The State of the War
TAS, SAL
Spotlight on Algeria -Three ArticlesThe State of the War For eight years after World War II, France exhausted itself in a costly military campaign in Indo-China. Then, in 1954 and 1955, the...
...The killing goes relentlessly on, and the gulf separating the two sides grows steadily wider...
...This group has already forced the inclusion of a preamble which declares that Algeria is French and will remain so...
...Their views appear on the pages which follow this report...
...A particularly serious obstacle to any discussion of Algerian independence is the problem of protecting the rights and interests of the European population of 1.3 million...
...Torture, common both in military detention camps and in the field, is often carried out by former German SS men now in the Foreign Legion...
...These people denounce as traitors those "left-wing intellectuals" who dare to protest against the Algerian atrocities...
...Algerian suspicion is further aroused by the fact that only on the eve of a new UN session has France moved to heed last year's UN injunction to "seek a just solution...
...As it is, the present draft is clearly unacceptable to the nationalists...
...And what country, other than France, is sufficiently interested to provide it...
...These provocative words obviously preclude any negotiation with the nationalists, and that is exactly what they are intended to do...
...Perhaps along these lines a humane, progressive solution to the terrible Algerian dilemma will be found...
...It is whether they are prepared to negotiate—and to negotiate over the heads of the "impossibilists" among the Algerian French...
...Robert Lacoste, French Resident Minister in Algeria, continues to claim military victories...
...A year ago, the European part of Algiers was virtually at the mercy of the Casbah, the Arab quarter...
...Paris As the UN General Assembly prepares to take up the Algerian question again, the situation in that embattled North African territory is even grimmer than a year ago, when the UN asked France "to seek a just solution...
...The paper assurances did not prevent the native population from launching a policy of discrimination which destroyed the position of the non-Indonesian population as effectively as any official Government campaign could have done...
...Apparently, however, there are always now recruits to fill the gap...
...Some supporters of Premier Maurice Bourges-Maunoury's Algerian policy have tried to justify these methods on the ground that they are needed to flush out terrorist bomb caches before they can be used against innocent victims...
...Some have been "shot while trying to escape...
...The nationalists are now almost completely dominated by the National Liberation Front (FLN), which has wiped out most of its rivals...
...This would suffice in any normal state with a record of internal peace and tolerance of minorities, but in this case the new nation would be born of a brutal civil war...
...Unfortunately, the United Nations is in no position to make a serious contribution...
...Even more widespread among French rightists is the practice of simply suppressing the facts...
...It seems clear from the utterances of these colonialists that they are aiming at a new assertion of French power in Algeria, a kind of supercolonialism designed to neutralize the dangerous examples of Morocco and Tunisia to the west and east...
...French soldiers have arrested people—particularly Arabs, but also Frenchmen suspected of being Communists or "progressistes"—without warrants...
...The visitors' fanaticism, their intolerance and, in particular, their vicious attacks on other Algerian nationalist groups like the MNA made the worst possible impression on Scandinavian audiences...
...Besides, if it were achieved, it would spell disaster for Algeria...
...It is meaningless for the nationalists to insist that they want to negotiate when, at the same time, they put forward as a precondition the recognition of Algerian independence— which is, of course, the very issue about which negotiations would revolve...
...The nationalists promise that the laws of an independent Algeria would provide adequate guarantees...
...In view of the terrible human and financial cost of the campaign for Paris, it may well succeed...
...The big question is not whether the French can produce a statute for Algeria...
...A compromise is clearly indicated...
...One is that the rebels, recruited from the local population, inevitably have a stronger hold in the countryside than the alien French...
...This was demonstrated recently when FLN spokesmen toured Scandinavia —a region whose people are staunch anti-colonialists and only too ready-to respond favorably to the nationalist cause...
...Now, thanks to the combined efforts of the Algerian police and French paratroopers, terrorism in Algiers has been brought under control...
...At all events, the more one speaks to nationalist leaders or reads their statements, the more one concludes that, like La-coste, they have just one idea in their minds: total military victory...
...The French Government has almost completed a "basic law," largely based on Lacoste's recommendations, which is designed to give Algeria some internal autonomy...
...The increasing criticism of Paris's "unconditional surrender" policy has been sparked by the Mendesian newspaper L'Express and by two leading intellectuals, independent conservative Raymond Aron and dissident Socialist Andre Philip...
...Some members of the French Assembly, notably the democratic leftist Frangois Mitterand, have warned against an attempt to atomize Algeria and evade the real problem of Algerian nationalist feeling...
...A vast amount of capital investment is needed to turn Algeria into an economically viable country...
...No one denies the cruelty frequently employed by the rebels, but there has been mounting uneasiness in Paris over reports of French Army atrocities...
...terrorists would emerge to strike at a victim, then melt back into the Casbah's teeming, crooked streets...
...There are many reasons for this...
...The members of the Soviet and Afro-Asian blocs, which regard the Algerian question as a pawn in their war against the West, are far too strong in the General Assembly...
...Countless Moslems have been brutally murdered or maimed because they refused to obey the FLN, or simply because they submitted to French authority when the French controlled their native village...
...Their stand resembles that of Lacoste, who insists that the nationalists first acknowledge that Algeria is French...
...The rebel losses claimed by the French Army are enormous...
...France would retain all sovereign power...
...This claim has been put forward for the past year, however, and it is meeting with increasing skepticism even among Government supporters in Paris...
...It would be sheer insanity for the Algerian nationalists to ignore their country's vital need for a continuing close relationship with France...
...This supercolonialism demands complete military victory...
...The FLN leaders' lack of political experience and realism has alienated many of their sympathizers abroad...
...While this spirit prevails in the FLN, there seems no way out but a military decision...
...Only the Algerian National Movement (MNA), led by the former Trotskyite Messali Hadj, who is interned in France, is still fighting for survival...
...At the same time, minor successes have been scored in the countryside...
...A nominal assembly for all Algeria would be elected, either directly or indirectly, but would have only formal tasks of coordination...
...The struggle against the French is continuing with varying success, and the FLN feels strong enough to hold out in the hope of eventually wearing France down...
...But if an outright victory for the French seems doubtful, a nationalist victory is even more so...
...The war has been draining French finances and overshadows all other issues of French politics...
...The rebels, he asserts, have been decisively weakened...
...It is being blocked by the accumulated passions on both sides...
...One cannot help recalling the example of Indonesia, which, following its war of independence, extended full legal guarantees to minorities...
...Lacoste's policy is clearly to push for a statute which will gain the approval of the French population of Algeria...
...People who treat even their fellow-countrymen in this manner can scarcely expect their "legal guarantees" to be given full faith and credit...
...The fact that Tunisia and Morocco, the two most ardent supporters of the nationalist cause, are also very close to France provides an element of hope...
...Fundamentally, it is clear that the French have been unable to win the Arab population over to their side...
...What is needed to bring the two sides together is sincere mediation by the real friends of France and Algeria...
...Furthermore, what country would invest its money in an Algeria which had driven the French out and broken all ties with France...
...To be sure, there have been some military successes...
...A system of provincial decentralization is envisaged, with the boundaries so drawn that the French population would have a majority of the votes in at least some provinces, which would then be tied closely to France...
...Indeed, the war is now approaching its "last 15 minutes...
...On the Algerian side, too, the situation is anything but conducive to a negotiated peace...
...Another reason is the increasing brutality with which the war is being fought...
...For the FLN has established its dominant position by methods often indistinguishable from those of the SS Legionnaires...
...Then, in 1954 and 1955, the French governments of Pierre Mendes-France and Edgar Faure ended that war and granted first internal autonomy, then independence to Tunisia and Morocco...
...The political situation in Algeria is not much better than the military...
...Since the beginning of 1956, however, some half a million French soldiers have been attempting lo crush still another nationalist uprising, in Algeria...
...The objcct of war, however, is to break the enemy's will to resist, and the French are farther from that than ever...
...An independent Algeria would be ruled by a nationalist elite just emerged from guerrilla warfare—a war, furthermore, waged not only against the French but, in large part, against fellow Moslems...
...For the latter, with a population of 11 million, can feed only 3 million without outside help...
...But even more dangerous is the failure to invite any Algerians to participate in discussion of the proposed statute...
...a good many have been tortured...
...The conclusion seems inescapable that this is only a tactical move to placate the General Assembly...
Vol. 40 • September 1957 • No. 37
