A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (41 page)

If I had carried a lot of brass, having first warned the enemy, I would have shot publicly any assassin caught
in flagrante
—I say advisedly
in flagrante
—if within forty-eight hours he had not voluntarily handed over his
secrets
….

There is no need to torture….

From a purely intelligence point of view, experience teaches that more often than not the collating services are overwhelmed by a mountain of false information extorted from victims desperate to save themselves further agony. Also, it is bound to drive into the enemy camp the innocents who have wrongly been submitted to torture. As Camus declares: “torture has perhaps saved some at the expense of honour, by uncovering thirty bombs, but at the same time it has created fifty new terrorists who, operating in some other way and in another place, would cause the death of even more innocent people”. Torture, one feels, is never warranted; one should never fight for a good cause with evil weapons. Again, says Camus, “it is better to suffer certain injustices than to commit them…such fine deeds would inevitably lead to the demoralisation of France and the loss of Algeria”. In the long run, the facile
tu quoque
arguments, such as those offered by Massu on the Alleg case, can only lead to an endless escalation of horror and degradation. In answer to the standard plaint that Muslim intellectuals were rarely heard to protest against F.L.N. atrocities, Pierre-Henri Simon counters passionately: “I would reply—‘If really we are capable of a moral reflex which our adversary has not, this is the best justification for our cause, and even for our victory.’ ”

One of the worst aspects of the admission of torture as an instrument is the wide train of corruption that inevitably follows in its wake. In a submission to the “Safeguard Committee” of September 1957, Teitgen wrote words that would apply equally to any latter-day authoritarian regime, whether it be Greece, Chile, Spain or the Soviet Union:

Even a legitimate action…can nevertheless lead to improvisations and excesses. Very rapidly, if this is not remedied, efficacity becomes the sole justification. In default of a legal basis, it seeks to justify itself at any price, and, with a certain bad conscience, it demands the privilege of exceptional legitimacy. In the name of efficacity, illegality has become justified.

In a civilised society, torture has no more counter-productive and insidious long-term effect than the way that it tends to demoralise the inflicter even more than his victim. Frantz Fanon, the militant Martiniquais psychiatrist, cites several examples of acute, lingering neurosis induced among the tortured; a kind of anorexia suffered by the innocent who had been put to
la question
wrongfully; pins-and-needles and a lasting fear of turning on a light switch, or touching a telephone, in those who had experienced the
gégène
. But just as psychically impaired were numerous cases like that of the European police inspector found guilty of torturing his own wife and children, which he explained as resulting from what he had been required to do to Algerian suspects: “The thing that kills me most is the torture. You just don’t know what it’s like, do you?”

Louis Joxe, the man summoned by de Gaulle to negotiate the final peace settlement with Algeria, told the author:

I shall never forget the young officers and soldiers whom I met who were absolutely appalled by what they had to do. One should never forget the significance of this experience in considering a settlement for Algeria; for practically every French soldier went through it. This is something that the supporters of
Algérie française
never properly understood.

Simon declares that a policeman torturing a suspect “injures in himself the essence of humanity”, but for the military to resort to it was one degree worse because: “It is here that the honour of the nation becomes engaged.” Certainly the pernicious effect on the French army as a whole lasted many years after the war had ended, and many officers came to agree with General Bollardière in condemning Massu for ever having allowed the army to be brought into such a police action in the first place, thereby inevitably exposing it to the practice of torture. But could Massu, in fact, have refused? Outside the army, in Algeria the rifts created by torture led to a further, decisive step in eradicating any Muslim “third force” of
interlocuteurs valables
with whom a compromise peace might have been negotiated; while in France the stunning, cumulative impact it had was materially to help persuade public opinion years later that France had to wash her hands of the
sale guerre
. As Paul Teitgen remarked: “All right, Massu won the Battle of Algiers; but that meant losing the war.”

By the end of March 1957—the first month in many when no bombs exploded in Algiers—it certainly looked as if, at any rate in the short term, the battle had been won. Sickened by what they had been forced to do, and breathing deep sighs of relief, Bigeard and his paras left the fetid city for the open air of the
bled
once more.

The terrain. 1.
Above
: In Kabylia. A soldier keeps guard over a rocky pass.

2.
Below:
The Aurès. The village on the spur of the gorge is almost invisible against the parched background.

3. December 1954. Zouaves searching a Kabyle suspect.

4. In contrast to the prosperous
pied noir
farms and suburbs, overpopulation and under-employment in the Muslim centres.

5.
Above:
The funeral of the victims of the Philippeville massacres, August 1955.

6.
Below:
The departure of Jacques Soustelle from Algiers in February 1956.

7.
Above:
The five members of the G.P.R.A. detained at the Château d’Aulnoy.
Left to right:
Hocine Ait Ahmed, Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohamed Khider, Mohamed Boudiaf and Rabah Bitat.

8.
Below left:
Ben Bella handcuffed after the arrest of the five leaders in October 1956.