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The Algerian War
The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of Independence or the Algerian Revolution (Arabic: الثورة الجزائريةAth-Thawra Al-Jazā’iriyya; French: Guerre d'Algérie, "Algerian War") was a war between France and the Algerianindependence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France. An importantdecolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, terrorism, the use oftorture by both sides, and counter-terrorism operations. The conflict was also a civil war between loyalist Algerians believing in a French Algeria and their insurrectionist Algerian Muslim counterparts.[5] Effectively started by members of the National Liberation Front (FLN) on November 1, 1954, during the Toussaint Rouge ("Red All Saints' Day"), the conflict shook the foundations of the French Fourth Republic (1946–58) and led to its eventual collapse. In 1961, president Charles de Gaulledecided to give up Algeria—which was up to then regarded as an integral part of France—after conducting a referendum showing huge support for Algerian independence. The planned withdrawal led to a state crisis, to various assassinationattempts on de Gaulle, and some attempts of military coups. Most of the former were carried out by the Organisation de l'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 in both Algeria and the homeland to stop the planned independence. At the time when the independence came into force in 1962, 900 000 European-stemming Algerians (Pieds-noirs) fled to France, in fear of the FLN's revenge, within a few months. The government was totally unprepared for the vast number of refugees who caused significant turmoil in France. The greatest part of the Algerians having worked for the French were deliberately left behind, though de Gaulle himself estimated a ″bloodbath″ among them once the French would be gone. Especially the Harkis, having fought as soldiers on the side of the French army, were regarded as traitors by the FLN. Between 50 000 and 150 000 Harkis and family members, disarmed by their leaving French officers, were murdered by the FLN or lynch-mobs, often after being atrociously abducted and tortured. About 91 000 managed to flee to France, some with help from their French officers acting against orders, and today form a significant part of the Algerian-stemming french population. The Algerian War has long been treated as a taboo by French authorities, only in 1999 the national assemblypassed a law officially allowing to use the term "Algerian War" instead of a number of previous euphemistic paraphrases.[6] Today, the conflict is widely regarded as a prototype of a modern asymmetrical war with regular military fighting informalinsurgents recruited from the civilian population. The unconventional, often illegal and human rights violating counter-insurgency measures applied by the French military against the FLN, namely torture, forced disappearances and illegal executions, were widely regarded as militarily successful, but also to have significantly weakened the French position due to the ensuing moral and political controversy. Similar measures were later employed in a number of conflicts, especially during the 1970s and 1980s era of right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America battling and often killing any potential opposition in what became known under the Argentinian term Dirty War (Guerra Sucia). According to a number of sources, this happened with the official assistance of French military advisors and also exiled OAS-members, besides support from the US military and intelligence agencies such as for the covert multinational search-and-kill Operation Condor. Early during the occupation of Iraq, the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict of the Pentagon used the famous1966 semi-documentary movie The Battle of Algiers as a show case for successfully defeating an insurgency and yet losing the "war of ideas".
The war involved a large number of rival movements which fought against each other at different moments, such as on the independence side, when the National Liberation Front(FLN) fought viciously against the Algerian National Movement (MNA) in Algeria and in the Café Wars on the French mainland; on the pro-French side, during its final months, when the conflict evolved into a civil war between pro-French hardliners in Algeria and supporters of President Charles de Gaulle. The French Army split during two attempted coups, while the right-wing Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) fought against both the FLN and the French government's forces.
Under directives from Guy Mollet's French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) government and from François Mitterrand, who was minister of the interior, the French Army initiated a campaign of "pacification" of what was considered at the time to be a full part of France. This "public-order operation" quickly grew to a full-scale war. Algerians, who had at first largely favored a peaceful resolution, turned increasingly toward the goal of independence, supported by Arab countries and, more generally, by worldwide opinion fueled by anti-colonialist ideas. Meanwhile, the French were divided on the issues of "French Algeria" (l'Algérie Française), specifically, concerning whether to keep the status-quo, negotiate a status intermediate between independence and complete integration in the French Republic, or allow complete independence. The French army finally obtained a military victory in the war, but the situation had changed, and Algerian independence could no longer be forestalled. Because of the instability in France, the French Fourth Republic was dissolved. Charles de Gaulle returned to power during the May 1958 crisis and subsequently founded the Fifth Republic with his Gaullist followers. De Gaulle's return to power was supposed to ensure Algeria's continued occupation and integration with the French Community, which had replaced the French Union and brought together France's colonies. However, de Gaulle progressively shifted in favor of Algerian independence, purportedly seeing it as inevitable. De Gaulle organized a vote for the Algerian people. The Algerians chose independence, and France engaged in negotiations with the FLN, leading to the March 1962 Evian Accords, which resulted in the independence of Algeria. After the failed April 1961 Algiers putsch, organized by generals hostile to the negotiations headed by Michel Debré's Gaullist government, the OAS (Organisation de l'armée secrète), which grouped various opponents of Algerian independence, initiated a campaign of bombings. It also initiated peaceful strikes and demonstrations in Algeria in order to block the implementation of the Evian Accords and the exile of the pieds-noirs (Algerians of European origin). Ahmed Ben Bella, who had been arrested in 1956 along with other FLN leaders, became the first President of Algeria. To this day, the war has provided an important strategy frame for counter-insurgency thinkers, while the use of torture by the French Army has provoked a moral and political debate on the legitimacy and effectiveness of such methods. This debate is far from being settled because torture was used by both sides. The Algerian war was a founding event in modern Algerian history. It was not until June 1999, 37 years after the conclusion of the conflict, that the French National Assemblyofficially acknowledged that a "war" had taken place,[9] while the Paris massacre of 1961 was recognized by the French state only in October 2001. On the other hand, the Oran massacre of 1962 by the FLN has also not yet been recognized by the Algerian state.
Date 1 November 1954 – 19 March 1962
(7 years, 4 months, 2 weeks and 4 days)
Location French Algeria
Result French military victory FLN political victory Évian Accords •Algerian independence •Exodus of the Pieds-Noirs Belligerents
FLN (ALN) MNA France FAF
(1960–61)
OAS
(1961–62) Commanders and leaders Saadi Yacef Mustapha Benboulaïd † Ferhat Abbas Houari Boumedienne Hocine Aït Ahmed Ahmed Ben Bella Krim Belkacem Frantz Fanon Larbi Ben M'Hidi † Rabah Bitat Mohamed Boudiaf Ali La Pointe Paul Cherrière(1954–55) Henri Lorillot(1955–56) Raoul Salan(1956–58) Jacques Massu(1956–60) Paul Aussaresses Maurice Challe(1958–60) Jean Crepin(1960–61) Fernand Gambiez (1961)
Pierre Lagaillarde Raoul Salan Edmond Jouhaud Jean-Jacques Susini
30,000 identified 40,000 civilian support 470,000 (maximum reached and maintained from 1956-1962)[1] plus 90,000Harkis 3,000 (OAS) Casualties and losses 253,000 dead[2][3] unknown number of wounded 25,600 dead 65,000 wounded 100 dead (OAS) 2,000 jailed (OAS) 500,000–1,500,000 total Algerian war dead[4] Both Muslim and European Algerians took part in World War I, fighting for France. Algerian Muslims served as tirailleurs (such regiments were created as early as 1842[15]) and spahis ; and French settlers as Zouaves or Chasseurs d'Afrique. With Wilson's 1918 proclamation of the Fourteen Points, whose fifth point proclaimed: "A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined", some Algerian intellectuals—dubbed oulémas began to nurture the desire for independence or, at least, autonomy and self-rule. Within this context, a grandson of Abd el-Kadir, spearheaded the resistance against the French in the first half of the 20th century. He was a member of the directing committee of the French Communist Party (PCF)). In 1926, he founded the Étoile Nord-Africaine (North African Star) party, to which Messali Hadj, also a member of the PCF and of its affiliated trade union, the Confédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU), joined the following year. The North African Star broke from the PCF in 1928, before being dissolved in 1929 at Paris's demand. Amid growing discontent from the Algerian population, the Third Republic (1871–1940) acknowledged some demands, and the Popular Front initiated the Blum-Viollette proposal in 1936 which was supposed to enlighten the Indigenous Code by giving French citizenship to a small number of Muslims. The pieds-noirs (Algerians of European origin) violently demonstrated against it and the North African Party opposed it, leading to the project's abandonment. The pro-independence party was dissolved in 1937, and its leaders were charged with the illegal reconstitution of a dissolved league, leading to Messali Hadj's 1937 founding of the Parti du peuple algérien (Algerian People's Party, PPA), which, at this time, no longer espoused full independence but only extensive autonomy. This new party was dissolved in 1939. Under Vichy, the French state attempted to abrogate the Crémieux decree in order to suppress the Jews' French citizenship, but the measure was never implemented. On the other hand, nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas founded the Algerian Popular Union (Union populaire algérienne) in 1938, while writing in 1943 the Algerian People's Manifest (Manifeste du peuple algérien). Arrested after the Sétif massacre of May 8, 1945, during which the French Army and pieds-noirs mobs killed about 6,000 Algerians,[16] Abbas founded the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto (UDMA) in 1946 and was elected as a deputy. Founded in 1954, the National Liberation Front (FLN) succeeded Messali Hadj's Algerian People's Party (PPA), while its leaders created an armed wing, the Armée de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Army) to engage in an armed struggle against French authority. http://www.historytoday.com/martin-evans/french-resistance-and-algerian-war