Algerian Report
TAS, SAL
Rebel chiefs and French generals vow war to the death ALGERIAN REPORT By Sal Tas Algiers Three weeks ago, Robert Lacoste stood before the French National Assembly to defend his policy in...
...quasi-pagan but nevertheless fanatical religious civilization...
...They were patrolling not just to protect Frenchmen, but to protect the Algerian farmers and give them confidence...
...In the Assembly, he talked like a traditional patriot, even a chauvinist, repeating all the slogans of French colonialist propaganda...
...The members of the Socialist council gave Lacoste their blessing...
...Seen from Algeria, all these spectacular moves of French politics seem irrelevant...
...They lack the realism of the Tunisians or the aristocratic discipline of the Moroccans...
...Algeria's atmosphere is grim...
...In Algeria, the atmosphere is much less confident than in the Palais Bourbon...
...The FLN would have to surrender and await the elections which the French would organize...
...The whole village must have gone out to do it," he said, "and they must have worked like hell--incomparably harder than they ever worked for me or for themselves...
...This is why the situation becomes more and more inextricable...
...In this connection, the proposal to send Marshal Juin to Algeria as head of a NATO army was indicative...
...An atmosphere of murder pervades the whole scene and rolls like a fog over the battlefield, cloaking all maneuvers, preventing true insight...
...doubtless, too, the colonial society in Algiers is determined to block, sabotage or at least emasculate them...
...To master these two occasions, Lacoste gave two speeches which were strikingly different in tone...
...However, at the end of this campaign no French farm will be left in Algeria...
...In talking with the leaders of this society, one easily discovers why Lacoste is popular with them: They feel that he has basically adopted their viewpoints, and they are confident they can put him in his place any time he becomes "imprudent...
...the time is past when it looked as though the rebels would dominate most of Algeria outside the cities...
...A defeat may bring Mendes-France to power, but it might also bring de Gaulle, or worse...
...the military reign on both sides, which means virtually that reason has ceased to reign...
...One Frenchman," a French lawyer told a meeting in Algiers, "can easily kill nine Algerians...
...A more cutting comment on Lacoste's boasts could not be made...
...Nevertheless, Lacoste has now decided to change drastically the entire nature of the war...
...Second, the platoon at Palestro was patrolling in reconquered country, country that was considered pacified and had been quiet for many months...
...But the contrary is true: It is hard to see how Algeria could live without France...
...in effect, therefore, they are playing ball with one another...
...They have assembled 400,000 men in Algeria now, an impressive army...
...Seeing what is at stake, in human as well as economic values, one must still hope that some compromise can be found...
...He got a rousing reception and, at the end of his speech, a huge ovation...
...For that is enough to destroy the whole crop, and the famine-stricken population will have to submit or die...
...And these parties would never permit Mendes-France to govern, at least not in any more or less normal situation...
...Mendes-France's resignation will have to be judged in the light of the months to come...
...If need be, we can create an exclusively French Algeria...
...Nevertheless, it seems certain that the Algerian liberation army cannot win the war...
...Lacoste calls for the spirit of 1914, but the reactions of the French people are more reminiscent of 1940...
...But, looking at Mollet's formula more closely, we see that it presupposes the complete capitulation of the rebels...
...While the French people have not resigned themselves to the loss of Algeria as a colony, they are becoming more and more uneasy about the sacrifices the colonial war demands of them...
...On the other hand, these protests are never spontaneous, but have to be provoked by the CP...
...Since the FLN cannot wage a conventional war, the situation is vastly different from Indo-China...
...In this mess, one gesture stands out clearly: Mendes-France has resigned, ending what was clearly an unbearable situation for him...
...Even this is not easy...
...Can they do this...
...The latter is the favorite method of escaping the clause that no company may possess more than 50 hectares...
...Mendes-France had miscalculated the possibilities of his "Republican Front" with the Socialists, and especially his chances of leading it...
...The Poujadists, who represent the crypto-fascist fringe of the French electorate, rose to give the signal for that ovation, the entire Right followed, and Lacoste's own Socialists, of course, had to follow...
...Just before I arrived here, a patrol of 17 men was ambushed near Palestro, killed and unspeakably mutilated...
...On both sides, the military leaders want to exclude any possibility of compromise...
...It is hollow demagogy to pretend, as the French Right does, that France cannot live without Algeria...
...The French started with a series of large-scale actions, which were widely publicized in France as tremendous successes...
...But then there won't be a single Frenchman left in Algeria...
...If we sacrifice three Algerians for one Frenchman," an Algerian intellectual told me, "6 million Algerians will still remain--enough to form a nation...
...A man like Fethat Abbas, fundamentally a moderate, intelligent, erudite man, a fine example of French culture, certainly must have his doubts...
...They now form one bloc, bent, they say, only on victory...
...There is fear among the recruits and its counterpart in the Assembly: the unwillingness of the propertied classes to pay for the war they have demanded so vehemently...
...With his policies and his personal character, he is doomed to wait until an historical showdown presents itself...
...Their numbers may appear small, but that does not make them any less formidable...
...But this works both ways...
...Holland lives without Indonesia--and lives better than before 1939...
...For the war has undone the work of many generations of civilizers...
...A week later, Lacoste and Guy Mollet appeared before the National Council of the Socialist party...
...There is not really so much land to be redistributed...
...The resolution adopted in favor of the two leaders was so flattering it recalled Moscow's late "cult of personality...
...Is catastrophe required before both sides accept mediation...
...but also because they ardently wished to be free of the tremendous responsibility which the Algerian war had placed on their shoulders...
...To smash the whole 20,000, the French must punish several million...
...The incident revealed several things: First, many of the young French recruits who are being sent to Algeria are insufficiently trained and are led by insufficiently experienced officers (mostly reservists...
...There is not yet a sound political reaction one way or the other...
...The Army of Liberation fights and recruits predominately in the mountain regions, which contain a very primitive population, hardly Arahized and only superficially Islamized --a population formed by a nomadic...
...There remain, as the only political weapon, the much-publicized reforms...
...We six are completely isolated from the rest of the administration here...
...Rebel chiefs and French generals vow war to the death ALGERIAN REPORT By Sal Tas Algiers Three weeks ago, Robert Lacoste stood before the French National Assembly to defend his policy in Algeria...
...You may argue that he waited a long time before stepping down...
...Nomination of this implacable enemy of Bourguiba and the Sultan would be the best way to drive Tunisia and Morocco away from NATO and into the arms of Nasser and, perhaps, Khrushchev...
...Algerian villages which have profited from French protection later try to make good in the eyes of the nationalists by serving the FLN with exemplary cruelty...
...and Lacoste's much-publicized reforms are far less conspicuous here than at the Socialist council meeting...
...We were certainly a long way from the revolutionary air with which Lacoste had presented his program to the Socialist council...
...It is the lesson learned from the Mau Mau: that there is no better way to commit a newly-won partisan than by involving him in murder and torture...
...for their "occasional" character means that they can easily expand numerically and topographically...
...The French are pushing the FLN around, and the rebels control only a few mountainous corners...
...This was partly because, as local party leaders, all of them had strong personal and organizational ties with Mollet...
...In his own party's council, he almost spoke like a Socialist...
...A victory may cause new anxieties...
...And, it must be said, the pluck with which Mollet took personal responsibility merited this reward...
...But the response of the young recruits on these occasions is significant...
...Only the Communists and Pierre Mendes-France remained, silent, in their seats...
...Once again, Mollet proved to be a" cunning manipulator of the party and of party meetings--an ability which reveals a considerable amount of cynicism on his part...
...He has dropped the vast, costly actions, and we may therefore assume that they did not bring the resounding victories headquarters had announced...
...No French victory can ever give me back my 120,000 feet of vine, the capital of a generation's work...
...These soldiers are hurried to the front to swell the Army figures that can be cited in debates, but they are no match for the experienced, implacable rebels...
...On both sides, there is a stubborn, poisonous will to exterminate the enemy...
...a Dienbienphu is certainly out of the question...
...The French Government's uncompromising attitude has driven the most moderate Algerian leaders to Cairo...
...Of course, French family companies will be able to distribute the land among their family members...
...There is some truth in this, and it seems we are heading for a very dangerous crisis...
...This not only shows the brutalizing influence of the rebellion...
...For the Assembly, he stressed the traditional rights of France...
...Here their victory was even greater than with the Right...
...They cannot beat an army of 400,000 which is well equipped and logistically close to its homeland...
...The West has grossly underestimated the tremendous impact the Mau Mau had on Africa--a lesson in the efficacy of bestial cruelty as a weapon against Western society...
...Certainly he knows that a military catastrophe of the Dienbienphu type is highly improbable...
...Their parties are weak and manifold and fight one another with almost the same ferocity with which they fight the French...
...True, most of the brawls that occur at the railway stations when recruits are called up are Communist-inspired...
...It shows an orgy of destruction...
...But there are at least 15,000 'occasional fellaghas': peasants who rise on command once in a while when a small rebel detachment comes to their village...
...We are six," an aide of Lacoste confided, "Lacoste and five men he brought with him from Paris...
...But this does not rule out a showdown of some other character...
...Lacoste's agrarian reform, for example, is entrusted to an old Algerian hand of 30 years' standing, a well-entrenched member of the firmly-knit colonial society...
...Is this the whole truth...
...One may wonder...
...As for me, the war is over...
...The Algerian rebels commit crimes so ugly that no political idea, still less an ideal, can excuse, let alone justify, them...
...The next day, they go back to routine labor, ready to obey the French platoon which orders them to repair what they themselves destroyed the night before...
...The French have now decided to pacify Algeria by occupying the country mile after mile, intensively patrolling each reconquered square mile...
...Caught between two fires, the civilians are swept from one to the other, following whoever is momentarily on top...
...To be sure, elements of the civilian population often participate in the actions of the FLN, the Algerian liberation army...
...And the French Army takes reprisals (such as collective punishment of whole villages) which take such a heavy toll among the civilians that any revulsion on their part against the misdeeds of the rebels is quickly swallowed up by a violent desire for revenge on the French...
...The same Algerian farmers left their homes to mutilate the bodies of the dead French boys after the FLN group had done the killing...
...There is without doubt a large group of Algerians who are not interested in the unconditional triumph of Cairo-led fanatics and xenophobes.and who would accept a reasonable proposal to satisfy nationalist aspirations...
...There are, perhaps," a French expert told me, "1,500 Cairo-trained rebels, plus 5,000 recruits whose courage and cruelty has won them the right to bear Cairo-delivered arms...
...Everything French in the countryside will have been destroyed...
...When discussing the reform with me, his every other phrase was temporizing: "We must be very cautious...
...Alas, it looks as if the two protagonists are so enmeshed in the nets of their own war propaganda that they are unable to free themselves...
...If you let 400,000 young boys merely patrol the countryside," a left-wing Frenchman in Algiers remarked, "you win already...
...Doubtless, Lacoste is sincere when he promises them...
...After all, you can't catch flies with jets...
...he could certainly wait no longer without destroying himself as a political factor...
...His mistake was not so much to forget that his party was a minority in the coalition, but, to forget that the coalition would be a minority in the Assembly and therefore would become dependent on the parties of the Right...
...This proposal was ruled out, but it gave us quite an insight into French military circles...
...Thus far, neither side has even worked out such a program...
...for the party council, he stressed the reforms he had introduced in Algeria, which, he said, would create a totally new Algeria in the long run...
...History has not endowed the people of Algeria with great political insight...
...As Mollet sticks to his policy-negotiations only with an elected partner after the rebels have stopped fighting--any real negotiation is ruled out...
...This in part explains their cruelty...
...And thus it serves admirably the political will of the French Right...
...But there is method behind the cruelty...
...The battle for Algeria, observes the French rightist press, can be lost in Paris...
...At first glance, this policy seems merely foolish, for elections are out of the question among a population where cutting one another's throat has become the decisive political argument...
...it also underlines the fragility of the military and political situation created by successful pacification...
...Political life has ceased to exist, and all there is here is war...
...High military circles certainly dream that victory in Algeria will cause such an outbreak of chauvinism that they will be permitted to attempt the reconquest of Tunisia and Morocco...
...a bare 200 votes were cast against their policy and more than 3,000 in favor...
...It was a lesson as telling and impressive as Japan's defeat of Russia in 1905 was for awakening Asia...
...This remark was corroborated by a French farmer, on whose farm (which was guarded) 120,000 feet of vine were destroyed in a single night...
...It must be possible to give the Algerians genuine self-government in a system that would not endanger the persons and goods of the French minority...
...No one can doubt that this war, even if it ends in a victory for the FLN, will prove a catastrophe for the Algerian people...
...From that moment on, he has destroyed all bridges leading to the French, and a subconscious guilt forces him deeper and deeper into the rebel community...
...There is no doubt that the FLN has been pushed back...
...These two statements, equally idiotic and inhuman, better characterize the atmosphere in Algeria than all the speeches of Minister Lacoste...
Vol. 39 • July 1956 • No. 27
