ALGERIAN WAR
REASONS INTERNAL TO France
French impotence. France had lost a war. Her economy was in ruin, and the government of the FourthRepublic teetered uncertainly. There was a bitter struggle being waged in Indochina. The international humiliation of losing there, especially the dramatic fall of Dien Bien Phu, in concert with a still moribund economy and a fragmented domestic and political scene including a large, aggressive Communist Party, again demonstrated a level of impotence in France that stirred Algerian nationalists. The French Army, disgusted with the results in Indochina, was determined to "get it right" in Algeria. There would be victory, whatever the cost. Yet, eight years later, Algeria was lost. The French Army suffered 18,000 killed and 65,000 wounded. Four General Officers were court-martialed for an attempted coup. In the words of noted historian Alistair Horne, writing the classic outline of the struggle, A Savage War of Peace: "The war in Algeria toppled six French prime ministers and the FourthRepublic itself. It came close to bringing down General de Gaulle and his Fifth Republic and confronted metropolitan France with the threat of civil war" In 1962, after eight years of combat, including terrorism on a scale previously unknown in the western world, Algeria became an independent nation. The last vestige of the French Empire had violently gone its own way.
1954
March 1954, Ahmed Ben Bella sets up FLN
It advocated social democracy within an Islamic framework and equal citizenship for any resident in Algeria.
Starts attacking on November 1st.
Started attacking government buildings, military installations, communications centres.
Mitterand said no negotiation as did the President Pierre-Mendes.
Jacques Soustelle arrived in Algiers as the new governor-general in February 1955, but the new plan he announced four months later once again proved to be ineffective.
August 1955 Skikda, north of Constantine region.
Jan 1956 Guy Mollet is Premiere.; appoint moderate General Georges Catroux.
He was replaced by Robert Lacoste.
By 1956 there are 400,000 French troops in Algeria
Guerilla tactics continue, in cities cafes; schools and shops, whilst French retaliatied by punishing enirte villages.
Reprisals against uncopoperative Muslims.
By the spring of 1956 a majority of previously noncommitted political leaders, such as Ferhat Abbas and Tawfiq al-Madani of the AUMA, had joined FLN leaders in Cairo, where the group had its headquarters.
The first FLN congress took place in August–September 1956 in the Soummam valley between Great and Little Kabylia and brought together the FLN leadership in an appraisal of the war and its objectives. Algeria was divided into six autonomous zones (wilayat), each led by guerrilla commanders who later played key roles in the affairs of the country.
956 was the French decision to grant full independence to Morocco and Tunisia and to concentrate on retaining “French Algeria.”
Battle of Algiers starts in 1956.
Paratroopers led by General Jacques Massu
Barbed wire fences cut off Algeria from Tunisia and Morroco.
Provoked by these assaults, in February 1958 the French air force bombed the Tunisian frontier village of Saqiyat Sidi Yusuf; a number of civilians were killed, including children from the local school.
IN May 1958, when it looked like France was wavering before International condemnation, the colons and some French officers sxet up a Committee of Public Safetly and demanded the return of De Gaulle, the only one who could preserve Algerian French.
But by 1959 zeven he realised it was hopeless and said he would let them choose.
After 2 failed attmepts to overthrow de Gaule,, and after the colon (settler) extremeists set up SAO (Secret Army Organisation) to fight against the FLN, in 1962 a cea-fire was organised in the Evian agreements. IN July Algeria voted for independence. This was followed by mass evacuation.
1962
1976 - Boumedienne introduces a new constitution which confirms commitment to socialism and role of the National Liberation Front (FLN) as the sole political party. Islam is recognised as state religion.
1976 December - Boumedienne is elected president and is instrumental in launching a programme of rapid industrialisation.
In 1992 a general election won by an Islamist party was annulled, marking the beginning of a bloody campaign which saw the slaughter of more than 150,000 people.
The Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) was a period of guerrilla strikes, maquis fighting, terrorism against civilians on both sides, and riots between the French army and colonists, or the "colons" as they were called, in Algeria and the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) and other pro-independence Algerians.
September 30, 1956, when three women placed bombs at three sites including the downtown office of Air France.
he 1957 general strike, timed to coincide with the UN debate on Algeria, was imposed on Muslim workers and businesses. General Jacques Massu, who was instructed to use whatever methods were necessary to restore order in the city, frequently fought terrorism with acts of terrorism. Using paratroopers, he broke the strike and systematically destroyed the FLN infrastructure there. But the FLN had succeeded in showing its ability to strike at the heart of French Algeria and in rallying a mass response to its appeals among urban Muslims. Massu's troops punished villages that were suspected of harboring rebels by attacking them by mobile troops or aerial bombardment (reminiscent of Nazi tactics against French Resistance) and gathered 2 million of rural population to concentration camps.
By 1956 France had committed more than 400,000 troops to Algeria. Although the elite airborne units and the Foreign Legion received particular notoriety, approximately 170,000 of the regular French army troops in Algeria were Muslim Algerians, most of them volunteers. France also sent air force and naval units to the Algerian theater.
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 many found it impossible to reestablish their accustomed economic or social situations. Living conditions in the camps were poor. Hundreds of empty villages were devastated, and in hundreds of others orchards and croplands were destroyed. These population transfers apparently had little strategic effect on the outcome of the war, but the disruptive social and economic effects of this massive program 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 ALN strongholds. Within the next year, Salan's successor, General Maurice Challe, appeared to have suppressed major rebel resistance. But political developments had already overtaken the French army's successes.
Frenchfeared another 1954.
Many thought only de Gaulle could handle it
After his tour as governor general, Soustelle had returned to France to organize support for de Gaulle's return to power, while retaining close ties to the army and the colons. By early 1958, he had organized a coup d'état, bringing together dissident army officers and colons with sympathetic Gaullists. An army junta under General Massu seized power in Algiers on the night of May 13. 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 union invested with extraordinary powers to prevent the "abandonment of Algeria."
On May 24, French paratroopers from Algeria landed on Corsica, taking the island in a bloodless action called "Operation Corse." Subsequently, preparations were made in Algeria for "Operation Resurrection," which had as objectives the seizure of Paris and the removal of the French government. Resurrection was to be implemented if one of three scenarios occurred: if de Gaulle was not approved as leader of France by Parliament; if de Gaulle asked 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, fifteen hours before the projected launch of Resurrection. This indicated that the FrenchFourthRepublic 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 main immediate factor in the return of de Gaulle to power in France.
De Gaulle's initiative threatened the FLN with the prospect of losing the support of the growing numbers of Muslims who were tired of the war and had never been more than lukewarm in their commitment to a totally independent Algeria. In reaction, the FLN set up the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (Gouvernement Provisionel 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, and several other Arab countries, by a number of Asian and African states, and by the Soviet Union and other Central-European states.
80 percent of the Muslim electorate turned out to vote in September, and of these 96 percent approved the constitution. In February 1959, de Gaulle was elected president of the new FifthRepublic. He visited Constantine in October to announce a program to end the war and create an Algeria closely linked to France.
Annually since 1955 the UN General Assembly had considered the Algerian question, and the FLN position was gaining support.
In a September 1959 statement, de Gaulle dramatically reversed his stand and uttered the words "self-determination," 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.
laiming that de Gaulle had betrayed them, the colons, backed by units of the army, staged an insurrection in Algiers in January 1960 that won mass support in Europe. As the police and army stood by, rioting colons threw up barricades in the streets and seized government buildings.
1962 The Evian accords
OAS operatives set off an average of 120 bombs per day in March, with targets including hospitals and schools. Ultimately, the terrorism failed in its objectives, and the OAS and the FLN concluded a truce on June 17, 1962. In the same month, more than 350,000 colons left Algeria. Within a year, 1.4 million refugees, including almost the entire Jewish community and some pro-French Muslims, had joined the exodus to France. French citizens could choose between remaining in Algeria as Algerian citizens or leaving the country. The vast majority left, as detailed below.
In October1961, in Paris, a demonstration by Algerians against the curfew ended in a massacre which is as yet still not officially recognized.
On July 1, 1962, some 6 million of a total Algerian electorate of 6.5 million cast their ballots in the referendum on independence. The vote was nearly unanimous. De Gaulle pronounced Algeria an independent country on July 3. The Provisional Executive, however, proclaimed July 5, the 132nd anniversary of the French entry into Algeria, as the day of national independence.
ied-noir (literally "black foot") is a term used to describe the European-descended population that had been in Algeria for generations; it is sometimes used to include the Jewish population as well, which likewise emigrated after 1962. The Europeans had arrived as colonists from all over the Mediterranean (particularly France, Spain, and Malta), starting in 1830. The Jews had arrived in several waves, some coming in Roman times while most had arrived as refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, and had largely embraced French citizenship and identity after the decret Crémieux in 1871. In 1959, the pieds-noirs numbered 1,025,000 (85% of European descent, and 15% of Jewish descent), and accounted for 10.4% of the total population of Algeria. In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 of these Europeans-descended and Jews flee the country, the first prior to the referendum, in the most massive relocation of population to Europe since the Second World War. A motto among the Pied-noirs community was "Suitcase or coffin" ("La valise ou le cercueil").
The so-called harkis, from the Arabic word haraka (movement), were the Muslim Algerians (as opposed to Europeans-descended or Jews) who fought on the side of the French army. The term also came to include non-fighting Muslim Algerians who supported a French Algeria. According to France, in 1962 there were 236,000 Algerian Muslims fighting for the French army; some estimates suggest that, with their families, they may have numbered at much as 1 million, but 400,000 is more commonly cited.
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 control of Algeria by all but name, and was elected as premier in a one-sided election on 20 September, and was recognised by the United States on September 29. Algeria was admitted as the 109th member of the United Nations on 8 October 1962. Afterwards, Ben Bella declared that Algeria would follow a neutral course in world politics; within a week he met with U.S. PresidentJohn F. Kennedy requesting more aid for Algeria, with Fidel Castro, expressing approval of Castro's demands for the abandonment of Guantanamo Bay and returned to Algeria requesting that France withdraw from its bases there. In November, Ben Bella's government banned the party, providing that the only party allowed to overtly function was the NLF. 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 violent civil war broke out in the 1990s.