By the latter part of 1960 the F.L.N. looked supreme and politically unbeatable on the internal Algerian scene, and it could claim that uncompromising determination had made it so. With its two cardinal events of the pied noir revolt in “Barricades Week” and Melun (combined with the destruction of the dangerous separatist threat of Si Salah), 1960 was the year which saw the ascendance of the hard-liners within the F.L.N. It was also the year of Boumedienne’s decisive consolidation of power within, and around, the army. The Comité Interministereal de Guerre, created at the Third C.N.R.A. in January largely to placate Krim’s ruffled feelings, had remained a dead letter, with the newly-appointed army chief-of-staff swiftly taking over the reins. Although the C.N.R.A. had passed a solemn motion declaring that the war would be lost if no reinforcements could be got through to the “interior” in the course of the year, it was not Boumedienne’s intention to follow in the footsteps of those French generals of the First World War. He was not going to let his army of the “exterior” be “bled white” in repeated vain attacks against an almost impregnable Line, against this ideal of a Maginot system which French ingenuity had at last perfected. Boumedienne’s was a calculated risk which external political developments, notably de Gaulle’s peace initiatives, were to vindicate.
With the same kind of ruthless efficiency that had brought him to note in his lower echelons of command, Boumedienne devoted himself to a rapid reorganisation of the A.L.N. The 12,000 men in Tunisia under control of Mohamedi Said, the old Abwehr agent with his inseparable coal-scuttle helmet, had degenerated into a state bordering on anarchy. In the boredom of inactivity some elements had taken to “mugging” local Tunisians, and one of Boumedienne’s first acts was to have twenty of these, officers and men, shot in front of the troops. (According to Ben Bella after the war, blaming Boussouf, “thousands of men” had been killed in the course of these purges.) There was also trouble in the Moroccan-based A.L.N. where a Captain Zoubir had launched an insurrection a hundred strong; with the help of the Moroccan army it too had been crushed, but not before Boumedienne’s forces had been more or less neutralised there for the best part of three months. To eradicate permanently this kind of indiscipline, Boumedienne introduced his own tough deputies — Azedine (the same much-wounded hero who had deceived his French captors in Wilaya 4), Slimane (alias Kaïd Ahmed) and Ali Mendjli — to weld the whole army closely under his personal control. Mendjli was a thirty-eight-year-old former café-owner, who had enlisted on the first day of the war, served as an officer in Wilaya 2, then left for Tunisia in 1958. He was as taciturn as his chief, Boumedienne, in contrast to the volubility and noisy rages of Slimane — a farmer and local dignitary from Tiaret who had commanded one of the zones of Wilaya 5 on the Moroccan frontier.
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 togethe
r 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.
The return of Salan and Jouhaud
Of much more immediate concern to Delouvrier was the unexpected reappearance in Algiers of two retired military tycoons, whose committal to Algérie française had been abundantly well publicised: Generals Salan and Jouhaud. Since his abrupt recall from Algeria at the end of 1958, Salan had mouldered away in his office as military governor of Paris, smarting at the cavalier way in wh
ich de Gaulle had treated him and disastrously cherishing the conviction that without his help de Gaulle could never have succeeded in May 1958. Having reached the statutory age of sixty, Salan retired from the army on 9 June; the previous day, at the customary luncheon given in his honour in the Elysée, de Gaulle is said to have warned the five-star general: “Don’t get mixed up in politics. It’s a dirty business.” Salan made no comment.
According to a curious, but not unwise, tradition in the French army, for a stipulated period retiring generals continue to remain subject to military discipline and all its restrictions, receiving in exchange certain privileges, such as a grace and favour office and sometimes a skeleton staff. In early September Salan broke the rules by announcing his intention to return to Algiers to live out his retirement in the villa he had purchased there for that purpose — without obtaining permission from Messmer, the Minister of Defence. Delouvrier signalled Messmer to forbid Salan right of entry, but in vain. Thus, quietly one morning the “Mandarin”, his wife and daughter, disembarked from the steamer Kairouan to be greeted by only one former colleague at the port of the city where he had once exerted such immense authority. That same afternoon Delouvrier grasped the nettle by going to see Salan at his villa, requesting that, as his predecessor, he should appreciate the difficulties that his return could cause him, Delouvrier. Salan, impassive as ever, replied calmly that Algeria was, after all, France; that his son lay buried there; and, thirdly, that his wife liked the climate. “J’y suis, j’y reste!” declared Salan, but assured Delouvrier that he would undertake no political activities in Algeria. It very soon reached the ears of the Delegate-General, however, that as well as receiving visits from army officers suspected of disaffection, Salan was also in contact with leaders of the F.A.F., by whom he was clearly regarded as a chieftain providentially sent. On 14 September, using as a pretext the current “Jeanson trial” and the incitements to military disobedience by the “121”, Salan committed a second breach of discipline. Without obtaining clearance from Messmer he sent a message to a congress of the anciens combattants of Indo-China, in his capacity as their president, declaring sweepingly that: “It is not within the power of any authority to decide upon the relinquishment of a part of the territory where France exercises her sovereignty.”
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