Algerian War

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Algerian War of Independence)
Jump to: navigation, search
Not to be confused with Algerian Civil War.
Algerian War
الثورة الجزائرية
Tagrawla Tadzayrit
Guerre d'Algérie
Algerian war collage wikipedia.jpg
Collage of the French war in Algeria
Date 1 November 1954 – 19 March 1962
Location Algeria

Military stalemate[1][2][3][4]
FLN political victory
Évian Accords

  • Algerian Independence
Independence of Algeria
Flag of Algeria (1958-1962).svg FLN
Flag of Algeria (1958-1962).svg MNA
Flag of Parti communiste algérien.gif PCA
 France France FAF
Commanders and leaders
Saadi Yacef
Mustapha Benboulaïd  
Ferhat Abbas
Houari Boumedienne
Hocine Aït Ahmed
Ahmed Ben Bella
Krim Belkacem
Frantz Fanon
Larbi Ben M'Hidi  
Rabah Bitat
Mohamed Boudiaf
Ali La Pointe  
Alphonse Djamate (1931-2001) Paul Cherrière (1954–55)
Henri Lorillot (1955–56)
Raoul Salan (1956–58)
Jacques Massu (1956–60)
Paul Aussaresses
Maurice Challe (1958–60)
Jean Crepin (1960–61)
Fernand Gambiez (1961)
Pierre Lagaillarde
Raoul Salan
Edmond Jouhaud
Jean-Jacques Susini
Said Boualam
300,000 identified 40,000 civilian support 470,000 (maximum reached and maintained from 1956-1962)[5]
plus 90,000 Harkis
3,000 (OAS)
Casualties and losses
  • 141,000-152,863 male FLN soldiers killed [6][7] including 12,000 internal purges [8]
  • Unknown number of wounded [9]
100 dead (OAS)
2,000 jailed (OAS)
300,000 Algerian casualities and 1 million Europeans forced to flee [15]

The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of Independence or the Algerian Revolution (Berber: Tagrawla Tadzayrit; Arabic: الثورة الجزائرية‎‎, Al-thawra Al-Jazaa'iriyya; French: Guerre d'Algérie or Révolution algérienne) was a war between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (French: Front de Libération Nationale - FLN) from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, and the use of torture by both sides. The conflict also became a civil war between loyalist Algerians supporting a French Algeria and their Algerian nationalist counterparts.[16]

Effectively started by members of the National Liberation Front (FLN) on November 1, 1954, during the Toussaint Rouge ("Red All Saints' Day"), the conflict shook the foundations of the weak and unstable Fourth French Republic (1946–58) and led to its replacement by the Fifth Republic with a strengthened Presidency and with Charles de Gaulle as President. Although the French military campaigns greatly weakened the FLN militarily, with most prominent FLN leaders killed or arrested and terror attacks effectively stopped, the brutality of the methods employed by the French forces failed to win hearts and minds in Algeria, alienated support in metropolitan France and discredited French prestige abroad.[17][18]

After major demonstrations[where?] in favor of independence from the end of 1960 [19][20] and a United Nations resolution recognizing the right to independence,[21] De Gaulle decided to open a series of negotiations with the FLN, which concluded with the signing of the Évian Accords on March 1962. A referendum took place on 8 April 1962 and the French electorate approved the Évian Accords. The final result was 91% in favor of the ratification of this agreement [22] and on 1 July, the Accords were subject to a second referendum in Algeria, where with 99.72% voted for independence and just 0.28% against.[23]

The planned French withdrawal led to a state crisis, to various assassination attempts on de Gaulle, and to some attempts at military coups. Most of the former were carried out by the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS), an underground organization formed mainly from French military personnel supporting a French Algeria, which committed a large number of bombings and murders both in Algeria and in the homeland to stop the planned independence.

Upon independence, in 1962, 900,000 European-Algerians (Pieds-noirs) fled to France, in fear of the FLN's revenge, within a few months. The French government was totally unprepared for the vast number of refugees, which caused turmoil in France. The majority of Algerian Muslims who had worked for the French were disarmed and left behind as the treaty between French and Algerian authorities declared that no actions could be taken against them.[24] However, the Harkis in particular, having served as auxiliaries with the French army, were regarded as traitors by the FLN and between 50,000 and 150,000 Harkis and family members were murdered by the FLN or by lynch-mobs, often after being abducted and tortured. About 91,000 managed to flee to France, some with help from their French officers acting against orders, and as of 2016 they and their descendants form a significant part of the Algerian-French population.

Background: French Algeria[edit]

Conquest of Algeria[edit]

Battle of Somah in 1836

On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algiers in 1830.[25] Directed by Marshall Bugeaud, who became the first Governor-General of Algeria, the conquest was violent, marked by a "scorched earth" policy designed to reduce the power of the Dey; this included massacres, mass rapes, and other atrocities.[26]




Arrival of Marshal Randon in Algiers in 1857

However, prior to 1870, fewer than 200 demands were registered by Muslims and 152 by Jewish Algerians.[28] The 1865 decree was then modified by the 1870 Crémieux decrees, which granted French nationality to Jews living in one of the three Algerian departments. In 1881, the Code de l'Indigénat made the discrimination official by creating specific penalties for indigenes and organizing the seizure or appropriation of their lands.[28]



Algerian nationalism[edit]

1954 film about French Algeria


Within this context, a grandson of Abd el-Kadir spearheaded the resistance against the French in the first half of the 20th century. He was a member of the directing committee of the French Communist Party (PCF). In 1926, he founded the Étoile Nord-Africaine (North African Star) party, to which Messali Hadj, also a member of the PCF and of its affiliated trade union, the Confédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU), joined the following year.


On the other hand, nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas founded the Algerian Popular Union (Union populaire algérienne) in 1938, while writing in 1943 the Algerian People's Manifesto (Manifeste du peuple algérien). Arrested after the Sétif massacre of May 8, 1945, during which the French Army and pieds-noirs mobs killed about 6,000 Algerians,[31] Abbas founded the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto (UDMA) in 1946 and was elected as a deputy. Founded in 1954, the National Liberation Front (FLN) succeeded Messali Hadj's Algerian People's Party (PPA), while its leaders created an armed wing, the Armée de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Army) to engage in an armed struggle against French authority. France, which had just lost Indochina, was determined not to lose the next anti-colonial war, particularly not in its oldest and nearest major colony, which was regarded as an integral part of the republic.

It was claimed by Yasmine Belkacem that No dogs or Muslims was written on a poster at an Algerian beach.[32]

War chronology[edit]

Beginning of hostilities[edit]

French forces killed Algerian rebels, December 1954









After the Philippeville massacre[edit]

Universal Newsreels Rebellion Spreads in North Africa, 1955
Examples of ALN uniforms:
1- Djoundi battle of the frontiers 1958
2- Zonal commando 1957-58






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 include Abbas, as well as imprisoned political leaders such as Ben Bella. It also convinced communist and Arab members of the United Nations (UN) to put diplomatic pressure on the French government to negotiate a cease-fire. In 1957, it become common knowledge in France that French Army was routinely using torture to extract information from suspected FLN members.[38] Hubert Beuve-Méry, the editor of Le Monde declared in an edition on 13 March 1957: "From now on, Frenchman must know that they don't have the right to condemn in the same terms as ten years ago the destruction of Oradour and the torture by the Gestapo."[39] Another case that attracted much media attention was the murder of Maurice Audin, a Communist math professor at the University of Algiers and a suspected FLN member who the French Army arrested in June 1957.[40] Audin was tortured and killed and his body was never found.[41] As Audin was French rather than Algerian, his "disappearance" while in the custody of the French Army led to the case becoming a cause célèbre as his widow aided by the historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet determinedly used sought to have the men responsible for her husband's death prosecuted.[42]


Battle of Algiers[edit]




Guerrilla war[edit]

1956 newsreel about the war



Muslim civilians killed by the FLN, 22 March 1956


French counter-insurgency operations[edit]



French soldiers with suspected Algerian rebels


French paratroopers in Algiers, 1957



French soldiers in Algeria, 1958



Electrified barriers along the entire length of Algeria's eastern and western borders




Fall of the Fourth Republic[edit]

Main article: May 1958 crisis




De Gaulle[edit]








Week of barricades[edit]



In Paris on January 29, 1960, de Gaulle called on his ineffective army to remain loyal and rallied popular support for his Algerian policy in a televised address:








Role of women[edit]

FLN female bombers



Women operated in a number of different areas during the course of the rebellion. "Women participated actively as combatants, spies, fundraisers, as well as nurses, launderers, and cooks",[60] "women assisted the male fighting forces in areas like transportation, communication and administration" [61] the range of involvement by a woman could include both combatant and non-combatant roles. While most women's tasks were non-combatant, their less frequent, violent acts were more noticed. The reality was that "rural women in maquis rural areas support networks"[62] contained the overwhelming majority of those who participated; female combatants were in the minority.

End of the war[edit]

Universal Newsreel about the 1962 cease fire


The generals' putsch in April 1961, aimed at canceling the government's negotiations with the FLN, marked the turning point in the official attitude toward the Algerian war. Leading the coup attempt to depose de Gaulle were General Raoul Salan, General André Zeller, General Maurice Challe, and General Edmond Jouhaud.[64] Only the paratroop divisions and the Foreign Legion join the coup while the Air Force, Navy and most of the Army stayed loyal to General de Gaulle, but at one moment de Gaulle went on French television to ask for public support with the normally lofty de Gaulle saying "Frenchmen, Frenchwoman help me!".[65] De Gaulle was now prepared to abandon the pieds-noirs, which no previous French government was willing to do. The army had been discredited by the putsch and kept a low profile politically throughout the rest of France's involvement with Algeria.


Following the cease fire tensions developed between the Pied-noir community and their former protectors in the French Army. An O.A.S. ambush of French conscripts on 20 March was followed by 20,000 gendarmes and troops being ordered to occupy the major Pied-Noir district of Bab-el-Oued in Algiers.[66] A week later French-officered Muslim tirailleurs panicked and opened fire on a crowd of Pied-noir demonstrators in the centre of the city. Total casualties in these three incidents were 326 dead and wounded amongst the Pied-noirs and 110 French military personnel.[67]



Summer 1962 saw a rush of pied-noirs to France. Within a year, 1.4 million refugees, including almost the entire Jewish community, had joined the exodus to France. Despite the declaration of independence on July 5, 1962, the last French forces did not leave the naval base of Mers El Kébir until 1967. (The Evian Accords had permitted France to maintain its military presence for fifteen years—the withdrawal in 1967 was significantly ahead of schedule.)[69] The Canadian historian John Cairns writing from Paris in 1962 declared: "In some ways the last year has been the worse. Tension has never been higher. Disenchantment in France at least has never been greater. The mindless cruelty of it all has never been more absurd and savage. This last year, stretching from the hopeful spring of 1961 to the ceasefire of March 18, 1962 spanned a season of shadow boxing, false threats, capitulation and murderous hysteria. French Algeria died badly. Its agony was marked by panic and brutality as ugly as the record of European imperialism could show. In the spring of 1962 the unhappy corpse of empire still shuddered and lashed out and stained itself in fratricide. The whole episode of its death, measured at least seven and half years, constituted perhaps the most pathetic and sordid event in the entire history of colonialism. It is hard to see how anybody of importance in the tangled web of the conflict came out looking well. Nobody won the conflict, nobody won it."[70]

Pieds-Noirs' and Harkis' exodus[edit]







Young Harki in uniform, summer 1961.



Death toll[edit]



More than 12,000 Algerians died in internal FLN purges during the war. In France, an additional 5,000 died in the "café wars" between the FLN and rival Algerian groups. French sources also estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN.[76]


Lasting effects in Algerian politics[edit]




French use of torture[edit]

Torture was a frequent process in use from the beginning of the colonization of Algeria, which started in 1830. Claude Bourdet had denounced these acts on December 6, 1951, in the magazine L'Observateur, rhetorically asking, "Is there a Gestapo in Algeria?" Torture was also used on both sides during the First Indochina War (1946–54)[78][79][80] D. Huf, in his seminal work on the subject, argued that the use of torture was one of the major factors in developing French opposition to the war.[81] Huf argued, "Such tactics sat uncomfortably with France's revolutionary history, and brought unbearable comparisons with Nazi Germany. The French national psyche would not tolerate any parallels between their experiences of occupation and their colonial mastery of Algeria." General Paul Aussaresses admitted in 2000 that systematic torture techniques were used during the war and justified it. He also recognized the assassination of lawyer Ali Boumendjel and the head of the FLN in Algiers, Larbi Ben M'Hidi, which had been disguised as suicides.[82] Bigeard, who called FLN activists "savages", claimed torture was a "necessary evil."[83][84] To the contrary, General Jacques Massu denounced it, following Aussaresses's revelations and, before his death, pronounced himself in favor of an official condemnation of the use of torture during the war.[85]



Algerian use of torture[edit]

Specializing in ambushes and night raids to avoid direct contact with superior French firepower, the internal forces targeted army patrols, military encampments, police posts, and colonial farms, mines, and factories, as well as transportation and communications facilities. Kidnapping was commonplace, as were the murder and mutilation of civilians.[43] At first, the FLN targeted only Muslim officials of the colonial regime; later, they coerced, maimed, or killed village elders, government employees, and even simple peasants who refused to support them. Throat slitting and decapitation were commonly used by the FLN as mechanisms of terror.[88] During the first two and a half years of the conflict, the guerrillas killed an estimated 6,352 Muslim and 1,035 non-Muslim civilians.[89]

French school[edit]



French North African Operations medal, 11 January 1958

Although the opening of the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after a 30-year lock-up enabled some new historical research on the war, including Jean-Charles Jauffret's book, La Guerre d'Algérie par les documents (The Algerian War According to the Documents), many remain inaccessible.[90] The recognition in 1999 by the National Assembly, permitted the Algerian War, at last, to enter the syllabi of French schools. In France, the war was known as "la guerre sans nom" ("the war without a name") while it was being fought as the government variously described the war as the "Algerian events", the "Algerian problem" and the "Algerian dispute"; the mission of the French Army was "ensuring security", "maintaining order" and "pacification", but was never described as fighting a war; while the FLN were referred to as "criminals", "bandits", "outlaws", "terrorists" and "fellagha" (a derogatory Arabic word meaning "road-cutters", but which was popularly mistranslated as "throat-cutters"-a reference to the FLN"s favorite method of execution, namely making people wear the "Algerian smile" by cutting their throats, pulling their tongues out and leaving them to bleed to death).[91] After reports of the widespread use of torture by French forces started to reach France in 1956-57, the war become commonly known as "la sale guerre" ("the dirty war"), a term that is still used today, and which reflects the very negative memory of the war in France.[92]

As the war was officially a "police action", for decades no monuments were built to honor the about 25, 000 French soldiers killed in the war while the Defense Ministry refused to classify veterans as veterans until the 1970s.[93] When a monument to the Unknown Soldier of the Algerian War was erected in 1977, the French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in his dedication speech refused to use the words war or Algeria, instead using the phrase "the unknown soldier of North Africa".[94] A national monument to the French war dead was not built until 1996, and even then spoke only of those killed fighting in "Afrique du nord" and was located in a decrepit area of Paris rarely visited by tourists, as if to hide the monument.[95] Further adding to the silence were the vested interests of French politicians. François Mitterrand, the Socialist president 1981-95 had been the Interior Minister 1954-55 and the Justice Minister 1955-57 during which time he had been deeply involved in the repression of the FLN, and it was only after Mitterrand's death in 1996 that Socialists started to become willing to talk about the war, and even then remain very guarded about Mitterrand's role.[96] Likewise, de Gaulle had promised in the Evian accords that the pied-noirs could remain in Algeria, but after independence, the FLN had freely violated the accords, leading to the entire pied-noir population fleeing to France, usually with only their clothes they were wearing as they had lost everything they had in Algeria.[97] For Gaullists, this was not exactly a shining moment to cherish.[98]

From time to time, the memory of the Algerian War surfaced. In 1987, when SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon" was brought to trial for crimes against humanity, graffiti appeared on the walls of the banlieues (the slum districts in which most Algerian immigrants in France live in) reading: "Barbie in France! When will Massu be in Algeria!".[99] Barbie's lawyer Jacques Vergès adopted a tu quoque defense, asking the judges "is a crime against humanity is to be defined as only one of Nazis against the Jews or if it applies to more seriously crimes...the crimes of imperialists against people struggling for their independence?", going on to say there was nothing his client did against the French Resistance that was not done by "certain French officers in Algeria" whom Vergès noted could not be prosecuted because of de Gaulle's amnesty of 1962.[100] In 1997, when Maurice Papon, a career French civil servant was brought to trial for crimes against humanity for sending 1, 600 Jews from Bordeaux to be killed at Auschwitz in 1942, it emerged over the course of the trial that on 17 October 1961 Papon had organized a massacre of between 100-200 Algerians in downtown Paris, which was the first time that most of the French had heard of the massacre.[101] The revelation that hundreds of people had been killed by the Paris Sûreté was a great shock in France and led to uncomfortable questions being raised about what had happened during the Algerian War.[102] The American historian William Cohen wrote that the Papon trial "sharpened the focus" on the Algerian War, it not provide "clarity" as Papon's role as a civil servant under Vichy led to misleading conclusions in France that it was former collaborators who were responsible for the terror in Algeria, when in fact most of the men responsible like Guy Mollet, General Marcel Bigeard, Robert Lacoste, General Jacques Massu and Jacques Soustelle had all been résistants in World War Two, which was a fact that many French historians found very unpalatable.[103]

The Algerian War remains a contentious event today. According to historian Benjamin Stora, one of the leading historians on the Algerian war, memories concerning the war remain fragmented, with no common ground to speak of:


Even though Stora has counted 3,000 publications in French on the Algerian war, there still is no work produced by French and Algerian authors cooperating with one another. Even though, according to Stora, there can "no longer be talk about a 'war without a name', a number of problems remain, especially the absence of sites in France to commemorate" the war. Furthermore, conflicts have arisen on an exact commemoration date to end the war. Although many sources as well as the French state place it on March 19, 1962, the Evian agreements, others point out that the massacres of harkis and the kidnapping of pied-noirs took place afterwards. Stora further points out, "The phase of memorial reconciliation between the two sides of the sea is still a long way off."[104] This was evidenced by the National Assembly's creation of the law on colonialism on 23 February 2005, which asserted that colonialism had overall been "positive."

On 15 June 2000, Le Monde published an interview with Louisette Ighilahriz, a former FLN member who described in graphic detail her torture at the hands of the French Army and made the sensational claim that the war heroes General Jacques Massu and General Marcel Bigeard had personally been present when she being tortured for information.[105] What made the interview very touching for many French people was that Ighilahriz was not demanding vengeance, but rather wished to express thanks to Dr. François Richaud, the army doctor who extended her much kindness and whom she believed saved her life by treating her every time she was tortured, asking if it were possible for her to see Dr. Richaud one last time to thank him personally (Dr. Richaud it turned out had died in 1997).[106] As Ighilahriz had been an attractive woman in her youth, university-educated, secular, fluent in French and fond of quoting Victor Hugo, and her duties in the FLN had been as an information courier, she made for a most sympathetic victim as she was a woman did not come across as Algerian.[107] The American historian William Cohen commented had she been an uneducated man who had been involved in killings and was not coming forward to express thanks for a Frenchman, her story might not had resonated the same way.[108] The Ighiahriz case led to a public letter signed by 12 people who been involved in the war to President Chirac asking that October 31 be made a public day of remembrance for victims of torture in Algeria.[109] In response to the Ighilahriz case, General Paul Aussaresses gave an interview on 23 November 2000 in which he candidly admitted to ordering torture and extrajudicial executions, stating he had personally executed 24 fellagha, which he argued were justified as torture and extrajudicial executions were the only way to defeat the FLN.[110] In May 2001, General Aussaresses published his memoirs Services spéciaux Algérie 1955-1957, in which presented a detailed account of torture and extrajudicial killings in the name of the republic which he wrote were all done under orders from Paris, confirming what had been long suspected.[111] As a result of these interviews and Aussaresses's book, the Algerian War was finally extensively discussed by the French media who had ignored the subject as much as possible for decades, through no consensus emerged about how to best remember the war.[112] Adding to the interest was the decision by one war veteran Georges Fogel to come forward to confirm that he had seen Ighiahriz and many others tortured in 1957 while the politician and war veteran Jean Marie Faure decided in February 2001 to release extracts from the diary he kept at the time showing "acts of sadism and horror" he had witnessed.[113] The French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet called this a moment of "catharsis" that was "explainable only in near-French terms: it is the return of the repressed".[114]

Alongside a heated debate in France, the February 23, 2005, law had the effect of jeopardizing the treaty of friendship that President Jacques Chirac was supposed to sign with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika — a treaty no longer on the agenda. Following this controversial law, Bouteflika has talked about a cultural genocide, particularly referring to the 1945 Sétif massacre. Chirac finally had the law repealed through a complex institutional mechanism.

Before the war, Algeria was a favored setting for French films with the British French professor Leslie Hill writing: "In the late 1920s and 1930s, for instance, North Africa provided film-makers in France with a ready fund of familiar images of the exotics, mingling, for instance, the languid eroticism of Arabian nights with the infinite and hazy vistas of the Sahara to create a powerful confection of tragic heroism and passionate love".[115] During the war itself, French censors banned the entire subject of the war.[116] Since 1962 when film censorship relating to the war eased, French films dealing with the conflict have consistently portrayed the war as a set of conflicting memories and rival narratives (of which only some may be true, but which ones is left unclear) with most films dealing with the war taking a disjointed chronological structure where scenes before, during and after the war are juxtaposed out of sequence with one film critic referring to the cinematic Algeria as "an ambiguous world marked by the displacements and repetitions of dreams".[117] The consistent message of French films dealing with the war is that something horrible happened, but just what happened, who was involved, and why being left unexplained.[117] Though atrocities, especially torture by French forces are acknowledged, the French soldiers who fought in Algeria were and are always portrayed in French cinema as the "lost soldiers", tragic victims of the war who are more deserving of sympathy than the FLN people they tortured (almost invariably portrayed as vicious, psychopathic terrorists) – an approach to the war that has raised anger in Algeria.[118]



In metropolitan France in 1963, 43% of French Algerians lived in bidonvilles (shanty towns).[120] Thus, Azouz Begag, the delegate Minister for Equal Opportunities, wrote an autobiographic novel, Le Gone du Chaâba, about his experiences while living in a bidonville in the outskirts of Lyon. It is impossible to understand the third-generation of Algerian immigrants to France without recalling this bicultural experience. An official parliamentary report on the "prevention of criminality", commanded by then Interior Minister Villepin and made by member of parliament Jacques-Alain Bénisti, claimed that "Multilingualism (bilinguisme) was a factor of criminality." (sic[121]). Following outcries, the definitive version of the Bénisti report finally made multilingualism an asset rather than a fault.[122]

After having denied its use for 40 years, the French state has finally recognized its history of torture; although, there was never an official proclamation about it. General Paul Aussaresses was sentenced following his justification of the use of torture for "apology of war crimes." But, as it did during wartime, the French state claimed torture were isolated acts, instead of admitting its responsibility for the frequent use of torture to break the insurgents' morale and not, as Aussaresses has claimed, to "save lives" by gaining short-term information which would stop "terrorists".[123] The state now claims that torture was a regrettable aberration due to the context of the exceptionally savage war. But academic research has proven both theses false. "Torture in Algeria was engraved in the colonial act; it is a 'normal' illustration of an abnormal system", wrote Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, who discuss the phenomena of "human zoos."[124] From the enfumades (smoking parlors) of the Darha caves in 1844 by Pélissier to the 1945 riots in Sétif, Guelma, and Kherrata, the repression in Algeria has used the same methods. Following the Sétif massacres, other riots against the European presence occurred in Guelma, Batna, Biskra, and Kherrata; they resulted in 103 deaths among the pied-noirs. The suppression of these riots officially saw 1,500 other deaths, but N. Bancel, P. Blanchard and S. Lemaire estimate the number to be between 6,000 and 8,000.[125]

INA archives[edit]


Contemporary publications[edit]

  • Feraoun, Mouloud, Journal 1955 - 1962, University of Nebraska Press, USA, 2000.

Other publications[edit]

English language[edit]

French language[edit]




See also[edit]


  1. ^ The Algerian War 1954-62, By Martin Windrow, Mike Chappell, page 11
  2. ^ Introduction to Comparative Politics, By Mark Kesselman, Joel Krieger, William Joseph, page 108
  3. ^ Contracting States: Sovereign Transfers in International Relations, By Alexander Cooley, Hendrik Spruyt, page 63
  4. ^ Christian A. Herter: The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy By George Bernard Noble, page 155
  5. ^ Martin Windrow, The Algerian War 1954–62. p. 17
  6. ^ [1] Page 6 "The Algerian Ministry of War Veterans gives the figure of 152,863 FLN killed"
  7. ^ [2] "The Algerian Ministry of War Veterans calculates 152,863 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) deaths, and although the death toll among Algerian civilians may never be accurately known estimate of 1500000 to 2000000 were killed Page 576
  8. ^ A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 - Alistair Horne - P358 (4,300 Algerian from the FLN and MNA killed in metropolitan France)
  9. ^ Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars, The: The United States in the Persian Gulf - by Spencer C. Tucker p 83 [3]
  10. ^ [4] Note: including 5,966 killed in accident - A Military History of Africa - Timothy J. Stapleton
  11. ^ Note: 2,788 killed, 500 disappeared in 42,000 acts of terrorism - Historicizing Colonial Nostalgia: European Women's Narratives of Algeria - Patricia M. E. Lorcin - P255 - Read here
  12. ^ North Africa - John G. Hall,Chelsea House Publishing - P26
  13. ^ Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict: Po - Z, index. 3 - P86
  14. ^ America's Dirty Wars: Irregular Warfare from 1776 to the War on Terror Par Russell Crandall. P184
  15. ^ [5]
  17. ^ Keith Brannum, University of North Carolina Asheville, The Victory Without Laurels: The French Military Tragedy in Algeria(1954-1962) [6]
  18. ^ Irwin M. Wall, France, the United States, and the Algerian War, pp, 68-69. [7]
  19. ^
  20. ^
  21. ^
  22. ^
  23. ^ "Proclamation des résultats du référendum d'autodétermination du 1er juillet 1962" (PDF). Journal Officiel de l'État Algérien. 6 July 1962. Retrieved 2009-04-08. 
  24. ^ Évian accords, Chapitre II, partie A, article 2
  31. ^ Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace, s. 27
  32. ^ Chloe Arnold (2 July 2012), Algeria's revolution: A child bomber with 'no regrets', BBC News 
  34. ^ Wretched of the Earth, 1961, Fanon.
  36. ^ a b Number given by the Archived February 19, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. Préfecture du Gers, French governmental site – URL accessed on February 17, 2007
  37. ^ The Times Report published on August 22, 1955
  43. ^ a b
  52. ^ Algeria - The Revolution and Social Change
  56. ^ French Army audio archives
  57. ^ Manifeste des 121, transl. in English
  64. ^ Cairns, John "Algeria: The Last Ordeal" pages 87-97 from International Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2 Spring 1962 page 88.
  66. ^ Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace. p. 524. ISBN 0-670-61964-7. 
  67. ^ Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace. pp. 524–525. ISBN 0-670-61964-7. 
  69. ^ Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962.
  72. ^ Philippe Denoix, "Harkis" in Encyclopædia Universalis, 2010
  75. ^ "Chirac hails Algerians who fought for France", The Telegraph 26 September 2001
  78. ^ Mohamed Harbi, La guerre d'Algérie
  79. ^ Benjamin Stora, La torture pendant la guerre d'Algérie
  84. ^ Torture Bigeard: " La presse en parle trop " Archived June 24, 2005, at the Wayback Machine., L'Humanité, May 12, 2000 (French)
  91. ^ Dine, Philip "A la recherche du soldat perdu: Myth, Metaphor and Memory in the French Cinema of the Algerian War" pages 142-158 from France At War In the Twentieth Century edited by Valerie Holman and Debra Kelly, Oxford: Berghahan Books, 2000 page 144.
  104. ^ a b c Bringing down the barriers – people's memories of the Algerian War Archived July 5, 2007, at the Wayback Machine., interview with Benjamin Stora published on the INA archive Web site (English)
  114. ^ Cohen, William "The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory" pages 219-239 from Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 2002 pages 235-236.
  120. ^ Le Gone du Chaâba[permanent dead link] (French)
  122. ^ Analyse de la version finale du rapport Benisti, Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League), and Final version[permanent dead link] of the Bénisti report given to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy (French)
  125. ^ Bancel, Blanchard and Lemaire (op.cit.) quote **Boucif Mekhaled, Chroniques d'un massacre. 8 mai 1945. Sétif, Guelma, Kherrata, Syros, Paris, 1995 **Yves Benot, Massacres coloniaux, La Découverte, coll. "Textes à l'appui", Paris, 1994
      • Annie Rey-Goldzeiguer, Aux origines de la guerre d'Algérie, La Découverte, Paris, 2001.

External links[edit]