Algerian War

The causes

France colonized Algeria from 1830 onward; Europeans and Muslim Algerians did not have the same rights there, which fed Algerian nationalism. After World War II, hopes for reform were dashed, and the repression of the Sétif riots, in 1945, radicalized part of the nationalists. In 1954, a group of activists founded the FLN, which chose armed struggle.

As early as 1947, a statute gave Algeria an elected assembly, but the Muslim electoral college was underrepresented, and the 1948 election was largely rigged by the administration. Militants of the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (MTLD) then split between the legal path and a paramilitary Special Organisation, which prepared armed struggle. The defeats of the French army in Indochina, with the fall of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, showed that a colonial power could be beaten. The feeling that reforms would never be applied then took hold among part of the militants, who turned to armed action.

The course of the war

On November 1, 1954, the FLN launched a series of simultaneous attacks, the Toussaint Rouge (Red All Saints' Day). The French authorities sent reinforcements and spoke of "events" or of "public order" operations rather than war. The FLN multiplied its attacks, including against civilians, and repression intensified. In 1957, the French army won the Battle of Algiers by dismantling the FLN network in the capital, using methods including torture, which is widely documented.

The May 13, 1958 crisis in Algiers was triggered by supporters of French Algeria; it led to General de Gaulle's return to power and the birth of the Fifth Republic. De Gaulle then opened negotiations with the FLN, which provoked the generals' putsch in Algiers, in April 1961, which failed. The Évian Accords, signed in March 1962, led to a ceasefire and then a referendum; independence was proclaimed on July 5, 1962. During this period, the OAS multiplied its attacks, a large part of the Europeans of Algeria, the pieds-noirs, left the country, and many harkis, Algerian auxiliaries of the French army, were abandoned, many being killed.

In August 1955, in the Constantine region, FLN attacks were followed by bloody reprisals against Muslim populations, notably at Philippeville. In 1956, the government of Guy Mollet obtained special powers and sent conscripts to Algeria. The Soummam Congress, held in August 1956, reorganised the FLN and affirmed the primacy of the interior of the country over the leaders based abroad. At the same time, the Franco-British expedition to Suez, which targeted in particular Nasser's Egypt, a supporter of the FLN, failed in November 1956.

After the Battle of Algiers, the conflict changed form. In September 1958, the FLN proclaimed a provisional government, the GPRA, of which Ferhat Abbas took the presidency. On 16 September 1959, de Gaulle spoke for the first time of self-determination for Algerians, which irritated supporters of French Algeria. These responded with the Week of the Barricades, in Algiers, in January 1960, which failed to overthrow the government. The Melun talks, in June 1960, between the government and the GPRA, came to nothing, and the war continued in the maquis and in the cities.

The war also played out in metropolitan France, where the FLN's federation in France carried out attacks against policemen and collected funds. On 17 October 1961, a demonstration of Algerian workers in Paris, called by the FLN, was violently repressed by the police, which caused many casualties. On 5 July 1962, the day of independence, Europeans were abducted and killed in Oran, in a wave of violence that accelerated the departure of the pieds-noirs. These events were added to the attacks of the OAS, which targeted Algerians as well as supporters of independence.

The consequences

Algeria became independent, and the exile of the pieds-noirs and harkis left a lasting mark on the memory of both countries. In France, the conflict was long referred to as "events"; the term "war" was only officially recognized with the 1999 law. The 1958 crisis put an end to the Fourth Republic and established the Fifth.

Historians have gradually reconstructed the widespread use of torture, long denied by the authorities. In 2018, President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that the mathematician Maurice Audin, an anticolonialist militant arrested in Algiers in 1957, had been tortured and then killed by French soldiers. The question of the harkis, abandoned and often massacred after 1962, remains a painful subject of memory, and their official recognition came only late. 19 March, the date of the 1962 ceasefire, has become a national day of commemoration of the victims of the war.

Timeline

1. 1954Toussaint Rouge attacks: start of the FLN uprising, on November 1
2. 1957Battle of Algiers
3. 1958May 13 crisis and the return of General de Gaulle to power
4. 1961Generals' putsch in Algiers, in April
5. 1962Évian Accords, then independence of Algeria, proclaimed on July 5

Key figures

• Charles de Gaulle, general who returned to power in 1958 and negotiated the end of the war
• Ferhat Abbas, president of the Algerian provisional government (GPRA) during the war
• Ahmed Ben Bella, one of the founders of the FLN, first president of independent Algeria
• Raoul Salan, general, a leading figure of the Algiers putsch, then head of the OAS