum RFI English