THE RIDDLE OF ALGERIA

...What every Moslem element demands is French recognition of the dignity of the Algerian Moslem population...

...In Algiers I had a long talk with Lacheroy and on the basis of both his comments and a first-hand view of the psychological machine in action, I would judge that the methods employed seem far from having sufSTATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF CONGRESS OF AUGUST 24, 1912, AS AMENDED BY THE ACTS OF MARCH 3, 1933, AND JULY 2, 1946...

...5. The average number of copies of each issue of this publication sold or distributed, through the mails or otherwise, to paid subscribers during the 12 months preceding the date shown above was (This information is required from daily, weekly, semi-weekly, and tri-weekJy newspapers only...

...Not all of us are for independence...

...Discrimination has rarely been a problem in Algerian schools, where European and Moslem students have always studied together, often under Moslem teachers...

...Apart from possibly much more richly endowed Morocco, Algeria today has the highest standard of living of the Arab world, and its system of railroads, airports, and dams approaches a European or American level...

...Tunisia is also a resting place and training area for the FLN troops, who, most foreign observers feel, are more powerful than the Tunisian army itself...

...The French, in turn, began rounding up Algerian Moslems in France and, with the seizure of France-Observateur, reinstated the censorship supposedly dropped by the new regime...

...In reality, Algeria is divided into two major geographical regions: the south, the fabled Sahara, which supports a population of perhaps 500,000, and a northern strip about 200 to 250 miles wide bordering the Mediterranean Coast...

...France has, therefore, brought a European economy and European civilization to Algeria, whose educated Moslems prefer speaking in French rather than in the local Berber or Arabic patois...

...The FLN offers a figure of 600,000 for the French army, 130,000 for their own...

...Over the years the European settlers have acquired the major portion of the plains areas, largely by means of legitimate purchase, leaving the hillsides and narrow valleys to the rapidly growing Moslem population...

...The French say it can come only after elections allow the Algerian people themselves to decide the issue of independence...

...Its population includes more than eight million Moslems and one million Europeans...

...transformed into whole systems of untruths, and the best that foreign observers can do is hear what each force has to say and somehow weigh out their own conclusions...

...The FLN has on occasion gone so far as to establish a system of registering births and deaths and making payments of social security and old age pensions...

...Business Manager, Gordon Sinykin, Madison, Wisconsin...

...Northern Algeria is a series of plains and low lying mountains, in many areas heavily forested, and nearly everywhere capable of supporting life...

...The rebels claim that by cutting the line simultaneously in several places, or by simple digging or crossing over, they can maneuver as though there were no barricade at all...

...FLN press officers hold that the French methods have been far less painstaking, and that, instead, large numbers of the population have been massacred to clear the way for French military action...

...A further French offensive, which began with May 13, was climaxed by the visits of de Gaulle amid acclaim from the Moslems realistic enough to convince the observant Andre Mal-raux...

...The comparison just does not hold...

...The final shaky premise is that French army officers can promote the same sense of rapport with the Moslems as can the men of the FLN...

...True, like most revolutionary movements the FLN is primarily comprised of intellectuals, bourgeoisie, and comparatively enlightened youth...

...everyone is pushed or pulled to extremes...

...A common customs frontier with France is of mutual benefit to the two nations, as will be the highly touted Algerian oil, which can be sold only in the protected French market as its price is well above that of Middle East oil...

...On a slightly different level is the so-called "spirit of May 13," the spirit engendered by the revolt organized by the army and the "grand colons" against the French political system...

...Title 39, United States Code, Section 233) Of The Progressive, published monthly at Madison 3, Wisconsin, for October 1, 1958...

...Even in Paris, the police have discovered FLN law courts complete with executioners...

...In certain important areas, such as housing, education, and job opportunities, discrimination is practically non-existent...

...Nor does anyone know what is actually happening in the so-called "inter-dit areas" between the barricade and the frontier, in which the French admit that stray persons are shot on sight...

...Thus, while the spectacular features of the conflict are the daily encounters between French and nationalist troops, the real battle in Algeria is for the support of the Moslem people, necessary to a victory for either side...

...Even the great majority of the Moslem population, who still live in their own homes, are attracted from time to time to the units to receive medical aid, to register their children in school, to watch free movies—and thus are open to French propaganda efforts...

...We recognize that the France of Soustelle, Salan, and de Serigny is also the France of Voltaire, Montaigne, Camus, and Delacroix...

...elsewhere the Algerian dislocation is not primarily geographical but psychological...

...If not owned by a corporation, the names and addresses of the individual owners must be given...

...Around many of these units are clustered hundreds—often thousands —of makeshift or even permanent homes belonging to small farmers who have either been driven or led out of the nationalist dominated hillsides...

...In return, Algeria has given France an outlet for its pioneering spirit, as America once did for all of Europe...

...The Algerian Moslem, caught in the middle, pays his French taxes, his FLN taxes, and money to "free lance" posers who work for the FLN and have found, in the atmosphere of fear, a windfall business...

...I wandered through the Moslem quarter of Constantine with a uniformed French captain, and while he appeared on good relations with the inhabitants and spoke their language, the six-foot Frenchman was always "Mon Capitain," representative of another people and another land...

...and an army garrison to protect against FLN attacks...

...One of the major problems of the French has been the flow of arms across the Tunisian border, arms financed by funds from every Moslem country, purchased in the Mediterranean and Eastern European arms market and shipped to the rebels from receiving ports in Egypt via the Lybian desert in Lybian and Tunisian trucks...

...A typical SAS unit is headed by a French army captain, who is absolute boss of the region under his control...

...the FLN says it is getting stronger all the time...

...The most important role of the SAS, from the French point of view, is as the operating arm of the army's fifth bureau, the office of psychological action...

...youth monitors—Moslems trained at a special school in Southern France—who organize "teen-age" activities...

...There is no reason for my people and the French people to be at war as we are...

...It would be unfair, however, to leave the impression that Algeria is a panorama of fleeing peoples...

...The finest suburbs in Oran and Algiers have Moslems and Europeans living side by side, as do the government sponsored low-cost housing projects, where apartments are just as coveted by the so-called "petits blancs" as by the city dwelling Khabylies, Arabs, or Mozabites...

...The FLN answer to the "pacification" program was a series of strikes and terrorist bombings, mainly in the capital city of Algiers...

...The Algerian military pattern is dictated primarily by the geography and population distribution of the country...

...French farmers proudly boast that they are much more proficient in agricultural technique than Moslem neighbors farming the same land...

...My friend was openly hurt and confused...

...The outbreak of the revolution, October 31, 1954, came as an absolute surprise to the French, and almost overnight a parallel administrative machine was formed in the Moslem community, complete with judges, police, draft boards, and the entire battery of functionaries and services offered by modern government...

...Thus, the SAS units have become, in effect, small cities, with shops, taxi-cabs, and occasionally little mosques...

...The barricade consists of three rows of barbed wire, one of which is electrified, along each side of the track, with a military post situated every few miles...

...The vast majority of the illiterate Algerian population probably has insufficient political sophistication to understand fully what is happening...

...My commission expires Jan...

...None...

...MILDRED LOHFF Notary Public, Dane County, Wis...

...1. The names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business managers are: Publisher, The Progressive, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin...

...The French explain that the military, as essentially outsiders to the Algerian European-Moslem conflict, inspire a sense of confidence...

...The ties between France and Algeria are much more than a common political doctrine...

...The fellagah or FLN (National Liberation Front) troops make their way to the French military targets in the plains and valleys under cover of darkness and then retire to their remote retreats through forests and brush impassable to all but those thoroughly familiar with the region...

...The French claim they have 400,000 troops in Algeria, and that their opponents number 50,000, only half of whom are regulars...

...Negotiations can come only with a cease-fire in Algeria...

...The French psychological action operates on a whole series of shaky premises...

...Armored trains run back and forth on the railroad, ready to rush to any spot where either a radar system or a cut electric wire announces that the rebels have made a crossing...

...The areas of population movement are in the regions of FLN strength and thus of most intense fighting...

...But in a state of war there are no moderates...

...Many commentators picture the Algerian Moslems as victims of a French oppression comparable to that of the Negroes of rural Georgia...

...and FLN agents, using bombs and machine guns, daily "take care" of recalcitrant Algerians all over France...

...also the statements in the two paragraphs show the affiant's full knowledge and belief as to the circumstances and conditions under which stockholders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the company as trustees, hold stock and securities in a capacity other than that of a bonafide owner...

...Similarly, the only French chance for undercutting the mountain-based bands is through information and support provided by the local populace—information the French are determined to obtain by any means, including torture...

...If owned by a partnership or other unincorporated firm, its name and address, as well as that of each individual member, must be given...

...But it seems reasonable that an even stronger confidence would be felt with the agents of the FLN, who are their own people...

...And they say it in excellent French, often in Paris itself, where many of their children are boarding students in French schools...

...On the other, it bears increasingly little relation to the hit-or-miss underground movements ordinarily associated with a popular resistance...

...Associate Editor, Mary Sheridan, Madison, Wisconsin...

...On the one hand, it does not include the familiar moving frontiers, anticipated engagements, and pinpointed objectives...

...The Progressive, Inc., Madison 3, Wisconsin, a non-profit corporation consisting of more than 5,000 members, none of whom holds 1 per cent of the stock...

...The ordinary exaggerations of war have been SIGMUND BECK, an American free lancer living abroad, has recently completed a first-hand survey of conditions in Algiers, where he conferred with many French and Algerian officials and citizens...

...While France has slowly come to recognize this, it is the old story of too little, too late...

...In each case, the result was further hardening of the extremes and a silencing of the moderates...

...France has given us much —even our nationalism...

...I remember well the conversation I had in Paris with a young Algerian Moslem intellectual after the late August wave of FLN terrorism in France...

...government has undertaken a large-scale feeding program at United Nations request...

...And on slightly lower levels as well, Moslem taxi drivers, waiters, and factory workers face little problem because of not being European if they are willing to accept European standards...

...These strikes, of businesses, employees, and students, put the Algerian Moslems on the spot, since refusal to co-operate may cause FLN reprisals, while following the strike order brands them as revolutionaries in the eyes of the French...

...More than 400,000 Algerians are today working in France and regularly sending home money which is the primary support of an estimated two million persons in Algeria...

...The army likes the "integration" slogan because it is the opposite of the catch-word "independence" and thus plays along with the Algerian Europeans who see complete integration into France as the only way to save their privileges as French citizens in an essentially Moslem country...

...And the lack of a sufficiently rapid evolution allowed the situation to give way to a violent and terrorist revolution...

...Countless others are in calmer areas of Algeria proper, living in makeshift houses in the sprawling bidonvilles, cities built of water cans that surround every urban area...

...The French say that all they have done is relocate the population into protection centers to keep them out of the line of action and to prevent their giving support to the nationalist troops...

...Among the great ironies of the Algerian story is that it is just those Moslems who have been eligible for full French citizenship who are the backbone of the independence movement...

...More than 100,000 are in Tunisia alone, where the U.S...

...They live in the Middle Ages, and what we have to do is evolve them to our level of civilization...

...And the war drags on...

...The main agents of the pacification have been the 750 army SAS (Special Administrative Section) units scattered throughout Algeria...

...No outside observer really knows what is going on...

...MORRIS H. RUBIN, Editor Sworn to and subscribed before me this 22nd day of September, 1958...

...Editor, Morris H. Rubin, Madison, Wisconsin...

...The French fully realize that were it not for the support granted the FLN army by the Moslem population the fighting would long since have ended...

...Both the French and FLN offer guided tours to visiting correspondents complete with cheering Moslem partisans...

...4. Paragraphs 2 and 3 include, in cases where the stockholders or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee is acting...

...3. The known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding one per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: (If there are none, so state...

...but, again, no one knows the whole answer...

...They want equality not just for their few intellectuals, high functionaries, or wealthy businessmen but for the entire Algerian people...

...When the French realized they might lose Algeria almost by default, they devised their present system of "pacification," i.e., a broad program for gaining the allegiance of the Moslem population...

...an Arabic or Berber speaking assistant who acts as judge for settling civil disputes...

...The Frenchman of Algeria has a personality entirely different from that of his European counterpart...

...The FLN response was to bring the war to France itself by setting fire to oil refineries, blowing up other installations, and shooting policemen at random...

...The popular image of Algeria and North Africa pictures a vast desert sweeping up to the very shores of the Mediterranean...

...Our nationalism isn't the same as that of the xenophobic Nasser...

...several civilian employees who take the census and register births and deaths...

...The Algerian French-speaking population does practice a form of racism, but entirely unlike anything traditionally familiar to Americans...

...The idea is that only those Moslems "evolved" to the level of working in the European community, following its laws of marriage and divorce, or graduates of its educational system, are culturally qualified to be full citizens on an equal footing with the European Algerians...

...The anatomy of the Algerian war follows no traditional pattern...

...But it seems unlikely that the 25 or 50 or 100 thousand fellagah troops could force support not granted to the equally terrorist and far more numerous French...

...The FLN demands recognition of the principle of Algerian independence before a cease-fire...

...Although the nationalists receive guns and ammunition from abroad, their two basic needs—food and information—come from the local population...

...French employers bemoan the fact that their Moslem employes simply do not understand European notions of efficiency...

...While the "inte-grationist" argument that "the Mediterranean is to France as the Seine is to Paris" is clearly ridiculous, as is the political fiction that Algeria is just another French department, only the most shortsighted nationalist can deny the very real links between the two nations...

...Initial success in the struggle for mass support was gained by the nationalists...

...Both sides run offensives and counter-offensives on a psychological as well as military level...

...But all the integration effort comes from one direction, and the leaders, like Madame Massu, are people who a year ago never gave a second thought to the Moslems or their condition...

...Some of us are for federation, others for confederation, others . for integration...

...They're not like us, they don't think like us...

...Nationalist tax collectors still make their rounds even in the large cities and areas ostensibly under complete French control...

...We are too close...

...The French say that the "Morice Line," named after the former defense minister, Andre Morice, who invented it, is all but completely effective...

...One fact is certain: Eastern Algeria pours forth huge numbers of Moslem refugees...

...the FLN claims 95 per cent...

...The French claim that only five per cent of the Moslem Algerians support the nationalists...

...As one Frenchman graphically put it, "Here we were telling these people all about our great revolution and liberty, equality, and fraternity, so they got it into their heads that maybe the French tradition was a good thing after all and wanted some of it for themselves...

...Many of the more fashionable Moslems even emulate their French counterparts and send their children to Catholic private schools...

...The attitude of the Algerian Europeans toward the Algerian Moslems is one of cultural superiority rather than true racism...

...In addition to one or two soldiers as administrative assistants, his staff includes a nurse...

...Even the nationalists admit that independent Algeria must maintain strong ties with France...

...The French answer has been to erect a barricade along the railroad running south from the port of Bone to the terminal of Tebessa...

...And European after European explained to me, echoing Kipling and Colonel Blimp, "The trouble with you Americans is that you just don't understand the Moslems...

...If the casualty lists offered by either side approximated the truth, the two opposing armies would long ago have been nearly exterminated...

...Typical of the great unknowns is what is happening in the region of the Tunisian frontier...

...2. The owner is: (if owned by a corparation, its name and address must be stated and also immediately thereunder the names and addresses of stockholders owning or holding one per cent or more of total amount of stock...

...There is probably some truth in both stories...

...The French government pays an annual subsidy of more than $200 million to the permanently unbalanced Algerian budget...

...The more rugged mountain areas remain a no man's land of dense brush, and it is in these mountains that the nationalist army has made its stand...

...Even the French army officers finally admit that their foe is more than a mountain-ranging rabble, but is, instead, a well organized military force, armed with modern small arms and trained by the best tactical specialists available in the Arab world...

...Stuck with their slogan, integration, the Europeans have devised activities like the Algiers center run by the wife of paratrooper General Massu, where veiled Moslem women are supposedly helped out of the Middle Ages into the modern era...

...In general, he is more open, more friendly, less sophisticated, and more violent...

...The second shaky premise in the French position is that those Algerians who know what it means want "integration" at all...

...What the French have failed to comprehend is that the Algerian Moslems are not French and see no reason why they should have to embrace foreign standards to be citizens in their own country...

...The resulting "Battle of Algiers" was won by the French, and the city today presents a peacetime calm with crowded cafes and avenues, while subsequent strike attempts have been almost completely blocked...

...The FLN replies that all French elections are dishonest...

...As for employment, in a nation where trained personnel is at a premium, educated—or as the French would put it, evolved—Moslems are more than welcome...

...the latter in its classical sense—a feeling of genetic difference—is completely alien to the French tradition...

...What the war has become, therefore, is not the traditional horizontal fighting, back and forth across open territory, but a vertical battle, in which the FLN holds the upper mountain areas, the French control the plains and valleys, with a frightened and torn Moslem population in the middle...

...instructors who assume the job of primary education...

...Moreover, since the French had always left the rural areas to their own devices, and with few exceptions had established schools and administrative systems only in the urban section, the Algerian Moslems, largely illiterate in both French and Arabic, and tied to their old traditions, had no opportunity to rise to French citizenship even if they had wanted...

...Peace can come only with negotiations...

...25, 1959) ficient potential force to counter the FLN's simple idea of self-respect through national identity and independence...

...What the Algerian nationalists have done is adopt the French political mythology and French imposed geographical boundaries as their own and, in the process of learning European ways, even the custom of seeing history to one's own advantage, have turned their newly learned views against their former mentors...

...An entire population is being pushed and pulled from two directions, often simultaneously, by a combination of psychological and physical persuasion—by forces which both claim, each with a portion of truth, to represent the best interests of Algeria and its people...

...The French are enthusiastic about the possibilities of persuading the Moslems to accept the French political view, and the chief of the fifth bureau, Colonel Charles Lacheroy, also spokesman for General Salan and the country's high censor, has become one of the best known of the "colonels" who have completely taken over the Algerian administrative machine...

...The French say that desertions and blockades have reduced the FLN to near the breaking point...

...Frenchmen think of Moslem women as just one cut above savages...

...The first is that the Algerian Moslems support the FLN out of sheer fright...

...The effect was, and to some extent remains, a dumbfounding duplication of civil functions...