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(The UN and INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENTS -- continued)
Algeria and War: 1954-62
Guy Mollet
Mohammed V visiting Berkeley,
California, in 1957
President Charles de Gaulle
In the early morning hours of 1 November 1954, small units of Algeria Muslims, organized by
the Front de Libération National (FLN) attacked police posts, warehouses, communications
facilities, and public utilities military installations. Their weapons were hunting rifles, shotguns,
and home-made bombs. The rising was accompanied by a broadcast from the FLN headquarters
in Nasser's Egypt, calling on Muslims in Algeria to join in a national struggle for the "restoration
of the Algerian state, sovereign, democratic, and social, within the framework of the principles of
Islam."
Mendès-France sent paratroopers, with their red berets and camouflage battle dress, showing the
government's determination to keep Algerian French, the soldiers wining fervent applause from
the settlers, who believed the soldiers had just returned from Vietnam. A whispering campaign
begun by rightists in Algeria suggested that Mendès-France, a Jew, was a communist and a
Soviet agent. The Algerian lobby managed to bring an end to the Mendès-France regime in
February, after six months in office, which was replaced by the slightly more conservative Edgar
Faure -- another member of the "Radical" political party. Meanwhile the guerrilla movement in
Algeria was picking up recruits and increasing its actions. In the month of April the guerrilla
actions were officially recorded at around 200, which included isolated attacks on persons and
property, the shooting of a constable and sawing down a telephone pole. The number of acts
counted increased to 900 in October, 1000 in December. By then the French government in Paris
had 120,000 troops in Algeria, but without being able to prevent more FLN actions. In March
1956 FLN actions were counted at 2,624. (John Talbott, War without a Name, p. 48.)
The idea of freedom from French rule had been encouraged elsewhere, including Cameroon. On
July 13, 1955, France outlawed the political party the Union des Populations du Cameroun
(UPC), which inspired the beginning of guerrilla warfare there.
In 1955 amnesty was offered to Tunisia's guerrillas and autonomy, with French control over
foreign affairs. But with a division between Habib Bourguiba group and a more radical group,
the French relented and on 20 March 1956 it gave Tunisia complete independence, with
Bourguiba as president of a “National Constituent Assembly” and designated as Prime Minister.
in Morocco in 1955 the French faced rising violence and a united demand for the French to all
the return of Sultan Mohammed V and in late 1955 Sultan Mohammed won a gradual restoration
of Moroccan independence within a framework of French-Moroccan interdependence. The
Sultan agreed to institute reforms that would transform Morocco into a constitutional monarchy
with a democratic form of government. In February 1956, Morocco acquired limited home rule,
and on March 2 France and Morocco signed an agreement giving Morocco complete
independence.
Since January 1956 the premier of France was the socialist Guy Mollet who compares with a
patriotic cold war Democrats in the United States. Mollet had what can be compared to President
Johnson's Tonkin Gulf Resolution: the Special Powers Law of March 16, 1956, which parliament
gave to the government in a vote of 455 to 76. The government sent draftees to Algeria, who
were more like guards while the professional and more glamorous paratroops, about three
percent of the total forces, dashed from one fire to another.
The FLN tightened its organization and began focusing on terrorism in the cities, mainly Algiers.
Their stronghold in Algiers was the thickly populated Casbah, described by some as a slum.
European settlers tried terror of their own. On August 10 they blew up an apartment building in
the Casbah, killing at least fifty Algerians. The FLN retaliated with bombings at popular
European hangouts.
By 1 January 1957 the French had 308,000 soldiers in Algeria. On 28 January1957 the UN was
scheduled to debate the Algerian question, and for that day the FLN scheduled a one-week work
stoppage in Algiers by Muslims against French rule. France's General Massu broke the strike,
forcing Muslims back to work and breaking in the storefronts of recalcitrant shopkeepers. That
year General Massu broke the FLN's network in Algiers. There were check points in the streets,
but that was mainly show for reassuring settlers that something was being done. The real action
was patrols, from door to door, during the day and night, the rounding up of suspects and
questions such as who is the person in your area who collects funds for the FLN. The French
show captured low ranking guerrillas documents describing other guerrillas as working for the
French and then release the guerrillas, and some are taken in by the trick, resulting in the purging
within the FLN. The army was able to trace down FLN operatives and believed that torture was
helping them do so. The French succeeded in forcing FLN soldiers to flee Algiers, and this
success was celebrated by French hardliners and the European settlers.
The Left in France raised the issue of torture, portraying Massu's men as a reincarnation of the
German SS. The Mollet government accused the anti-torture campaign on the "enemies of
France," implying it was the work basically of the Communist Party. The campaign against
torture was much broader among French intellectuals, while the majority of France remained
silent. The protest was futile. Torture by the French in Algeria was common. Many taken captive
by the French died in captivity. Paul Teitgen, who had been tortured by the Germans during
World War II resigned his post in Algeria and wrote:
Understand this, fear was the basis of it all. All of our so-called Civilization is covered with a
varnish. Scratch it, and underneath you find fear. The French, even the Germans, are not
torturers by nation. But when you see the throats of your copains (buddies) slit, then the varnish
disappears.
Quoted by Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, 1977, p. 204.
The French military made itself dominant across much of Algeria, resulting in FLN complaints
of people no longer wanting to work with them. In searching for suspects, the military was
uprooting people from their homes and fields and imprisoning them in camps. To escape the
military thousands of Algerians fled to Tunisia or Morocco and joined the FLN there. Military
success was not producing political success. The FLN was able to continue its terrorism, killing
persons here and there. The war was becoming a matter of which side would wear down the
other first. A good bet would have been that the nationalism of the Algerian people, enhanced
and broadened by the actions of France's military, would win against the European minority in
Algeria and their rightist French supporters. The political right saw the matter in terms of either
military victory or surrender to terrorism, and they feared a political solution.
In the spring of 1958 army leaders and European settlers in Algeria staged a mass demonstration
in Algiers directed against any attempt in Paris to form a government that would make
concessions to the Algerian Muslim nationalists. In France political leaders of various
persuasions turned to Charles de Gaulle as the one person who could solve the divisions created
by the war. On June 1, 1958, the National Assembly named de Gaulle premier and granted him
wide emergency powers, including the right to prepare a new constitution to be submitted to a
popular referendum. In September 1958 the new constitution, providing for a presidential
system, was overwhelmingly adopted by 83 percent of the electorate. In December de Gaulle
was elected president of the France's new Fifth Republic by a 78 percent of the France's Electoral
College. He was inaugurated in January 1959. Michel Debre became the first premier of the Fifth
Republic, but the President retained the decisive voice in all matters involving foreign affairs,
national defense, and even key domestic policies.
De Gaulle was concerned about France's economy and its position among the world's bigger
powers. As Senator John F. Kennedy observed in the United States, the war in Algeria was
opposed by Asian-African nations, a Cold War liability and a detriment to economic
interdependent between France and those historically associated with France. De Gaulle believed
that while the war in Algeria was militarily winnable but not good politics. France's defeat in
Vietnam had disillusioned de Gaulle concerning French colonialism. He wanted accommodation
with those historically tied to France, not war.
In 1958 France replaced the colonial association called the "French Union" with the " French
Community" Member of the French Community were to have substantial autonomy, with France
controlling only the currency, defense, and national security strategy. De Gaulle specified that
any country within the community would have the option of moving to complete independence.
Apart from Guinea, which chose by referendum in 1958 not to join the Community, all Frenchruled territories in sub-Saharan Africa joined the community and they in 1960 they acquired
independence. They included Cameroon, Togo, Senegal, Niger, Dahomy, Chad, Gabon,Burkina
Faso, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, The Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire),
Mali and, in late November, Mauritania. Since 1956 France had been moving Madagascar
toward independence, and it became fully independent on June 26, 1960.
By 1960, de Gaulle believed it was a dreadful mockery to claim that Algeria's Muslims were
French. French troops were still in Algeria and de Gaulle continued to favor law and order there,
that it was a delusion to see political solution in their integration or Frenchification with France
by force. In January he dismissed General Massu who had suggested in an interview opposition
to him. Massu was a hero to the European settlers, and they erected barricades in the center of
their part of Algiers. French gendarmes ordered them to disperse. The settlers killed 14
gendarmes and wounded 123, behind the barricades six died and 26 wounded.
In the summer of 1960 de Gaulle spoke of Algeria as Algerian (Algérie algérienne). In his New
Year greeting to his fellow French he spoke again of Algeria and Algerian. In April 1961 army
commanders in Algeria revolted. It was a fiasco. De Gaulle used emergency powers to put down
risings by the European settlers. A Secret Army Organization (OAS) organized by army rightists
to keep Algerian French, resorted to terrorism in Paris and to attempts to assassinate de Gaulle.
All of it failed. In a referendum on Algerian self-determination, 75.2 percent of the vote in
France was in favor. In March, talks between the French government and representatives of the
Muslim Algerians were announced. The talks dragged on into 1962, with the status of Algeria's
European settlers an issue and France unable to win recognition of part of the desert in the south
as not a part of Algeria. In September de Gaulle abandoned his desire for the desert areas
remaining separate. The Muslim negotiators assured the French that the European settlers would
not have to fear reprisals but the French wanted specific guarantees, while the Europeans settlers
were seeing their alternatives under the Muslims as either "the suitcase or the coffin" and almost
every day a settler was killing a Muslim and a Muslim was killing a settler. The Algerian
negotiators insisted that everyone who remained in Algeria were to be Algerians, not French.
Finally, on March 18, 1962, at Évian-les-Bains, on the French side of Lake Geneva, a 98-page
agreement was reached. The conflict, never called a war by France's government, was finished.
The Europeans, it was agreed, would receive seats in Algerian public assemblies in proportional
to their public number. On July 3, Algeria became officially independent. Meanwhile, around
800,000 -- an overwhelming majority -- of those in Algeria of European descent had begun their
return to Europe.
Seeking Freedom South of the Sahara
Empress Victoria down in Guiana
In the eyes of their colonial subjects, Britain and France had lost prestige during World War II.
Moreover, the Atlantic Charter created by Roosevelt and Churchill in 1941 had stated that their
principle in fighting World War II was to "respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of
government under which they will live." Many colonized people, especially the educated
African, wondered why this should not apply to them, and they wanted that freedom.
During the war, Africa benefited from demand in Europe for its exports. By the end of World
War II, Africa had experienced considerable economic growth and social change. In greater
numbers people were moving to cities. After the war came a temporary setback as the demand
for African goods diminished. But by the 1950s prosperity was returning, and Africans were
exporting more than ever before. They were building roads and harbors and dredging rivers.
They were building more extensive rail and telegraphic networks. In 1951, Cocoa exports from
Britain's Gold Coast colony rose to 230,000 tons, up from about 1,000 tons in 1901. In 1954,
Uganda exported 398,000 bales of cotton, up from 500 in 1906. Africans were participating in
this economic growth and benefiting from it. And they wanted to have a voice in maintaining
and increasing their prosperity.
The Gold Coast becomes Ghana
Some who favored independence believed in individual enterprise, profits and incentives. Some
African intellectuals held onto Leftist dreams, and they demonized capitalism. One of the Leftist
dreamers was Kwame Nkrumah, a man Christianized by missionary schools. In 1939 he had
graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology and economics from Lincoln University in
Pennsylvania. Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast after World War II and joined the
independence movement there. In 1949 he led a split within the movement from the more
conservative, middleclass adherents. Nkrumah was more interested in mobilizing the masses
than were the conservative intellectuals, and Nkrumah formed his own political party, the
Convention People's Party.
The Gold Coast was the first to win its independence, becoming an independent dominion in
1957. Britain had prepared the Gold Coast for independence, believing that independence was
inevitable and seeing itself as living up to its duty and declared aim. The Gold Coast became
Ghana, which emerged as a parliamentary democracy. Its leader was Nkrumah, who had
personal ties with the British and kept some British around as advisors. Nkrumah wished to
create a truly democratic state. In his speeches he was inclined to include references to such men
as Edmund Burke and Aristotle. And he was admired. On the day of Ghana's independence
crowds filled with joy cheered his speech and cheered him. Nkrumah was their hero.
Nigeria
In 1960 the British granted full independence to Nigeria. In 1961, the British granted
independence to Tanganyika, which the British had been ruling under a United Nations mandate.
In 1962, the British gave Uganda its independence. That year, Belgium granted independence to
Rwanda and Burundi, former German colonial territory that Belgium had been administering as
trust territories -- just west of Lake Victoria.
Cold War Concerns
Observers in the Kremlin had no illusions about Africa being on the verge of Communist
revolution. They described African nationalist movements as "bourgeois" and thoroughly unproletarian. But the Soviet Union did what it could to improve relations with the newly
independent African states, including offering low interest loans for economic development. The
Soviet Union opened an embassy in Ghana in 1959. Anti-Communists in the United States and
Europe were alarmed -- as Vice President Richard Nixon had been when he returned from a visit
to Africa in 1957 and reported that Africa was a new area of conflict "between the forces of
freedom and international Communism." The Eisenhower administration feared that nationalist
movements in Africa would be dangerously Leftist, as had been the nationalist movements in
Asia. The Eisenhower administration gave only unenthusiastic endorsement for independence in
Africa. And when Sekou Touré, an avowed socialist, requested aide for economic assistance for
Guinea, the Eisenhower administration ignored it.
The Belgian Congo
Abruptly in 1960 the Belgians pulled out of the Congo. They had done little to prepare the
Congo for independence, and the Congo erupted into factional fighting, with the southeastern
part of the Congo, Katanga, attempting separation. In Katanga were the copper mines owned by
Belgium's Union Minière. The mining company and Belgian troops were backing Katanga's
independence and Maurice Tshombe. The duly elected prime minister of the newly independent
Congo was Patrice Lumumba, who opposed Katanga's breaking away. Lumumba sought help
from the United Nations. He had the support of other African leaders, including Kwame
Nkrumah. The United Nations dithered, leaving Lumumba frustrated. The United States offered
no help. Lumumba sought the help offered from the Soviet Union. A CIA dispatch to
Washington (18 august 1960) labeled Lumumba as "a commie playing the commie game." CIA
chief, Lawrence Devlin, had close contacts with the Congolese commander Colonel Joseph
Mobutu and the U.S. ambassador in the region, Clare Hayes Timerlake. Lumumba was taken
prisoner by Mobuto's forces, degraded, beaten and murdered. And across Africa anti-American
riots erupted.
The British in Kenya
Because of the greater number of white settlers in East Africa, working toward independence
there was more difficult for the British. The whites were as opposed to handing a fair share of
power to blacks and others as had been the whites in Algeria. In Kenya, frustration among the
Kikuyu (about 20 percent of the population) led to rebellion in 1952 -- known as the Mau Mau
uprising. The Kikuyu were unhappy about their lack of power, their having been driven off much
of their land and their unemployment and lives of poverty in the city of Nairobi and other towns.
The Mau Mau uprising was loosely organized, or perhaps it was more of a spontaneous rising of
uncoordinated groups who hid in Kenya's jungles and struck at the fringes of white held areas.
The British were able to crush the rebellion after five years of struggle -- with about 90,000
Kikuyu having been put into concentration camps, more than a million Kikuyu and Embu
civilians having been shifted into "secure" areas, and perhaps as many as 10,000 blacks killed.
British firepower had proven supreme, the British losing only about 100 killed. They maintained
their rule over 15 million blacks.
But Britain could not afford to keep a large force in Kenya to maintain its military victory, and it
began to organize the turning over of power to the black Africans, to a government that would
respect the minority white and Asian presence and maintain economic ties with Britain.
They found such a government under the leadership of Jomo Kenyatta, who had been the
undisputed Kikuyu leader since the 1940s. Kenyatta had studied anthropology in Britain and had
worked hard since the 1930s for reform, and he was revered by the Kikuyu. Kenyatta denounced
Mau Mau terrorism, but the British had held him responsible for the uprising, had put him in
prison in 1952 and had held him there for nine years. In 1963, the British granted Kenya its
independence. Most of the Europeans -- 50,000 of them -- chose to remain in Kenya, confident
that they could survive well enough under black rule. And Kenyatta entered Kenyan
independence realistic about the difficulties that lay ahead. In his first speech as president he
warned of the hard work which lay ahead and the need to save themselves from poverty,
ignorance and disease, to educate their children and to have doctors, to build roads and to
improve or provide all day-to-day essentials.
Rhodesia
Rhodesia had experienced impressive economic growth, the benefits of which were far from
equally shared between Europeans and blacks -- in 1961 the Europeans on average earning
fifteen times that of blacks. In an effort to surrender more power to blacks and prevent more
uprisings like that of the Mau Mau rebellion, Britain separated Southern Rhodesia from Northern
Rhodesia and Nyasaland. On July 6, 1964 Nyasaland became the independent state of Malawi.
And on October 24 that same year, Northern Rhodesia became Zambia.
Southern Rhodesia remained a British colony, 250,000 persons of European descent there
holding power over 16 times their number: 4,000,000 blacks. Europeans continued calling it
simply Rhodesia. And in November 1965 the Europeans there, led by their prime minister, Ian
Smith, unilaterally declared itself independent. -- Within the Commonwealth of Nations.