Algerian War

Conquest of Algeria The decision to capture Algiers was made by Charles X and his ministers in January 1830. An invasion had already been discussed throughout the French blockade of Algiers from 1827 to 1830 in part in reaction to Barbary corsair activities and their ransoming of Christian captives and slaves, and the refusal of Marseilles merchants to pay their debts to the Dey of Algiers. By early 1830 however, the real motive was to distract and assuage with a foreign conquest French opinion hostile to the increasingly authoritarian king. On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French attacked and captured Algiers in June 1830. In following years the conquest spread to the interior. Between 500,000 and 1,000,000, from approximately 3 million Algerians, were killed in the first three decades of the conquest. French losses from 1830 to 1851 were 3,336 killed in action and 92,329 dying in hospital. In 1834, Algeria became a French military colony. It was declared by the Constitution of 1848 to be an integral part of France and was 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 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. in Algiers in 1857 Prior to 1870, fewer than 200 demands were registered by Muslims and 152 by Jewish Algerians. The 1865 decree was then modified by the 1870 Crémieux Decree, 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 organising the seizure or appropriation of their lands. 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 I and fought for France. Algerian Muslims served as tirailleurs (such regiments were created as early as 1842) and spahis; and French settlers as Zouaves or Chasseurs d'Afrique. US President Woodrow Wilson's 1918 Fourteen Points called for "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 the very least, autonomy and self-rule. 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. 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 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 also opposed it, leading to its abandonment. In 1937, the pro-independence party was dissolved, 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 no longer espoused full independence but only extensive autonomy. This new party was dissolved in 1939. Under Vichy France, the French Sctate attempted to abrogate the Crémieux Decree to suppress the Jews' French citizenship, but the measure was never implemented. In 1938, the nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas founded the Algerian Popular Union (Union populaire algérienne). In 1943, Abbas wrote the Algerian People's Manifesto (Manifeste du peuple algérien). Arrested after the Sétif and Guelma massacre of May 8, 1945, when the French Army and pieds-noirs mobs killed between 6,000 and 30,000 Algerians, 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. == War chronology ==

According to historian Natalya Vince, the FLN leadership understood that they could not achieve Algerian independence through direct military victory over the powerful French army. Instead, they adopted tactics later recognized as asymmetric or revolutionary warfare, including guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism. Their strategy aimed to erode France's political will to continue the conflict, either by increasing the costs of war and exhausting public support or by exposing French repression and undermining its moral authority. The FLN took inspiration from Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionary leaders, particularly Mao Zedong and Hồ Chí Minh, and maintained contact with them by 1959. They studied General Vo Nguyen Giap’s tactics at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, where the Viet Minh overcame French forces through strategic use of terrain and siege warfare. The FLN also embraced Mao's principle that guerrillas must integrate with the rural population, securing local support to sustain their movement and evade enemy forces. 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 Toussaint Rouge (Red All-Saints' Day). From Cairo, the FLN broadcast the declaration of 1 November 1954 written by the journalist Mohamed Aïchaoui 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." The Algerian population radicalized itself in particular because of the terrorist acts of the 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. 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, 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 derogatory term for 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 s Rebellion Spreads in North Africa, 1955 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 urban 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 (71 of them French), 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. 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." mathematics professor at the University of Algiers and a suspected FLN member whom the French Army arrested in June 1957. 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. 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. 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." 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. 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. 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. Despite the 1925 Geneva Protocol, France made widespread use of . 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 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. At the same time, the French tried to gain support from the civilian population by providing money, jobs and housing to farmers 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, 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 Convinced that de Gaulle had betrayed them, some units of European volunteers () 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 . The ultras incorrectly believed that they would be supported by 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. 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 Alain de Sérigny was arrested, and Joseph Ortiz's FNF dissolved, as well as General Lionel Chassin's MP-13. De Gaulle also modified the government, excluding Jacques Soustelle, believed to be too pro-French Algeria, and granting the Minister of Information to Louis Terrenoire, who quit RTF (French broadcasting TV). Pierre Messmer, who had been a member of the Foreign Legion, was named Minister of Defense, and dissolved the Fifth Bureau, the psychological warfare branch, which had ordered the rebellion. These units had theorized the principles of a counter-revolutionary war, including the use of torture. During the Indochina War (1947–54), officers such as Roger Trinquier and Lionel-Max Chassin were inspired by Mao Zedong's strategic doctrine and acquired knowledge of convincing the population to support the fight. The officers were initially trained in the ''Centre d'instruction et de préparation à la contre-guérilla (Arzew). Jacques Chaban-Delmas added to that the Centre d'entraînement à la guerre subversive Jeanne-d'Arc'' (Center of Training to Subversive War Joan of Arc) in Philippeville, Algeria, directed by Colonel Marcel Bigeard. The French army officers' uprising was due to a perceived second betrayal by the government, the first having been in the Indochina of 1947–1954. They felt that during that war, the Dien Bien Phu garrison was sacrificed with no metropolitan support, and that commanding officer General de Castries was ordered to "let the affair die of its own, in serenity" ("''laissez mourir l'affaire d'elle même en sérénité''"). 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 Manifeste des 121 against the use of torture and the war, the opponents to the war created the Rassemblement de la gauche démocratique (Assembly of the Democratic Left), which included the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) socialist party, the Radical-Socialist Party, Force ouvrière (FO) trade union, Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens trade-union, UNEF trade-union, etc., which supported de Gaulle against the ultras. End of the war De Gaulle held the first referendum on the self-determination of Algeria on 8 January 1961. 75% of the voters (both in France and Algeria) approved, and de Gaulle's government began secret peace negotiations with the FLN. In the Algerian départements 69.51% voted in favor of self-determination. The talks that began in March 1961 broke down when de Gaulle insisted on including the much smaller Mouvement national algérien (MNA), which the FLN objected to. Since the FLN was the by far stronger movement with the MNA almost wiped out by this time, the French were finally forced to exclude the MNA from the talks after the FLN walked out for a time. 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. fired on a crowd of Pied-Noir demonstrators in Algiers, killing between 50 and 80 civilians. Total casualties in these three incidents were 326 killed and wounded amongst the Pied-Noirs and 110 French military personnel dead or injured. 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 7 June 1962, the University of Algiers Library was burned by the OAS, an event memorialized in postage stamps issued by a number of Muslim countries. 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.) 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." == 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. 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. 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. This political aspect would reinforce the legitimacy of the FLN in Algeria, which was all the more necessary since Algeria, unlike other colonies, had been formally incorporated as a part of metropolitan France. The French counter-strategy aimed to keep the conflict internal and strictly French to maintain its image abroad. The FLN succeeded, and the conflict rapidly became international, embroiled with the tensions of the Cold War and the emergence of the Third World. Firstly, the FLN exploited the tensions between the American-led Western Bloc and the Soviet-led Communist bloc. FLN sought material support from the communists, goading the Americans to support Algerian independence to keep the country on the western side. Furthermore, the FLN used the tensions within each bloc, including between France and the US and between the USSR and Mao's China. The United States, which generally opposed colonisation, had every interest in pushing France to give Algeria its independence. 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 United Nations, 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. 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; the 1955 Bandung conference internationally recognized the FLN as representing Algeria; and Third-World countries brought up the Algerian conflict at the UN general assembly. 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. The Soviet Union competed with China, and Nikita Khrushchev intensified moral support for the Algerian rebellion, which in turn pushed the United States to react. In 1958, the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (PGAR) was created, naming official representatives to negotiate with France. 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. == 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. 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. 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. "women assisted the male fighting forces in areas like transportation, communication and administration" contained the overwhelming majority of those who participated; female combatants were in the minority. Perhaps the most famous incident involving Algerian women revolutionaries was the Milk Bar Café bombing of 1956, when Zohra Drif and Yacef Saâdi planted three bombs: one in the Air France office in the Mauritania building in Algiers, which did not explode, one in a cafeteria on the Rue Michelet, and another at the Milk Bar Café, which killed three young women and injured multiple adults and children. Algerian Communist Party member Raymonde Peschard was initially accused of being an accomplice to the bombing and was forced to flee from the colonial authorities. In September 1957, though, Drif and Saâdi were arrested and sentenced to twenty years hard labor in the Barbarossa prison. Drif was pardoned by Charles de Gaulle when Algeria gained independence in 1962. == Exodus of the Pieds-noirs and Harkis ==

Pieds-noirs (including indigenous Mizrachi and Sephardi Jews) and Harkis accounted for 13% of the total population of Algeria in 1962. For the sake of clarity, each group's exodus is described separately here, although their fate shared many common elements. Pieds-noirs of the 4th Zouave regiment. Zouave regiments were mostly composed of European settlers. Pied-noir (literally "black foot") is a term used to name the European-descended population (mostly Catholic), who had resided in Algeria for generations; it is sometimes used to include the indigenous Maghrebi Jewish population as well, which likewise emigrated after 1962. Europeans arrived in Algeria as immigrants from all over the western Mediterranean (particularly France, Spain, Italy and Malta), starting in 1830. The Jews arrived in several waves, some coming as early as 600 BC and during the Roman period, known as the Maghrebi Jews or Berber Jews. The Maghrebi Jewish population was outnumbered by the Sephardic Jews, who were driven out of Spain in 1492, and was further strengthened by Marrano refugees from the Spanish Inquisition through the 16th century. Algerian Jews largely embraced French citizenship after the décret Crémieux in 1871. 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 Maghrebi and Sephardi Jewish descent), and accounted for 10.4% of the total population of Algeria. In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 of them fled, the first third prior to the referendum, in the largest relocation of population to Europe since the Second World War. A motto used in the FLN message to the pieds-noirs was "a suitcase or a coffin" ("La valise ou le cercueil"), repurposing a slogan first coined years earlier by pied-noir "ultras" when rallying the European community to their hardcore line. 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. Harkis in uniform, summer 1961 The so-called Harkis, from the Algerian-Arabic dialect word harki (soldier), were indigenous Muslim Algerians (as opposed to European-descended Catholics or indigenous Algerian Maghrebi Jews) who fought as auxiliaries on the French side. Some of these were veterans of the Free French Forces who participated in the liberation of France during World War II or in the Indochina War. The term also came to broadly include civilian indigenous Algerians who supported a French Algeria. According to French government figures, there were 236,000 Algerian Muslims serving in the French Army in 1962 (four times more than in the FLN), either in regular units (Spahis and Tirailleurs) or as irregulars (harkis and moghaznis). Some estimates suggest that, with their families, the indigenous Muslim loyalists may have numbered as many as 1 million. In 1962, around 90,000 Harkis took refuge in France, despite French government policy against this. Pierre Messmer, Minister of the Armies, and Louis Joxe, Minister for Algerian Affairs, gave orders to this effect. Harkis lacked civil rights and were often kept in 'temporary' concentration camps and are to this day barely spoken about or integrated in French society, though the Jacques Chirac administration made efforts to recognize their suffering and advance integration, In September of 2021, President Emmanuel Macron asked for forgiveness from Harkis for French mistreatment and abandonment. The Harkis are seen as traitors by many Algerians, and many of those who stayed behind suffered severe reprisals after independence. Harkis are compared to French Nazi sympathizers and are barred from revisiting Algeria. French historians estimate that somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 Harkis and members of their families were killed by the FLN or by lynch mobs in Algeria, often in atrocious circumstances or after torture. == Death toll ==

thanking for the safe return of a son from Algeria, August 1958 Death toll estimates vary. Algerian historians and the FLN estimated that nearly eight years of revolution caused 1.5 million Algerian deaths. 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, but this was regarded by many as an underestimate. French military authorities listed their losses at nearly 17,456 dead (5,966 from accidents) 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. Rudolph Rummel attributes at least 100,000 6,000 to 20,000 Algerians were killed Horne estimated Algerian casualties during the span of eight years to be around 1 million. Uncounted thousands of Muslim civilians died 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 Algerian civilians perished of starvation, depredation, and disease inside and outside the camps. In addition, large numbers of Harkis were murdered when the FLN settled accounts after independence, with 30,000 to 150,000 killed in Algeria in . == Lasting effects in Algerian politics ==

After Algeria's independence was recognised, Ahmed Ben Bella quickly became more popular and thereby more powerful. In June 1962, he challenged the leadership of Premier Benyoucef Ben Khedda; this led to several disputes among his rivals in the FLN, which were quickly suppressed by Ben Bella's rapidly growing support, most notably within the armed forces. By September, Bella was in de facto control of Algeria and was elected premier in a one-sided election on September 20, and was recognised by the U.S. on September 29. Algeria was admitted as the 109th member of the United Nations on October 8, 1962. Afterward, Ben Bella declared that Algeria would follow a neutral course in world politics; within a week he met with U.S. President John F. Kennedy, requesting more aid for Algeria with Fidel Castro and expressed approval of Castro's demands for the abandonment of Guantanamo Bay. Bella returned to Algeria and requested that France withdraw from its bases there. In November, his government banned political parties, providing that the FLN would be the only party allowed to function overtly. Shortly thereafter, in 1965, Bella was deposed and placed under house arrest (and later exiled) by Houari Boumédiènne, who served as president until his death in 1978. Algeria remained stable, though in a one-party state, until a violent civil war broke out in the 1990s. 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. 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. == 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. bombings of villages suspected of helping the FLN, rape, disembowelment of pregnant women, imprisonment without food in small cells (some of which were small enough to impede lying down), throwing detainees from helicopters and into the sea with concrete on their feet, and burying people alive. Torture methods included beatings, mutilations, burning, hanging by the feet or hands, torture by electroshock, waterboarding, sleep deprivation and sexual assaults. During the war, the French military relocated entire villages to ("regroupement centers"), which were built for forcibly displaced civilian populations, in order to separate them from FLN guerrilla combatants. Over 8,000 villages were destroyed. Over 2 million Algerians were resettled in regrouping internment camps, with some being forced into labour. 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. Torture was also used by both sides during the First Indochina War (1946–54). Claude Bourdet denounced acts of torture in Algeria on 6 December 1951, in the magazine ''L'Observateur'', rhetorically asking, "Is there a Gestapo in Algeria?". D. Huf, in his seminal work on the subject, argued that the use of torture was one of the major factors in developing French opposition to the war. Huf argued, "Such tactics sat uncomfortably with France's revolutionary history, and brought unbearable comparisons with Nazi Germany. The French national psyche would not tolerate any parallels between their experiences of occupation and their colonial mastery of Algeria." General Paul Aussaresses admitted in 2000 that systematic torture techniques were used during the war and justified them. He also recognized the assassination of lawyer Ali Boumendjel and the head of the FLN in Algiers, Larbi Ben M'Hidi, which had been disguised as suicides. Marcel Bigeard, who called FLN activists "savages", claimed torture was a "necessary evil". To the contrary, General Jacques Massu denounced it, following Aussaresses's revelations and, before his death, pronounced himself in favor of an official condemnation of the use of torture during the war. Bigeard's justification of torture has been criticized by Joseph Doré, archbishop of Strasbourg, Marc Lienhard, president of the Lutheran Church of Augsbourg Confession in Alsace-Lorraine, and others. In June 2000, Bigeard declared that he was based in Sidi Ferruch, a torture center where Algerians were murdered. Bigeard qualified Louisette Ighilahriz's revelations, published in the Le Monde newspaper on June 20, 2000, as "lies". An ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz had been tortured by Massu. However, since Massu's revelations, Bigeard has admitted the use of torture, although he denies having personally used it, and has declared, "You are striking the heart of an 84-year-old man." Bigeard also recognized that Larbi Ben M'Hidi was assassinated and that his death was disguised as a suicide. In 2018 France officially admitted that torture was systematic and routine. File:Algerian woman sexually abused by the French army.jpg|Algerian woman sexually abused by the French Army File:Photo de l'infirmerie et des locaux disiplinaire du camp de Thol.jpg|Camp de Thol, one of the French concentration camps for Algerians used during the war File:General Marcel Bigeard young.jpg|Marcel Bigeard's troops were accused of practicing "death flights", whose victims were called crevettes Bigeard (fr), "Bigeard shrimp". File:Gégène - Génératrice pour torture à l'électricité.JPG|"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. 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. == 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. 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. 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. 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. Although 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." 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 1961 Paris massacre were musical groups, including hip-hop groups such as Suprême NTM (les Arabes dans la Seine) and La Rumeur. Indeed, the Algerian War is not even the subject of a specific chapter in the textbook for terminales. 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. Thus, Azouz Begag, the delegate Minister for Equal Opportunities, wrote an autobiographic novel, Le Gone du Chaâba, about his experiences while living in a bidonville in the outskirts of Lyon. It is impossible to understand the third-generation of Algerian immigrants to France without recalling the bicultural experience. An official parliamentary report on the "prevention of criminality", commanded by Interior Minister Philippe de Villepin and made by the deputy Jacques-Alain Bénisti, claimed, "Bilingualism (bilinguisme) was a factor of criminality" (sic). Following outcries, the definitive version of the report finally made bilingualism an asset, rather than a fault. 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". 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". 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 1,500 other deaths, but N. Bancel, P. Blanchard and S. Lemaire estimate the number to be between 6,000 and 8,000. 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.'' • 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, . • • Maran, Rita (1989). Torture: The Role of Ideology in the French-Algerian War, New York: Prager Publishers. • Windrow, Martin. The Algerian War 1954–62. London: Osprey Publishing, 1997. . • 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. . 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. • Robin, Marie-Monique. ''Escadrons de la mort, l'école française,453 pages. La Découverte (15 September 2004). Collection: Cahiers libres. () (Spanish transl.: Los Escuadrones De La Muerte/ the Death Squadron''), 539 pages. Sudamericana; Édition: Translatio (October 2005) (). • 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 ==

member Saadi Yacef starred and co-produced The Battle of Algiers (1966) by Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo, which was critically acclaimed for its sense of historical authenticity and cast who had lived through the real war. • Jamila, the Algerian (1958). Egyptian film by Youssef Chahine; about Djamila Bouhired. • Le Petit Soldat by Jean-Luc Godard (1960). Banned until 1963 because some scenes contained torture. 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. • Commando (1962 film) • 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 1961 Paris massacre. The title translates to "Black Night". • Caché by Michael Haneke (2005). On the 1961 Paris massacre. The movie is often known in English by its French name's translation, "Hidden". • Harkis by Alain Tasma (2006). The title refers to ethnically Algerian French military auxiliaries. • Mon colonel by Laurent Herbier (2007). The title translates to "My Colonel". • ''L'Ennemi Intime'' by Florent Emilio Siri (2007). Scenario by Patrick Rotman which depicts the use of Napalm. • Cartouches Gauloises by 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 ==