A Savage War of Peace

by Alistair Horne

  Yet, as a G.P.R.A. minister was quoted as saying by L’Express after the conference: “We are not in agreement on any subject. We don’t even know what we are going to talk about. We are going to Evian purely so that international opinion can be the judge.” There was still a vast no-man’s-land of disagreement to be explored and charted at the conference table. There was the role of Ben Bella and his fellow prisoners, always a sore subject for the F.L.N.; there was the question of “guarantees” for the European minority in an Algérie algérienne; there was the fate of Algeria’s vast Saharan under-belly, which de Gaulle — who liked to compare it to “an interior sea, with its archipelagos and its treasures” — insisted should be held separate from the rest of Algeria; there was the question of defence interests construed vital by the French, such as the great base of Mers-el-Kébir; and finally there was the quest for a formula of “association” rather than of “abandoning Algeria to her own devices”, in de Gaulle’s words. Nevertheless, after the second “information” meeting between Pompidou and Boumendjel in the first week of March, it seemed that enough had been agreed for talks to begin. By the end of the month a place and a date had been appointed; Evian and 7 April. It was not to de Gaulle the most inspiriting ambience (“Ce n’est pas très gai,” he had once remarked to Macmillan in another diplomatic context. “Le lac. Et puis toute cette histoire de ce Monsieur Calvin. Non. Ce n’est pas très gai. Tout de même….”) He had few illusions of speedy success. But even before the conference could sit a series of shipwrecking squalls was being whipped up on the surface of the wintry, grey and cheerless lake.

  Evian: Round One

  On the day of the publication of simultaneous communiqués announcing the Evian talks, Louis Joxe, de Gaulle’s Minister for Algeria, committed what looked like a major gaffe. He announced that he would “be meeting the M.N.A. in parallel with the F.L.N.”. It was a last final attempt by France to resurrect the idea of a “third force” — and a thoroughly unsuccessful one. The G.P.R.A. exploded; here at the eleventh hour was France trying to turn the peace talks into a round-table affair; trying to do just what Ahmed Francis had always warned they would do — “produce a Bao-Dai out of a hat”. Within twenty-four hours of their own acceptance, on 31 March the G.P.R.A. proclaimed that the conference was off. Meanwhile, the infant O.A.S. marked the same day by murdering the innocent mayor of Evian, describing it as an act of “national salubrity” — a deed that was as senseless and brutal as any of their subsequent actions. Next, taking advantage of the Evian adjournment, the generals’ putsch had broken out in Algiers. As soon as order had been restored, de Gaulle informed the G.P.R.A. coolly: “The Algiers parenthesis is now closed. Let us resume our affairs.” On 20 May the negotiations began in Evian. But, in their post-putsch debility, the French had had to concede to the F.L.N. all notion of there being any other negotiating partner but themselves. Yet another major trick had been lost to the F.L.N. It was going to be like the peeling of an onion, layer after layer.

  A sleepy spa on the French side of Lake Geneva, opposite Lausanne, Evian had been chosen carefully out of deference to F.L.N. susceptibilities, so that the Algerians should not feel themselves “prisoners in a golden cage” as they had within the confines of the prefecture at Melun the previous summer. In fact, if anything (it was indicative of trends) the Algerian delegates were accommodated in rather greater luxury than their French opposite numbers. Guests of the opulent Emir of Qatar at his charming and sumptuous Swiss chateau of Bois d’Avault, surrounded by lush meadows, the F.L.N. representatives were ferried each day across the lake to Evian by Swiss army helicopters. After the murder of the unhappy mayor by the O.A.S., the utmost security precautions had been taken, both by the Swiss and the French; the air space over Lake Geneva was forbidden to all outside aircraft, while frogmen patrolled round the helicopter landing-pad; the grounds of the Edwardian Hôtel du Parc, the actual site of the conference, had been turned into a virtual armed camp. Powerfully supported by experts, each team mounted about thirty members. Leading the French was Louis Joxe, suave historian and diplomat, wearing that hall-mark of the carrière, an Anthony Eden hat, and backed by Bernard Tricot from the Elysée. The Algerians were even more strongly represented, headed by Krim himself and seconded by the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, Ahmed Francis, with the negotiators of Melun, Boumendjel and Ben Yahia, standing behind them. Also in attendance was a figure recently emerged on the international scene, Saad Dahlab, Krim’s second-in-command in Foreign Affairs and a converted Messalist. Significantly, two senior officers from the A.L.N. General Staff, Boumedienne’s closest deputies, Major Slimane and Major Mendjli, were constantly hovering in the background as well. Physically absent, but very much present in spirit, were Ben Bella and his imprisoned colleagues; they had been transferred to more luxurious internment at the Châteaux de Turquant as an additional douceur to the F.L.N. by de Gaulle, but still not permitted to join in the negotiations.

  There was a moment of tense anticipation as Krim made his début at Evian; Krim, the last of the neuf historiques who had launched the revolt in 1954 still alive and at liberty; founder-member of the Kabyle maquis and former French army corporal, now with the eyes of the world upon him. Nattily dressed and his normally flaccid features rendered even less taut by a recent gall-bladder operation and four years of city life following his flight from Algeria during the Battle of Algiers, Krim could have passed more readily as a Corsican mafioso than a veteran maquisard. He did not look like a hard-liner, and from the dossier compiled on Krim over the years the French negotiators regarded his presence as a hopeful sign. After the formal introductions were over, Joxe with utmost deference to Krim proposed that the Algerian should have the first word; Krim, meeting courtesy with courtesy, refused, insisting that the privilege belonged to the French host. Resorting to an Arab aphorism, Joxe declared, “the page must be turned” and stressed de Gaulle’s determination to reach a peace settlement. But once these initial politesses had been exchanged, the French were swiftly disabused of any hopes of a smooth passage for the talks. Whatever might have been expected of Krim, rightly or wrongly, it was at once apparent that over his one shoulder there stared the uncompromising gaze of Boumedienne and the General Staff; over the other, that of Ben Bella and his colleagues, unforgiving and implacably militant after their four and a half years of sequestration.

  If ever there was a moment when the birds of that French folly, the hijacking of 1956, were coming home to roost it was now, when prospects of peace seemed closest. The imprisoned leaders of the “exterior” had spent the long hours of confinement following football results, playing ping-pong among themselves (at which Boudiaf emerged the steady champion), listening to records, and endlessly reading. As well as numerous books on Algeria published by the pro-F.L.N. Paris house of Maspéro, they were plentifully provided with works by such diverse writers as Lenin, Sartre, Malraux and Ibn Khaldoun. In the latter months Ben Bella dedicated himself to perfecting his Spanish and classical Arabic, while Ait Ahmed concentrated on English literature. Maintaining from the very earliest days a remarkable constancy of communication with the leadership of the “new exterior” in Tunis, the detainees had only been helped to improve these contacts by de Gaulle’s successive concessions. As 1961 went on they were holding regular telephone conversations with their families abroad, and even with Nasser in Cairo as well as with members of the G.P.R.A. Yet, inevitably, their isolation from many of the true facts of life — particularly the state of war-weariness within the Wilayas — was profound. Boredom and bitterness against the French proliferated as the months of imprisonment spun out, regardless of all efforts by de Gaulle to improve their circumstances. Many hours were spent in argument on the present, and future, of Algeria, and there were rifts (notably between Ait Ahmed and Ben Bella) reflecting those that had perpetually plagued the free F.L.N. leadership.

  In one aspect, however, all were quite united; they were the hardest of hard-liners when it came to contemplatin
g any dilution of future Algerian sovereignty, or the continuance of French influence in Algeria in any form whatsoever. Aware of their intransigence, de Gaulle was determined that this albatross which Guy Mollet’s France had hung around its neck should continue to be excluded from the peace talks at all costs. But, though absent, Ben Bella and his colleagues would throughout constitute the mummy at the feast. They would exert a stiffening influence whenever there might be suggestions of flexibility, moderation or compromise in the air. Within the G.P.R.A. the prisoners of Turquant were also finding an increasingly sympathetic, and powerful, ally in the form of Colonel Boumedienne who, already in the pre-negotiation period, had sharply criticised Krim for risking peace talks at all. If these were to fall short of total satisfaction for the F.L.N., argued Boumedienne, grave damage might be inflicted to the morale of the army — which he himself had so successfully reconstituted.

  The F.L.N. hardens its line

  The first practical disappointment for the French negotiators came with the resolute refusal of the F.L.N. to meet de Gaulle’s “unilateral truce” with anything resembling a reciprocal gesture. On the contrary. The period of May—June showed a fifty per cent increase in the rate of “incidents”; the wounded numbering 121, the dead eighty-five — which included sixty-two “third force” Muslims and twenty French soldiers. From Tunis Yazid declared: “An effective interruption of the fighting can only be the result of a bilateral accord bearing on the overall political problem.” As always, the F.L.N. was remaining rigidly faithful to the line laid down at Soummam in 1956, regardless of whatever concessions de Gaulle might feel impelled to offer; there could be no cease-fire of any sort before a political solution. Worse (from the French point of view), orders captured in the Wilayas revealed the A.L.N. of the “interior” deliberately exploiting the French “unilateral truce” to replenish arms supplies and regain ascendancy over the “floating voter”. Unashamedly and effectively, F.L.N. propaganda took the line: “Victory is at hand! The enemy is on the point of calling for mercy!” Desertions multiplied from the demoralised harkis. At Evian, says Bernard Tricot, Krim actually “reproached us for this unilateral decision, as if we had broken some unspoken law of the war”. Angered at being rebuffed once again, de Gaulle used the F.L.N.’s response to the truce as an excuse for slamming the door even more firmly on any suggestion of Ben Bella and Co. playing a part at Evian. Meanwhile, just to make the role of the negotiators even more difficult, the O.A.S. had celebrated the eve of Evian with a festival de plastique, exploding a score of bombs in Algiers, and keeping up their offensive over the ensuing days.

  As the actual negotiations at Evian got under way, a fundamental difference of approach was at once discernible between the opposing teams, with Joxe endeavouring to get down to specific details — such as the length of the “transitory phase” from French administration to Algerian sovereignty, and the “guarantees” to be provided for the Europeans — and Krim seeking refuge behind declarations of general principles. On the vital issue of “guarantees” for the pieds noirs, Tricot found it “intolerable” that Krim would not, or could not, “speak with precision of the future”. Immediately, said Tricot, there gaped “an abyss between the global guarantees of which we were thinking and the various protestations of goodwill which our representatives had heard”.

  Basically the guarantees requested by the French were:

  Double nationality, so that the pieds noirs could become Algerian citizens while still retaining their French nationality.

  Assurance against discrimination, particularly regarding private property.

  The normal minority rights of freedom of religion and education, and of a fair share in public life.

  After Krim had rejected these demands as infringements of the sovereignty of the “Algerian people”, Joxe attempted to pin him down into giving a definition of what he meant by the “Algerian people”. It was, said Krim in an impassioned speech which evoked all the long pent-up resentments and chagrins of his race:

  constituted by the indigènes who had resisted over a long time the French conquest. They are united by language, religion, customs, a common history which contains much fighting and suffering. The war which has lasted for seven years has demonstrated the force of their national conscience, but this people has had to submit, since 1830, to the fact of colonialism. A European population has been created, heterogeneous in its origins, but soldered together by its integration within French nationality…. It has benefited from exorbitant privileges…. Independence is going to pose the problem of these Europeans. We wish to settle this in all equity, and we do not refuse to these people the right to unite themselves to the Algerian people and even to be merged into them.

  Not unreasonably, Joxe and his colleagues found little for comfort here. Nor was Krim any more encouraging on the subject of European property. “Here is a people”, he declared, “of whom several millions live in misery, and who after independence must not feel themselves still colonised.” Land and property which had been “legitimately” acquired, said Krim, would be respected; but — coupled to the repeated F.L.N. declarations over the preceding seven years that all colonial-held assets would be expropriated and redistributed — the French negotiators found all this “rather disquieting”. The burden of Krim’s assurances to the pieds noirs was that, just as for the agreement on articles of Franco—Algerian “association and co-operation”, the details must be left for the French and the future Algerian government to work out. But in what possible way could an as yet unborn Algerian government be bound to honour whatever vaguely worded undertakings might be agreed at Evian? Here it was abundantly evident to the French team that there existed a fundamental dichotomy between the “old guard” Algerian revolutionaries, such as Krim and Abbas, prepared to accept the continued existence of a pied noir “presence”, and the hard-liners already bent upon a future Algeria from which they would eventually be excluded: Boumedienne and Ben Bella. Though, for the time being, it might seem that Krim represented the majority view, who could predict what hand would hold the reins of power in three, five or ten years’ time? Moreover, with de Gaulle formally and rigidly committed to non-recognition of the G.P.R.A., Joxe the professional diplomatist was, as Tricot notes, “embarrassed” throughout the talks by not knowing precisely with whom, or what, he was negotiating. What indeed was “this revolutionary organism which had created itself into a government without ever having exercised any territorial authority, and pretended to represent a state which had never existed”?

  Here, willy-nilly, the French found their heads led into a noose which, eventually, was to prove fatal for the pieds noirs. All right, said the Algerians, if you cannot recognise the G.P.R.A. as a legitimate government, then it cannot accept any responsibility for the future. With the G.P.R.A. black-balled, pacts could only be concluded with the F.L.N. — which, as a mere political party, would have no powers to make commitments binding upon any future Algerian government.

  The Sahara, and breakdown

  With the “Statute for the Europeans” threatening to reach an impasse, Joxe switched to the question of the Sahara. But here the lines of disagreement were even more sharply etched. In simplest terms, the French view was that the Algerians had no more right to the vast desert under-belly than the Indians had to Texas. Pedantically, Joxe explained how the frontiers of the Sahara were purely artificial, created arbitrarily by French cartographers. Historically, geographically and racially it had never had any connection with Algeria, and what was understood by Algeria was that narrow strip bounded by the Atlas mountains and the Mediterranean; traditionally the Algerians, claimed Joxe, had always been drawn northwards rather than southwards. Meanwhile, France had consistently accorded the Sahara special status. It required only the minimum of cynicism to comment that, ten years previously, the fate of all those millions of hectares of barren and would not have occupied the conference table for five minutes, but now what was at stake was the untold wealth of the oil and gas benea
th the surface. Vast sums of French capital had already been poured into its exploitation; the future prosperity of the Gaullist economy was predicated upon it. Altruistically, the French delegates at Evian expounded the intention of developing the Sahara resources for the benefit of all former French colonies adjacent. De Gaulle was adamant. “The petroleum, that’s France and uniquely France,” he told Joxe, adding: “The Algerian Sahara is a juridical and nationalist fiction devoid of any historical foundation.” Equally immovable, the Algerian delegates declared: “The Sahara is an integral part of Algeria: there can be no discussion about the integrity of Algerian territory.” It was the formula unaltered since the Soummam Conference of 1956.

  By the thirteenth session on 13 June Louis Joxe was faced with a complete breakdown of the talks. The only progress made had been some modicum of agreement over the transitory period to precede full independence; but this was daily being eroded by new developments in Algeria itself — the O.A.S. and its savage onslaughts against the Muslim population. After returning to Paris for consultations with de Gaulle, Joxe informed Krim: “I am disappointed. Not discouraged, but disappointed. Your propositions are too far removed from ours.” A suspension of the talks was agreed, but — because of the evident will on both sides for peace, and a desire not to repeat the unhappy atmosphere left by Melun — it was decided not to break off negotiations. Instead there would be left behind in Evian two skeleton teams to maintain contact. On 20 July a fresh attempt was made to recommence negotiations, at the ancient Château de Lugrin which dominates Evian. It lasted only six sessions, at the second of which Tricot noted gloomily, “The word ‘impasse’ was pronounced.” At its close on 28 July the breakdown looked even more irreparable than it had at Evian; though Saad Dahlab endeavoured to put a brave face on things by declaring: “It’s not a rupture, but a new suspension; the beginnings of agreement have been reached; that which has been gained must not be lost; we shall keep in contact.” Meanwhile, the war continued — with renewed beastliness.