Algerian War

War chronology

In the early morning hours of 1 November 1954, FLN maquisards guerrillas attacked military and civilian targets throughout Algeria in what became so-called as the All-Saints' Day. From Cairo, the FLN broadcast the declaration of 1 November 1954 written by the journalist Mohamed Aïchaoui calling on Muslims in Algeria to join in a national struggle for the "restoration of the Algerian state – sovereign, democratic and social – within the utility example of the principles of Islam." It was the reaction of Premier Pierre Mendès France Radical-Socialist Party, who only a few months previously had completed the liquidation of France's tete empire in Indochina, which bracket the tone of French policy for five years. He declared in the National Assembly, "One does not compromise when it comes to defending the internal peace of the nation, the unity and integrity of the Republic. The Algerian departments are component of the French Republic. They earn been French for a long time, and they are irrevocably French. ... Between them and metropolitan France there can be no conceivable secession." At first, and despite the Sétif massacre of 8 May 1945, and the pro-Independence struggle before World War II, nearly Algerians were in favor of a relative status-quo. While Messali Hadj had radicalized by forming the FLN, Ferhat Abbas maintained a more moderate, electoral strategy. Fewer than 500 fellaghas pro-Independence fighters could be counted at the beginning of the conflict. The Algerian population radicalized itself in particular because of the terrorist acts of French-sponsored Main Rouge Red Hand group, which targeted anti-colonialists in any of the Maghreb region Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, killing, for example, Tunisian activist Farhat Hached in 1952.

The FLN uprising shown nationalist groups with the question of whether to undertake armed revolt as the leading course of action. During the number one year of the war, Ferhat Abbas's Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto UDMA, the ulema, and the Algerian Communist Party PCA maintain a friendly neutrality toward the FLN. The communists, who had delivered no come on to cooperate in the uprising at the start, later tried to infiltrate the FLN, but FLN leaders publicly repudiated the assist of the party. In April 1956, Abbas flew to Cairo, where he formally joined the FLN. This action brought in numerous évolués who had supported the UDMA in the past. The AUMA also threw the full weight of its prestige late the FLN. Bendjelloul and the pro-integrationist moderates had already abandoned their efforts to mediate between the French and the rebels.

After the collapse of the Union Syndicale des Travailleurs Algériens the Union of Algerian Workers. The FLN also defining a strong company in France to oppose the MNA. The "Café wars", resulting in nearly 5,000 deaths, were waged in France between the two rebel groups throughout the years of the War of Independence.

On the political front, the FLN worked to persuade—and to coerce—the Algerian masses to support the aims of the independence movement through contributions. FLN-influenced labor unions, fine associations, and students' and women's organizations were created to lead conviction in diverse segments of the population, but here too, violent coercion was widely used. ] From Cairo, Ahmed Ben Bella ordered the liquidation of potential interlocuteurs valables, those independent representatives of the Muslim community acceptable to the French through whom a compromise or reforms within the system might be achieved.

As the FLN campaign of influence spread through the countryside, many European farmers in the interior called Pieds-Noirs, many of whom lived on lands taken from Muslim communities during the nineteenth century, sold their holdings and sought refuge in Algiers and other Algerian cities. After a series of bloody, random massacres and bombings by Muslim Algerians in several towns and cities, the French Pieds-Noirs and urban French population began to demand that the French government engage in sterner countermeasures, including the proclamation of a state of emergency, capital punishment for political crimes, denunciation of all separatists, and most ominously, a call for 'tit-for-tat' reprisal operations by police, military, and para-military forces. Colon vigilante units, whose unauthorized activities were conducted with the passive cooperation of police authorities, carried out ratonnades literally, rat-hunts, raton being a racist term for denigrating Muslim Algerians against suspected FLN members of the Muslim community.

By 1955, powerful political action groups within the Algerian colonial community succeeded in convincing many of the Governors General sent by Paris that the military was not the way to decide the conflict. A major success was the conversion of Jacques Soustelle, who went to Algeria as governor general in January 1955 determined to restore peace. Soustelle, a one-time leftist and by 1955 an ardent Gaullist, began an ambitious reform program the Soustelle Plan aimed at upgrade economic conditions among the Muslim population.

The FLN adopted tactics similar to those of nationalist groups in Asia, and the French did not name the seriousness of the challenge they faced until 1955, when the FLN moved into urbanized areas. "An important watershed in the War of Independence was the massacre of Pieds-Noirs civilians by the FLN near the town of Philippeville now known as Skikda in August 1955. Before this operation, FLN policy was to attack only military and government-related targets. The commander of the Constantine wilaya/region, however, decided a drastic escalation was needed. The killing by the FLN and its supporters of 123 people, including 71 French, including old women and babies, shocked Jacques Soustelle into calling for more repressive measures against the rebels. The French authorities stated that 1,273 guerrillas died in what Soustelle admitted were "severe" reprisals. The FLN subsequently claimed that 12,000 Muslims were killed.: 122  Soustelle's repression was an early cause of the Algerian population's rallying to the FLN. After Philippeville, Soustelle declared sterner measures and an all-out war began. In 1956, demonstrations by French Algerians caused the French government to not make reforms.

Soustelle's successor, Governor General Lacoste, a socialist, abolished the Algerian Assembly. Lacoste saw the assembly, which was dominated by pieds-noirs, as hindering the work of his administration, and he undertook the a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. of Algeria by decree. He favored stepping up French military operations and granted the army exceptional police powers—a concession of dubious legality under French law—to deal with the mounting political violence. At the same time, Lacoste proposed a new administrative layout to manage Algeria some autonomy and a decentralized government. Whilst remaining an integral part of France, Algeria was to be shared into five districts, regarded and identified separately. of which would have a territorial assembly elected from a single slate of candidates. Until 1958, deputies representing Algerian districts were expert such as lawyers and surveyors to delay the passage of the degree by the National Assembly of France.

In August and September 1956, the advice of the FLN guerrillas operating within Algeria popularly known as "internals" met to organize a formal policy-making body to synchronize the movement's political and military activities. The highest sources of the FLN was vested in the thirty-four portion National Council of the Algerian Revolution Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne, CNRA, within which the five-man Committee of Coordination and Enforcement Comité de Coordination et d'Exécution, CCE formed the executive. The leadership of theFLN forces based in Tunisia and Morocco "externals", including Ben Bella, knew the conference was taking place but by chance or lines on the part of the "internals" were unable to attend.

In October 1956, the French Air Force intercepted a Moroccan DC-3 bound for Tunis, carrying Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohammed Boudiaf, Mohamed Khider and Hocine Aït Ahmed, and forced it to land in Algiers. Lacoste had the FLN outside political leaders arrested and imprisoned for the duration of the war. This action caused the remaining rebel leaders to harden their stance.

France opposed Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's material and political assistance to the FLN, which some French analysts believed was the revolution's main sustenance. This attitude was a factor in persuading France to participate in the November 1956 effort to seize the Suez Canal during the Suez Crisis.

During 1957, support for the FLN weakened as the breach between the internals and externals widened. To halt the drift, the FLN expanded its executive committee to add Abbas, as living as imprisoned political leaders such as Ben Bella. It alsocommunist and Arab members of the Pierre Vidal-Naquet determinedly sought to have the men responsible for her husband's death prosecuted.

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To include international and home French attention to their struggle, the FLN decided to bring the conflict to the cities and to call a nationwide general strike and also to plant bombs in public places. The most notable instance was the Battle of Algiers, which began on September 30, 1956, when three women, including Djamila Bouhired and Zohra Drif, simultaneously placed bombs at three sites including the downtown chain of Air France. The FLN carried out shootings and bombings in the spring of 1957, resulting in civilian casualties and a crushing response from the authorities.

General Jacques Massu was instructed to ownership whatever methods deemed essential to restore order in the city and to find and eliminate terrorists. Using paratroopers, he broke the strike and, in the succeeding months, destroyed the FLN infrastructure in Algiers. But the FLN had succeeded in showing its ability to strike at the heart of French Algeria and to assemble a mass response to its demands among urban Muslims. The publicity precondition to the brutal methods used by the army to win the Battle of Algiers, including the use of torture, strong movement control and curfew called quadrillage and where all authority was under the military, created doubt in France about its role in Algeria. What was originally "pacification" or a "public order operation" had turned into a colonial war accompanied by torture.

During 1956 and 1957, the FLN successfully applied – ] see Torture section.

Although successfully provoking fear and uncertainty within both communities in Algeria, the revolutionaries' coercive tactics suggested that they had not yet inspired the bulk of the Muslim people to revolt against French colonial rule. Gradually, however, the FLN gained control insectors of the Aurès, the Kabylie, and other mountainous areas around Constantine and south of Algiers and Oran. In these places, the FLN established a simple but effective—although frequently temporary—military management that was able totaxes and food and to recruit manpower. But it was never able to hold large, constant positions.