A Savage War of Peace

by Alistair Horne

  Secret negotiations with the F.L.N.

  Early in his appointment to Algiers Lacoste remarked optimistically: “Though I promise no miracles, I have a reasonable hope that by the end of the summer law and order will reign in Algeria.” But by that summer external events beyond Lacoste’s control were already beginning to move towards the year’s powerful climax. In March, soon after Mollet’s coming to power, he had sent on a mission to Cairo, his Foreign Minister, Christian Pineau, who through Nasser had put out feelers for “conversations” with the F.L.N. These had been taken up, and the following month a first meeting took place, also in Cairo, between Mohamed Khider and a secret emissary of Mollet’s, each acting with the utmost reserve and in fear of being accused of “selling-out” by their compatriots. This led, however, to a further series of talks about talks (much against the better judgement of Lacoste), five of which took place during the course of 1956, ranging from Cairo to Belgrade to Rome, and all held in the utmost secrecy. The Mollet government offered to facilitate a free entry into Algeria for Ben Bella for the purpose of negotiations, and at the final meeting in Rome in September a further rendezvous was made for the end of October; at which time a public declaration was to be drafted for signature by Mollet and the C.C.E. announcing their intent to launch full-scale peace negotiations. To this day there is disagreement as to how serious were the prospects held by the 1956 peace feelers. Ben Bella claims to have believed “that peace was within reach”; Mollet, on the other hand, remains sceptical, stating in an interview with the author “Even if Ben Bella had not been sequestrated, I doubt whether things would have turned out very differently; because the F.L.N. never accepted our basic thesis that there should be, first of all, a cease-fire.”

  No one will ever know.

  Autumn of madness: Suez nationalised and the Athos

  On 13 June the last British soldier quit the Suez Canal Zone; six weeks later Nasser shook the world by nationalising the canal. For the next months the wires between London, Paris and Washington began to hum as Western statesmen debated how to deal with the Egyptian leader and his arbitrary action. At the far end of the Mediterranean from Algeria, Ben Gurion’s tiny infant state of Israel began to feel in jeopardy. Through the long summer the temperature steadily rose, with Britain and France beginning to make tentative, fumbling and long-drawn-out preparations for a military intervention over Suez. Already by 9 August, General André Beaufre at his headquarters in Constantine East had received orders to command a contingency “Force A” ready for operating against Egypt. Then, on 16 October, an event occurred that would significantly harden French policy. French naval and air interception services, which by this time had attained a high state of efficiency in picking up maritime gunrunners, had been tracking a ship called the Athos on its suspiciously zigzag course round the Mediterranean. On 14 October it was reported heading for the Moroccan coast, and two days later it was stopped and boarded by a French escort vessel.

  Though sailing under a Sudanese flag, with a Greek captain, the Athos was revealed to be carrying over seventy tons of arms and ammunition — all loaded in Alexandria and purchased with Egyptian money. The inventory read as follows:

  72 mortars

  40 machine-guns

  74 automatic rifles

  240 sub-machine-guns

  2,300 rifles

  2,000 mortar shells

  600,000 cartridges

  An insignificant cargo, perhaps, in terms of a major war, but its value to the F.L.N. can be appreciated when it is recorded that, up to that date, it possessed no more than twenty mortars and ten machine-guns throughout the country. The Athos cargo represented the biggest arms shipment yet to the F.L.N.; by far the greatest significance attached to it, however, was that it was the first major Egyptian arms delivery to the F.L.N. — the fruit of the months of badgering by Ben Bella and his colleagues. The weapons were believed to be intended for the opening up (on 1 November, the second anniversary of the war) of a new front in the hitherto peaceful area to the west of Oran. In the mind of the astute Nasser, this was to serve an additional tactical purpose by distracting the French, who were by now making very threatening noises about Suez.

  In the heated atmosphere prevailing in Paris, the Athos episode caused a considerable impact. Here, at last, was conclusive evidence to confirm the long-cherished beliefs that the hub of the revolution lay in Cairo, and that Ben Bella was its lynch-pin. At the time of the seizure of the Athos, Ben Bella was on his way to Morocco to arrange the reception and distribution of its arms. Deeply chagrined by the news of the Soummam Conference and its decisions taken in his absence, he was intending to reject these (especially the primacy of the “interior” over the “exterior”), and to launch a political counter-offensive to re-establish his own personal pre-eminence. To this end he planned to fly from Morocco to Tunis, to convene there, on 22 or 23 October, his own “summit conference” of the three Maghreb powers. There they would discuss both the future conduct of the war and the furtherance of the peace initiatives then under way secretly with Mollet’s representatives. With both Tunisian and Moroccan leaders disposed towards a negotiated compromise peace at this time, there seemed a reasonable prospect of success for Ben Bella’s initiative. Originally Ben Bella and his party were to have flown from Rabat in the personal plane of the King of Morocco, but at the last minute the palace announced that there would be insufficient room on the King’s plane and that another — a D.C.3 belonging to Air Maroc, with a French crew — would be at their disposal. According to Ben Bella subsequently, the change of plan caused him indefinable misgivings; nevertheless, he and the rest of the “external” delegation — Boudiaf, Khider, Ait Ahmed — plus an Algerian professor working for the F.L.N. called Mostefa Lacheraf, embarked on the D.C.3 for Tunis. Among other passengers aboard that 22 October was a New York Times correspondent, Tom Brady.

  Ben Bella hijacked

  From Rabat a Colonel Jean Gardes tipped off Algiers that Ben Bella would no longer be flying under the protection of the King of Morocco. Somewhere along the line between Gardes and Colonel Ducournau, the first para commander to achieve distinction in the war and currently Lacoste’s chief military adviser, a spectacular coup was hatched. General Beaufre was lunching with General Lorillot when the Commander-in-Chief was called to the telephone by Ducournau and he accepted responsibility for forcing the Moroccan plane down on to Algerian soil. Lacoste was away on leave in the Dordogne, and to this day there remains some mystery as to whether the coup was in fact a first major instance of the French military acting on its own initiative, in disregard of the civil authorities, expressly with a view to torpedoing the peace negotiations; as to whether Lacoste turned a blind eye; or whether there was some degree of complicity even by the Mollet government, now deeply committed to the Suez adventure. The relevant orders are said to have been destroyed. According to Tournoux’s account, Lacoste returned to Algiers just in time to countermand the interception order, but nevertheless gave his sanction to go ahead. Subsequently, however, both Lacoste and Mollet have affirmed categorically to the author their indignation at the order given.

  The D.C.3 was approaching its intermediary stop at Palma de Mallorca when the French pilot, Gellier, a reservist officer, received radio orders from Oran, in the name of the French Ministry of Defence, to put down in Algeria instead of Tunis. After some argument and referring by radio back to Air Maroc headquarters in Rabat, Gellier agreed. On leaving Palma the French air hostess, though noting with concern that Ben Bella had his revolver lodged in the seat pocket in front of him, maintained a superb poker face, chatting up the Algerians so as to distract them from detecting the plane’s change of direction, and announcing coolly as it began its descent: “Attachez vos ceintures et cessez de fumer, s’il vous plaît. Nous atterrissons à Tunis!” The Algerians were totally deceived. One of them, noting from afar the large number of figures on the airfield, exclaimed: “Why, they’ve organised a very handsome reception for us!” It was not until th
e instant of landing and recognising the French uniforms, tanks and armoured cars that packed the runway that they realised they were in Algiers, not Tunis. With no chance to resist, the five Algerians were led out by armed gendarmes to begin five and a half years of imprisonment in the Santé in Paris, then in a series of other French gaols and strongholds. Indicted for crimes punishable by death, they were given the status of political prisoners but were never brought to trial.

  On hearing the news, European Algiers erupted in unprecedented delight, while at least one French radio commentator declared: “At last France has dared!” Undoubtedly, the hijacking of Ben Bella and his companions in flagrant breach of international law was a brilliant intelligence coup; but, as so often with such coups, it was to rebound badly on the originators. Mollet, according to Mendès-France who saw him that day, was in a cold fury when he heard the news. Why, then, did he not disavow the action and release the Algerians? Because, says Mollet, “I could not liberate men who were condemned under common law; my government would have fallen overnight.” And, says Lacoste, explosively: “Because Algiers would have blown up. At that moment it was like a steamboiler. … Also, the Arabs were very sensitive to force, and — there’s no doubt about it — the capture of Ben Bella did calm them for a while. …” But, says Mendès-France: “It was because, like everybody else at the time, Mollet was weak.” The international Press was overwhelmingly hostile to what was regarded as a flagrant breach of international law. The French ambassador in Tunis, Pierre de Leusse, and Mollet’s Secretary for Moroccan and Tunisian Affairs, Alain Savary, both resigned in protest. At Meknès in Morocco forty-nine French civilians were butchered in fierce anti-French riots. The King, mortified by what he took as a personal affront, and Bourguiba, who had had triumphal arches erected in honour of the Tunis “summit”, henceforth stiffened their resolve to back the Algerian war effort to the utmost. As a Tunisian spokesman told journalists at the time: “The Tunis conference, which was to have been the conference about peace in Algeria, may … turn into a war conference.”

  Certainly it seems that, in the autumn of 1956, both Tunisia and Morocco had their own reasons for pressing the F.L.N. towards a negotiated peace, and now a golden opportunity of their support was sacrificed. As far as the peace negotiations, so delicately initiated by Mollet himself, were concerned, the bridges were truly down, and it would not be possible to re-erect them for many years to come. With his well-known wit, and speaking from personal experience, Bourguiba is said to have joked at the time: “Don’t forget, the French have a habit of locking up their interlocuteurs before negotiating with them!” Mollet could still have thrown the switches. He could have released Ben Bella and his colleagues, and have dealt with them, from a position of strength, as honoured negotiators, as indeed the French dealt with Mohammed V and Bourguiba. But, as revealed, the Mollet government possessed neither the will nor the power; and, in any event, with Suez in the offing, the time would soon be quite out of joint. So the interlocuteurs valables (which Mendès-France had sought so anxiously for) remained in the indignity of imprisonment, becoming more embittered and intransigent, a source of constant embarrassment to successive French governments, a veritable time-bomb in their midst.

  From France’s point of view, in retrospect, much more might have been achieved by leaving Ben Bella well alone. For if there was any satisfaction gained from the whole episode, paradoxically it lay in the ranks of the F.L.N. leaders themselves. Overtly expressing outrage at the hijacking, privately Abane and the “interior” were delighted. The major split within the F.L.N., threatened as a consequence of Soummam, had been miraculously avoided; unity had been restored and all argument about the primacy of the “interior” resolved — because now the “exterior” had simply ceased to exist. Any flagging by potential “soft-liners” had been effectively quelled. Thus had the French army devisers of the coup really done the enemy a good turn.

  Whatever else, the Ben Bella episode undoubtedly marked a major turning-point in the war. From now on the war could only proceed, savagely and irreconcilably; any other way out had been sealed off.

  Suez

  Almost immediately, however, other and greater events were pushing the Ben Bella episode into the background. Encouraged, briefly, by Khrushchev’s “de-Stalinisation” bombshell at the Twentieth Party Congress, the captive peoples of eastern Europe had seen their hopes for a more liberal future crushed by the police apparatus. This provoked serious riots in Poland, and on the day after the seizure of Ben Bella police opened fire in Budapest. There then followed the ten days of wild, mad euphoria of the Hungarian revolt when it seemed, momentarily, as if Russia might actually allow her satellite to regain some degree of freedom. Meanwhile, America was enmeshed in the re-election of President Eisenhower, and Israel and Egypt had gone to war. Then, on 30 October, after months of huffing and puffing, of making plans and changing them, France and Britain issued — and had rejected — their ultimatum to Nasser. The next day the R.A.F.’s ponderous and protracted “psychological bombardment” of Egypt began.

  The Suez “war”, so well-trampled since by journalists, historians and self-justifying politicians, has a place in this story only in so far as it influenced the Algerian war and was in turn influenced by it. The lies, half-truths and fudged recollections that have overlaid Suez in the intervening twenty years have done much to confuse the prime motives of principals. None of them were identical, or even in harmony, and only Israel’s seem simple and straightforward: she was fighting for what she conceived to be survival. Eden was alarmed by the threat to Britain’s imperial position, and obsessed by the notion of Nasser being a new Mussolini—Hitler and Suez the Rhineland of our times; he cared little for French problems in North Africa, and probably less for Israel (which he generally referred to, revealingly, as “the Jews”).

  Mollet in his turn cared little about British imperial problems, but to his death insisted passionately that Israel was his first concern. He was deeply conditioned by the past betrayals of Munich and the Spanish Civil War, and, as a good Socialist, was drawn to Israel as a “pioneer country socialising itself”.[3] He felt she had but one true friend in the world — the United States — which, in the throes of an election, would be unable to help her. He denied hotly that Suez was “done for Algeria”, and yet one is entitled to pose the question: had France not been so embroiled in Algeria, would Mollet have been quite so open to Israeli pressure, and would he in turn have pushed Eden so hard to participate in what was to prove to be such a desperate gamble? One has seen how France, from Soustelle onwards, had persuaded herself, erroneously, that Nasser and Ben Bella were the dynamos of the Algerian revolt. This had been reconfirmed during Foreign Minister Pineau’s Cairo visit of the spring, when Nasser had told him (with possibly exaggerated self-importance): “When you really have the intention of negotiating in Algeria, give me the word and it will be swiftly settled.” And the Athos had provided a last straw. Mollet and the strong man of his government, Defence Minister Bourgès-Maunoury, as well as many lesser Frenchmen convinced themselves, intuitively, that if Nasser went the collapse of the Algerian revolt would soon follow. In the well-chosen words of Hugh Thomas: “Publicly, the Entente Cordiale seemed at its height. But Eden joined not Europe but the French war in Algeria.”

  The proclamations made to the French expeditionary force to Suez certainly had an archaic ring of the First World War about them. In words that seem unlikely to be heard ever again, General Beaufre addressed his troops on 4 November: “Officers, N.C.O.s and men, we are going into Egypt with our British friends and allies. France and the world have their eyes on you…. If necessary, you will repeat the exploits of your forebears on Egyptian soil … [i.e. Napoleon Bonaparte].” At dawn the next morning, 5 November, 600 British and 500 French paratroops dropped near Port Said. For all the muddles and delays of the past months, the last minute changes of plan whereby élite airborne troops had been sent in on invasion barges, operations proceeded with remarkable s
moothness. Brushing aside fairly feeble resistance, Massu’s fast-moving paras, tempered by the war in Algeria, were well on their way to Suez when Bulganin issued his missile-rattling ultimatum to the “Allies” — just twenty-four hours after Russian tanks had rolled into Hungary to crush her short-lived liberty. The following day, 6 November, the news reached Beaufre that the British had agreed to a cease-fire and the advance was to stop. “I was in a suppressed rage, and at that moment I considered the possibility of disobeying,” says Beaufre, and many French troops shared his anger. It is said that some, on their way back through Cyprus, showed their disgust with their perfide ally by selling their weapons to E.O.K.A. terrorists. In France (where, on 31 October, Mollet had received a majority of 368 to 182 — including 149 Communists — compared with Eden’s 270 to 218) feelings ran high against Britain’s apparent lack of moral fibre.

  Thus, after just forty hours, ended the Suez “war”, the shortest in history and possibly the silliest. As Hugh Thomas comments, “the grand old Duke of York” did at least get to the top of the hill! In terms of human losses it cost the French ten killed, the British twenty-two, the Israelis 200 and the Egyptians less than 3,000; in cash, instead of the figure of £5 million earmarked by Chancellor Macmillan in July, it was to cost Britain alone somewhere between £100 million and an estimated £328 million. But the unquantifiable costs were to prove far higher for both nations over the long term; even though history may not rate Suez as one of its most “decisive” battles, it may well come to be regarded as one of its most influential. “Never before”, wrote Harold Macmillan, “had Western Europe proved so weak. The fact that they [Britain and France] had been met by an unnatural combination between Russia and America was almost a portent.” For Britain, Suez meant that she would not henceforth be capable of a foreign policy independent of the United States; in her dealings with France it meant the end of the old Entente Cordiale and the beginning of an era of mistrust to be exemplified by the Gaullist “Non” to Britain in Europe. In France, as Roy Jenkins rightly noted, “the reaction to Suez was quite different. There was less guilt and more anger. The lesson there learnt was never to trust the Americans and probably not the British either. The ‘Anglo-Saxons’ became the main object of obloquy ….”