A celebration to mark the independence of Algeria in the summer of 1962.
“Algeria today presents the world with a closed, distrustful face. Although its revolutionary state survived the tumultuous ruptures of the late twentieth century, it has been plagued by border conflicts, Islamist insurgencies, and, most recently, widespread youth protests. However, the legacy of the Algerian people and their liberation state is as dynamic, internationalist, and courageous as any in the world — the proud equal of a Cuba or a Vietnam in revolutionary heroics. A century ago, Algeria stood at the heart of the French empire, as central to the French imperial project as India was to the British. Algeria was partly settled by white colons, who considered it their homeland and did not view themselves as a caste of imperial administrators. France maintained a legal fiction that Algeria was an integral part of the nation, just like any other domestic province, split from the mainland by the Mediterranean like Paris was split by the Seine. The large majority of the Arab population had second-rate status as subjects, not citizens. Although a tiny minority were allowed to ‘evolve’ into full French citizenship by renouncing Arab culture, in particular their Muslim faith, the majority were of no interest to the French settlers. As such, they were kept as segregated as possible and were not seen or heard from beyond their utility as domestic servants, farm laborers, or cannon fodder in times of war. Even the industrial working class in French Algeria was overwhelmingly composed of white settlers, allowing the vigorous French labor movement to remain distant from the economic destitution that blighted the majority Muslim population. … The French reacted to the challenge as they had always done in the past: with swift, brutal repression. However, in the new international context, the old methods produced diametrically opposite results. Sensing the winds of change blowing across the colonized world, Algerians flocked to the banner of the FLN, first in their thousands, and then in their millions. The French responded with an intensified anti-insurgency campaign in which the use of torture, concentration camps, and the murder of civilians became nothing short of official policy. The FLN were quick to recognize the importance of the new international dynamic and opened a war on two fronts. On the ground, they adopted a Leninist-Maoist party organization suitable for waging a protracted guerrilla war. They made use of assassination and terror, singling out French administrators and Muslim collaborators in particular, deliberately deepening the polarity of the conflict and forcing the population into a binary choice between sides. They also made intense use of political agitation, especially among the rural populations they relied upon for shelter and support. The FLN’s political commissars emphasized the social revolutionary aspect of the war and established the movement as a shadow state under the noses of the French. Much like the Viet Cong, from whom they drew inspiration, the FLN set about providing health care, welfare, and education services to a rural population of subsistence farming peasants. …”
Jacobin
Algerian War of Independence: Freedom from the French
The return of Algeria’s revolution
1960s: Days of Rage
1960s: Days of Rage 