The War of Algerian Independence

* The French in Algeria before WWI

- France conquered Muslim city-states in the 1830s

-> stopping the Barbary Pirates and making the Western Mediterranean safer for Europe

-> annexed in 1834

- "Indigenous Code" in 1854 made Muslims choose between following Muslim law and being a

French full citizen

-> keeping to one's culture meant subject-hood

- Algerian Jews were allowed to become French citizens eventually, separating them from the

Muslims

- later laws in the 1870s and 1880s expropriated Muslim-held lands

- Muslim Algerians served in the French army

* Post-WWI to WWII Algerian nationalism

- Wilson's 14 points inspired some Muslim intellectuals

- long service in WWI required payment in Muslim eyes

- In the 1920s, various competing political groups formed to push for Algerian rights

-> Algerian communists

-> non-communist independence movements as well

=> North African Star party

=> Algerian People's Party (PPA)

=> Algerian Popular Union (Ferhat Abbas)

* The Pied Noir position

- By WWII, one million Algerian-born French lived in Algeria

-> saw themselves as entirely and irrevocably French

- Often racist towards Muslims

-> particularly against Muslims who did not take the offer of French citizenship

- Some quite wealthy from agriculture and business

- many were immigrants of Spanish or Italian origin

- determined to keep their position, even at the risk of setting up an Apartheid-like legal system

* Independence movement immediately after WWII

- Algeria had been part of Vichy France and thus a group of Nazi sympathizers

-> With the French defeat and the later US-led liberation, Muslims believed their time had come

- After the war, the French moved back in with a vengeance

-> France needed the wealth and could not abandon the Pied Noirs

- The Setíf Massacre resulted when the French crushed Muslim independence protests and violence

-> hard to say who started it, but 6,000 to 45,000 Algerians were killed

- Shuffling of independence parties

-> APU became the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto (UDMA) under Abbas

-> PPA became the more militaristic National Liberation Front (FLN)

-> These two parties fought it out as much as they protested the French, the FLN won

- The French government in Paris was desperately trying to find a deal that would bring Algerian

Muslims into full French citizenship

-> problem was that they massively outnumbered the Pied Noirs (9 to 1)

=> thus Muslims could outvote Pied Noirs if there was ever true democracy

-> also, Muslim poverty required land reform and economic changes that would hurt Pied Noirs

-> because of unstable French politics, Pied Noirs could vote as a group and block reforms

-> eventually, Muslims got tired of waiting for political solutions that the Pied Noirs vetoed

- In early 1954, the French finally admitted defeat in Vietnam and came slinking home

-> no French government could afford to lose another colony

* The War for Algerian Independence

- November 1, 1954, FLN fighters struck military targets throughout Algeria

-> Muslims who sided with the French were also assassinated in large numbers

-> remaining UDMA members also targeted

=> Abbas joined the FLN, unifying the opposition to France

-> low-level guerrilla war ran for a year or so

- Philippeville massacre in 1955 hardened the sides

-> FLN troops massacred Pied Noir families (123 dead)

-> French soldiers and Pied Noir vigilantes killed thousands (1,293 official to 12,000 FLN #) of

Muslims

-> classic guerrilla trick of sparking overreaction worked

-> made it impossible for the French government to talk about reform

- Sept 30, 1956 - The Battle of Algiers

-> three women places bombs in civilian locations in Algiers

=> many civilians killed

-> Pied Noirs respond with counter-bombings that kill many innocent Muslims

-> For months, tit for tat bombings wrack Algiers, creating massive instability

-> French move 400,000 troops into the country

=> military draft and long service near bombings and chaos very unpopular

- 1957 FLN tries to hold a general strike

-> it is broken and fails, but it does get international attention

-> suddenly, the world starts looking at France unsympathetically

- late 1957 French Paras (elite units) take over the war in a "Surge"

-> used mass arrests, torture, partition of the city, etc. to break the bombing campaign in Algiers

=> US is presently using a variant of this system in Iraq, particularly in Baghdad

- FLN reduced to a weak guerrilla war in the rural areas and from Tunisia

* The false peace and the end

- After early 1958, and especially after the French military began to perfect insurgent hunting,

France looked dominant

- the problem was that the vast majority of Muslims now despised the French

- only way to keep the country peaceful was with military force

-> financial cost to France was extreme

-> French military was shattered in its morale, with elite units unwilling to give up and conscripts

completely bewildered as to what the point was

-> international opinion of France was horrendous

- French war hero de Gaulle became president

-> he started negotiating with the FLN, hoping for a "decent" solution

-> the FLN held out for absolute victory

-> Pied Noirs forced de Gaulle's hands by rebelling against him when he tried to negotiate a deal

with the FLN

=> Pied Noirs refused to compromise

-> tired and needing to move on, France and de Gaulle pulled the plug

=> Pied Noirs abandoned Algeria

=> Algerian Jews forced to flee the land they had been in for thousands of years as well

- July 1, 1962 Algerians voted to become an independent nation

Most facts taken from: Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace - Algeria 1954-1962. New York Review of Books: New York. 1977.