The Algerian war of independence, between 1954 and 1962 was brutish and vicious. The French government hung hopelessly to the idea that Algeria had become an integral part of metropolitan France. When in the face of implacable opposition from the majority of Arab Algerians, they finally wavered, the French colonists launched their own campaign of violence in the form of terrorist movement, the OAS.
Even before the French began to lose their grip on the country, the use of torture against captured liberation fighters had become common. This much has become clear in recent revelations from senior French officers, now in the twilight of their years. The latest comes from Gen. Paul Aussaresses, a former special forces commander, who reveals in a new book how prisoners were tortured as a matter of course, and once they had cracked, were executed. Aussaresses, a holder of France’s highest military decoration, the Legion of Honor, admits that he personally executed 20 such captives.
But what is chilling about the Aussaresses’ book is that the old man still feels no regret nor shame for the terrible things he did. Far from it indeed. Instead he wraps himself in the French flag, asserting that he is proud of what he did for the sake of his country. It is a schizophrenia which has always characterized French memories of their long and ultimately brutal occupation of Algeria. While there has been a muted acceptance of the horrors that were perpetrated in the name of France, there has been a refusal to express any regret. The plan to build a memorial bearing the names of all 20,000 French dead were notable for the fact that at no point did anyone think of the Algerians who were slain — 200,000 of them.
There has never been a case where former French soldiers met up with their old Algerian opponents to go over past actions, in the way that has even happened now with American and Vietnamese veterans. This was a war without honor but much shame. Whatever the feeling of Algerian commanders, French veterans had no desire to recall both their country’s appalling behavior and its eventual humiliating defeat.
There is a strong case for believing that it was the brutalizing effects of the war of liberation that left newly independent Algeria unstable and exhausted. Though Algeria has had some outstanding technocrats and political thinkers, the military, never known anywhere in the world for their economic literacy nor political sophistication, has dominated the country’s life. By 1988, the economy was in collapse and a year later, political pluralism was reintroduced. But the energy of civilians was never given fair rein by the military fixers. Algerian society began to break up and dissent became ever more violent, until it reached levels last seen under colonial occupation.
Some, principally French commentators, have tried to blame Algeria’s descent into violence on the political break with France. The harsher truth is that it was the urbane, sophisticated French who threw aside all decent standards in their attempt to crush the Algerian liberation movement. They sowed the seeds of violence. But tragically it was the Algerians who, having driven out their colonial masters, were to reap the terrible whirlwind.
