The Battle for Algeria. Jennifer Johnson
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and assimilation,” and on 15 June, he discussed “forcing the French hand, to make them understand our will.”52 This rhetoric was not that of the same man who led the Federation of Elected Muslims in the late 1920s. By the end of 1944, the Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté counted 500,000 members, thanks to Messali Hadj’s open support. And yet, tensions between the two ideologues persisted; Abbas wanted to keep working with American president Franklin Roosevelt and French moderates to achieve a peaceful solution to the Algerian question, whereas Messali Hadj increasingly called for insurrection. The AML dissolved by 1 May 1945 and seven days later, after a series of tragic events, radical Algerian nationalists received an unexpected boost in men willing and eager to pursue independence at any cost.
One of the most violent and significant episodes in colonial Algerian history occurred while many people in Algeria and France celebrated the end of the war on 8 May 1945. In the eastern Algerian city of Sétif, 8,000–10,000 Algerian protesters carrying homemade banners and Algerian flags gathered in the streets. A scuffle erupted between them and the police, and by the end of the day twenty-nine Algerians were dead.53 A similar scene played out in Guelma, a nearby town in the Constantinois close to the Tunisian border. However, a major distinguishing factor between the two cities is that settler militias carried out the reprisals in Guelma.54 Threatened by what they considered to be a nationalist uprising and with the support of local subprefect André Achiary, the 4,000 settlers in Guelma organized themselves and killed 1,500 Algerians, mostly men between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, by the end of the month.55 The number of Algerians arrested soared in the weeks that followed. One estimate claims 5,560 individuals were rounded up for questioning.56 Sétif and Guelma were turning points in solidifying nationalist sentiment. They hardened the political line for both French and Algerians and were a chilling indicator of the war to come. For advocates of Algérie française, Achiary’s militias demonstrated the lengths they were willing to go to protect themselves and their interests. For anticolonialists, these events represented a definitive rupture in assimilationist policies. AML members recalled “the fallen innocent victims” who died as a result of “criminal acts” and vowed to push for stronger democratic reforms.57 Be that as it may, I do not agree with historians such as Jean-Pierre Peyroulou who argue that May 1945 started the war for national liberation. To be sure, it was a defining moment in the evolution of Algerian nationalism. However, important domestic, regional, and international developments that contributed to the FLN’s winning strategy for claiming sovereignty of Algeria had yet to take place.
Anticolonial Influences: North Africa and Indochina
In 1946, Ferhat Abbas and Messali Hadj continued to dominate the domestic political scene and a new generation of Algerian nationalists still had a choice between Abbas’s recently formed Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA) and Messali Hadj’s latest political party, the Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libértés Démocratiques (MTLD).58 World War II radicalized Abbas, and even though both men wanted the same outcome for Algeria, independence, they did not agree on the approach and pace at which this was to happen. Abbas and his reformist supporters thought a gradual timeline achieved through diplomatic and democratic steps was the best way to attain independence from France, whereas Messali Hadj thought military action would yield the most successful results. Due to Messali Hadj’s unwillingness to compromise, according to former FLN member Mohammed Harbi, by 1953, he was squeezed out of the MTLD by allies who were drawn to the UDMA’s gradual approach.59
On the eve of 1 November 1954, three major political strands competed for power: the Messalists who advocated for independence through armed struggle; the centralists who attracted students and intellectuals with their message of political pluralism; and, last, the men who founded the FLN on 23 October 1954, who wanted to take up arms against the French colonial regime immediately.60 One might notice that the Messalists and the FLN had extremely similar goals. They differed on one small point. Messali Hadj wanted to unite the various nationalist coalitions before initiating violence because he believed they stood a better chance of defeating the French. The FLN did not think that step was necessary and went ahead without the support of all Algerian nationalists. This rupture between the nationalists and lack of consensus reverberated into the early years of the struggle for national liberation as evidenced by the internal FLN divisions debated at Soummam in August 1956. It was also suggestive of the violent process by which Algerian nationalist “consensus” was established. Despite his being one of the most influential and experienced nationalist leaders dating back to the 1926 North African Star, Messali Hadj was marginalized by the FLN and postcolonial Algerian literature and relegated to the periphery of Algerian nationalist history. His charismatic personality and thirty years in Algerian politics threatened to undermine the FLN’s message of unity under one party supported by the entire Algerian population. As a result, he was largely written out of the nationalist record until the late 1980s.61
In the decade after 1945, the Maghrib underwent considerable political changes that influenced Algerian nationalists and expanded their political options.62 Immediately after World War II, Tunisian, Moroccan, and Algerian nationalists met to discuss pan-Maghribi action against French imperialism. Algeria’s “wings,” both French protectorates, were embroiled in similar nationalist mobilizations.63 In Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, the leader of the Neo-Destour Party and future first president, was convinced that “only a combination of Tunisian opposition and international pressure on France would create a political climate conducive to terminating French rule.”64 In March 1945, he traveled to Egypt to solicit help from the recently formed League of Arab States. The six nations in the League—Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria—were more focused on the Palestine question and thus unable to deliver the kind of support Bourguiba desired. However, the League’s mere existence coupled with the Palestinian crisis inspired a “strong sense of Arab and Islamic identity” and propelled Pan-Arabism.65 In 1947, Bourguiba joined forces with Moroccan and Algerian nationalists and created the Arab Maghrib Bureau in Cairo “with the purpose of coordinating propaganda and agitation against French rule,” a tactic the FLN would soon adopt.66 One year later, representatives from all three North African countries formed the Arab Maghrib Liberation Committee to carry out complementary initiatives. During the war for national liberation, the FLN relied on these regional connections for support ranging from material aid and arms to physical space to set up offices and organizations.
In the five years before the Algerian war, Algerian leaders witnessed armed struggle take off in the region. In 1949, the UN passed a resolution stating Libya would become independent, foreshadowing the important role the organization would play in decolonization. In 1950, Bourguiba attempted another round of political negotiations with the French administration when he presented it with the Neo-Destour’s proposal to redefine the Franco-Tunisian relationship and his vision for Tunisian independence. In December 1952, tensions reached an all-time high in Tunisia when French terrorists killed Tunisian trade leader Ferhat Hached, setting off union strikes across the Maghrib. In the summer of that year, Nasser launched a revolution in Egypt and in August 1953, the French exiled then Moroccan sultan Mohammed V, which sparked violent protests. The Maghrib was rife with instability and the French were losing their grip on power.
The Algerians were not the only ones struggling to cast off a European oppressor. They now had tangible examples and models from which to draw. The Vietminh’s struggle to oust the French in Indochina between 1946 and 1954 arguably served as the FLN’s direct inspiration when it launched its anticolonial movement in Algeria.67 The Vietminh fashioned itself as a revolutionary group committed to creating a new political, economic, and social order. Its leadership, including Communist Party head Ho Chi Minh and senior military strategist Vo Nguyen Giap, developed a multipronged strategy that relied on mobilizing the indigenous population, solidifying regional alliances, and obtaining aid (especially from the People’s Republic of China after 1949), which enabled them to strengthen their military efforts, construct a propaganda machine, and turn Cold War concerns into political gains. The FLN would emulate the Vietminh’s blueprint for success and add a few more elements to its particular recipe for victory over the French. The consequences of a French defeat in Indochina reverberated for years to come and influenced how the