Getting Out: Learning from Past Exit Strategies

...This happened in large part because nei­ther military nor civilian officials expected it ; nor did they give much credence to reports from French officers on the ground . The rea­sons were double: a widespread suspicion that such officers were trying to undermine the peace process and an unwillingness to grapple with the fact that neither the Provisional Au­thority, which the Evian Accords had estab­lished, nor the FLN and its allied organizations had much control over what was happening . Government responsibility here is substantial : under direct instructions from de Gaulle, who rejected his advisers' suggestions to the con­trary, French officials impeded every FLN ef­fort to assert authority within Algeria...

...If they wished, they could remain French citizens, stay in or join the French Army, even repatriate to France . More emphatic in­structions, however, laid out the generous bo­nuses they would receive if they demobilized ; explained the protections that the FLN and French government would provide and the op­portunities they would have in the new Alge­rian military and police forces . Many harkis believed government prom­ises...

...When "Muslims" tried to exercise these rights, however, French atti­tudes changed . While French authorities sim­ply stopped talking about "French Muslims" in their public declarations, among themselves they stopped referring to their legal status as French citizens, "repatriates," and began to re­fer to them as "refugees"-people who might be aided out of French charity...

...But between April and July1962,the vast majority of pro-French Algerians fled across the Mediterranean, a mad rush that contemporar­ies termed "the Exodus ." In those same months, the provisional authority the French had established gained no traction, although their efforts undercut the authority of those na­tionalist groups most amenable to cooperating in the transition and discredited individual Al­gerians who actively cooperated . Subsequently, the intra-nationalist civil war, which broke out almost as sooni as independence was declared, left the most vocally anti-French forces in con­trol...

...In the photo-weeklyParis-Match,the year's first editorial, "Snow and Fascism," noted that "between Christmas and these first days of January, 900,000 Parisians put on hold their rendezvous with History and rushed off to the slopes...

...A revised edition of his book The Invention of Decolonization : The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Corneli, 2006) has been published in French as 1962 . Comment l'indépendance algérienne a tranforme la France (Payot, 2008) . DISSENT I Winter 2009 . 5 1...

...First, intense negotiations leading up to the Evian Accords aimed to provide them extensive and ironclad guarantees: in independent Algeria they would be able to hold on to French nationality ; to opt for dual citizenship ; to use the French language in all public affairs...

...the still-present threat of terrorist vio­lence...

...While trying to counter international support of Algerian nationalism, French offi­cials constantly pointed to this fact, highlight­ing not just Algerian electoral participation, but all the other social and economic reforms that aimed to make life in Algeria better, more mod­ern...

...On the same page, an­other editorial described "those [Europeans] who are leaving Algeria" as acting "despite the OAS" and "ín fear of the OAS ." When it came to the harkis, however, France-Observateur cau­tioned, "As normal as it is that France should shelter and protect the lives of the French Army's Muslim soldiers who consider them­selves menaced by the FLN, it would be dan­gerous to allow the return to the metropole of veritable Muslim commandos of the OAS...

...Hundreds of thousands marched on February 13, 1962, to protest the govern­ment's violent response to an anti-OAS rally...

...No one in France had predicted the exodus of almost all the pieds noirs, although some had thought large numbers would leave . The subtitle of a magazine article in the sum­mer of 1962, "From Predictions (400,000 Re­patriates in Four Years in 90 Departments [across France]) to Reality (400,000 repatriates in Four Weeks in Four Departments [around Marseilles])," gives a sense of the distance be­tween the most prescient estimates and what happened...

...a group of "Arabs" jumped out ; the harkis were killed, their throats slit as the ship's passengers looked on...

...All the better, as most of them had other things to do...

...all wí11 become dead­weights...

...To keep the pieds noirs in Algeria the government had pursued a two-track strategy...

...In the end, several hundred pied noir civilians died during the French retreat from Algeria, some at the hands of French troops, others killed byAlgerian neighbors or by armed bands, FLN or not...

...random Muslim civilians ; and even, occasionally, French sol­diers...

...Popular opin­ion encouraged such an approach...

...Unprepared, the government quickly cobbled together a plan that provided some support for every pied noir who sought refuge in mainland France . They did so against the headwinds of French opinion, which had come to see the pieds noirs as only dubiously French, even un-French (as de Gaulle himself opined in private) . Indeed, many French people, quite conveniently, came to see the pieds noirs and the violent OAS, which mur­dered some two thousand people, as wholly responsible for the war's horrors (rather than the French themselves, their leaders, and their army...

...An edito­rial entitled "Return of the Harkis," in the left-leaning weekly France-Observateur, high­lighted the dangerous role they might play in "reconstituting the OAS in certain regions" in France . The article detailed the numerous ways the government could restrict and monitor harkis' arrivals and "reported" on numerous clandestine landings of harkis, supposedly "con­trolled by the OAS...

...In French, of course, the word mars means both the month of March and the planet Mars: "Martians" were those who, in March 1962, loudly and often brutally proclaimed their undying (íf previously invisible) attachment to the nationalist cause . Scenes reminiscent of some that took place at the liberation of prance, lolling "collaborators"-the often defenseless harkis-or attacking their families, seemed a compelling way to demonstrate such a commitment...

...Fo­cused on the OAS menace to France, they paid little attention to the details of their government's plan for getting out of Algeria . O FFIcIAis HAD organized their pullout, it soon became clear, on the basis of two wrong-headed assumptions . On the one hand, the authorities were sure that they had done what was necessary to convince the substantial minority of Algerians who still wanted a French Algeria to stay put . On the other hand, their plans for how to deal with Algerians eager for independence, the FLN in particular, assumed that they would be able to propagate the illusion that the French had de­cided on their own to leave Algeria and that, rather than a nationalist victory, the indepen­dent state-in-waiting was the result of a French plan...

...For some men whose service to France had lasted a bit too long striking out at those whose French connections had lasted even longer proved particularly tempting . Ever since, Algerian leaders have called opponents harkis, members of the "French camp," in order to reject challenges to their incompetence or their authority...

...By war's end, the term harki meant all those-male or female­who had worked with the French and failed to distance themselves effectively and in time...

...The numbers of those who were killed in Algeria remains unclear, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to 100,000...

...Looking out from the mountain top, just before the promise of independence has been achieved, gives the undeniable pleasure of being certain of what wí11 happen...

...These were the months when the "Algerian events" no longer appeared as a fight between the French government and the FLN but be­tween two visions of France, between (in the shorthand of the left) the "Republic" and the "fascists ." It was in this context that the government announced the Evian Accords . There was loud criticism, but almost all of it came from the very small number of ultras, who still insisted that Algeria remain French . The usual critics of de Gaulle's government, among Communist and Socialist politicians, public intellectuals, or far-left militants, had little to say, except to complain that peace had not come earlier...

...Plans for a pluralist democracy were in tat­ ters...

...Two of the most well-known windows into this moment-the on-screen events in Gillo Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers and the account and analysis in Frantz Fanon's book The Wretched of the Earth-stop in 1961, just before the FLN's final victory...

...With a few wealthy excep­tions, these pieds noirs, although better off than their Muslim neighbors, were poorer than French people living in Europe . Most were deeply attached to their French citizenship, which laws since 1889 had guaranteed...

...In mainland France, meanwhile, pre­fects received instructions to report all "irregu­lar arrivals of Muslims in their department...

...The end was, after all, inevitable, or so it can seem in retrospect...

...As the ship pulled away, the journalist described, another jeep pulled up...

...the most extreme, those who joined the Secret Army Organization (OAS), led by officers who had deserted from the French Army, accelerated their terrorist attacks against suspectedFLNsympathizers...

...Many became-and some re­main-quite bitter about the hostility they en­countered from other French people . The experience of the harkis was incomparably worse...

...In the final months of 1961, French politicians hesitantly had begun to prepare their country for Algerian independence...

...Left-wing pro­tests drew few into the streets . Algerian civilians as well as French soldiers and nation­alist fighters continued to die in what the French government still insisted on calling the "events in Algeria...

...In the end, according to official estimates, between 25,000 and 27,000 harkis arrived in France by June 1963...

...De Gaulle insisted that no action, however sym­bolic, that might suggest that the FLN had any measure of sovereignty within Algeria was per­missible-until a French-run referendum, held on July 1, could legitimate French claims that they had decided to leave Algeria, rather than been forced out . Nationalist leaders were thus in no position to stop the so-called "Martians...

...Mostpieds noirsdid not...

...EVEN BEFORE the post-independence civil war, then, the assumptions guiding the French pullout from Algeria created conditions that invited violence (against the barkis) and chaos (the mass exodus), although the evidence is clear that no one on the French side and almost no one among the nationalists planned for or wanted either to occur . French eagerness to get out, which was quite intense among average French people as well as among those on the left who had long called for Algerian independence, gave the French government carte blanche . Where de Gaulle's ministers focused most of their attention, of course, was not on Algeria, or on people from Algeria, but on French politics . That history is beyond the scope of this article . TODD SHEPARD is an associate professor in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University...

...Indeed, about 10 percent of all French deputies and senators serving in 1962 were, to use the official terminology, Muslim French citizens from Algeria . When French officials announced the Evian Accords, they repeatedly affirmed that, as with repatriate status, most of the guaran­tees they had negotiated for Europeans would remain available to all French citizens from Algeria, including the "Muslims...

...to have civil questions judged under French law and by French ju­rists...

...Starting on April 21, 1962-the day after soldiers captured the head of the OAS, Raoul Salan, thus deflating pieds noirs fantasies that the OAS's violent methods would triumph-waves of departures began, heading from Algeria to mainland France...

...Aharkiwas a man who belonged to one of the many self­defense units or harkas, which the French gov­ernment had organized in their attempts to crush the nationalist uprising...

...Second, in December 1961, a measure establishing a special status for "repatriates, which was aimed specifically at pieds noirs, became law...

...U wTIL THE exodus began, French politi­cians and officers endlessly repeated that "Muslims" would have the same rights as "Europeans...

...In numer­ous French cities, around Paris and in the provinces, OAS members turned from collect­ing funds via bank robberies and extortion at­tempts (a tactic that one angry target, Brigitte Bardot, loudly brought to public attention in late 1961) to a bombing campaign that target­ed left wingers...

...Todd Shepard: Algeria IN MARCH 1962, ín the eighth year of the Algerian War, the French government signed off on the Evian Accords, which es­tablished a ceasefire as well as a process that led to the July 5 proclamation in Algiers of in­dependence-one hundred and thirty-two years to the day after the Ottoman ruler of that city had surrendered to French invaders . Few people were surprised-the only surprising thing was that ending the French occupation took so long...

...No Muslims, it is worth noting, participated in sub­sequent OAS attacks in France ; a number of pieds noirs did...

...Already in February, officers had received instructions to let their Muslim troops know that "their legiti­mate interests as soldiers and citizens will be guaranteed...

...Days earlier, in fact, a Top Secret note of 23 May from de Gaulle's office had ordered officials in Algeria to "cease all initiatives linked to the repatriation of harkis...

...Comparing that promise with the ledger of post-independence disappointments (the economic, political, and ideological fail­ures...

...some families remained in these camps into the 1990s...

...1962, he intoned, "wí11 be the year the army wí11 be regrouped in Europe ." The quiescence de Gaulle shattered gave way to an intense period of activity and argument on both sides of the Mediterranean . In Alge­ria, those who wanted the French to maintain control over their homeland responded with anguish and outraged protest, strikes, and blockades...

...their representation in local government would be assured, their property rights pro­tected...

...Working-class neighborhoods in the cit­ies of Algiers and Oran that had remained somewhat mixed, with "Europeans" and "Mus­ 48 . DISSENT I Winter 2009 hms" living together, were hurriedly and urgent­ly segregated-the exodus of one group or the other driven by pressure from local thugs ("Eu­ropean" and "Muslim") or by fear...

...Such reflections can seem particularly meaningful because, in today's history books, the Algerian revolution often stands in for the era of decolonization writ large, with the war's exceptional violence magnifying the hopes in­spired by "Third World revolutions" as well as the doubts about the West's "civilizing mission ." Focusing on how the French withdrawal from Algeria actually happened offers a different perspective...

...As French archives make clear, officials designed this project with the counter­intuitive goal of convincing Algeria's Europe­ans that, since their right to come to France DISSENT I Winter 2009 .49 was guaranteed, they should stay in their North African homeland...

...in an official census from 1968, 138,000 were living in France . (Many were confined to camps, parked in rural cor­ners of France, where they had been consigned upon arrival...

...Several days later, an officer directed that "Muslims" who were "too old, physically handi­capped, or too young" as well as "single women" should not be transported . Such people, he explained, "are destined effectively either to live off public charity or, with the young women, to turn to prostitution...

...The minimal coverage the mainstream press now accorded Algeria was occupied by a fierce de­bate over the merits of splitting Algeria into mini-states, one "francophile," one "national­ist," with a third for the Sahara...

...Terrorist attacks on French ci­vilians succeeded-in ways that reports of officially sanctioned torture, obscene numbers of civilian deaths, and international reproba­tion never had-in mobilizing the forces of the French left...

...What is clear is that many (probably tens of) thousands died, many more were tortured, and that, while this retribution was occurring, French officials in decision-making positions did little to intervene...

...On December 29, 1961, President Charles de Gaulle broke this silence in his New Year's address . He told those listening that the year ahead would see the end of French Algeria "one way or another...

...Potentially, this was a lot of people, as the num­bers of Algerians who served in French uniform or worked for the French state during the war dwarfed those who had directly supported the FLN or other nationalist groups . According to the Constitution of the Fifth French Republic, ratified in October 1958, all Algerians were full French citizens, with (le­gally) the same political rights as their compa­triots across the French Republic, whether Parisians, Breton peasants, or Europeans in Algeria...

...Skipping over the messy details, it turns out, was an impulse widely shared at the time . Already in early 1962, though few French people could imagine how the Algerian conflict would finally end, they knew that it would...

...Another group, its outlines a bit less obvi­ous, was made up of a minority of Algeria's Arab or Berber inhabitants (rather than call such people Algerians, official French terminology spoke of "Muslims") . This group of French loy­alists came to be called the harkis...

...But the war was long, and its violence was shocking to con­temporaries both in its forms-the French Armed Forces' systematic use of torture on sus­pected nationalists and the embrace of terror­ism by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN)-and its effects: the dead numbered some 17,000 French soldiers, about 3,500 French civilians, and (according to current es­timates) between 250,000 and 578,000 Alge­rians, the vast majority of whom were noncombatants...

...The most immediate victims were two groups of pro-French Algerians . The most well known were the Europeans, more colloquially named pieds noirs (black feet), who made up some one million of Algeria's nine million in­habitants . This was a diverse group, most with family ties to Algeria dating back two or more generations, mainly immigrants from Spain, Italy, and Malta, with smaller numbers com­ing from mainland France . About 120,000 "Eu­ropeans" were Jews, the vast majority with ancient family ties to Algeria, dating in some cases to600B.C.E...

...iv LATE MAY, a journalist reported witness­ing a horrifying scene : two jeeps wheeled up to a ship docked in Oran, full of civil­jans fleeing to mainland France . Officers jumped from the jeeps and led those huddled in back, a group of harkis, onto the docks and 50 . DISSENT I Winter 2009 up the gangway, as the klaxon announcing im­minent departure rang out . Rather than let them board, however, sailors separated them from their Army guardians and sent the Alge­rian men back to the dock...

...Most went through diffi­cult departures and uncomfortable arrivals in the metropole...

...the intense desire of so many North Africans to emigrate to Europe) provides grounds for commentaries, both smug and de­spairing...