The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of Independence or the Algerian

Revolution (Arabic: ‫ الثورة الجزائرية‬Al-thawra Al-Jazaa'iriyya; Berber languages: Tagrawla

Tadzayrit; French: Guerre d'Algérie or Révolution algérienne) was fought between France and the
Algerian National Liberation Front (French: Front de Libération Nationale – FLN) from 1954 to 1962,
which led to Algeria winning its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was
a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, and the use of torture. The
conflict also became a civil war between the different communities and within the
communities.[23] The war took place mainly on the territory of Algeria, with repercussions
in metropolitan France. France was backed by the USA. But as the war dragged on the French
public turned sharply against the French participation in the war.
Effectively started by members of the National Liberation Front (FLN) on 1 November 1954, during
the Toussaint Rouge ("Red All Saints' Day"), the conflict led to serious political crises in France,
causing the fall of the Fourth French Republic (1946–58) replaced by the Fifth Republic with a
strengthened Presidency. The brutality of the methods employed by the French forces failed to win
hearts and minds in Algeria, alienated support in metropolitan France and discredited French
prestige abroad.[24][25]
After major demonstrations in Algiers and several other cities in favor of independence
(1960)[26][27] and a United Nations resolution recognizing the right to independence,[28] Charles de
Gaulle, the first President of the Fifth Republic, decided to open a series of negotiations with the
FLN. These concluded with the signing of the Évian Accords in March 1962. A referendum took
place on 8 April 1962 and the French electorate approved the Évian Accords. The final result was
91% in favor of the ratification of this agreement[29] and on 1 July, the Accords were subject to
a second referendum in Algeria, where 99.72% voted for independence and just 0.28% against.[30]
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.
Upon independence in 1962, 900,000 European-Algerians (Pieds-noirs) fled to France within a few
months in fear of the FLN's revenge. The French government was totally unprepared for the vast
number of refugees, which caused turmoil in France. The majority of Algerian Muslims who had
worked for the French were disarmed and left behind as the treaty between French and Algerian
authorities declared that no actions could be taken against them.[31] However, the Harkis in particular,
having served as auxiliaries with the French army, were regarded as traitors and many were
murdered by the FLN or by lynch-mobs, often after being abducted and tortured.[14]:537[32] About 90,000
managed to flee to France,[33] some with help from their French officers acting against orders, and as
of 2016 they and their descendants form a significant part of the Algerian-French population.

Contents

 1Background: French Algeria

o 1.1Conquest of Algeria
o 1.2Algerian nationalism
 2War chronology
o 2.1Beginning of hostilities
o 2.2FLN
o 2.3After the Philippeville massacre
o 2.4Battle of Algiers
 o 2.5Guerrilla war
o 2.6French counter-insurgency operations
o 2.7Fall of the Fourth Republic
o 2.8De Gaulle
o 2.9Week of barricades
o 2.10Role of women
o 2.11End of the war
 3Strategy of internationalisation of the Algerian War led by the FLN
 4Pieds-Noirs' and Harkis' exodus
o 4.1Pieds-noirs
o 4.2Harkis
 5Death toll
 6Lasting effects in Algerian politics
 7Torture
o 7.1French use of torture
o 7.2Algerian use of terror
 8French school
 9Historiography
o 9.1INA archives
o 9.2Contemporary publications
o 9.3Other publications
 9.3.1English language
 9.3.2French language
 10Films
 11See also
 12References
 13Further reading
 14External links

Background: French Algeria[edit]

Main articles: French rule in Algeria, Pacification of Algeria, and Nationalism and resistance in
Algeria

Conquest of Algeria[edit]
Main article: French conquest of Algeria
Battle of Somah in 1836

Arrival of Marshal Randon in Algiers in 1857

On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algeria in 1830.[14]: Directed by Marshall
Bugeaud, who became the first Governor-General of Algeria, the conquest was violent, marked by a
"scorched earth" policy designed to reduce the power of the native rulers, the Dey, including
massacres, mass rapes, and other atrocities.[34][35] Between 500,000 and 1,000,000, from
approximately 3 million Algerians, were killed within the first three decades of the
conquest.[36][37] French losses from 1830–51 were 3,336 killed in action and 92,329 dead in the
hospital.[38]
In 1834, Algeria became a French military colony and was subsequently declared by the constitution
of 1848 to be an integral part of France and divided into
three departments: Alger, Oran and Constantine. Many French and other Europeans (Spanish,
Italians, Maltese, and others) later settled in Algeria.
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 considered a kind of 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.[39]
Prior to 1870, fewer than 200 demands were registered by Muslims and 152 by Jewish
Algerians.[40] The 1865 decree was then modified by the 1870 Crémieux decrees, which
granted French nationality to Jews living in one of the three Algerian departments. In 1881, the Code
de l'Indigénat made the discrimination official by creating specific penalties for indigènes and
organizing the seizure or appropriation of their lands.[40]
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 the
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.[41][dubious – discuss]
Algeria was unique to France because, unlike all other overseas possessions acquired by France
during the 19th century, only Algeria was considered and legally classified an integral part of France.

Algerian nationalism[edit]
1954 film about French Algeria

Both Muslim and European Algerians took part in World War II, fighting for France. Algerian Muslims
served as tirailleurs (such regiments were created as early as 1842[42]) and spahis; and French
settlers as Zouaves or Chasseurs d'Afrique. With Wilson's 1918 proclamation of the Fourteen Points,
the fifth reading: "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[43].
Within this context, a grandson[who?] 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.[44]
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.[citation needed]
On the other hand, nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas founded the Algerian Popular Union (Union
populaire algérienne) in 1938. In 1943 Abbas wrote the Algerian People's Manifesto (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,[14]:27 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. France, which had just lost Indochina, was determined
not to lose the next anti-colonial war, particularly not in its oldest and nearest major colony, which
was regarded as an integral part of the republic[45].

War chronology[edit]
Beginning of hostilities[edit]

Algerian rebel fighters in the mountains

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 Toussaint Rouge (Red All-Saints'
Day). From Cairo, the FLN broadcast a proclamation calling on Muslims in Algeria to join in a
national struggle for the "restoration of the Algerian state – sovereign, democratic and social – within
the framework of the principles of Islam." It was the reaction of Premier Pierre Mendès
France (Radical-Socialist Party), who only a few months before had completed the liquidation of
France's tete empire in Indochina, which set the tone of French policy for five years. He declared in
the National Assembly, "One does not compromise when it comes to defending the internal peace of
the nation, the unity and integrity of the Republic. The Algerian departments are part of the French
Republic. They have been French for a long time, and they are irrevocably French. ... Between them
and metropolitan France there can be no conceivable secession." At first, and despite the Sétif
massacre of 8 May 1945, and the pro-Independence struggle before World War II, most Algerians
were in favor of a relative status-quo. While Messali Hadj had radicalized by forming the FLN, Ferhat
Abbas maintained a more moderate, electoral strategy. Fewer than 500 fellaghas (pro-
Independence fighters) could be counted at the beginning of the conflict.[46] The Algerian population
radicalized itself in particular because of the terrorist acts of French-sponsored Main Rouge (Red
Hand) group, which targeted anti-colonialists in all of the Maghreb region (Morocco, Tunisia and
Algeria), killing, for example, Tunisian activist Farhat Hached in 1952.[46]

FLN[edit]
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ALN R.A. propaganda poster in Algiers: "The Algerian Revolution, a people at war against colonialist barbarity"
(June 29, 1962, Rocher Noir)

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, Ferhat Abbas's Democratic Union of the
Algerian Manifesto (UDMA), the ulema, and the Algerian Communist Party (PCA) maintained a
friendly neutrality toward the FLN. The communists, who had made no move to cooperate in the
uprising at the start, later tried to infiltrate the FLN, but FLN leaders publicly repudiated the support
of the party. In April 1956, Abbas flew to Cairo, where he formally joined the FLN. This action
brought in many évolués who had supported the UDMA in the past. The AUMA also threw the full
weight of its prestige behind the FLN. Bendjelloul and the pro-integrationist moderates had already
abandoned their efforts to mediate between the French and the rebels.
After the collapse of the MTLD, the veteran nationalist Messali Hadj formed the leftist Mouvement
National Algérien (MNA), which advocated a policy of violent revolution and total independence
similar to that of the FLN, but aimed to compete with that organisation. The Armée de Libération
Nationale (ALN), the military wing of the FLN, subsequently wiped out the MNA guerrilla operation in
Algeria, and Messali Hadj's movement lost what little influence it had had there. However, the MNA
retained the support of many Algerian workers in France through the Union Syndicale des
Travailleurs Algériens (the Union of Algerian Workers). The FLN also established a strong
organization in France to oppose the MNA. The "Café wars", resulting in nearly 5,000 deaths, were
waged in France between the two rebel groups throughout the years of the War of Independence.

The six historical Leaders of the FLN: Rabah Bitat, Mostefa Ben Boulaïd, Mourad Didouche, Mohammed
Boudiaf, Krim Belkacem and Larbi Ben M'Hidi.

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. Frantz Fanon, a
psychiatrist from Martinique who became the FLN's leading political theorist, provided a
sophisticated intellectual justification for the use of violence in achieving national
liberation.[47] From Cairo, Ahmed Ben Bella ordered the liquidation of potential interlocuteurs
valables, those independent representatives of the Muslim community acceptable to the French
through whom a compromise or reforms within the system might be achieved.
As the FLN campaign of influence spread through the countryside, many European farmers in the
interior (called Pieds-Noirs), many of whom lived on lands taken from Muslim communities during
the nineteenth century,[48] sold their holdings and sought refuge in Algiers and other Algerian cities.
After a series of bloody, random massacres and bombings by Muslim Algerians in several towns and
cities, the French Pieds-Noirs and urban French population began to demand that the French
government engage in sterner countermeasures, including the proclamation of a state of emergency,
capital punishment for political crimes, denunciation of all separatists, and most ominously, a call for
'tit-for-tat' reprisal operations by police, military, and para-military forces. Colon vigilante units, whose
unauthorized activities were conducted with the passive cooperation of police authorities, carried
out ratonnades (literally, rat-hunts, raton being a racist term for denigrating Muslim Algerians)
against suspected FLN members of the Muslim community.
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[edit]

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Universal Newsreels Rebellion Spreads in North Africa, 1955

ALN guerrillas using a mortar across the Algerian-Tunisian border protected by the electrified Morice Line
(1958)

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 the massacre of Pieds-Noirs civilians by
the FLN near the town of Philippeville (now known as Skikda) in August 1955. Before this operation,
FLN policy was to attack only military and government-related targets. The commander of
the Constantine wilaya/region, however, decided a drastic escalation was needed. The killing by the
FLN and its supporters of 123 people, including 71 French,[49] including old women and babies,
shocked Jacques Soustelle into calling for more repressive measures against the rebels. The French
authorities stated that 1,273 guerrillas died in what Soustelle admitted were "severe" reprisals. The
FLN subsequently claimed that 12,000 Muslims were killed.[14]:122 Soustelle's repression was an early
cause of the Algerian population's rallying to the FLN.[49] After Philippeville, Soustelle declared
sterner measures and an all-out war began. In 1956, demonstrations by French Algerians caused
the French government to not make reforms.
Soustelle's successor, Governor General Lacoste, a socialist, abolished the Algerian Assembly.
Lacoste saw the assembly, which was dominated by pieds-noirs, as hindering the work of his
administration, and he undertook the rule of Algeria by decree. He favored stepping up French
military operations and granted the army exceptional police powers—a concession of dubious
legality under French law—to deal with the mounting political violence. At the same time, Lacoste
proposed a new administrative structure to give Algeria some autonomy and a decentralized
government. Whilst remaining an integral part of France, Algeria was to be divided into five districts,
each of which would have a territorial assembly elected from a single slate of candidates. Until 1958,
deputies representing Algerian districts were able to delay the passage of the measure by
the National Assembly of France.
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 French Air Force intercepted a Moroccan DC-3 bound for Tunis,
carrying Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohammed Boudiaf, Mohamed Khider and Hocine Aït Ahmed, and
forced it to land in Algiers. Lacoste had the FLN external political leaders arrested and imprisoned
for the duration of the war. This action caused the remaining rebel leaders to harden their stance.
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 British 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.[50] 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."[50] Another case that attracted much media attention was the murder
of Maurice Audin, a Communist mathematics professor at the University of Algiers and a suspected
FLN member whom the French Army arrested in June 1957.[50]:224 Audin was tortured and killed and
his body was never found.[50] 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.[50]
Existentialist writer, philosopher and playwright Albert Camus, native of Algiers, tried unsuccessfully
to persuade both sides to at least leave civilians alone, writing editorials against the use of torture
in Combat newspaper. The FLN considered him a fool, and some Pieds-Noirs considered him a
traitor. Nevertheless, in his speech when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, Camus said that
when faced with a radical choice he would eventually support his community. This statement made
him lose his status among left-wing intellectuals; when he died in 1960 in a car crash, the official
thesis of an ordinary accident (a quick open-and-shut case) left more than a few observers doubtful.
His widow claimed that Camus, though discreet, was in fact an ardent supporter of French Algeria in
the last years of his life.[citation needed]

Battle of Algiers[edit]
Main article: Battle of Algiers (1956–57)

Algiers: Muslim quarters (green), European quarters (orange), terrorist attacks

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[edit]

1956 newsreel about the 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. Kidnapping was commonplace, as were the ritual murder and mutilation of
civilians[51][dubious – discuss] (see Torture section).
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 Aurès, the Kabylie, and other mountainous areas around Constantine and south of
Algiers and Oran. In these places, the FLN established a simple but effective—although frequently
temporary—military administration that was able to collect taxes and food and to recruit manpower.
But it was never able to hold large, fixed positions.
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[edit]

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 colonial infantry airborne units 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,[52] which was depicted for the first time in the 2007 film L'Ennemi intime (Intimate
Enemies) by Florent Emilio Siri.[52]
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,[53] 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 platoon or smaller size units, attached to
French battalions, in a similar way as the Kit Carson Scouts by the U.S. in Vietnam. A third use was
an intelligence gathering role, with some reported minor pseudo-operations in support of their
intelligence collection.[54] U.S. military expert Lawrence E. Cline stated, "The extent of these pseudo-
operations appears to have been very limited both in time and scope. ... The most widespread use of
pseudo type operations was during the 'Battle of Algiers' in 1957. The principal French employer
of covert agents in Algiers was the Fifth Bureau, the psychological warfare branch. "The Fifth
Bureau" made extensive use of 'turned' FLN members, one such network being run by Captain Paul-
Alain Leger of the 10th Paras. "Persuaded" to work for the French forces included by the use of
torture and threats against their family; these agents "mingled with FLN cadres. They planted
incriminating forged documents, spread false rumors of treachery and fomented distrust. ... As a
frenzy of throat-cutting and disemboweling broke out among confused and suspicious FLN cadres,
nationalist slaughtered nationalist from April to September 1957 and did France's work for
her."[55] But this type of operation involved individual operatives rather than organized covert units.
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.[56] 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.[57]
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.[57][14]:255–7
Late in 1957, General Raoul Salan, commanding the French Army in Algeria, instituted a system
of quadrillage (surveillance using a grid pattern), dividing the country into sectors, each permanently
garrisoned by troops responsible for suppressing rebel operations in their assigned territory. Salan's
methods sharply reduced the instances of FLN terrorism but tied down a large number of troops in
static defense. Salan also constructed a heavily patrolled system of barriers to limit infiltration from
Tunisia and Morocco. The best known of these was the Morice Line (named for the French defense
minister, André Morice), which consisted of an electrified fence, barbed wire, and mines over a 320-
kilometer stretch of the Tunisian border.
Electrified barriers along the entire length of Algeria's eastern and western borders

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.[58]
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[22] were removed from their villages, mostly in the mountainous areas, and resettled in the
plains, where it was difficult to reestablish their previous economic and social systems. Living
conditions in the fortified villages were poor. In hundreds of villages, orchards and croplands not
already burned by French troops went to seed for lack of care. These population transfers effectively
denied the use of remote villages to FLN guerrillas, who had used them as a source of rations and
manpower, but also caused significant resentment on the part of the displaced villagers. Relocation's
social and economic disruption continued to be felt a generation later.
The French Army shifted its tactics at the end of 1958 from dependence on quadrillage to the use of
mobile forces deployed on massive search-and-destroy missions against FLN strongholds. In 1959,
Salan's successor, General Maurice Challe, appeared to have suppressed major rebel resistance,
but political developments had already overtaken the French Army's successes.

Fall of the Fourth Republic[edit]

Main article: May 1958 crisis

French soldiers in Algeria, 1958

Recurrent cabinet crises focused attention on the inherent instability of the Fourth Republic and
increased the misgivings of the army and of the pieds-noirs that the security of Algeria was being
undermined by party politics. Army commanders chafed at what they took to be inadequate and
incompetent political initiatives by the government in support of military efforts to end the rebellion.
The feeling was widespread that another debacle like that of Indochina in 1954 was in the offing and
that the government would order another precipitate pullout and sacrifice French honor to political
expediency. Many saw in de Gaulle, who had not held office since 1946, the only public figure
capable of rallying the nation and giving direction to the French government.
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 coup d'état, bringing together dissident army officers and pieds-noirs with sympathetic
Gaullists. An army junta under General Massu seized power in Algiers on the night of May 13,
thereafter known as the May 1958 crisis. General Salan assumed leadership of a Committee of
Public Safety formed to replace the civil authority and pressed the junta's demands that de Gaulle be
named by French president René Coty to head a government of national unity invested with
extraordinary powers to prevent the "abandonment of Algeria."
On May 24, French paratroopers from the Algerian corps landed on Corsica, taking the French
island in a bloodless action, Opération Corse. 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[edit]
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, 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, opposition to the conflict was growing among the population,
notably the French Communist Party, then one of the country's strongest political forces, which was
supporting the Algerian Revolution. Thousands of relatives of conscripts and reserve soldiers
suffered loss and pain; revelations of torture and the indiscriminate brutality the army visited on 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".[59] International pressure was also building on France to grant Algeria independence.
Since 1955, the UN General Assembly annually considered the Algerian question, and the FLN
position was gaining support. France's seeming intransigence in settling a colonial war that tied
down half the manpower of its armed forces was also a source of concern to its North Atlantic Treaty
Organization allies. In a 16 September 1959, statement, de Gaulle dramatically reversed his stand
and uttered the words "self-determination" as the third and preferred solution [5], which he
envisioned as leading to majority rule in an Algeria formally associated with France. In Tunis, Abbas
acknowledged that de Gaulle's statement might be accepted as a basis for settlement, but the
French government refused to recognize the GPRA as the representative of Algeria's Muslim
community.

Week of barricades[edit]

Barricades in Algiers, January 1960. The banner reads, "Long live Massu" (Vive Massu).

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, 20 rioters were killed during shooting
on Boulevard Laferrière. Eight arrest warrants were issued in Paris against the initiators of the
insurrection. Jean-Marie Le Pen, a member of parliament and future Front national founder, who
called for the barricades to be extended to Paris, and theoretician Georges Sauge were then placed
under custody.[60]
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 incarned for 20 years, I ask everyone to support me whatever happens.[61]