All this, however, remained concealed from the gaze of the public in France until, in July 1959, the conservative Figaro launched a bombshell in the form of a searing report from a correspondent who had visited a camp near Philippeville. For two years the inhabitants had been living in tents, fifteen to each, where in summer the temperature reached 110ŶF. Many of the children were unable to attend school because of lack of clothes, and the hunger was acute: “I shall not easily forget those arms hardly thicker than a stick, those fearful expressions, those hollow faces.” The Figaro report provoked a major uproar, on Left and Right, and was followed by a spate of similar accounts in other newspapers. Challe was pressed to close down the regroupment camps but pleaded for their retention on grounds of military necessity; by the end of the year, however, a big effort had been made to improve living conditions within them.
At about the same time there were also murmurs that torture had raised its ugly head again, employed to extract intelligence vital for the Challe offensives. The de Gaulle government, however, had set its face resolutely against such malpractices. André Malraux, who in his own remarkable life had learned more about the full horror of torture than probably any other Western politician, had declared as Minister of Information that there would be no more of it; de Gaulle had openly criticised Delouvrier for permitting the army to resort to torture. So if it did continue it seems to have been on a basis of “private enterprise”, no longer the wholesale outrage that it had been during the Battle of Algiers.
The balance
In summing up on the Challe Plan, though one may respect Challe’s sincerity in claiming that “the military phase of the rebellion is terminated”, one may well question just how fundamental and lasting were the consequences of this military victory; would they be decisive on the political conduct of the war; was it, on the other hand, going to prove a case of the operation succeeding and the patient succumbing nevertheless? As so often happens with the soldiers on the spot, there was a certain amount of self-deception by the “centurions” of Algeria, a self-deception that would shortly lead to the gravest of misjudgements. Even if Challe had effectively broken up the katibas into penny-packets of shaken guerrillas, so long as they were not all annihilated or won over there always existed the danger that at some future date they might reform themselves and recruit new replacements to fill the gaps. As Lartéguy’s “Boisfeuras” remarks in Les Prétoriens, “In a few weeks, in a few months, the rebellion will break out again—you know, like the algae which always comes back in aquariums.” What was not visible to the French military at the time should also be recalled; namely, that it was already the deliberate strategy of the new A.L.N. chief-of-staff, Boumedienne, to build up a powerful new force outside under the safe umbrella of Tunisian neutrality, at the expense of those hard-pressed katibas of the interior, but waiting for the right opportunity that would present itself one day.
Then there was always the prospect of support from further afield. “In its hatred for the F.L.N.,” declared Jules Roy as the Challe offensives ended, “the army refused to realise that the F.L.N. might receive outside aid that will one day blow its barriers…. Instead of admitting that it is easier to make peace with the F.L.N. than with the Chinese, it cherishes the illusion that a decomposition of the rebel forces is imminent….” De Gaulle, however, was later to claim that he for one was not deceived by the scale of Challe’s successes. During his visit to “Binoculars”, after Kabyle village children had dutifully chanted the Marseillaise,
Just as I was leaving, the Muslim town clerk stopped me, bowing and trembling, and murmured: “Mon général, don’t be taken in! Everyone here wants independence.” At Saida, where the heroic Bigeard introduced me to a commando unit who had been won over, I caught sight of a young Arab doctor attached to their group. “Well, doctor, what do you think of it all?” “What we Arabs want, and what we need,” he replied, his eyes filled with tears, “is to be responsible for ourselves instead of others being responsible for us.”
Certainly de Gaulle had himself frequently stressed to the army that military success was not an end in itself. “A request for a cease-fire by those on the other side,” writes de Gaulle’s close collaborator, Bernard Tricot, “only seems to us foreseeable if, convinced that the armed struggle had become hopeless, they had good reasons for thinking that a return to peace would permit them to attain their objectives by political means.” All through the hard year of 1959 there were no effective offers of a cease-fire forthcoming from the F.L.N.—despite the relentless military pressure being applied by Challe—and meanwhile a political formula was still wanting.
Political and economic initiatives
On the political front, Delegate-General Paul Delouvrier was continuing to find de Gaulle’s instructions discouragingly vague. The only thing that was quite clear was the priority attached to getting the Constantine Plan under way, to give Algeria an economic solution to its troubles even if a political one was not immediately forthcoming. Here Delouvrier the technocrat, finding himself on his home ground, had moved energetically. During 1959 242 milliard francs had been invested, and a further 326 milliards earmarked for 1960; 132 new industrial enterprises had been projected, 400,000 acres of arable land (still not very much in relation to demand) handed over to Muslim farmers; the number of jobs for manual workers had been increased by eight per cent in only six months, while school attendance for Muslim children had risen from 510,000 in 1958 to 840,000 at the beginning of 1960. Under the “thousand villages programme”, designed to counter the miseries of regroupment, 38,000 housing units had been constructed. In November 1959 the oil pipeline from Hassi-Messaoud to Bougie entered into service; in March 1960 work was to begin on the Hassi-R’Mel—Arzew pipeline for natural gas, and plans were under way to build a major steel complex at Bône. All this represented a considerable advance over anything done, socially or economically, for Algeria in the past—as well as being a pledge and an assurance to the Muslims that France had no intention of pulling out. At the same time, de Gaulle had endeavoured to make various conciliatory gestures to the F.L.N. On the day of his inauguration as President, he had commuted all death sentences, transferred Ben Bella and his companions to more “honourable” quarters, released Messali Hadj unconditionally from his perennial house-arrest, and continued to set free Muslim internees in Algeria by the thousand.
At his first Press conference in the Elysée, on 25 March, he had told a questioner that France, “while endeavouring to achieve pacification, is working towards a transformation which will enable Algeria to find her new personality”. The following month, in an interview with the liberal editor of the Echo d’Oran, Pierre Laffont, he had made some hard-hitting remarks aimed at the diehard pieds noirs. When asked why he never mentioned the word “integration” in his speeches, he had replied haughtily, “First of all, because they wanted to impose it on me”; and then he added: “What they want, is to return to ‘Papa’s Algeria’. But Papa’s Algeria is dead, and if they don’t understand that they will die with it.” He had followed this up by emphasising (again chiefly for pied noir consumption) that it was in his name the Muslim “fraternisation” of May 1958 had taken place, and that only he and he alone could bring about a solution in Algeria.
Neither de Gaulle’s clemency measures nor his other olive sprigs of 1959 produced any more flicker of a quid pro quo from the hard core of the F.L.N. than British governments were to obtain from the I.R.A. The principal effect they had was to anger the army and arouse mistrust among the pieds noirs. The first anniversary of 13 May was a sombre affair in Algiers, Lagaillarde attempting (with only modest success) to transform it into a day of mourning, and there were heard the first shouts of “De Gaulle au poteau!” In France, Mollet continued to support de Gaulle on Algeria, while Soustelle was becoming increasingly alienated. There also seemed to be a divergence between de Gaulle and his Prime Minister, Debré; in August when the latter declared that “France would do anything—anything at all—to
keep Algeria French,” de Gaulle was saying: “Peace is a necessity. This absurd war….”
Though as ever enigmatic when it came to revealing his precise intentions, de Gaulle had dropped one or two hints in the course of 1959 about the way in which his mind was working. At his inauguration on 8 January he had spoken of Algeria, “pacified and transformed, developing her own personality and closely associated with France”. And on 30 January: “destiny lies essentially within the Algerians themselves”. On 25 March: “a new Algeria, that is to say modern, educated and fraternal…will find her face and her soul”. To Bernard Tricot, his newly appointed councillor on Algerian affairs who was probably as close to the General’s thinking on this subject as anyone else, at that time “he gave the impression of a man who was still searching”. In August de Gaulle took a relatively long vacation of three weeks, his first while in office, accompanied by a note carefully drafted by Tricot and others on the prospects for an Algerian peace settlement. Among the points studied was the pursuit of a cease-fire that could be regarded by the F.L.N. not as an act of surrender, but as a transitional period leading to definitive negotiations; also it contained the proposition that the Algerians be consulted (presumably by referendum) on the future status of their country. It was during these weeks of withdrawal from the daily pressures of the office that, one can assume, de Gaulle thoughtfully deliberated his Algeria policy.
De Gaulle visits his army
Immediately afterwards he flew to Algeria on his tournée des popotes (round of officers’ messes), to put his intentions across to the army leaders who were fighting the war so wholeheartedly. He felt, not without reason, that communication between himself and the army in Algeria had become distinctly faulty. The military mind found the changeable nuances of de Gaulle’s statements not easy to decipher; on the other hand, Tricot claims that even his clearest instructions were often deliberately misapplied by the army when they conflicted with its own philosophy. Always pointedly in uniform, de Gaulle began (on 27 August) by visiting Bigeard in the Ouarsenis, half-amused, half-irritated by the flamboyant colonel’s “circus”; then on to Colonel Buis in the Hodna, followed by a lightning tour of the Morice Line in the east; ending in Kabylia (on 30 August) at Challe’s battle headquarters whence he was conducting “Binoculars”.
On the way de Gaulle had had an illuminating private conversation with a remarkable Muslim, Mahdi Belhaddad, a veteran who had lost his right arm at Cassino, currently sub-prefect of a one-horse town on the fringes of the Aurès, the only Muslim to hold such a post. Taking Belhaddad aside, the President had asked him for his views on the exposé of the situation that the local military had just given. Belhaddad began by complaining of the limitations imposed upon his own freedom of action, and at the fact that—after all the administrative reforms of the past years—there was still no other Muslim sub-prefect apart from himself, and that there was no Muslim in Delouvrier’s cabinet. He then offered the opinion that no genuine pacification could be achieved without a cease-fire. Expecting that this would provoke de Gaulle’s wrath, Belhaddad was astonished to hear him reply:
That’s exactly my opinion and I am happy to hear you say it, you whose courage and loyalty are well-known. Yes, the fighting must be halted. There must be peace, it’s indispensable, the people are too unhappy, peace must be brought back. Then the Algerians will freely decide their own fate….
The following day, however, de Gaulle did lose his patience at the headquarters of General Faure, the sporting general carpeted for his rash involvement in the first of the Algiers plots against the Fourth Republic. After Faure had returned once too often to the theme of how greatly military operations would be helped if only de Gaulle would declare decisively for Algérie française, de Gaulle had exclaimed: “Ah, écoutez, Faure, j’en ai assez!” and broken off the discussion.
Then, at Challe’s headquarters, where the Commander-in-Chief and some hundred generals and staff officers were hoping for maximum approbation on the success of the offensive, the President of the Republic made a top-secret speech, “to be used verbally for the information of officers only”, charged with messages of another kind. On a note of only moderate praise, he began: “What I have heard and seen here in the course of this inspection gives me full satisfaction. I have to say that to you [je tiens à vous le dire]. But the problem is not solved.” De Gaulle then listed its three basic ingredients: the predicament of the Algerians, which had become intolerable because France after a hundred and twenty years had not done enough for them; the progressive enfeeblement of France herself; and the present world situation, where France could no longer cock a snook at global opinion. In Algeria, “We shall not have the Algerians with us, if they do not want that themselves…. The era of the European administration of the indigenous peoples has run its course.” In the outside world, “there is an international situation almost entirely and openly against us. This will not change if we seem to have to keep Algeria in the position where it is vis-à-vis ourselves.” After paying tribute to the troops he had just seen in action, de Gaulle concluded with a solemn and direct appeal to the senior officers present:
As for yourselves, mark my words! You are not an army for its own sake. You are the army of France. You only exist through her, for her and in her service. This is your raison d’être….
It is I who, in view of my position, must be obeyed by the army in order that France should survive. I am confident of your obedience, and I thank you, gentlemen.
Vive la France!
In his memoirs de Gaulle declares that, “In saying this I was giving my audience an inkling of my intention to recognise Algeria’s right to self-determination,” and he adds that before leaving Challe that day he informed him in private “precisely what I was soon to announce publicly. Challe replied: ‘It’s feasible!’ and assured me that I could count on him whatever happened.” Challe, however, insists that he was left no wiser than any of the hundred other officers present at the earlier briefing, and never once in his whole tournée des popotes did de Gaulle actually mention the key-word, “self-determination”, which was to create such a furore a few weeks later.
16 September 1959: “self-determination”
On 16 September, at 8 p.m., de Gaulle spoke to the nation. In Algiers there was an unusual hush as everybody clustered round radio and television sets, sensing that a major pronouncement was to be made. They were not disappointed; it was the longest and most important speech consecrated to the Algerian problem that de Gaulle was ever to make. “Our recovery is proceeding,” he began, but “the difficult, blood-soaked problem of Algeria remains to be settled.” Eschewing all “various over-simplifications” France would solve it “as a great nation should, choosing the only path worthy of being followed. I mean by the free choice of what the Algerians themselves want to do with their future.” In a tone of the utmost solemnity of which he was capable, de Gaulle continued:
Thanks to the progress of pacification, of democracy and of social evolution, we can now look forward to the day when the men and women who live in Algeria will be in a position to decide on their destiny, once and for all, freely, in the full knowledge of what is at stake. Taking into account all these factors, those of the Algerian situation, those inherent in the national and the international situation, I deem it necessary that recourse to self-determination be here and now proclaimed.
In the name of France and of the republic, by virtue of the power granted to me by our constitution to consult its citizens, granted that God let me live and that the people lend me their ear, I commit myself to ask, on the one hand, of the Algerians in their twelve departments, what it is they finally wish to be and, on the other hand, of all Frenchmen to endorse their choice.
The fateful word was now out: “self-determination”. The question, de Gaulle went on to explain,
will be put to the Algerians as individuals. For since the beginning of the world there has never been any true Algerian unity, far less any Algerian sovereignty; the
Carthaginians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Syrian Arabs, the Cordoba Arabs, the Turks, the French, have one after the other penetrated the country without there being at any time in any shape or form an Algerian state.
As for the time of the election, I will decide upon it in due course, at the latest four years after the actual restoration of peace, that is to say, once a situation has been established whereby loss of life, be it in ambushes or isolated attempts, will not exceed 200 a year.
The following span of time will be devoted to resuming normal existence, to emptying the prisons and the camps, to allowing for exiles to return, to restoring the free play of individual and public freedom and to enabling the population to be fully aware of what is at stake.
I would like to invite, here and now, observers from all over the world to attend, without let or hindrance, the final culmination of this process….
De Gaulle envisaged that the Algerians, thus consulted, would have but three choices for their “political destiny”:
Either—secession, where some believe independence would be found. France would then leave the Algerians who had expressed their wish to become separated from her. They would organise, without her, the territory in which they live, the resources which they have at their disposal, the government which they desire.
A Savage War of Peace Page 50