“What”, asked Buron, “was the point of proclaiming a cease-fire if, as soon as fighting ceased in the djebel, civil war then broke out in the cities?”
By 11 March, under the barrage of “clarifications” and further concessions demanded by the Algerians, the second Evian looked like following in the footsteps of the first. “I am anxious,” recorded Buron. “Louis Joxe seemed to be very tired, that is if not actually ill, all day. The morale of the delegation is not very high.” Joxe tried to force the pace, threatening the Algerians to break off if no progress were made over the next two days. A “nervous and irritated” de Gaulle was constantly on the telephone telling his delegation to threaten the Algerians that — if the worst came to the worst — France would go ahead with unilateral solutions, invoking the short-lived spectre of partition. 16 March was a day of intense cold, with the wind blowing like a tempest across the gloomy lake; on hearing of the murder of Feraoun and his associates, Buron says that the Götterdämmerung instincts of the O.A.S. made him think of “the Hitler bunker”. And meanwhile there was still but little progress towards a peace settlement.
Then, suddenly, on 18 March it was all over: “Et voilà! We have finished; we have attached our three signatures opposite that of Belkacem Krim at the bottom of ninety-three pages, the fruit of the work of these twelve days,” wrote Robert Buron. After seven and a half years of war, the cease-fire was due to operate with effect from midday on the 19th, both parties hoping that its announcement would at last bring about an end to the O.A.S. outrages.
The Agreement
How, from all the complexity of their ninety-three pages, preambles, chapters, headings and articles, can one distil the salient points of the Evian Agreements? First of all, they dealt with details of the cease-fire, including arrangements for the release forthwith of all prisoners. Next came a déclaration générale, recognising the full sovereignty of Algeria, in its territorial integrity, in accordance with the principles of “self-determination” as bestowed by the referendum of 8 January 1961. Early in this déclaration were recognised the rights of “French citizens” to share in equality the protection and privileges accorded to all Algerians over a transitory period of three years. At the end of this period they could either opt for Algerian citizenship or retain their French nationality, in which case they would become “foreigners” in Algeria. They could not have it both ways; thus had the French negotiators been forced to concede yet another major bargaining point, that of “dual nationality”. The rights to which the “French citizens” would be entitled during the transitory three years were spelled out to include: respect for private property — no “dispossession” without fair compensation; a “fair and authentic” participation in public affairs; guarantees of non-discrimination in language, cultural and religious matters. All citizens of Algeria would also be equally protected against discrimination, or sanctions relating to any acts committed during the war and prior to the cease-fire.
Thus was the Number One question of the pieds noirs regulated — on paper.
A chapter on the “settlement of the military questions” gave France twelve months in which to reduce her armed forces to 80,000, and a further twenty-four months to repatriate them altogether; the lease of Mers-el-Kébir was fixed at fifteen years, renewable by agreement after that; leases on other military installations as were deemed “necessary” to France were granted, but for unspecified periods. Under “Economic and Financial Co-operation”, France was committed to continue for three years, renewable, to provide aid “at a level equivalent to that of current programmes”; i.e. the multi-million franc Constantine Plan. Algeria would remain part of the franc zone, and Algerian workers would be free to remain in France. Under the all-important item of petroleum rights, a complex agreement permitted the French oil companies concessions on the bases of past enterprises, and preferential treatment for new exploration and development over a period of six years. To preside over the “transitory period”, a Provisional Executive would be appointed — comprised of equal numbers of Algerians and French — and one of its first acts would entail the fixing of a referendum to ratify the Evian Agreements within three to six months of the cease-fire; not, as originally envisaged by de Gaulle at the time of his “self-determination” statement in 1959, after an elapse of four years. The Agreements ended with a pious “Declaration of Principles”, to the effect that: “France and Algeria will resolve the differences that may arise between them by pacific means of settlement.” (I.e. French forces still in situ would be precluded from intervening in the event of any infringement of the Algerian side.)
Thus, layer by layer, had the onion of French demands been peeled in the face of Algerian refusal to compromise: first, the French insistence on a prior cease-fire; then her refusal to recognise the G.P.R.A. as the sole interlocuteur valable; then de Gaulle’s requirement of a four years’ hiatus between a cease-fire and “self-determination”; then the Sahara, and then the safeguard of dual nationality for the pieds noirs. And so on.
In fact, almost every one of the above provisions was to remain a dead letter, overtaken by events for one reason or another.
Algerian jubilation: French misgivings
On the night of 18 March, over the transmitters of all North Africa, President Ben Khedda proclaimed triumphantly “a great victory of the Algerian people”. It could indeed be said that, through its extraordinary consistency, the F.L.N. at Evian had fulfilled virtually all of its original war objectives as framed at the Soummam Conference back in 1956. In France Le Canard Enchainé, abandoning its satirical style, blazoned in a bold headline: “To de Gaulle, from his grateful country: once and for all, merci!” The feeling of Frenchmen in general was one of relief but no rejoicing, accompanied by a great deal of criticism from all quarters. “We felt not the slightest surge of joy,” wrote Simone de Beauvoir: “The Algerians’ victory didn’t just wipe out the seven years of French atrocities, suddenly brought out into the light of day … the prevailing sentiment — ‘Yes, the poor Germans; one realises now it wasn’t their fault.”’ There were others on the Left who attacked the amnesty clause in the Agreements for letting the “torturers” go unpunished. There were those like General Massu who condemned them for “betraying” the Muslim administrators and harkis who had remained loyal to France, while Lacoste castigated de Gaulle for “letting the petroleum go within forty-eight hours”. Many felt that the main weakness of the Agreements was the lack of watertight guarantees for the pieds noirs; that de Gaulle in his haste had sold them down the river. “Our legitimate war aim”, the liberal Germaine Tillion had written in 1960 “is the safeguarding of the lives and interests of a significant population which has its claims on France.” Had this been achieved at Evian?
There were those who felt that only France was bound by the Agreements: with herself fettered to resolving future differences by “pacific means”, with her army withdrawing, what possible sanctions could be applied against the G.P.R.A. if it failed to respect the Agreements? Other critics pointed to a small matter of validity; the Agreements had been signed with representatives of a body that was not even a legitimately constituted government — therefore, France would be bound, while a future Algerian regime could repudiate. (Indeed, within a month Chanderli at the United Nations would be claiming that the Evian Agreements were purely provisional, and capable of renunciation as soon as this would be in the interests of Algeria.) In France the Conseil d’État was to challenge the validity of the Agreements by pronouncing as “unconstitutional” the referendum endorsing them. “This government has required four years of war to impose on its adversary the solution which was precisely his final objective,” was the caustic comment of Professor Maurice Allais, and many criticised de Gaulle for going too slowly over the four years from 1958, but too fast in the final weeks and days. Some of those, too, most intimately involved in bringing the Agreements to fruition were far from being entirely happy with the results. Tricot, the brain behind the scenes, held rese
rvations that dealings for a cease-fire and for the future organisation of Algeria had to be compressed into one stage: “It was extremely bad to have to make arrangements for the future in an atmosphere of war and terror,” he says in retrospect. For Robert Buron, it was “a very strange document” at the bottom of which his signature figured; he felt “conscious of having done my duty in the full sense of the word, but I do not experience any genuine satisfaction”. In Paris, Premier Debré composed his letter of resignation, incensed in particular by the surrender of the Sahara. De Gaulle once again dissuaded him; then let him go the following month, once the dust had settled, replacing him quietly by banker Pompidou.
De Gaulle himself greeted the Agreements with characteristically cynical realism. To his cabinet the following day he remarked: “It’s an honourable exit. It’s not necessary to write an epilogue on what has just been done, or not done…. That the application of the Agreements will be capricious [aléatoire] is certain…. As for France, it will be necessary for her now to interest herself in something else.” In his mind the subject of Algeria was now dismissed.
Cease-fire: but no peace
On the day of the cease-fire, Monday, 19 March, contemporary news films show tough, scruffily dressed men of Boumedienne’s A.L.N. standing in one minute’s solemn silence to commemorate the claimed one million Muslim dead of the seven-and-a-half-year war. Then followed scenes of wild emotion as the moudjadhiddine danced, hugged and embraced each other. In the pied noir strongholds of Algeria the news of the peace signed at Evian was greeted with dumb and glum disbelief. On a day of sparkling spring sunshine the streets of Algiers emptied, except for the constantly patrolling vehicles of the police and army. The O.A.S.’s first reaction was to go round ripping down the posters that had suddenly appeared, showing a Muslim and a European child smiling at each other above the caption, “For our children, Peace in Algeria.” A general strike was called by Salan, and an O.A.S. order went out declaring that — in addition to the civil law-enforcers, the C.R.S. and the gendarmerie — the French army was now considered an enemy. Far from leading to an end to O.A.S. violence as the delegations at Evian had hoped in hastening signature, the week after the cease-fire brought the bloodiest interlude that Algiers had yet seen as the O.A.S. strained every muscle to nullify the Agreements.
The O.A.S. first extended its promiscuous attacks against Muslims of all walks of life, and both sexes, with the Deltas issuing a total ban on Muslim employees entering the European quarters of Algiers.[4] On the 20th, the day after the cease-fire, an O.A.S. deserter lieutenant sighted a 60 mm. mortar from a Bab-el-Oued balcony at the Place du Gouvernement, which, at midday, was thronged with happy Muslims. Six bombs fell into the packed crowd, killing twenty-four and wounding fifty-nine, and creating a murderous urge for revenge which — for the first time — the French army and F.L.N. officials at hand collaborated to control. Two days later twenty men of the O.A.S. “Z Commandos”, equipped with machine-guns and bazookas, trapped a gendarmerie patrol emerging from the Tunnel des Facultés. They knocked out three of the half-tracks, killing eighteen gendarmes and wounding twenty-five. Three events now marked the climax of pure civil war, of Frenchmen killing Frenchmen. On the 23rd two army trucks loaded with young conscripts were surrounded by hostile pieds noirs in Bab-el-Oued. A new addition to Degueldre’s Deltas, called an “A-Commando” after its leader Jacques Achard, arrived on the scene and attempted to disarm the soldiers. Apparently a Muslim private nervously cocked his sub-machine-gun; Achard’s squad ruthlessly opened fire, killing outright seven of the conscripts and wounding another eleven. “It was”, admits Pérez, “a very grave action.” Salan’s instructions had been obeyed, but the massacre of the young conscripts totally transformed the attitude of the army — hitherto almost passively neutral — towards the O.A.S. A determination to avenge fallen comrades took over.
In a towering rage, the French Commander-in-Chief, General Ailleret, now ordered a full-scale assault on the O.A.S. stronghold of Bab-el-Oued. At first gendarmerie armoured cars raked the façades of apartment buildings with heavy .50 calibre machine-guns. But the O.A.S. marksmen fired back. Then, in the afternoon, 20,000 French troops — led by Ailleret himself — moved in and sealed off Bab-el-Oued with its some 60,000 inhabitants. Tanks fired their cannon at point-blank range into suspected O.A.S. snipers’ nests. In the evening a flight of T.6 planes flew in to strafe the still rebellious quarter with rockets and machine-guns. It was a scene more familiar to an army coup in Bolivia than anything ever experienced on French territory. For three days the “reduction” of Bab-el-Oued continued, and at the end of it the bullet-riddled walls, shattered windows, gutted cars in the streets and dangling trolley-bus cables resembled scenes from Budapest of 1956 — which, right from the beginning, Roger Degueldre had told Captain Sergent was what he wanted to create in Algiers. The fighting cost the French forces fifteen dead and seventy-seven wounded, while the Bab-el-Oued casualties were estimated at twenty killed and sixty wounded; 3,309 arrests were made and 1,110 weapons of various kinds seized, together with 100 kilos of plastique. During those days of siege, and afterwards, the uncommitted residents of Bab-el-Oued found themselves caught in a grim no-man’s-land between the O.A.S. and the F.L.N. “We didn’t dare go into the Casbah for fear of being kidnapped or killed by the F.L.N.,” recalled a Jewish school-teacher, Madame Lorette Ankaoua: “nor did we dare go into the European shops behind our house for fear of the O.A.S. So small Arab children in my class smuggled us bread secretly in their dirty haversacks. It was all we had to eat.”
Crushed as Bab-el-Oued might seem, there was more to come. On the 26th the O.A.S. mounted a mass demonstration to sweep along the whole pied noir population to the monument aux morts in protest against the treatment of Bab-el-Oued. Reckoning that anything up to 500,000 people might turn out, the new Algiers prefect of police, Vitalis Cros, declared all demonstrations banned and called up troop reinforcements to stiffen his twenty-five squadrons of gendarmes mobiles. The key role fell upon the 4th Regiment of Tirailleurs, one of the last regular units still containing a majority of “loyal” Algerian troops, which had just arrived — exhausted and tense — from operations in the bled. A few days previously their commanding officer, Colonel Goubard, had reported to the Commander-in-Chief, General Ailleret, that his Tirailleurs — averaging twenty years of age and with only eighteen months’ training — had proved themselves in the djebel but were in no way conditioned or trained for police activities in the city. Ailleret promised that the Tirailleurs would not be used in Algiers; but somehow, incredibly, the order was never passed down. Thus, at a time when nerves were at breaking-point in Algiers, these totally unsuited Algerian troops found themselves holding a road block in the centre of Algiers, across the Rue d’Isly by the Grande Poste, close to where Ortiz had erected his barricades in January 1960.
Despite the ban on demonstrations, shortly after 2 p.m. a wave of pieds noirs surged up the Rue d’Isly. They began jostling the Tirailleurs, who were obviously panicked by having to deal with a mob at such close quarters. Suddenly shots were fired by an unknown hand from a rooftop on the Rue d’Isly. The young Tirailleurs began spontaneously to shoot back, as they would have done out in the djebel. They shot, and shot — wildly, and at point-blank range — into the crowd. Among the journalists to witness it, Yves Courrière recalls that the horror of the scene was something he would never forget all his life. It was a repeat of the deadly fusillade which had prefaced “Barricades Week” in 1960 — only worse, with women and old men caught up in the murderous cross-fire. The crowd stampeded, and were fired after as they ran; men and women flattened themselves to the ground, then tried to crawl for safety to the Grande Poste or into nearby shops, with a hail of bullets following them. In the shattered window of one elegant boutique two corpses were found grotesquely sprawled among bullet-ridden dummies. Agonised shouts of “Arrête ton feu, arrête ton feu, arrête…!” went unheeded. When the shooting was finally stopped, forty-six dead and 2
00 wounded were picked up, more than a score of whom died subsequently. Afterwards some 2,000 cartridge cases were counted. Lengthy enquiries were held but, although the identity of the sniper on the roof was never clarified, it was generally assumed that he had belonged to the O.A.S., aiming deliberately to provoke a massacre that would speed the breakdown of order in Algiers. Whatever the truth, it was criminal negligence to place the Tirailleurs in such a predicament.
The O.A.S. decapitated
During the siege of Bab-el-Oued de Gaulle issued a curt instruction to Debré: “Immediate action must be taken to smash the criminal action of terrorist bands in Algiers and Oran.” But, disastrous as it had been, the week following the cease-fire in fact marked the peak in the fortunes of the O.A.S. and a turning-point in the struggle against it. In Algiers, guarded day and night by eight C.R.S. gunmen, the new tough prefect of police, Vitalis Cros, had taken over; meanwhile, the underground work of “Professor Ermelin”, alias Michel Hacq, and his “Force C” was at last beginning to bear fruit. In Oran a new army commander, an ex-trooper called General Katz, had assumed personal control of the battle. After the killing of his Deuxième Bureau chief, Katz installed himself in the prefecture, where the windows had been shot out, put his mattress on the floor to be out of the field of snipers’ fire, and read Saint-Simon by night to distract himself from the incessant shooting and bombing outside.
It was in Oran that on 25 March, between the assault of Bab-el-Oued and the Rue d’Isly massacre in Algiers — the first arrest came of an O.A.S. leader. With its preponderance of pieds noirs, with the wind in its dusty streets that seemed if anything to exacerbate violent tempers, Oran had given itself over perhaps even more completely to the O.A.S. than Algiers. March had begun with a particularly odious F.L.N. atrocity at Mers-el-Kébir: Muslims had broken into the house of a pied noir night-watchman during his absence, disembowelled his wife and smashed the skulls of his five- and four-year-old children against a wall. The predictable ratonnade had followed, with black-jacketed youths setting fire to Muslim shops in Oran and killing four Muslims “while attempting to evade arrest”. A few days later Oran’s civil prison was conflagrated by a crude butane and petrol bomb, creating a panic and killing two Muslims. On the 22nd the O.A.S. — with total impunity, and apparently aided by the bank clerks — pulled off the biggest bank raid in history to date, getting away with 2,200 million francs (about $4,700,000 or nearly £1,000,000) from the Banque d’Algérie in the centre of Oran.
A Savage War of Peace Page 77