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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 1948555" data-attributes="member: 26473">Campaign Briefing - the Algerian Insurrection“L’Algerie c’est la France.”On 1 November 1954 the National Liberation Front (FLN) calls for a general uprising against the French government in Algeria while its military arm, the National Liberation Army (ALN), stages its first coordinated attacks on police stations and military outposts, seeking to capture weapons and ammunition. The following week French interior minister François Mitterand states unequivocally in a radio address that “Algeria is France.”France’s restive colonies, a thorn in the side of the Fourth Republic, threaten to become a dagger at its throat. The debacle of Dien Ben Phu in May 1954, a scant six months earlier, and the independence of Indochina are the most visible signs of disorganization and uncertainty about France’s role as a colonial power, and following the FLN’s call to arms, a line is drawn in the sand around Algeria by the French government.Why Algeria? A colony since 1834, Algeria is viewed by many in France the same way that Americans do Hawaii, as an overseas extension of itself. Indeed, Algeria’s three departments are represented in parliament, unlike the French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia. However, this obscures that fact that few Algerians enjoy French citizenship, that the European colonists of Alsatian, Corsican, Spanish and Italian origin, called pieds-noir or colons, practice crushing social and economic segregation of their Muslim Arab and Berber neighbors. The wave of anti-colonialism sweeping the post-war world has washed ashore in Algeria.The FLN demands an end to French imperialism and hegemony, and they wage a campaign of death and destruction not only against the farms and mines of the pieds-noir in the countryside, but against Muslim ‘collaborators’ who aid the French or simply refuse to support the FLN. The conservative and equally extreme colons, for whom any compromise on issues of enfranchisement and self-determination are unthinkable, exert tremendous influence over the appointed governor-general of Algeria. French efforts to introduce reforms for the betterment of Algerian Muslims are met with resistance and bloody reprisals by both sides.By the middle of 1955, the ALN and FLN agree to wage a war of unlimited terror against the French and Muslim collaborators, and the government responds with a policy of ‘collective responsibility’ against communities supporting the insurrection. On 21 August 1955, the ALN stages one of its most daring and deadly attacks on the town of Phillipeville, killing over 120 citizens, including women and children. French outrage over the atrocities results in escalating brutality by the gendarmerie and military, including the increasing use of torture to extract information on FLN and ALN forces. Call-ups of reservists in France are required to increase the troops committed in Algeria to battling the insurrection.Colon riots in the cities of Algiers, Oran, and Constantine in early 1956 against reformers in the colonial administration push the French government further toward demands for absolute victory over the FLN, which in turn gains strength in the countryside as French tactics grow more extreme. The army’s role expands as the police and courts are unable to either successfully prevent terrorist attacks or prosecute the perpetrators.In March 1956, Morocco and Tunisia receive their independence from France, and both countries quickly become havens to the ALN, who establish camps to train and equip their katibas (companies) for raids into Algeria. The war shifts to protecting the borders from interdiction, to cut off the flow of men and arms and explosives to the ALN and FLN. Soldiers battle the ALN among the farms of the coastal plain, in the oak forests and maquis of the rugged Aures and Kabylie Mountains, and in the barren oueds (wadis or canyons) of the interior.It’s now June 1956, and there is no hope in sight that the war will end anytime soon…</blockquote>

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