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Algeria
Polarization and Politicization
Algerian Muslims rallied to the French side at the start of World
War II as they had done in World War I. Nazi Germany's quick defeat
of France, however, and the establishment of the collaborationist
Vichy regime, to which the colons were generally sympathetic,
not only increased the difficulties of the Muslims but also posed
an ominous threat to the Jews in Algeria. The Algerian administration
vigorously enforced the anti-Semitic laws imposed by Vichy, which
stripped Algerian Jews of their French citizenship. Potential
opposition leaders in both the European and the Muslim communities
were arrested.
Allied landings were made at Algiers and Oran by 70,000 British
and United States troops on November 8, 1942, in coordination
with landings in Morocco. As part of Operation Torch under the
overall command of Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Algiers
and Oran were secured two days later after a determined resistance
by French defenders. On November 11, Admiral Jean Louis Darlan,
commander in chief of Vichy French forces, ordered a cease-fire
in North Africa. Algeria provided a base for the subsequent Allied
campaign in Tunisia.
After the fall of the Vichy regime in Algeria, General Henri
Giraud, Free French commander in chief in North Africa, slowly
rescinded repressive Vichy laws despite opposition by colon extremists.
He also called on the Muslim population to supply troops for the
Allied war effort. Ferhat Abbas and twenty-four other Muslim leaders
replied that Algerians were ready to fight with the Allies in
freeing their homeland but demanded the right to call a conference
of Muslim representatives to develop political, economic, and
social institutions for the indigenous population "within an essentially
French framework." Giraud, who succeeded in raising an army of
250,000 men to fight in the Italian campaign, refused to consider
this proposal, explaining that "politics" must wait until the
end of the war.
In March 1943, Abbas, who had abandoned assimilation as a viable
alternative to self-determination, presented the French administration
with the Manifesto of the Algerian People, signed by fifty-six
Algerian nationalist and international leaders. Outlining the
past evils of colonial rule and denouncing continued suppression,
the manifesto demanded specifically an Algerian constitution that
would guarantee immediate and effective political participation
and legal equality for Muslims. It called for agrarian reform,
recognition of Arabic as an official language on equal terms with
French, recognition of a full range of civil liberties, and the
liberation of political prisoners of all parties.
The French governor general created a commission composed of
prominent Muslims and Europeans to study the manifesto. This commission
produced a supplementary reform program, which was forwarded to
General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French movement.
De Gaulle and his newly appointed governor general in Algeria,
General Georges Catroux, a recognized liberal, viewed the manifesto
as evidence of a need to develop a mutually advantageous relationship
between the European and Muslim communities. Catroux was reportedly
shocked by the "blinded spirit of social conservatism" of the
colons, but he did not regard the manifesto as a satisfactory
basis for cooperation because he felt it would submerge the European
minority in a Muslim state. Instead, the French administration
in 1944 instituted a reform package, based on the 1936 Viollette
Plan, that granted full French citizenship to certain categories
of "meritorious" Algerian Muslims--military officers and decorated
veterans, university graduates, government officials, and members
of the Legion of Honor--who numbered about 60,000.
A new factor influencing Muslim reaction to the reintroduction
of the Viollette Plan--which by that date even many moderates
had rejected as inadequate--was the shift in Abbas's position
from support for integration to the demand for an independent
Algerian state federated with France. Abbas gained the support
of the AUMA and of Messali Hadj, who joined him in forming the
Friends of the Manifesto and Liberty (Amis du Manifeste et de
la Liberté--AML) to work for Algerian independence. Within a short
time, the AML's newspaper, Égalité, claimed 500,000 subscribers,
indicating unprecedented interest in independence.
During this time the outlawed PPA was creating secret political
cells throughout the country and paramilitary groups in the Kabylie
and the Constantine region. In addition, PPA supporters joined
the AML in large numbers and attempted to promote Messali Hadj's
independence concept in contrast to the more moderate autonomy
advocates. Social unrest grew in the winter of 1944-45, fueled
in part by a poor wheat harvest, shortages of manufactured goods,
and severe unemployment. On May Day, the AML organized demonstrations
in twenty-one towns across the country, with marchers demanding
freedom for Messali Hadj and independence for Algeria. Violence
erupted in some locations, including Algiers and Oran, leaving
many wounded and three dead.
Nationalist leaders were resolving to mark the approaching liberation
of Europe with demonstrations calling for their own liberation,
and it was clear that a clash with the authorities was imminent.
The tensions between the Muslim and colon communities exploded
on May 8, 1945, V-E Day, in an outburst of such violence as to
make their polarization complete, if not irreparable. Police had
told AML organizers they could march in Sétif only if they did
not display nationalist flags or placards. They ignored the warnings,
the march began, and gunfire resulted in which a number of police
and demonstrators were killed. Marchers rampaged, leading to the
killing of 103 Europeans. Word spread to the countryside, and
villagers attacked colon settlements and government buildings.
The army and police responded by conducting a prolonged and systematic
ratissage (literally, raking over) of suspected centers
of dissidence. In addition, military airplanes and ships attacked
Muslim population centers. According to official French figures,
1,500 Muslims died as a result of these countermeasures. Other
estimates vary from 6,000 to as high as 45,000 killed.
In the aftermath of the Sétif violence, the AML was outlawed,
and 5,460 Muslims, including Abbas, were arrested. Abbas deplored
the uprising but charged that its repression had taken Algeria
"back to the days of the Crusades." In April 1946, Abbas once
again asserted the demands of the manifesto and founded the Democratic
Union of the Algerian Manifesto (Union Démocratique du Manifeste
Algérien--UDMA), abandoning the alliance that the AML had made
with Messali Hadj's PPA and the AUMA. Abbas called for a free,
secular, and republican Algeria loosely federated with France.
Upon his release from five-year house arrest, Messali Hadj returned
to Algeria and formed the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic
Liberties (Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques--MTLD),
which quickly drew supporters from a broad cross-section of society.
Committed to unequivocal independence, the MTLD firmly opposed
Abbas's proposal for federation. The PPA continued to operate,
but clandestinely, always striving for an independent, Arab, and
Islamic Algeria. The clandestine Special Organization (Organisation
Spéciale--OS) was created within the MTLD by Hocine Ait Ahmed
in 1947 to conduct terrorist operations when political protest
through legal channels was suppressed by authorities. Ait Ahmed
was later succeeded as chief of the OS by Ahmed Ben Bella, one
of the early Algerian nationalist leaders.
The National Assembly approved the government-proposed Organic
Statute of Algeria in August 1947. This law called for the creation
of an Algerian Assembly with one house representing Europeans
and "meritorious" Muslims, and the other representing the remaining
more than 8 million Muslims. The statute also replaced mixed communes
with elected local councils, abolished military government in
the Algerian Sahara, recognized Arabic as an official language
with French, and proposed enfranchising Muslim women. Muslim and
colon deputies alike abstained or voted against the statute but
for diametrically opposed reasons: the Muslims because it fell
short of their expectations and the colons because it went too
far.
The sweeping victory of Messali Hadj's MTLD in the 1947 municipal
elections frightened the colons, whose political leaders, through
fraud and intimidation, attempted to obtain a result more favorable
to them in the following year's first Algerian Assembly voting.
The term élection algérienne became a synonym for rigged
election. The MTLD was allowed nine seats, Abbas's UDMA was given
eight, and government-approved "independents" were awarded fifty-five
seats. These results may have reassured some of the colons that
the nationalists had been rejected by the Muslim community, but
the elections suggested to many Muslims that a peaceful solution
to Algeria's problems was not possible.
At the first session of the colon-controlled Algerian Assembly,
an MTLD delegate was arrested at the door, prompting other Muslim
representatives to walk out in protest. A request by Abbas to
gain the floor was refused. Frustrated by these events, the nationalist
parties, joined by the PCA, formed a common political front that
undertook to have the results of the election voided. French socialists
and moderates tried to initiate a formal inquiry into the reports
of vote fraud but were prevented from doing so by the assembly's
European delegates, who persuaded the governor general that an
investigation would disturb the peace. New elections in 1951 were
subject to the same sort of rigging that had characterized the
1948 voting.
In 1952 anti-French demonstrations precipitated by the OS led
to Messali Hadj's arrest and deportation to France. Internal divisions
and attacks by the authorities severely weakened the MTLD, draining
its energies. Colon extremists took every opportunity to persuade
the French government of the need for draconian measures against
the emergent independence movement.
Ben Bella created a new underground action committee to replace
the OS, which had been broken up by the French police in 1950.
The new group, the Revolutionary Committee of Unity and Action
(Comité Révolutionnaire d'Unité et d'Action--CRUA), was based
in Cairo, where Ben Bella had fled in 1952. Known as the chefs
historiques (historical chiefs), the group's nine original
leaders--Ait Ahmed, Mohamed Boudiaf, Belkacem Krim, Rabah Bitat,
Larbi Ben M'Hidi, Mourad Didouch, Moustafa Ben Boulaid, Mohamed
Khider, and Ben Bella--were considered the leaders of the Algerian
War of Independence.
Between March and October 1954, the CRUA organized a military
network in Algeria comprising six military regions (referred to
at the time as wilayat; sing., wilaya). The
leaders of these regions and their followers became known as the
"internals." Ben Bella, Khider, and Ait Ahmed formed the External
Delegation in Cairo. Encouraged by Egypt's President Gamal Abdul
Nasser (r. 1954-71), their role was to gain foreign support for
the rebellion and to acquire arms, supplies, and funds for the
wilaya commanders. In October the CRUA renamed itself
the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale--FLN),
which assumed responsibility for the political direction of the
revolution. The National Liberation Army (Armée de Libération
Nationale--ALN), the FLN's military arm, was to conduct the War
of Independence within Algeria.
Data as of December 1993
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