For more than six decades the Algerian War of Independence served as a case study in how to achieve military success against an insurgent nationalist movement while still losing the larger political war. The eight-year war broke the back of the Fourth Republic and very nearly resulted in paratroopers launching a coup d’état against a government they felt had abandoned them. Ultimately the political cost of maintaining control in Algeria proved too steep to the French Republic despite very nearly annihilating the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (Henceforth FLN) as a coherent fighting force. A key element in this failure to secure Algeria lay in interference by the white settler population: the pieds-noirs. Numbering roughly one million alongside eight and a half million Muslims, the pieds-noirs placed constant pressure on the French government to dedicate more resources to “pacify” the local population on one hand, and actively antagonized native Muslims on the other. In doing so the white settler population introduced a brutal racial conflict that undermined every aspect of attempts by French authorities to reassert control in the face of a nationalist insurgency fueled by religious fervor and a century of resentment. As a result, the French military found its freedom of action steadily limited by mutual antagonisms between native Muslims and settlers, often forced into decisions that alienated both and guaranteed a cycle of ever increasing violence.[1]
In many ways Algeria occupies a curious position in the history of wars of decolonization. First, the presence of a very large settler population consisting of roughly 10-15% of the total population (Kenya and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe’s white population measured significantly less) dramatically altered the locus of political power in the country, and it provided a particularly inviting target for the FLN. This population, outnumbered in hostile territory clamored for more troops and more repressive measures to guarantee their security. Second, Algeria was considered a fundamental part of metropole France, not just an overseas possession like French Indochina or even elsewhere in French Africa. “Ici, c’est la France!” was a particularly common refrain amongst the pieds-noirs, and in the wake of the débâcle at Dien Bien Phu, the French military was especially determined to not let Algeria fall to nationalist rebels.[2] These two factors guaranteed that the French could not afford to let Algeria go peacefully in the same manner as its other colonial holdings, and forced the military to balance precariously the demands of settlers for security, the demands of native Algerians for self-determination, and the expectations of mainland French for an honorable exit.[3]
Immediately following the conclusion of the Second World War a riot against European settlers in the town of Sétif spread across Algeria like a wild brushfire as Muslims attacked settler-owned businesses and government functionaries, leaving a hundred Europeans dead. This outburst, fueled by post-war deprivation, was reported in lurid detail amongst the white population who then set out on the bloody work of repression and revenge.[4] In response to rumors of a general Muslim uprising, settlers in Guelma struck first, massacring 1,500 Muslims in the city own their own initiative.[5] With the direct assistance of the French military, thousands more were killed in summary executions and naval and aerial bombardments of suspect villages.[6] Here, in the first uprisings connected to Algerian nationalism, we can find the general pattern that will dominate remainder of the conflict: A terrorist attack by Algerian nationalists (later the FLN) followed up by extensive reprisals by both white settlers and the French military that further alienate the remaining Algerian population from the French cause. For many Muslims, the events of the summer of 1945 were events which “each of them felt… that some sort of armed uprising would sooner or later become necessary.”[7]
The uprisings at Sétif and elsewhere presented an existential threat to the white settlers as many found themselves under siege by people they had employed for years. In this way, the repression following Sétif reflects the interplay of two different dynamics, a French state eager to reassert its control over a significant portion of its territory and a white settler population terrified at the prospect of losing their position of supremacy in Algerian society. For the pieds-noirs, the aftermath bolstered their determination to refuse any reform that ran the risk of placing Muslims on an equal footing, as it would inevitably lead to nationalist rule and their annihilation. The French military, as a result of settler political lobbying, was obliged to place the restoration of order above and beyond any political or economic reform. Ironically, their intransigence made full-scale conflict inevitable in the following decade. [8]
The repression following the uprisings in the summer of 1945 largely subdued the fragmented Algerian nationalist movement for the better part of a decade, however the root of the issue remained unresolved as Algerians continued to live in crushing poverty despite the post-war economic boom in France.[9] This environment of resentment and deprivation provided fertile ground for the FLN, which was emerging slowly as the preeminent nationalist movement amongst Algerians. The FLN took the experience of Sétif to heart, acknowledging that as a tiny vanguard they could not go toe-to-toe with even isolated French military forces, and instead concentrated their efforts on the populations most crucial to the French effort: white settlers and moderate Muslims loyal to the French regime. By attacking pieds-noirs, the FLN guaranteed an outsized military (and in many cases, backed up by rioting settlers) response that inevitably caught other Muslims in the crossfire, driving more into the ranks of the FLN.[10] When the FLN attacked Muslims cooperating with the French administration, not only did they destroy potential vectors of intelligence , they eliminated political moderates who could seeking a democratic solution to the Algerian War. These ever elusive interlocuteurs valables with whom the French pinned their hopes on to negotiate an honorable peace by cutting out the FLN vanished from the scene. Caught between two fires, they were killed by the FLN or by settler vigilantes.[11]
In August 1955 the FLN launched another offensive targeting white settlers across northern Algeria referred to as the Philippeville Massacres. This offensive represented a significant step up from the All Saints’ Day rising the previous November, as more than a hundred were killed, often in brutal face-to-face fashion.[12] According to the FLN, the French response resulted in 12,000 Algerians were executed by French authorities.[13] For many, this marked the end of the “low-intensity” period of the conflict, and transformed it into an open war. For the FLN the attacks proved to be a massive psychological victory. Not only was the formula of baiting the French into bloody reprisals successful, it internationalized the conflict by making the FLN the only genuinely popular Algerian nationalist movement. Moderate Muslims in the Algerian Assembly condemned the blind repression, and ultimately resigned en-masse, rendering the Assembly as a white settler mouthpiece and robbing it of any political legitimacy in the eyes of native Algerians.[14] The “third way” of negotiating a path between settlers and Algerian nationalists was well and truly blockaded.
As the FLN concentrated its efforts in Algiers, a stronghold of white settler power, they directly attacked civilian targets from January to March 1957. For one FLN operative “a bomb causing the death of ten people and wounding fifty others is the equivalent on a psychological level to the loss of a French battalion” entirely justified their efforts.[15] The responsibility of policing the city fell into the hands of hardened French paratroopers, who all too eagerly took the same tactics they learned in fighting FLN guerillas in the interior and placed them in an urban context. Through the extensive use of terror backed by extrajudicial torture, the paras were able to penetrate the FLN’s networks in Algiers and forced them to implode in a welter of self-inflicted purges.[16] In a way the experiences of 1957 acted as a laboratory for larger offensives in 1959-1960 that proved immensely profitable for the French military. As in the “Battle of Algiers,” however, the means by which the military victory was achieved had profound political costs. Elsewhere the paras had hit their stride turning FLN agents and embarking on a program of forced resettlement to, in keeping with Mao’s dictum, separate the water from the fish. The paras felt they were on the verge of victory, but in reality, they had badly miscalculated the political reality. Despite the near-annihilation of the FLN they were no longer the miniscule vanguard of Algerian nationalism. Their two-pronged approach of instigating French reprisals to drive others into their ranks, and murdering those who tried to remain neutral, had won the population over to their side.[17]
Despite military successes the pieds-noirs’ aspirations of a French-Algeria were not shared by metropolitan France, who as time went on sought an honorable exit from the war. When Charles de Gaulle, after returning to power on a wave of support from conservatives in France as well as the pieds-noirs’ political lobby, proposed “self-determination.” For many, Algeria was as close to “pacified” as it ever was going to get, and that the time was right for the long-promised elections to determine Algeria’s future.[18] For the pieds-noirs it embodied the most grievous betrayal of their hopes and dreams. Fearing Algerian reprisal, and sensing the shaky loyalties of some para regiments, a number of settlers established their own militias such as the Front National Français.[19]With their roots in the counter-terrorist reprisals during the Battle for Algiers the FNF embarked on a campaign not just against FLN operatives but against Frenchmen as well. For these “ultras,” no negotiation with the perpetrators of the bombing of the Casino was possible. Instead, they faced the choice of either the “suitcase or the coffin,” believing that “to yield to majority rule would inevitably mean leaving Algeria either as corpses or refugees.”[20] An abortive “week of barricades” in January 1960 was only a dress rehearsal for a officers’ putsch that temporarily gained control of northern Algeria and shook de Gaulle’s government to the core. In a “war of transistors”, de Gaulle appealed directly to the soldiers in Algeria to remain loyal to the government, and only 25,000 out of the 400,000 soldiers stationed in Algeria defected to the rebel officers.[21] While the putsch was a failure, it clearly demonstrates the multi-layered tensions that were driving a wedge between metropolitan France and the pieds-noirs in Algeria.
Despite the failure of the putsch, which rather fancifully envisioned paratroopers dropping around Paris to the support of the remaining French army, the “ultras” continued operations. Reorganized as the Organization de l’Armée Secrète (OAS) their goal was to render untenable the ceasefire negotiations underway at Evian and “regain Muslim confidence from the FLN, and carry along the Europeans . . . to seize power in Algeria, in order to assume it one day in France.”[22] What it failed to realize was that after fifteen years of violent repression spearheaded by pieds-noirs, Muslims had no confidence to gain let alone reestablish the status-quo ante of white settler supremacy. Not content to act only in Algeria the OAS embarked on a bombing campaign in mainland France on a scale to which the FLN could only aspire.[23] As murder squads roamed Algiers machine-gunning cafés indiscriminately, a four-year-old child was badly disfigured by glass from a bomb set off by OAS in Paris. “Although the atrocity against Delphine would have been regarded as little more than an everyday event in contemporary Algiers… it provoked a wave of horror and condemnation of the OAS.”[24] The OAS had gone too far, and soon the French government employed the same tactics against them that were perfected against the FLN, that of torture, turncoats, and imprisonment. Their goal of rendering Algeria ungovernable had backfired and in fact guaranteed that their fellow settlers would have to make their final choice following Algerian independence: the suitcase or the coffin.
In sum, the French experience in Algeria is particularly unique in the larger framework of wars of decolonization. Unlike many Algeria possessed a large settler population that was extremely reactive to any reforms that may have rendered a revolutionary war unnecessary. Furthermore, upon the outbreak of hostilities, the outsized power the settler population had over metropole France demanded harsh measures against rebels. When compounded with the bitterness of many professional soldiers in the French Army over their “betrayal” in Indochina, an environment of alienation and suspicion permeated both the settler community and some levels of the French military. As a result, in spite of eliminating the FLN as a conventional fighting force, the concept of Algerian nationalism could not be stomped out, and ultimately overwhelmed efforts to stem the tide by force.
[1] Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, (New York: New York Review of Books, 2007), 2-6, 51-52.
[2] This was further complicated by the large number of officers in the French military with pied-noir roots, such as Marshal Alphonse Juin, who found himself cashiered after the abortive putsch in 1962.
[3] Martin Evans, Algeria: France’s Undeclared War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), xiv. The discovery of significant oil deposits in the Sahara compounded this issue.
[4] Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 26.
[5] Evans, Algeria, 89.
[6] As per Horne, the total count will probably never be known, a report following the uprising “placed the figure at between 1,020 and 1,300; while Cairo radio immediately claimed that 45,000 had been killed.” Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 27.
[7] Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 28.
[8] Evans, Algeria, 94. One of the major obstacles was the Algerian Assembly, which needed to approve legislation from mainland France, and was dominated by white settler representatives. As a result, repeated attempts to pass reform proposals by successive governments of the Fourth Republic were rejected by procedural jiggery pokery.
[9] Evans, Algeria, 112. By 1954 roughly one million Muslims were underemployed with a further two million totally unemployed. Pied-noir obstructionism, however, isn’t solely to blame, as the first half of the 1950s the French government was distracted by other international affairs in Indochina, as well as within NATO.
[10] Inevitably, as reservists from mainland France were called in to Algeria, the pattern of FLN ambush and vicious reprisal by young, scared men who knew nothing of Algerian culture, created its own internal logic.
[11] Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 100-101.
[12] Evans, Algeria, 140-141. One of the victims, notably, was the leader of a more moderate faction of Algerian nationalists.
[13] In many cases, Algerians were lynched by white settlers while the army stood on.
[14] Evans, Algeria, 142.
[15] Evans, Algiers, 202.
[16] Max Boot, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (New York: Liveright, 2013), 372.
[17] Evans, Algeria, 249.
[18] Evans, Algeria, 261-262, 269.
[19] Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 349.
[20] Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 352.
[21] Evans, Algeria, 297.
[22] Boot, Invisible Armies, 375. Evans, Algeria, 305.
[23] It reached such a slang term developed to describe the employment of plastic explosives to destroy a building: plastiqué
[24] Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 503.
Le Grognard 