The Algerian war of independence




                                MVZ489 Causes of Political Violence











Lucie Sitarová

397539

June 2016








Introduction

The war between France and the Algerian people, in the middle of the 20th century, was one of the
deadliest and most cruel conflicts of its kind in that century. It is certainly a war of
decolonization and even though some of the authors and the public debate frames it as a war between
France and Algeria as countries, it is not a true image of the conflict. The country we now know as
Algeria was colonized by the French from 1830 and had been an integral part of France (and some say
its crown jewel) since the end of the 19th century. This, the way opposition to the French rule
formed, the demands made by the insurgents and the way of leading the war are all reasons why I
believe that we can study this conflict from the point of view of the internal violence. The main
object to study here is obviously the reasons for the population to oppose the French in the first
place.

First, I’ll briefly establish a theoretical frame of the essay and the tested theory, then I’ll
explain the history of the French rule over Algeria. I’ll use this knowledge to assess whether the
chosen theory is suitable to explain the rise of Algerian nationalism. In the end I’ll present the
results of the analysis.

Theoretical frame

        Conflict

We can define conflict behavior as any behavior that helps the party to achieve its goals that are
incompatible with that of the opponent or that express hostility towards him. In our studies, we
mostly focus on the coercive ways of influencing the other actor, from threat of coercion to
violent coercion. The possibility for conflict arises when two parties have incompatible goals. The
conflict can have different levels of complexity, which depends on tangible issues (such as
recognition of the state, security, money) is more significant than intangible issues (values,
ideologies etc.). Heidelberg Institute of International conflict research defines conflict in the
international relations as "clashing interests on national values of some duration and magnitude
between at least two parties that are determined to pursuetheir interests and win their case".
Peter Wallensteen says that to understand and provide conflict analysis we have to take into
account and study 3 major factors, which are actors, process and incompatibilities.

Ethnic Security Dilemma

We shall study chosen conflict via a prism of a certain theory of international (or intranational)
relations. I choose the Ethnic Security Dilemma theory, which is an interesting concept that brings
international relations concept to domestic politics. The first one to apply this concept
internally was Barry Posen. The ethnic security dilemma stems from an idea that the government of
any state is the greatest potential threat to any (namely minority) groups inside. That’s because
it usually takes a state’s resources to commit genocide and the fear of group extinction is an
important element of ethnic identity and group conflict. „The ethnic security dilemma, then,
essentially occurs when the efforts of one group to control the government cause all to be worse
off. “[1] There is a lot of similar but different definitions of the security dilemma and the
ethnic security dilemma as such. For this essay I chose the definition by Shipping Tang, which is
building on the original exposition by Butterfield, Herz and Jervis, that’s why Tang calls it „the
BHJ formulation“. It has eight major aspects: „(1) The ultimate source of the security dilemma is
the anarchic nature of international politics. (2) Under anarchy, states cannot be certain about
each other’s present and future intentions, partly because intentions can change. As a result,
states tend to fear each other (…). (3) The security dilemma is unintentional in origin: only
between two states that merely want security without intending to threaten the other – that is,
both are benign or defensive realist states – can a genuine security dilemma exist. (4) Due to the
uncertainty about each other’s intentions and fear, states resort to the accumulation of power or
capabilities as a means of defense, and these capabilities inevitably contain some offensive
capabilities; (5) the dynamics of the security dilemma is self-reinforcing and often leads to
(unintended and bad) spiral-like situations, such as the worsening of relationships, arms race, and
war; (6) the dynamics of the security dilemma tends to make some measures for increasing security
such as accumulating unnecessary offensive capabilities self-defeating: more power but less
security;(7) the vicious cycle derived from the security dilemma can lead to tragic results, such
as unnecessary or avoidable wars and, (8) the severity of the security dilemma can be regulated by
both physical factors (for example, geography, asymmetric distribution of power) and social
psychological factors (for example, ethnocentrism, nationalism, worst-case mentality).“[2]

There are three essential aspects – anarchy, lack of malign intention of both sides and some
accumulation of power. “Other aspects are either consequences or regulators of the security
dilemma, and they are neither sufficient nor necessary for the rise and continuation of the
security dilemma.”[3]

Even though this definition talks about states as units, I believe we can (and as was established
by Posen any many researchers after him) apply the general security dilemma theory to intrastate
conflicts, here the Franco Algerian conflict.

One crucial point that we have to test as well is whether the groups in the conflict were formed
and (self)defined along ethnic lines (for example common customs, homeland, religion, ancestors,
language). Otherwise it obviously cannot be ethnic conflict.


History of the conflict

To understand the French-Algerian war, we need understand the history of the mutual relationship of
these countries and nations. Even though some say that „no overview could adequately explain the
complexity of this conflict  that had three faces: war of decolonization between France and
Algeria, war in Algeria itself (between the FLN and Messalists) and war in France itself,"[4] I’ll
try to present the crucial facts that lead to the insurrection and violence in the middle of 20th
century.

The actual conquest of Algeria began in 1830, few years after what was cited as its cause – the
unfortunate humiliation of the French consul in Algeria[5]- and lasted until 1947. „De Bourmont’s
contingent was able to conquer Algiers in three weeks with small losses. To take control over
Algeria took many years and was accompanied by a number of bloody battles.“[6] The French
occupation has had a profound implications on the society. „The main reason that made these drastic
changes possible was threefold. First, it was the new system of administration, put in place by the
French, second, it was a dismantlement and total change of the system of agricultural property, and
in both of these reasons an important factor was the arrival of the European settlers – colons.“
[7] After World War I there was about 791 thousand colons in Algeria. That represented about a
seventh of the population. The system of ownership has been dismantled, social security broken down
and the system of schools nearly annihilated. Apart from the changes in the economic structure,
there were big changes in the societal and cultural sphere as well. „Even though there were some
time-limited and minority ideas saying that the French should treat Muslims as equal co-citizens,
as said for example the emperor Napoleon III., the reality was very much different. (…) At the end
of 19th century the situation in Algeria was very similar to that in the south of United
States.“[8] The discrimination could also be seen in the realm of the language. „The only official
language during the whole time of the colonization of Algeria was French and a law from 1938 even
stated Arabic as a foreign language.“[9]

As colonial power, France had many colonies and protectorates, but Algeria was a special one, it
was an integral part of France, another department on another continent. "Having declared Algeria
in the 1880s officially an integral part of France on par with Normandy or Burgundy, they created
the lasting legacy of an infrastructure of roads and railways, while building schools and hospitals
and setting up a modern public administration.“[10] Algerians were very far from being recognized
as French citizens.

It was however few educated Muslim Algerians who started to opposition movement. The first movement
opposing the French rule (not in itself, but the discriminatory parts of it) was the „Young
Algerians“. „The Young Algerians wanted, for their duty to serve and die in French uniform,
revision of the discriminating law about autochthones and bigger political rights for the regional
elites.“[11] These were the ideas of the young (and mostly educated men), but the war and the
problems that came with it  made the hostility to France in the rest of the population even
stronger.

„The legitimacy of the demands was acknowledged by politicians in Paris, who in the last months of
the war began to work on the draft reforms that would broaden the range of political and civil
rights for a group of Algerian Muslims. These proposals encountered fierce resistance most of the
colons.“[12] This stubbornness of the French colons will destroy every effort to make the situation
of the Algerian population more bearable until the beginning of the war and even beyond.

If before the World War I the only viable opposition were the Young Algerians and the participation
of the population was limited, the momentum of the different opposition groups started to grow
between the wars and „after World War II there were masses of Algerian people organizing themselves
in different organizations and political parties, including those in the French diaspora“[13].

There was a big difference between the political views. The Young Algerians, until the WWII,
refused the viability of the Algerian nation as itself, and believed that Algeria can thrive only
under France. Another organization, the Association of the ulamas of Algeria tried to promote the
education of salafia and achieve political, but most of all religious independence of the country.
There was also a political organization called the Nordalgerian star (Etoile nord-africaine), which
was the first party to want the Algerian independence from the beginning. Its symbol later became
the official flag of Algeria.

The radicalization of the opposition had increased at the end of the peaceful period. „The global
conflict, that left the imperial standing of France deeply shaken, brought about a convergence of
opinions of the different parts of the Algerian opposition.“[14] The situation didn’t improve with
the regime of Vichy at all, with the governor Weygand unable draft and pass laws to appease the
population. More fuel in the fire was the Manifesto of the Algerian people, published by Ferhart
Abbas, that cited the quasi-new Atlantic Charter that guarantees the right of all people to choose
the government. „The awakening of the Algerian nationalism was also facilitated by the 14 point
program of US president Wilson, a and most of all its fifth statement regarding the „colonial
question“, in which he states that the colonial problems should be resolved impartially and with
regard to the minds of the autochthones.“[15]

The first spark was lit on May 8th 1945, when most of the world celebrated the end of the war.
During a celebration in majoritairly Muslim city of Sétif. There’s no certainty as to what has
happened, but we know that the events left some of the Muslim protesters dead and provoked a
revenge of Algerians, and a brutal response from France

„For many of the Algerian Muslims the 8th May meant a definitive rupture with the idea of futile
cohabitation with Europeans in the borders of an French Algeria.“[16]

After these events, even with some effort on the side of the French government, it was impossible
to appease the population and its nationalist feelings. The first organized attack came on November
1st and then came a war of independence with no clear front lines, sabotage acts, spreading of
terror, killing of civilians. The war „lasted for 8 years, until 1962. About 300 000 Muslims and
30 000 Europeans were killed and it was one of the deadliest conflict of its kind in the 20th
century.“[17]

Assessment

In the theoretical framework, we explained the (ethnic) security dilemma theory. In this part of
the essay, we will try to see whether this conflict fulfills the requirements of the defined
security dilemma and ethnic conflict.

Ethnic

As we saw in the short account of the common Franco Algerian history, Algeria was an integral part
of France. „At the end of 19th century, there were different laws and different political
rights[18] for each of the two communities.“[19] There was a theoretical possibility for Algerian
to get a French citizenship, but this required them to become Christian. That’s why the application
for the citizenship were few. Moreover, the administration rejected most of these applications.
Given the fact that even a conversion to Christianity wasn’t in most cases enough to get them a
citizenship, the discrimination in fact had ethnic grounds, so it was segregation. There was no
explicit segregation law, but there were more of implicit rules of behavior that made equality and
integration of the two communities virtually impossible.

The Algerian, who are in a majority Arab people, have obviously very different ancestry from the
French. Moreover, there is the definition of Algerian nation by Ibn Badis: „Islam is my religion,
Arabic is my language and Algeria is my motherland“[20]. Also, “it was a war inspired by religion.
Even though "the declaration from Soumman" that was adopted at a congress of FLN in 1956 called for
a separation of the religion and the states; and although there were some leader inspired by
socialism. But these positions cannot make us forget that from 1954 to 1962, FLN expanded its hold
on the population and prohibited the consummation of tobacco and alcohol, under the penalty of
mutilation, in the name of Islam.“ [21]

We can then say that the conflict was truly an ethnic one.

Anarchy

One of the main aspect in our chosen definition of the security dilemma is the fact that there is
(to a certain point) anarchy. In France’s Algeria, there wasn’t anarchy comparable to the one of
the international system, however, in some areas the control of the government became more and more
limited. A big factor here was the realities of the two World wars and namely the effects of the
Second World War on the capability of France to sustain the stability of its non-European
territories, and on the other hand the many problems the population faced because of the restraints
of the war. „For the Muslims it (the defeat by Rommel) was an important experience that has shaken
their faith in the real strength of the French power.“[22]
In this sense, I’d say that there wasn’t anarchy yet, but all of the parties involved thought it’s
coming.

Lack of malign intention

In my opinion, it is true that there were no explicit malign intentions on the both sides to
substantially hurt the other party. On the part of the colons, there was a clear objective not to
give up their privileges and not to let the Algerians achieve full political rights and
citizenship. That being said, they didn’t want to hurt the Algerians anymore they needed to keep
them in their subordinate position. The Algerians didn’t necessarily want to hurt the French
citizens either. Their goals was to gain full rights and citizenship. It wasn’t until after they
understood this won’t never happen by peaceful means that they started to oppose the government
violently. „The growing hostility towards French colonizing power was caused also by bad economic
situation (…) There was a long term increase of dissatisfaction over the limitation of the
political rights and openly racist behavior of a major part of the French people.“[23]

Accumulation of power

The aspect of the accumulation of power, that is the number of supporters, financial sources,
allies and also weapons that could be used in a violent encounter, is also an aspect we can deem
true in this case. The French accumulation of (mainly hard) power in this case is clear. In the
wake of the conflict, the Algerians were able to accumulate some soft power (that grew stronger
with the continuation of the conflict), the uprising was supported by a great number of the
population, and they were able to gather weaponry as well by raiding French policy offices and
deposits of weapons. It wasn’t very much, but given their strategies of asymmetrical fighting in
the maquis, it was more than enough.

Conclusion

To conclude, I believe we can say the Franco-Algerian conflict can by partly explained by the
ethnic security dilemma theory, as the parties of the conflict were formed along and defined by
ethnic lines, there was a threat of an oncoming anarchic environment, there were no explicit malign
tendencies and we can see the accumulation of power on both sides (mostly on the Algerian side) on
the wake of the conflict. In this essay there is not enough space for examining other aspects of
the definition or to problematize the interpretation. Other theories we could examine in this
conflicts could be the mainly the grievances and the democratization theories.

Literature

HORNE, Alistair. A savage war of peace: Algeria, 1954-1962. New York: New York Review Books, c2006.
ISBN 1590172183

BERÁNEK, Zdeněk. Alžírsko. Praha: Libri, 2007. Stručná historie států. ISBN 978-80-7277-335-0

LUTZ, Andreas. Špinavá válka: Alžírsko 1954-1962. Praha: CeskyCestovatel.cz, 2016. ISBN
978-80-87657-06-5.

HARRISS, Joseph A. When France lost its crown jewel: fifty years on, it's still struggling to get
over the horror and shame of the Algerian war. The American Spectator [online]. 2012, 45(7), 46-48
[cit. 2016-06-13]. ISSN 01488414

HOLEŠ, Jan a Jaromír KADLEC. Jazyková politika frankofonních zemí. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v
Olomouci, 2012. Odborná kniha. ISBN 978-80-244-3257-1.

WALLENSTEEN, Peter. Understanding conflict resolution. Fourth edition. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2015.
ISBN 9781473902114.

BACHOLLE-BOŠKOVIĆ, Michèle. La Guerre d'Algérie expliquée à nos enfants. The French
Review [online]. 2003, 76(5), 968-982 [cit. 2016-06-13]. ISSN 0016111X

Saideman, S., Lanoue, D., Campenni, M., Stanton, S. (2002): ―Democratization, Political
institutions, and Ethnic Conflict. A pooled-Time Series Analysis, 1985-1998‖, Comparative Political
Studies, Vol. 35, No 1., pp: 103-129.

STORA, Benjamin. Algérie: les retours de la mémoire de la guerre d'indépendance. Modern [online].
2002, 10(4), 461-473 [cit. 2016-06-13]. DOI: 10.1080/0963948022000029547. ISSN 09639489.
________________________________

[1] Saideman, S., Lanoue, D., Campenni, M., Stanton, S. (2002): ―Democratization, Political
institutions, and Ethnic Conflict. A pooled-Time Series Analysis, 1985-1998‖, Comparative Political
Studies, Vol. 35, No 1., pp: 103-129.

[2] TANG, SHIPING. The security dilemma and ethnic conflict: toward a dynamic and integrative
theory of ethnic conflict. Review of International Studies [online]. 2011, vol. 37, no. 2, s.
511-536. ISSN 02602105., p. 514

[3] IbidemT

[4] BACHOLLE-BOŠKOVIĆ, Michèle. La Guerre d'Algérie expliquée à nos enfants. The French
Review [online]. 2003, 76(5), 968-982 [cit. 2016-06-13]. ISSN 0016111X., p. 969

[5] The dey of Alger wanted France to repay its loans made during the Napoleonic wars, but France
didn’t feel the need to. The dey then tapped him with a ceremonial flywhisk, calling him a "wicked,
faithless, idol-worshipping rascal"

[6] BERÁNEK, Zdeněk. Alžírsko. Praha: Libri, 2007. Stručná historie států. ISBN 978-80-7277-335-0.,
p 42

[7]Ibidem, p. 44

[8] BERÁNEK, Zdeněk. Alžírsko. Praha: Libri, 2007. Stručná historie států. ISBN 978-80-7277-335-0.,
p. 46

[9] HOLEŠ, Jan a Jaromír KADLEC. Jazyková politika frankofonních zemí. Olomouc: Univerzita
Palackého v Olomouci, 2012. Odborná kniha. ISBN 978-80-244-3257-1., p 24

[10] HARRISS, Joseph A. When France lost its crown jewel: fifty years on, it's still struggling to
get over the horror and shame of the Algerian war. The American Spectator [online]. 2012, 45(7),
46-48 [cit. 2016-06-13]. ISSN 01488414., p. 47

[11] BERÁNEK, Zdeněk. Alžírsko. Praha: Libri, 2007. Stručná historie států. ISBN
978-80-7277-335-0., p. 51

[12]Ibidem, p. 53

[13] Ibidem, p. 56

[14] Ibidem, p. 65

[15] LUTZ, Andreas. Špinavá válka: Alžírsko 1954-1962. Praha: CeskyCestovatel.cz, 2016. ISBN
978-80-87657-06-5., p 22

[16] BERÁNEK, Zdeněk. Alžírsko. Praha: Libri, 2007. Stručná historie států. ISBN
978-80-7277-335-0., p. 68

[17] BERÁNEK, Zdeněk. Alžírsko. Praha: Libri, 2007. Stručná historie států. ISBN
978-80-7277-335-0., p. 72

[18] In 1881 the law known as Code d’indigénat was signed into action. It was a series of crimes
that applied only to the „Muslim French“. Among others it cited unauthorized tresspassing between
the regions of Algeria, travel abroad, unauthorized assembly and more. The punishments could be
collective and the jurisdiction was under the local courts, but the judges were appointed by
France.

[19]BERÁNEK, Zdeněk. Alžírsko. Praha: Libri, 2007. Stručná historie států. ISBN 978-80-7277-335-0.,
p. 47

[20] Ibidem, p. 56

[21] STORA, Benjamin. Algérie: les retours de la mémoire de la guerre
d'indépendance. Modern [online]. 2002, 10(4), 461-473 [cit. 2016-06-13]. DOI:
10.1080/0963948022000029547. ISSN 09639489., p. 466

[22] Ibidem, p. 66

[23] BERÁNEK, Zdeněk. Alžírsko. Praha: Libri, 2007. Stručná historie států. ISBN
978-80-7277-335-0., p. 67