The Battle for Algeria. Jennifer Johnson
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the world utilized revolutionary warfare as their dominant strategy, and Algeria was no exception.58 From its first set of coordinated attacks, the FLN employed guerrilla tactics that were meant to destabilize French rule throughout the country. In response, the French military adopted counterrevolutionary measures that were applied in conjunction with a series of programs intended to destroy Algerian political networks, collect intelligence, and win over the local population.59
The Sections Administratives Spécialisées were the cornerstone integration program, and by 1961 more than seven hundred existed in Algeria.60 Despite French claims throughout colonial rule that Algerians could become French citizens, few actually obtained citizenship because in order to do so Algerians were required to abandon their Muslim personal status. During the 1950s and 1960s, in an effort to quell the war, French politicians adopted a more flexible approach to officially incorporating Algerians into France.61 Alongside meager political openings, the government pursued integration policies that officials hoped would “overcome [the Muslim community’s] overwhelming poverty and that independence would be prevented by integrating Muslims fully into modern French society.”62 But there was a certain irony to the urgency of the SAS. Had the French previously educated Algerians, granted them political rights, or consistently provided social services, the Pierre Mendès-France and Edgar Faure governments may not have needed Soustelle to devise an integration campaign.63
Nearly six months after his initial trip through the Algerian countryside, a 26 September 1955 decree permitted Soustelle to establish the Special Administrative Sections. In a December 1955 pamphlet he explained that in light of the current situation, he decided to create the SAS “to ensure the retaking of the population in regions where terrorists are active or those at risk of being contaminated.” The heart of the mission was “to reestablish contact with the Algerians, renew their confidence in the French, and report information back to civil authorities.”64 To help SAS personnel accomplish these goals, Soustelle authorized them to “exercise certain administrative functions that will permit them to service the population” and help it “recover a taste for and respect of the French presence.”65 He divided up the country into zones, and the SAS would operate within those areas that Soustelle believed harbored rebels. Soustelle specified that an Algerian Affaires officer would head each SAS unit and a member of the Algerian Affaires Attaché Corps, medical personnel, a protection force, a vehicle and radio, and construction supplies, would be at his disposal.66 This team’s objective, writes Jacques Frémeaux, was to “prevent losing Algeria” and “to construct an Algeria linked with France,” not service the people simply for their own good.67
The December 1955 pamphlet obscures the degree to which SAS social programs were firmly subordinated to the military and its larger purpose of fighting the FLN. Its medical sector received instructions from the military and reported its progress and monthly activities back to military superiors. The various programs’ materials and equipment were supplied by the military, and personnel were frequently hired through military channels. Any structural changes or reassignments came from military officials. In actuality, the SAS were simply an extension of the French military and carried out what one scholar calls “police missions.”68
However, this new face of the military did not principally guard checkpoints or carry rifles. The SAS personnel arrived with more gentle weapons, medicine and health-care products, and, similar to military physicians who helped settle Algeria during the mid-nineteenth century, they became potent symbols of colonial development to which the French could point as showcasing their commitment to Algeria. How could the government be accused of neglecting the Algerians’ welfare if it was offering free medical care and building new schools? Jacques Soustelle knew the colonial administration needed to concentrate on public relations and focus on strengthening relations with the Algerian population. For French general Raoul Salan, the SAS officers played a central role in this endeavor and were “the driving force behind pacification.”69
From the inception of the SAS there was a distinction between the military objectives and the way the SAS portrayed its activities to the Algerian people. The military’s dual mission was to subdue the local population by supplying social services and to collect intelligence for future military endeavors, just as doctors had done during the Algerian conquest beginning in the 1830s. Part of the comprehensive strategy in waging war against the FLN was to engage the population, take hold of it, rally it, and progressively utilize it.70 The SAS were dispatched to areas of strategic value and they were supposed to operate with military precision when establishing contact with villages and attempt to neutralize their suspicion and hostility toward the French. SAS visits would demonstrate to the local population that not only could the colonial state provide for them but that it was also committed to improving their quality of life in ways that the FLN could not. At the same time, monthly medical reports about the number of men, women, and children would be sent back to military officials who would then convert the raw data into reliable intelligence about particular regions.71 With this kind of information, soon the SAS could attempt “to balance in a short time, and with considerable effort, the administrative and social irresponsibility with which Paris had ruled Algeria for more than a century.”72 This was how the SAS were ideally supposed to function. As we will see, the reality of how the SAS operated was quite different.73
Recruiting Personnel
The administration turned its attention to finding qualified staff to carry out pacification, many of whom were likely unaware of the depth and breadth of the medical field’s underdevelopment. This immediately posed a problem. Those that were hired came from a variety of backgrounds, including but not limited to Indochina veterans, Arabic linguists and specialists of the region, and regiment officers.74 The diverse experience of participants made ideological coherence nearly impossible, and they were constantly caught between contradictory military and civilian priorities. Their “intermediary positions” were a source of tension from the outset and hindered what they would achieve.75
When the SAS started, there were fewer than four hundred military physicians working in Algeria and the state of medical facilities remained inadequate to offer comprehensive care to the roughly ten million Muslim and European people living in Algeria at the time.76 Public and private hospitals received twelve million francs between 1949 and 1954, and a May 1955 Monthly Bulletin of General Statistics applauded the expansion of hospital beds in that time from 21,218 to 28,018, but this number would hardly temper the devastation ahead and the deplorable conditions SAS teams encountered.77 Given the nature of SAS units, officials preferred to place military doctors in designated medical positions; however, too few existed and the leadership began coordinating their efforts with civil physicians in Algeria.
The SAS recruited active officers in the French army and reserve officers at home. They were expected to serve anywhere from six months to three years and were enticed with salaries ranging from 5,000 to 18,000 francs, but even with these incentives, the number of volunteers remained feeble.78 Armand Frémont attributes the difficulty of recruiting voluntary military and Foreign Legion enlistees to feelings of doubt and ambivalence about Algeria, some even protesting that “this war [is] not ours.”79 SAS medical officers, frequently drawn from the same pool of volunteers, had to temper these sentiments and find ways to continue their medical outreach to the Algerian people.
The SAS program, looking to develop its staff beyond military recruits, may have found a way of supplementing medical personnel with Algerian staff, but a series of applications from 1955 show that colonial officials privileged political allegiance over technical skill. Late that fall, several hundred men and women, the majority of whom were Algerian, submitted dossiers for consideration to work at hospital facilities such as the Psychiatric Hospital of Blida, the Algerian Cancer Center, the Oran Civil Hospital, and the Sétif Civil Hospital. Upon review, which consisted of checking the person’s education, city and address of origin, police record, and personal conduct, a significant portion of the male applicants were rejected because of their political affiliation. The police wanted to know whether the applicant supported the French government and if he or she had any questionable political ties.80
Abderrahmane