l'Algerie montait a la tete
Lately, I have been reading A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, by Alistair Horne. My paperback's cover says that it's "On the reading lists of President Bush and the US military."
With the focus on counter-insurgency operations lately, military men and analysts are dusting off books on Algeria to see what lessons might be learned from the French experience.
The French initially struck against the Algerian rebels with tanks and artillery--heavy firepower, 1954's version of shock and awe. The indiscriminate attacks brought indiscriminate reprisals: French forces would fire indiscriminately. F.L.N. rebels would launch bombing campaigns or mutilate corpses. French forces would resort to torture and more indiscriminate collective punishment--which only brought more fighters to the F.L.N. banner.
Probably the most horrifying thing I've read so far is the steady breakdown in discipline among French soldiers fighting in Algeria. I will quite one passage from the book here at length
Lately, I have been reading A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, by Alistair Horne. My paperback's cover says that it's "On the reading lists of President Bush and the US military."
With the focus on counter-insurgency operations lately, military men and analysts are dusting off books on Algeria to see what lessons might be learned from the French experience.
The French initially struck against the Algerian rebels with tanks and artillery--heavy firepower, 1954's version of shock and awe. The indiscriminate attacks brought indiscriminate reprisals: French forces would fire indiscriminately. F.L.N. rebels would launch bombing campaigns or mutilate corpses. French forces would resort to torture and more indiscriminate collective punishment--which only brought more fighters to the F.L.N. banner.
Probably the most horrifying thing I've read so far is the steady breakdown in discipline among French soldiers fighting in Algeria. I will quite one passage from the book here at length. Horne begins by comparing the situation in Algeria to the situation in Belfast during the Troubles:
. . . In an article entitled "Stretching a Soldier's Patience," The Times of 7 June 1973 described how Belfasters cheered when four British soldiers were blown up and horribly mutilated by a mine, and how other British soldiers were "shocked and embittered by what they thought was a callous disregard for life." Multiply this several hundred times for the additional horrors of fighting in Algeria. . . for the greater numbers involved, and for the altogether less phlegmatic character fo the French soldier, and the occasional angry backlash or infraction of discipline becomes inevitable.
By 1956 accounts of such cases in Algeria were legion. Leulliette himself recounts relieving in the Nementchas the 1st Parachute Regiment of the Foreign Legion (1st R.E.P.), just after one of their sergeant-majors had been knifed in the street. A quarter of an hour later, the entire company descended on the Arab quarter: "Sixty-four people, mostly men, were slaughtered by automatic rifle or bayonet in less than an hour. Fire did the rest." Earlier, near Philippeville, Leuliette's own unit had been involved in a massacre of civilians. The rebels had proved elusive that day. "Everything seemed to slip through our fingers. We no longer knew what we were doing." Then, suddenly, a group of women and children instead of fellaghas had run into the paras' fire:
. . . could the bloke thirty yards ahead of me, firing his automatic rifle at a child of ten lying astride the path, his leg broken and chest heaving, have sworn that he couldn't see? Women, old women, stiff and awkward with fear, were massacred in full view of everyone, in broad daylight, almost as if it were a game, to make our bullets "talk." Some of us would have done anything. Back at home, civilians again, they'd think: was it possible? Yes, it was with all sorts of corpses, old men's and children's mingled with those of the rebels. The sight of an old woman, with her hair down, flattened in front of you by a burst form an automatir rifle was something you never forget. "If you've no imagination," said Celine, "dying's nothing; if you have, it's too much."
One wonders if this is what's happening in Iraq now, and whether the ongoing Haditha investigation will uncover a similar breakdown.