A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 Read Online Free
Author: Alistair Horne
Tags: History, War, Non-Fiction, Politics, bought-and-paid-for
particularly, the West has needed to take a new, hard look at Algeria’s “Savage War of Peace,” and all that has flowed from it.
Four decades of independence provided little of peace, or prosperity, for the Algerians. At many times the peace has been no less savage than the war, with the ghosts of it coming back to haunt both Algeria and France. Under the gaunt and unyielding figure of Boumedienne, for a while Algeria carried an influence above its weight in world affairs—to the embarrassment of the West. The Arab-Israeli War of 1973, with its accompanying surge in oil prices, was partly orchestrated in Algiers. When Boumedienne died in 1978, the seemingly more benign Chadli Benjedid brought hopes of a more liberal Algeria. But these faded as the country wrestled with mountainous economic problems, amid murmurs of corruption estimated to have cost the impoverished country the equivalent of the entire national debt. During its brief period of liberalism in the 1980s many who had not dared speak during the Boumedienne years now appeared from the woodwork. Then, in 1984, I was able to meet many important participants who had been unapproachable in the 1970s, such as the son of Si Salah and some of the (still young) women who had risked their lives to plant bombs in French targets. I was also able to meet Ben Bella and Ait Ahmed, two of the six leaders “hijacked” by French intelligence in 1956, in exile in Switzerland. These were exciting encounters for an historian, and helped provide fresh substance to what I had written in the previous decade.
Fundamentalism and Civil War
By the 1990s, however, the harsh voice of Islamic fundamentalism was heard across the land. Those young, progressive-minded war heroines whom I met in 1984, with their bright hopes of the future, were forced back once more behind the veil, or, like Maître Marie-Claude Radziewsky, the courageous Polish-French woman lawyer who had represented them during the war, to emigrate abroad. The state continued to be run by the men who still controlled the guns, the FLN Party. In the early 1990s, revolt broke out, led by the fundamentalist and aggressively dynamic FIS (Front Islamique du Salut—“Islamic Salvation Front”). Significantly pronounced fils , the FIS also proclaimed itself the fils , or sons of the heroic and high-principled FLN of the war years. Abassi Madani, the President of the FIS, who was one of the original volunteers from I November 1954, explicitly claimed that the FLN revolution had been “confiscated” by Marxist and secular forces following independence). Many of its leaders were the kind of young Algerian who joined the struggle against the French occupiers in the 1950s. Their grievances were similar—unemployment and overpopulation, and no say in the administration of the country. The FIS took advantage of the upsurge in hostility and disillusion with the regime, which had first been expressed in riots in October 1988. After the creation of a new multiparty system in 1989 the FIS successfully posed as the only viable alternative to the regime capable of ejecting the corrupt and despised existing system. In 1992 elections were cancelled, and the FIS disenfranchised. Elements of it took to the hills and the streets in much the same way as the FLN had in 1954.
Starting with the killing of local policemen and regional administrators—just as in 1954, but displaying less coordination—an appalling civil war ensued, with the Algiers government proving as incapable of crushing the revolt as the French Army had been in 1954–62. The FIS was in turn thrust aside by a far more extreme band of revolutionaries, the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), prepared to wage war with total ruthlessness. Its origins and leaders were surrounded in mystery—but its aims appeared to be projected towards a complete and anarchic destruction of the existing order. On a note that was to become pointedly ominous on September 11, 2001, some of its killers
Four decades of independence provided little of peace, or prosperity, for the Algerians. At many times the peace has been no less savage than the war, with the ghosts of it coming back to haunt both Algeria and France. Under the gaunt and unyielding figure of Boumedienne, for a while Algeria carried an influence above its weight in world affairs—to the embarrassment of the West. The Arab-Israeli War of 1973, with its accompanying surge in oil prices, was partly orchestrated in Algiers. When Boumedienne died in 1978, the seemingly more benign Chadli Benjedid brought hopes of a more liberal Algeria. But these faded as the country wrestled with mountainous economic problems, amid murmurs of corruption estimated to have cost the impoverished country the equivalent of the entire national debt. During its brief period of liberalism in the 1980s many who had not dared speak during the Boumedienne years now appeared from the woodwork. Then, in 1984, I was able to meet many important participants who had been unapproachable in the 1970s, such as the son of Si Salah and some of the (still young) women who had risked their lives to plant bombs in French targets. I was also able to meet Ben Bella and Ait Ahmed, two of the six leaders “hijacked” by French intelligence in 1956, in exile in Switzerland. These were exciting encounters for an historian, and helped provide fresh substance to what I had written in the previous decade.
Fundamentalism and Civil War
By the 1990s, however, the harsh voice of Islamic fundamentalism was heard across the land. Those young, progressive-minded war heroines whom I met in 1984, with their bright hopes of the future, were forced back once more behind the veil, or, like Maître Marie-Claude Radziewsky, the courageous Polish-French woman lawyer who had represented them during the war, to emigrate abroad. The state continued to be run by the men who still controlled the guns, the FLN Party. In the early 1990s, revolt broke out, led by the fundamentalist and aggressively dynamic FIS (Front Islamique du Salut—“Islamic Salvation Front”). Significantly pronounced fils , the FIS also proclaimed itself the fils , or sons of the heroic and high-principled FLN of the war years. Abassi Madani, the President of the FIS, who was one of the original volunteers from I November 1954, explicitly claimed that the FLN revolution had been “confiscated” by Marxist and secular forces following independence). Many of its leaders were the kind of young Algerian who joined the struggle against the French occupiers in the 1950s. Their grievances were similar—unemployment and overpopulation, and no say in the administration of the country. The FIS took advantage of the upsurge in hostility and disillusion with the regime, which had first been expressed in riots in October 1988. After the creation of a new multiparty system in 1989 the FIS successfully posed as the only viable alternative to the regime capable of ejecting the corrupt and despised existing system. In 1992 elections were cancelled, and the FIS disenfranchised. Elements of it took to the hills and the streets in much the same way as the FLN had in 1954.
Starting with the killing of local policemen and regional administrators—just as in 1954, but displaying less coordination—an appalling civil war ensued, with the Algiers government proving as incapable of crushing the revolt as the French Army had been in 1954–62. The FIS was in turn thrust aside by a far more extreme band of revolutionaries, the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), prepared to wage war with total ruthlessness. Its origins and leaders were surrounded in mystery—but its aims appeared to be projected towards a complete and anarchic destruction of the existing order. On a note that was to become pointedly ominous on September 11, 2001, some of its killers
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