A Savage War of Peace
Commentary: In the wake of Abu Ghraib and Haditha, what lessons can be drawn from a French colonial war in North Africa?
June 5, 2006
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Article created by Foreign Policy in Focus.
On November 1, 1954, the self-declared Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) or National Liberation Front proclaimed an armed struggle for Algerian independence, launching coordinated attacks against French buildings and personnel throughout Algeria. The ensuing Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962; and before it ended, France had committed more than half a million troops to the suppression of the Algerian revolution, an intractable conflict that combined revolutionary war and state terror in brutal fashion.
With the French army left largely to its own devices, torture and other atrocities became widespread, even commonplace. Torture, in particular, was institutionalized by the army. In the process, the senior ranks of the French military grew increasingly disenchanted with its civilian leadership in a manner reminiscent of the retired U.S. generals who called recently for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Eventually, senior military officers turned on the government and attempted to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle, an episode captured later by film director Fred Zinnemann in “The Day of the Jackal.”
Alistair Horne, a fellow at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, is the author of 19 books, many of which treat French military or political subjects. Published in 1977, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 was immediately proclaimed by experts from all sides of the political spectrum to be the definitive history of the Algerian war. In rereading the book, the early praise seems justified as Horne does a superb job on detailing the Byzantine intricacies of the conflict with intelligence, style, and grace.
“Class Notes” is an innovative, sometimes provocative, series published by the Washington Post in which journalists visit the classrooms of government officials and Washington insiders teaching the next generation expected to join their ranks. Thomas E. Ricks, a Washington Post staff writer, published an article in the series on April 28, 2006, based on a visit to the School of Advanced Warfighting, Marine Corps University, in Quantico, Virginia. Sitting in on a course entitled “SAW 7202-06: ‘The French Army at War in Algeria, 1954-1962,'” he discovered the French struggle against Algerian rebels had become a hot topic among officers deploying to Iraq.
Reflecting this interest, the present demand for used copies of A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962, now out of print, is so great that the few soft cover copies available on www.alibris.com are selling for up to $265. On www.Amazon.com, a used hardcover edition is offered at $280. I count myself fortunate to have retained a dog-eared old copy, purchased in the late 1970s when I was working in North Africa.
In his Washington Post article, Ricks indicated that the 11 military officers studying Algeria, which included eight marines, one army major, and one officer each from Australia and Italy, looked at the conflict from a variety of perspectives, always with a thought to its similarities and differences with Iraq. For example, both conflicts involved urban terrorism supported by remote desert camps, and both grew very unpopular at home. France deployed a huge conscript army in Algeria while the United States has depended heavily on National Guard and Reserve units, citizen soldiers, in Iraq. On the other hand, France was fighting to remain in Algeria while the United States hopes to withdraw from Iraq as soon as an independent and stable government is in place. The officers also discussed the heavy manpower demands of both conflicts as well as the widespread use of torture in Algeria. Ricks' article was not clear as to what conclusions, if any, were reached by the officers taking the course.
Battle of Algiers
A member of the Italian Communist Party, Gillo Pontecorvo undertook his masterpiece, “The Battle of Algiers,” the most atmospheric and forceful film about the war, under prodding from the Algerian resistance leader, Saadi Yacef. Banned in France for many years, the film suggests the French went too far in their widespread adoption of policies of torture, intimidation, and outright murder. That said, “The Battle of Algiers” is neither a propaganda piece nor a how-to-do-it manual. In the film, the leadership of the French army dissects and represses the insurgency as Algerian partisans plan and execute their actions, often using violent means to achieve their goals.
The Battle of Algiers was over by 1957, five years before the Algerian War ended, with the French successful in destroying the FLN resistance network operating in the Casbah, the city's ancient Muslim section. It was a pyrrhic victory at best. France ultimately lost the war, withdrawing in 1962 from a newly independent Algeria ruled by the FLN. The use of force may have been a tactical success, but it was clearly a strategic failure. It inspired support for nationalists in and out of Algeria, discredited the French army, led to domestic political scandals in France, and traumatized French political life for decades.
End Product
The Algerian War left some 30,000 French men and women dead, together with as many as one million Algerians. Over 800,000 European settlers, so-called pied-noirs, were driven from Algeria into exile. Algerian auxiliaries recruited by the French, known as harkis, were despised as collaborators by the independence movement. Largely abandoned by the French at the end of the war, they were hunted down and killed by the FLN. Estimates of their losses range from 10,000-150,000. Disputed statistics are only one of the highly-charged issues that perpetuate conflict over the war. The Algerian War also caused the fall of six French governments, resulted in the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned Charles DeGaulle to power, and almost provoked a civil war in France.
The French government never apologized for its conduct during the war, and official France continues to have difficulty dealing with the conflict. It was not until mid-1999 that the word guerre (war) was established officially to describe events in Algeria in 1954-62. In an article in the April 2001 issue of Le Monde diplomatique, journalist Maurice T. Maschino explored in detail the extent to which history textbooks in France still describe its broader colonial history as a “fine intellectual adventure” with a “broadly positive outcome.” The war in Algeria is depicted as a struggle between Europeans, colons(colonists), and paratroopers on one side and Muslims, fanatics, and terrorists (never maquis, resistance fighters, or patriots) on the other. Most of the textbooks mention torture but play it down as an understandable reaction to the massacre of European civilians and a justifiable means to destroy FLN networks or to prevent bomb attacks.
