France's war in Algeria: telling the story
10 Dec. London Times op-ed - A Lesson About Torture, Half Century On.
Quote:
...if Europeans who are worried about America’s treatment of Muslims wish to assess the true worth of mass torture in a time of terror, the atrocities committed by the French in Algeria between 1954 and the country’s independence in 1962 bear close examination.
France had far grander aims in Algeria than the United States has in Iraq. She intended to stay indefinitely in a country she maintained was actually part of France. In Algiers, French pieds noirs constituted the majority. Furthermore, the eight-year Algerian war was far bloodier. At least a third of a million died in it.
Yet, the ultimate French defeat did not appear inevitable when the insurgency began. In 1957, the so-called Battle of Algiers was decisively won and the insurgent FLN terrorist campaign was severely curtailed. This was achieved by a variety of tough measures directed at seizing control of the Casbah. Thousands of Arab youths were taken away for interrogation. Around 3,000 never re-emerged...
Bigeard's methods in Algiers
Just a follow-up to my previous. I ran through Erwan Bergot's bio of Bigeard last night for the battle of Algiers. Of interest, Bigeard emphasizes what an intelligence analyst would call the "pattern analysis" approach to cracking the cells. He lays out the problem that the police had in dealing with insurgents using the existing French legal code, and emphasizes that the Army was not going to be bound by rules of evidence or criminal procedure, and that they were not going to fail. Bigeard attributes his success in Algiers to the fact that his company commanders were given specific pieces of territory and challenged to ferret out the information needed to identify the FLN cells within his regimental area, which included the Casbah. Specifically, he had his intelligence officer prepare a briefing for the unit commanders which detailed all that was known about the FLN and its organization, and capturing that in an organizational diagram with blank spaces showing for persons unknown. The S-2 had gained his information from the Police records, but the individuals were at that time out on the street. At the briefing, Bigeard informed his commanders that it was their jobs to fill in the spaces on the chart, not the S-2's, and that they would be judged accordingly. He emphasized that all they had were the very lowest ranking members of the organization, and that the nature of the organization was that each man would know only the members of his cell, and with luck, perhaps a member of another cell. The cell leader would know the name only of his higher contact. But, with the information they had, they held the keys to filling in the blanks. The advantage of the Army over the police was that the Army, under martial law, could be far more flexible and much quicker to exploit intelligence. They did not need to go to a judge to get a search order, and the same commander who picked up reportable information was the same entity who would be reacting to it. The units subsequently fanned out through their assigned areas, and began bringing in suspects. Deprived of their access to a defense attorney, and in total ignorance of how long and under what conditions they would be held, many of the suspects began to drop snippets of information, which the units immediately followed up on. It was a laborious method, but it allowed his regiment to accumulate enough information to begin piecing a more comprehensive picture together, which in turn generated more operations, more suspects in custody,and more information. The end result was a picture accurate enough to allow a patterned analysis of the insurgents infrastructure, resulting in the arrest and neutralization of its leaders. In the short term, Massu's 10th Abn Div won the battle of Algiers, but Bigeard warned that the victory was only operational, and that enough of a structure had fled to allow the FLN to return and reconstitute their networks, thereby resuming operations. As I understand his take on torture, which he neither denies nor endorses, the issue of torture was greatly exaggerated by both the FLN and the government's enemies in order to discredit the Army and thus build the political consensus in French political circles necessary to prevent the Army from ever undertaking such operations again.
Book Review: My Battle of Algiers
Commentary Magazine book review - My Battle of Algiers by Ted Morgan. Book Review by Roger Kaplan.
Quote:
A well-known journalist and biographer, Ted Morgan, born Sanche de Gramont, was as a young man a reluctant conscript in France’s last colonial war. Morgan arrived in Algeria in September 1956, two years into the gruesome and complex struggle that would put an end to France’s 130-year North African empire. Now, five decades later, he writes that the guerre d’Algérie, which Algerians call their revolution, is worth recalling because of its role in the invention of modern Arab terrorism. But he also means to come to terms with an experience that in his own eyes left him morally compromised, and that remains a subject of sharp political controversy.
Military historians and moral philosophers may quarrel about just what constitutes modern terrorism, Arab or otherwise. But the terrorism of the Algerian nationalist insurgents, which was deliberately aimed at civilians, seemed at the time unprecedented—more cruel and immoral, Albert Camus wrote, than anything envisioned, let alone carried out, by such earlier proponents of terrorism as the Russian nihilists or the Spanish anarchists.
The French response, too, was unprecedented. Torture is no doubt as old as warfare, but this was probably the first time a liberal-democratic regime permitted its own soldiers to apply such methods systematically. To restore security in the capital city of Algiers, French forces rounded up and tortured thousands of Muslims and a few score of their European allies, mostly members of the Algerian Communist party, often killing them in the process or afterward. For recalling this—without regret—in a memoir published five years ago, a retired French general officer named Paul Aussaresses was taken to court and found guilty of justifying torture, a crime in today’s France...
A Review of Algerian War of National Liberation
A Review of Algerian War of National Liberation Using the U.S. Army's Current Counterinsurgency Doctrine - Colonel Karl Goetzke, US Army. US Army War College Strategy Research Project, 2005.
Quote:
The Algerian War of National Liberation is a classic counter-insurgency operation. A rebellion arising from within the Algerian population was transformed into an insurgency by the incorporation of an armed political campaign. Underlying this rebellion were socio-economic factors that typically galvanize any political campaign (e.g., distribution of wealth, participation in political intercourse). The catalyst for rebellion and resistance was a popular desire to end the French occupation of Algeria. While the indigenous population of Algeria was overwhelmingly Islamic, religious ideology was not a primary mobilizing factor behind the rebellion, unlike the current insurgencies faced in the War on Terrorism.
This paper reviews the French Army experience during the Algerian War of National Liberation (“War of National Liberation”) in the context of the most recent U.S. Army doctrine on counterinsurgency. This review will focus on the French Army’s counterinsurgency techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTPs) using a framework that is drawn from the U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine established in Field Manual (Interim) 3-07.22, adopted in October 2004.
THESIS
Among the counterinsurgencies of the last 50 years, the French experience in Algeria is highly relevant to evaluation of current U.S. Army counterinsurgency doctrine to be followed in the War on Terrorism (WOT). Immediate similarities can be found between the counterinsurgency in Algeria and the counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Similarities include terrain, the TTPs of the current insurgents, and their underlying motivations and ideologies. Additionally, this was a major counterinsurgency involving a Western suppression of a rebellion arising in an Islamic population.
ROADMAP
Because many readers will have limited familiarity with the War of National Liberation, the paper provides a brief overview of the conflict. Subsequently, current U.S. Army doctrine on counterinsurgency is introduced. Using this doctrine as a framework, the TTPs used by the French Army are reviewed and then analyzed. This analysis seeks to establish two critical points: (1) Whether the current Army doctrine is validated by the French Army’s experience in Algeria; and (2) Whether the French Army’s experience can be applied to the current campaigns in the WOT.
French Paratrooper Shares Experience in COIN
Two months ago I traveled to Paris and spent three hours interviewing a former French paratrooper who participated in the Battle of Algiers. Here is a part of my interview with him. I hope it is valuable.
On Oct. 4, 2006, Robert Rocher, now retired and living in Paris, discussed his role in the Battle of Algiers and the use of interrogation in counterinsurgency operations.
Question: “What unit were you assigned to during the Battle of Algiers and what was your rank?”
Answer: “I was assigned to the 2nd Regiment Parachute Colonial (RPC) as a lieutenant.”
Q: “What were your duties with the 2nd RCP?”
A: “We were in charge of intelligence work—gathering information. There was an intelligence officer who directed our actions. We arrested terrorism suspects and conducted interrogations. Intelligence is like fish, you have to use it when it is fresh.”
Q: “What was the size of the unit you commanded in Algiers?”
A: “I typically commanded 25-30 paratroopers. The paras were very flexible; sometimes I controlled as many as 50 soldiers.”
Q: “When you arrested someone, what happened to him?”
A: “When the person was still in good health, we took them to our headquarters and interrogated him. If the person was not well, we interrogated him directly on the spot.”
Q: “What interrogation methods did you use?”
A: “The interrogations were conducted verbally and sometimes a certain brutality was used. We used electric shock when necessary. All the interrogations happened as fast as possible, within 24 hours. We were trying to prevent acts of terrorism”
Q: “How often would people talk during interrogation without physical abuse?”
A: “Four out of five talked right away. In some cases we gained good intelligence immediately. Many of the people were very scared and had been forced to cooperate with the terrorists.”
Q: “Were these interrogation techniques used by other units in Algiers?”
A: “All the other units used similar techniques.”
Q: “What happened to the prisoners after they were interrogated?”
A: “We sent them to prison camps in the south of Algeria. It was often for their protection. If the FLN knew someone had been interrogated, the FLN would assume he talked to us and would kill him.”
Q: “Did you ever release anyone on purpose, knowing he would be killed for talking to you?”
A: “It happened.”
Q: “Could you have defeated the insurgency without using inhumane interrogation techniques?”
A: “No, for two reasons. We had to show the native Algerians we were stronger than the insurgents. The fanatical terrorists had the information we needed. They would not talk without brutality.”
Q: “If you used the information you gained from interrogating suspects who talked freely, without the use of torture, could you eventually have beaten the insurgents?”
A: “Those who spoke freely did not have good quality information. The ones who did not want to talk had the useful information. There are two levels of information and we needed the information from the fanatics.”
Q: “How did you arrest people for interrogation?”
A: “We always acted on intelligence. We never simply swept an area and detained all the residents.”
Q: “What else can you share about your counterinsurgency experience in Algeria?”
A: “Counterinsurgency is about creating confidence in the population. Obtaining information is key. Protecting the local population is important to make their life less difficult. When insurgencies prevail, civilization disappears. People are put into slavery by insurgent forces.”
Q: “What was the long-term impact of losing the Algerian War for the French military?”
A: “The army lost its morale after the war. Many officers resigned from the service and the loss fostered a corrosive attitude at the national level of government.”