Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
159. The War of Algeria’s Independence – 5
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Violence begets violence. In retribution for the riots at Setiff, the French army and the colony perpetrated widespread massacres. This in turn nurtured Algerian resentment and armed attacks on French installations inviting more vicious retribution in return. The colons were particularly vicious, carrying out deadly raids on Muslim quarters in which innocent men, women and children were slaughtered. The moderates who sought an accommodation with France were increasingly marginalized. The Algerian merchant in the coastal cities as well as the farmer in the highlands came to the conclusion that armed struggle was the only way to throw off the French yoke. What was a political issue became a war of attrition with increasing ferocity in which it was hard to separate the victims from the victimizers but in which the Algerian Muslims were the primary sufferers.
Even in the midst of this mayhem, the voices of moderation were not silent. Ferhat Abbas, the moderate nationalist, who prepared the Algerian People’s Manifesto in 1943, founded the Democratic Union of Algerian Manifesto (UDMA) in 1946. This party stood for political accommodation with France and a resolution of the conflict based on dialogue and compromise. In the initial phases of the War of Independence, during 1954-55, Ferhat Abbas and his party were lukewarm towards the armed insurrection. So were the ulema. It was not until 1956, with positions hardening on both sides, and avenues for compromise exhausted that Ferhat Abbas joined the FLN.
The FLN did not represent all shades of opinion in Algeria. The veteran Messeli Hadj, miffed at not being consulted by the FLN, founded the Mouvement Nationale Algerien (MNA) in 1954 as a rival organization to the FLN. The MNA found support among Algerian émigrés in France and also received covert support from the French government to weaken the influence of the FLN. A war of attrition between the FLN and the MNA ensued spanning both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. Many thousands died during the so called “café wars” in Paris between the protagonists of the two political parties. Ultimately, the Armee de Liberation Narionalale (ALN), the military arm of the FLN, gained the upper hand, and the MNA lost out on both political and military fronts.
Using Cairo as its base, the FLN organized its political and military activities with the dual aim of soliciting Arab public support and compelling the French to the negotiating table. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt was an ardent Arab nationalist and the FLN received his blessing as well as his full political backing. In the anti-colonial atmosphere of the post World War II world, the Algerians also received moral and political support from the emerging Afro-Asian countries. The FNL set up a Comité Révolutionnaire d’Unité et d’Action-CRUA in Cairo. Its nine executive members, Ait Ahmed, Ben Bella, Rabah Bitat, Moustafa Ben Boulaid, Mohamed Boudiaf, Mourad Didouch, Mohamed Khider, Belkacem Krim and Larbi Ben M’Hidi formed the brain trust behind the Revolution. Local political committees were established to influence workers’ union, students, intellectuals and women’s groups. For effective armed action, the CRUA divided Algeria into wilayets and Kasbahs with local commanders assigned to each cell. The decentralized units were autonomous and could initiate military contact at opportune moments. It was classic asymmetrical warfare, which pitted a diffuse, highly motivated insurgency against a centralized, modern French army.
The initial phases of the insurrection witnessed low intensity combat. The FLN stages hit and run attacks against army and police installations, avoiding pitched battles against a superior military force and melted into the local population from whom they drew their moral and material support. The French, who viewed the conflict as a pacification program, confined their initial attacks to FLN positions. The situation changed when the FLN operatives killed scores of civilians in Skikda in August 1955. In retribution, the governor Jacques Soustelle unleashed a rain of terror. The French army raided Muslim Kasbahs, bombed villages and killed, according to some accounts, over 12,000 civilians. In this asymmetrical warfare, the settler Pied-Noir gangs took a leading part. What had started as a pacification program now became a full-fledged war. France, which had fewer than 60,000 troops at the start of the war, now had an army of over 400,000 battling the insurgents. The repression and cruelty of the French army and of the settlers further radicalized Algerian political opinion. The moderates, with no quarters to hide, increasingly drifted to the FLN position that armed resistance was the only way to achieve independence.
On the political front, the issue of Algerian independence was brought before the General Assembly of the United Nations by the Arab states and was supported by the Soviet Union and the emerging nations. To influence the debate at the UN session of September 1956, the FLN initiated a major military campaign in Algiers. Merchants shuttered their doors and the city was virtually shut down. The offices of the French airlines were bombed. The French responded with a major offensive killing many innocent civilians in the process. The battle had an impact on the UN debate and the resolution for Algerian independence passed by an overwhelming majority.
Egyptian support for Algerian independence was a major factor in France joining with Great Britain and Israel for an attack on the Suez Canal in October 1956. In a lightning strike, Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula while a joint Anglo-French force occupied the Suez Canal region. However, the opposition of both the United States and the Soviet Union forced the occupiers to withdraw. The Suez crisis was a major milestone in the 20 th century because it demonstrated to the world that the era of the European colonial powers had ended and a new era dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union had begun.
Undeterred by world opinion, France continued its brutal crackdown in Algeria. Soustelle’s successor, Lacoste applied repressive measures with increasing severity. In addition to the French army, the Muslim population endured savage attacks by colon vigilantes and police action by the Harkis who were Algerians who sided with the French in the fight. The French used covert operations to divide the FLN rank and file. Psychological warfare was used to infuse terror into the hearts of the Algerian population. In 1957 Salan succeeded Lacoste and carried the colonial war to new levels of barbarity. Salan divided Algeria into wards. Each ward manned by a platoon of French troops. Trenches, road blocks and walls were installed to preclude movement between wards. Tanks, armored units and helicopters were used with impunity against defenseless civilians. Napalm was used to destroy villages. More than two million villagers were herded into concentration camps where they lived in the most abominal conditions. This wholesale forced migration of population caused entire villages to be deserted, their orchards untended, fields laid desolate for lack of cultivation. Political prisoners were tortured to death and their deaths classified as suicides. A common punishment for political activists was to be dumped in the ocean from airplanes. Once, when a group of insurgents and civilians sought refuge in a cave, the French walled up the entrance to the cave and left the refugees die in the caves without food and water. Opinions vary, but it is estimated that over a million Algerians were killed by the French and vigilante colonial gangs during the Algerian War of Independence. This was roughly twelve percent of the population of France in 1954. Very few nations of the world had to endure this level of colonial savagery. The president of Algeria, (Abdelaziz Bouteflika), once called the wartime slaughter, a “genocide”.
By 1958, the French had effectively contained the Algerian insurgency and could genuinely claim that they had won the military conflict. However, the conflict in Algeria was not military; it was political. It was for the independence of a land, for the reclamation of its very soul. The French won the battle but lost the war.
The widespread use of torture and the brutalities committed by the French armed forces, caused revulsion in France. Public opinion was divided. The divisions were most apparent in the National Assembly which was split into three camps-the socialists, the left-wing Stalinists, and the right wing MRP. The right-wing parties were adamant about keeping Algeria French and conceding as little as possible to the Muslim Algerians. The socialists favored some kind of accommodation which, while keeping Algeria French would bestow basic rights to the Algerians. The communists and the left-wing parties favored a withdrawal. As the debate became intense, the army and the right-wing colons became concerned that a weak government, divided between the CP, the SP and the MRP might withdraw from Algeria leaving its influential European population in the lurch.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
