A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (85 page)

The General Staff itself was remodelled around four bureaux integrally copied from the French system, and these were placed in the charge of officers who had defected recently from the French army, bringing with them specialist know-how. Energetic training programmes were launched as the new and heavier weapons promised from the Communist bloc began to reach it. At the same time, clearly with an eye to the future, Boumedienne subjected the A.L.N. to intensive political education.

To staff officers in Tunisia Boumedienne disclosed his new military tactics a month after his assumption of office: the previous policy of periodic, massive breaching attempts on the Morice Line with their “decimating” losses was to be abandoned; liaison agents would still have to run the gauntlet through the Line to keep up contact with the “interior”, but they would only go in small, highly trained packets, taking advantage of electric storms which fused the high-tension barrier. Using its increasing firepower, the A.L.N. would harass the French army with repeated, painful “pin-pricks”, shelling and mortaring units from the safety of their Tunisian and Moroccan sanctuaries. This, Boumedienne reckoned with reason, would “freeze” on the frontiers substantial numbers of French troops — thereby granting the hard-pressed “interior” as much relief as the reinforcements that could be run through to them at appalling and unacceptable cost. Meanwhile, the “interior” was instructed to maintain a low profile; to refuse combat in the face of continuing French
ratissages
; to break up and dissipate in small groups and, if necessary, take refuge in another Wilaya far from the current offensive. Without in any way launching a new wave of terrorism that would inevitably bring massive counter-measures, the
fidayine
were just to keep the pot simmering with an occasional grenade thrown into a café here, a burst of machine-gun fire against bathers on a beach there. The aim was to continue to terrorise Muslims away from lending support to any possible “third force”, and also constantly to remind the outside world that the F.L.N. remained in existence.

More significant was the cautious but steady rebuilding of the Algiers network after more than two years of complete inactivity. It had started chiefly, it seems, as a defensive measure against the excesses of the “ultras” during “Barricades Week”, but by the spring of 1960 the new organisation had already mustered some 250 adherents. Its leader, Larbi Alilat, son of a Kabyle
caid
from the Soummam valley and a veteran of the 1957 Battle of Algiers, renounced the old rigid pyramidal structure of Yacef’s Z.A.A. which had become so disastrously susceptible to
bleuite
penetration. Instead, each trusted member of the network was instructed to recruit one lifelong friend. Co-ordinated under the aegis of a newly reconstructed Wilaya 4, a minimum of carefully chosen operations was attempted in the course of the year. Thus the growth of Alilat’s force went on largely undisturbed by the French security forces. By the end of 1960 a useful and well-disciplined contingent about 400 strong had grown up in the capital in such secrecy that it would provide the French with a shock as unpleasant as it was unexpected.

During this first year of Boumedienne’s command there still occurred the occasional military disaster in the “interior”, or the bloody setback provoked by an over-zealous local commander on the Morice Line. But by and large the serious military war was beginning slowly to peter out as de Gaulle showed increasing signs of being bent upon a course of negotiation. As Professor Quandt remarks, henceforth to the F.L.N. “Military victory was not only widely regarded as a chimera, but also it seemed increasingly unnecessary.” The top priority was to keep the military apparatus intact, and Boumedienne saw it as his longer-term function to create a well-equipped, disciplined and trustworthy army with which any future Algerian government of the F.L.N. could rule an independent Algeria, against all rivals, in the difficult days that might lie ahead.

[
1
] The French army’s well-intentioned efforts at psychological counter-propaganda had its absurd aspects, especially in the early days. Jean Servier recalls that when he revisited Kabylia in 1956, “Donald Duck” was being shown in English to utterly dumbfounded villagers.

CHAPTER TWENTY
De Gaulle Caught in the Draught:
September 1960–January 1961

If you open a window to the right, and another to the left, don’t be surprised if you get caught in the draught.

Arab proverb

Anti-war sentiments mount in France

As 1960 went on it had increasingly little of comfort to offer de Gaulle. It was the year of polarisation, with opposing extremes becoming more extreme, and more powerful, and progressively crushing the life out of the moderates in the centre. “I saw better than ever what had to be done,” de Gaulle wrote in his memoirs of his sentiments in the aftermath of “Barricades Week”: “I doubted less than ever that it was my duty to accomplish it But I needed as much as ever the support of the French people.”

It was a year, though, that brought de Gaulle less support and fresh enemies, as it brought the F.L.N. new allies, both in the outside world and within France itself. There the failure at Melun had provoked an unmistakable, and general, sense of discouragement, which served to sidelight the war-weariness increasingly afflicting the nation as a whole. In a remarkable summer
entente
, the Communist and non-Communist trade unions had joined together to plead for successful peace negotiations, with threats of a general strike “as an answer to any insurrection or
coup d’état
that might tend to impede the Algerian peace”, and the government had actually had to ban all demonstrations in favour of peace. Among the youth of France the Algerian war was coming to be known as “The Hundred Years’ War”. The discovery of Jean-Paul Belmondo, the impact of the
nouvelle vague
French cinema — especially of
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
, which seemed then as dangerously daring as it was embarrassing to the puritanical Gaullists — all suggested which way domestic interests were turning. More and more articles were appearing in the Press by young national servicemen returning from Algeria shocked by the “immoral” acts they had participated in, seen, or heard about there. A large sector of liberal French public opinion, barely recovered from the shocks administered during the Battle of Algiers, was now outraged anew by the resumption of executions of terrorists (agreed to by de Gaulle as a sop to the
pieds noirs
in January), and by the torture case of a young Algerian girl called Djamila Boupacha. Arrested in February for throwing a bomb into a café, she had allegedly been submitted to the most revolting tortures, which included being brutally deflowered with the neck of a bottle. Her case had received the widest publicity in France, with a portrait of her drawn by Picasso appearing in many magazines, and a highly vocal “Djamila Boupacha Committee” founded by eminent French liberals such as François Mauriac, Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Tillion.

Out of all this inflammation of liberal feelings there emerged on 5 September the “Manifesto of the 121”. Sub-titled a “Declaration on the Right of Insubordination in the Algerian War”, it incited French conscripts there to desert. The 121 signatories were all celebrities, including Sartre, de Beauvoir, Françoise Sagan and Simone Signoret. Most were of the Left and many identified as committed “fellow-travellers” (but, it was worth noting, no Communist Party members); nevertheless, the presence among them of such heroes of the Resistance as “Vercors” ensured that the document was taken seriously in wider circles. “In the course of a few weeks,” says Vidal-Naquet, “the political climate changed fundamentally,” and at the end of October there were demonstrations in support of the “121” bringing several hundred thousand out on to the streets throughout France. The launching of the “Manifesto” also coincided with another event that afforded the anti-war lobby with the maximum publicity: the “Jeanson Network” trial.

From its early nucleus of Christian—Marxist humanists (not unlike the
tercio mundo
Catholics operating against the Chilean Junta of the 1970s), Francis Jeanson’s network, created to run funds for the F.L.N. and help deserters and F.L.N. terrorists in hiding, had by the beginning of 1960 come to embrace some 4,000 members in all walks of life. Having been astonishingly tardy in tracking down its activities, the French D.S.T. then swooped on the organisation. It missed the leader, Jeanson himself, who with equally astonishing impunity continued about his work, published a book on it, and openly held a Press conference in Paris. At the trial six Algerians and eighteen French were defended by twenty-six lawyers, who skillfully used the occasion as a platform for anti-war speeches. A long statement from Sartre, absent in Brazil, was read out to the court. There was loud applause at Sartre’s words: “The independence of Algeria has in fact been won. Whether it will occur in a year’s time or in five years’ time…I do not know, but it is already a fact.” One former French infantryman who had served in Algeria explained to his judges that it was the “misery that one encountered there at every step” which had decided him to join the “Jeanson Network” and actively aid the F.L.N. Called to the witness box, “Vercors” also declared that he, too, wholeheartedly approved of the activities of the accused. After a month of hearings, fifteen received the maximum sentence of ten years’ imprisonment, with a further three sentenced to lesser penalties. The country had been shaken to discover that Frenchmen had been actively working for the “enemy” when the arrests were first announced, and now it buzzed with controversy as to the morality of their alleged treason.

In a backlash against the “Manifesto of the 121” and the Jeanson trial, and all the publicity both had attracted, in October a counter-manifesto appeared, signed by some 300 spokesmen of the Right, including the
pied noir
first soldier of France, Marshal Juin. A few days later the Assembly of French Cardinals and Bishops issued a statement condemning desertion and subversive activities, but disapproving of torture and stressing that orders to implement it should be disobeyed. In November another trial opened, this time providing a platform for the supporters of
Algérie française
and continuing for four months, when Lagaillarde and his colleagues of “the Barricades” appeared before their judges. Among other things, the defence made much of a statement uttered by Premier Debré at the time of the May “events” of 1958: “When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection becomes the most imperious duty….” Meanwhile, in June 1960 the most vehement political opponents of de Gaulle over Algeria, now numbering in their ranks former premier Georges Bidault and Jacques Soustelle, had come together to form the Comité de Vincennes, uncompromisingly dedicated to the cause of
Algérie française
. Never before had the debate on Algeria become so strident. By November it was almost a positive relief to turn aside to watch the struggle of young Senator Kennedy for the presidency of the United States; though even he had launched his campaign with some pointed remarks about the necessity for France to withdraw from Algeria.

In Algiers: new “ultra” manoeuvrings

Making a fresh visit to Algiers in October, his first since “Operation Tilsit”, Bernard Tricot noted a “rapid deterioration” in the atmosphere: “Among the Muslims: extreme lassitude, profound disappointment now that they had assessed better the breakdown at Melun, interest increasing for the international activities of the F.L.N. and for the U.N. debates. On the European side: profound disquiet, a lively hostility towards the government, and no real rapprochement with the Muslims.”[
1
] Delouvrier’s office voiced fears that a new clandestine organisation had been set up by the “ultras”, which, on a given day, might attempt to “neutralise” the authorities in Algeria. But details that Algiers security had of it were embarrassingly scant.

In the weeks that followed their defeat on the barricades, the “ultras” had seemed effectively decapitated, with most of their leaders — Lagaillarde, Ortiz, Susini, Pérez, Lefèvre, de Sérigny and Colonel Gardes — either imprisoned or in refuge. Gradually, however, the F.N.F. slogans on the Algiers walls became replaced by new graffiti: F.A.F. or Front d’Algérie Française, with its aggressively virile symbol of a ram, which made its first appearance in the wake of de Gaulle’s appeal to the F.L.N. of 14 June. Initially, this time the centre of gravity of the new Front lay in France itself, where weekly meetings took place with such militant fallen angels of the Vincennes group as Soustelle and Bidault, and extreme right-wing politicians like Jean-Marie le Pen. The leaders in Algeria were unknown to Delouvrier’s security branch; in any case, they were of little significance, and it was apparent that they were but a “caretaker government” pending the return of absentee big guns. On the other hand, the F.A.F. could mark up one very useful acquisition: the Bachaga Boualem, the dedicated ally of France and leader of the “loyal”
harkis
, who came bringing with him the declared allegiance of 120,000
Algérie française
Muslims. Thus, by the time of Tricot’s autumn visit the F.A.F. claimed a million supporters in Algeria alone. Though keeping Paris informed of its activities, Delouvrier refrained from taking action against the F.A.F., on the grounds that it had not yet strayed across the frontier of legality.