Introduction

To read the account of Louisette Ighilahriz' three-month imprisonment at the hands of French officers requires a strong stomach. During the so-called Battle of Algiers in 1957 this Algerian woman, then a fighter in the war for Algerian independence, was wounded in a French ambush and captured. Tortured for information about her associates and their plans, she was always tied down naked while they tortured her, covered in her own blood and excretions. Her story is shocking but its kind was not unknown in France. It made the headlines (see, for example, Le Monde, June 20, 2000: 1) not because this was previously unheard of behavior, but because Louisette Ighilahriz was seeking to thank the person who saved her life, a military doctor by the name of Richaud who, appalled by her condition, put her into the hospital.

In the fall of 2001 a historic ruling by a French court awarded Mohammed Garne a small pension because he had become the first person in France to be recognized as a war victim due to criminal acts occurring before his birth. In 1959 his mother Kheira, then 16, was sequestered by French soldiers and repeatedly raped. Garne was awarded damages for his physical problems because of the injury he sustained as a fetus when his mother was beaten and tortured in an attempt to get her to miscarry. The verdict capped his thirteen-year effort to get justice. (Le Monde, November 24, 2001: Société.)

This decision was made public some days before the beginning of the trial of a former French army general, Paul Aussaresses, who had published his memoirs of the Algerian war, Services spéciaux: Algérie 1955-57, in 2001. He revealed that he had ordered Algerian terrorist suspects to be tortured or summarily executed. Beatings, electrodes attached to earlobes and genitals or shoved down the throat, and forced ingestion of water were some of the methods used to gather intelligence. Two elements in Aussaresses' commentary were particularly shocking. The first was his tone of absolute conviction and his utter lack of regret about what he had done. In fact, his rationale was very clear: it was necessary to perform extraordinary acts in extraordinary times when the enemy was not clearly defined in terms of traditional military operations. The second shocking allegation was that the French government knew about torture in Algeria, tolerated it and even recommended it. Aussaresses stated that François Mitterrand, then Minister of Justice and later President of France (1981-95), had sent an emissary to Algeria to keep him informed and to provide cover for the torturers (155).

Although many publications had already appeared alleging torture in Algeria and often detailing it with gruesome eyewitness accounts, the revelations of the new millennium seemed to seize the French conscience with a poignancy that had not been demonstrated before. In order to understand the context in which French memory opened one of its suppressed chapters, we need to review the history of French involvement in Algeria.

Background

The French Adventure in Algeria

History gives many lessons from which one learns that rash behavior leads to unfortunate consequences. Such is the incident in which the dey of Algiers struck the French consul with a fly-whisk, thus precipitating the 1830 French expedition against Algeria. In actuality, he whisked him because the French government refused to honor an unpaid debt dating from the French Directory of 1795-99. Apologies were demanded and refused. A French ship arriving for talks was bombarded; an ineffective French blockade of Algerian ports was answered by the seizing of French interests. Because Charles X, the last of the Bourbon monarchs, wanted to give prestige to his restored dynasty, political motivation was at the heart of the French expedition against Algeria, as it was for his successor, the constitutional monarch Louis-Philippe.

In June 1830 an expeditionary corps of 37,000 French soldiers arrived off the coast. It faced fifty thousand Arabs whose fighting qualities were uneven and who lacked the French advantage in artillery. Algiers fell on July 5, 1830, but conquest was not a given because the Muslims did not yield quietly. By 1837 Abd el-Kader, an Islamic purist of considerable military and diplomatic skills, was recognized by France as ruler of two-thirds of Algeria. Because he was convinced that over time the French would dominate, he broke the peace in 1840. The French were faced with the choice between a complete evacuation of Algeria or total conquest. They chose the latter course of action.

General Bugeaud, commander of the French forces, used the tactic of the razzia, the systematic destruction of cattle, crops, grain stores and warehouses to force local Muslims into submission. Captives were treated harshly. The countryside he left behind was devastated. After seven years of fighting, Abd el-Kader surrendered on December 3, 1847.

The French government expropriated land and began to turn it over to colonizers recruited for resettlement. The French Second Republic (1848-52) declared Algeria an integral part of France and carved part of it into French departments. The French philosophy of assimilation—the obligation to uplift indigenous populations by sharing the benefits of French civilization and technology—began at this point. Under the Second Empire (1852-70) Napoleon III declared Algeria to be an "Arab kingdom" that France was required to protect and to "civilize." Arabs would be given land to cultivate while Europeans would concern themselves mainly with commerce and industry. By the end of the Second Empire in 1870, this policy had again changed. The Third Republic (1875-1940), having lost Alsace and Lorraine to the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, concentrated on the development of French overseas conquests. From 1871 and until World War I, France encouraged immigration to Algeria. Between 1872-1914 the European population grew from roughly 250,000 to 750,000.

Huge areas of land were given to the colonists for free or were sold very cheaply. Dispossessed of their lands, local Arab populations were increasingly impoverished. At the outbreak of the Algerian war in 1954 the settlers (colons) were in control of the best Algerian land. The philosophy of assimilation—known as "integration" in the post 1954 years—theoretically aligned the rights and duties of local populations with those of Europeans, but the reality of assimilationist policies meant that French laws replaced local institutions, while Arabs did not have the same guarantees as the French in the areas of education, taxation and salary. Although a small Arab elite was allowed to form by virtue of some space allotted to them in the French educational system, the net result of assimilation was to unhinge local society.

By the 1930s the colonial order was showing strain. Most Algerian peasants (fellahs) were paupers. Nonetheless, the 100th anniversary of the conquest in 1930 was led by a press campaign in France that portrayed colonization in flattering terms. Efforts of the socialist Front Populaire (1936-38) to increase Algerian representation in Parlement, to give elector rights to some Algerians, and to allow some to become French citizens, were met by furious protests among Europeans in Algeria. Among the Moslem population disillusionment and embitterment were growing, not only among more radical nationalist groups, but among many moderates as well. Ferhat Abbas, a moderate politician, originated a manifesto in which he rejected assimilation and in which he proposed a nation, an idea that had already been in the air. Now Algerian leaders turned down French proposals for increased assimilation and representation.

The War for Algerian Independence

Trouble broke out in Algeria in 1945 after World War II. A demonstration at Sétif on May 8, 1945 degenerated into riots in which ultimately about one hundred French were killed. Savage repression by French armed forces that included indiscriminate bombardments followed. While official estimates of 1500 dead were made public, the real figure more likely numbered between 6,000-8,000 (Hutchinson 5). In the aftermath, local hostility toward the French and increasing nationalism were evident.

Algeria was a colony whose administration and economy clearly functioned to the benefit of its French population, which now numbered almost one million. Eighty percent were born in Algeria (the pieds noirs) and by this time they considered themselves to be the legitimate owners of the country. They were largely an urban population engaged in business and administration, and while there were many small farmers among their number, most French had achieved a respectable standard of living, often higher than that of their counterparts in metropolitan France. These descendents of colonists were very conservative and for the most part set against all reform. About two million of the nine million Algerians had reached some European standards, but three-quarters of the population was still not assured of a decent living. The Moslem population suffered through continuous stagnation. Only thirteen percent of Arab children had access to public schooling. (Droz and Lever 43). No political reforms were in sight nor were any major plans to improve the material conditions of life undertaken on behalf of the Algerians. The metropolitan French were mainly indifferent to affairs in Algeria.

The post-World War II generation of Algerians had grown tired of the status quo politics, racism, and immovability of the French colonial government. Many young Algerians, having served with the Free French Forces, were ready to turn their military experience against the French. Significant too was their knowledge of the French defeat at the hands of the Germans and against the Viet Minh in Indochina, which removed the aura of invincibility from the French army. It was a generation that would not shy away from violence to gain its ends. New leaders like Ahmed Ben Bella (later the first president of an independent Algeria) emerged. They formed several revolutionary committees that finally surfaced as the Front de Libération Nationale, the F.L.N. In July 1954, the Algerian revolutionaries made the decision to train and arm for a protracted struggle for their independence. Early on the morning of November 1, 1954, the insurrection broke out. Some limited attacks on French installations took place, but what was to follow was to be a long and terrible conflict.

In the face of the uprising, the position of the French government was that these were acts of sedition rather than the beginning of a war of national liberation. Since Algeria was a part of France, it could not be given up like other colonies in North Africa (Tunisia and Morocco were granted independence in 1956) or in sub-Saharan western Africa. On November 7, 1954, François Mitterrrand, then Minister of Justice (later President of France, 1981-95) said, " L' Algérie c'est la France et la France ne reconnaîtra pas chez elle d'autre autorité que la sienne." (qtd. in Droz and Lever 62) Several days later, on November 12, Pierre Mendès-France, the President of the Counsel of Ministers, echoed this when he said that there would be no compromise with sedition, and that, "Les départments d' Algérie constituent une partie de la République française. Ils sont français depuis longtemps et d'une manière irrévocable…"(55). A state of emergency was declared in April 1955, providing the legal status for extraordinary action. The National Assembly declared special powers in Algeria, which coincided with a call up of reservists and an extension of military service.

Riots on August 20 and 21, 1955, were serious. Thousands of French as well as Algerians suspected of being sympathetic to the French were murdered, including women and children. Increasingly fearful, the French population demanded extreme measures. It became increasingly obvious that the official line of a "police action" could not be taken seriously. By the end of 1955, the number of terrorist acts now numbered one thousand per month (78). The army reacted to ambushes and raids by the F.L.N. in the countryside, but frequently lacking good intelligence, French soldiers sometimes shot up and terrorized innocent villages. Often, F.L.N. fighters mutilated their victims, French soldiers and settlers as well as unsympathetic Arabs, providing the French with a rationale for reprisals. The French sometimes subjected Moslem suspects to electric torture (la gégène) by hooking them up to the magnetos of field telephones. Summary execution (la corvée de bois) often followed.

The F.L.N. wanted to demonstrate its hold on urban populations as well as upon the countryside. On December 30, 1956, bombs exploded in the Milk Bar and the Caféteria, two cafés popular with European young people, leaving four dead and fifty-two wounded, including several children. On January 7, 1957, General Massu, the commanding general of the 10th Parachute Division, was given complete police powers in Algiers because the regular police forces could not prevent attacks or find their perpetrators. Troop strength was increased to 400,000 by the end of 1957.

The French won the so-called battle of Algiers of 1957 largely through the torture of suspects (131). By the same measure, the revelation of torture had both domestic and international repercussions, and opened new questions in France concerning the legitimacy of the war. Pressure from the international community for a negotiated settlement increased, while continued military action, searches of villages (ratonnades), detentions, brutal treatment, summary executions, removal of populations to resettlement camps, and pressure by the F.L.N. (which executed those Algerians deemed disloyal to its cause), kept the local population on the side of the F.L.N.

Charles de Gaulle and the End of the Algerian War

By the spring of 1958 the war in Algeria had been going on long enough to be seen as inconclusive in metropolitan France. The French government of the Fourth Republic (1946-58) was incapable of resisting pressure from the French citizens of Algeria and was rapidly undergoing crisis. Waiting in the wings was Charles de Gaulle, the World War II hero of France, who had left the presidency twelve years earlier in 1946, disgusted by party politics. He had retired to his home at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises to write his memoirs and to await the call to return to public service. When the colons and the army combined efforts to bring down the colonial government in Algeria and called for the return of De Gaulle to power, he let it be known in May 1958 that he was "ready to assume the powers of the republic" (Horne, 290). His historical stature was enhanced for the colonizers because he had kept the French Empire together during the war, and for the colonized he was remembered for his 1944 Brazzaville declaration in which he referred to self-administration and self-governance for the colonies.

De Gaulle set a high price for his return, nothing less than the elimination of the Fourth Republic and the formulation of the Fifth Republic under a new constitution and government. Meanwhile, General Salan, commander-in- chief in Algeria, was making plans for paratroopers from Algeria to drop on Paris and to create a coup d'état in favor of de Gaulle. The regime could not resist the pressure for some resolution of the crisis in Algeria and the threats of an invasion by its own army. President René Coty invited Charles de Gaulle to form a government. On June 1, 1958, the National Assembly accepted him. De Gaulle's takeover put him in the position of the man of destiny who would again shoulder the nation's burden in its hour of need. He was 67 years of age.

De Gaulle made his first speech in Algeria on June 4, 1958. His ambiguous first sentence to the crowd of pieds noirs and Muslims was, " Je vous ai compris." He kept his cards close to his chest, but while he would have liked to retain Algeria for France in some kind of federated relationship, war-weariness, world opinion, De Gaulle's own lack of sympathy for the colonizers of Algeria, an unsuccessful putsch organized by dissident army generals and bombings in Algeria and France by the OAS (the right-wing Organisation de l'armée secrète headed by general Salan), led to the beginning of the end. De Gaulle held a referendum in July, 1962, in which Algerians could vote for a more free and enlightened relationship with France or complete independence. Algerians voted massively and overwhelmingly for independence. After seven and a half years of war the French government and the F.L.N. signed the Evian accords in March 1962, agreeing to a cease-fire and to Algeria's self-determination.

The Aussaresses Outcome

In 2001,General Aussaresses and his publishers were indicted in France over the publication of his book, Services spéciaux. The charge was an unusual one, "complicity in apologetics for war crimes." Because of several amnesties granted in the decade after the war, Aussaresses and others could not be charged with war crimes directly. The defense presented the old general as a World War II resistance hero who was involved in Algeria in a terrible war against an enemy who used terrorism to attack not only French soldiers but also civilians on both sides. For the civil litigants the conduct of the Algerian war was on trial. What outraged many was not Aussaresses' wanting to speak about torture, but his legitimizing of it. Lawyers pointed out that this legitimization was manifested in the detached tone of the book. The defense disparagingly countered that it would be necessary to put handcuffs on the tone. The prosecutor asked for a fine of 100,000 francs against the publishers of the book for having exploited the cold-blooded recounting of torture in the interest of their sales receipts.

The trial ended on November 28, 2001. Paul Aussaresses was found guilty of complicity in defending war crimes. He was fined 7,500 euros, taken off the general's list and suspended from the Legion of Honor. He was spared the maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros. The court was more interested in the clinical, factual presentation of what Aussaresses did than in his absence of regret. The judges condemned presenting acts of torture as inevitable and legitimate because the net effect is to remove the inherent moral reprobation of these acts in the eyes of the reader. His editors were fined 15,000 euros because the court found that the publishers had sought out the retired general to encourage him to publish, not so much for history's sake, as their lawyers maintained, but for the sake of publicity and sales. (Libération, January 26, 2002: 14). An appeal of the fines was denied in April 2003. In June 2003 the French Court of Appeals (la Cour de cassation) reaffirmed earlier court decisions not to allow Paul Aussaresses to be indicted for crimes against humanity, citing the 1968 amnesty, which precluded any further action.

Source: Michael Kline and Nancy Mellerski, Issues in the French-Speaking World. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004, 45-53.