I call your attention to the French-Algerian War (1954-1962). It was part of the 3rd World's fight vs. Colonialism.
De Gaulle was for Algerian independence. De Gaulle threatened to jail the Generals who opposed it. Independent Algeria has maintained a neutral policy toward Israel. Actually, according to Day of the Jackel, the anti-Algerian independence OAS hired the Jackel to kill De Gaulle. Carl
Today Guido Pontecorvo's film "Battle of Algiers" about the French-Algerian War is required viewing for the Pentagon. During that war, the French military killed about 1 million Algerians, tortured prisoners and lost the war. Today Algeria is culturally economically tied to France. Perhaps the Pentagon should read Franz Fanon's books. Carl'
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/weekinreview/07KAUF.html?pagewanted=print&position=
What Does the Pentagon See in 'Battle of Algiers'?
September 7, 2003
FILM STUDIES
What Does the Pentagon See in 'Battle of Algiers'?
By MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN
EXCERPTS:
Challenged by terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare in Iraq, the Pentagon
recently held a screening of "The Battle of Algiers," the film that in the
late 1960's was required viewing and something of a teaching tool for
radicalized Americans and revolutionary wannabes opposing the Vietnam War.
Back in those days the young audiences that often sat through several
showings of Gillo Pontecorvo's 1965 re-enactment of the urban struggle
between French troops and Algerian nationalists, shared the director's
sympathies for the guerrillas of the F.L.N., Algeria's National Liberation
Front. Those viewers identified with and even cheered for Ali La Pointe,
the streetwise operator who drew on his underworld connections to organize
a network of terrorist cells and entrenched it within the Casbah, the
city's old Muslim section. In the same way they would hiss Colonel
Mathieu, the character based on Jacques Massu, the actual commander of the
French forces.
The Pentagon's showing drew a more professionally detached audience of
about 40 officers and civilian experts who were urged to consider and
discuss the implicit issues at the core of the film - the problematic but
alluring efficacy of brutal and repressive means in fighting clandestine
terrorists in places like Algeria and Iraq. Or more specifically, the
advantages and costs of resorting to torture and intimidation in seeking
vital human intelligence about enemy plans.
As the flier inviting guests to the Pentagon screening declared: "How to
win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot
soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire
Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a
plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why,
come to a rare showing of this film."
The idea came from the Directorate for Special Operations and
Low-Intensity Conflict, which a Defense Department official described as a
civilian-led group with "responsibility for thinking aggressively and
creatively" on issues of guerrilla war. The official said, "Showing the
film offers historical insight into the conduct of French operations in
Algeria, and was intended to prompt informative discussion of the
challenges faced by the French." He added that the discussion was lively
and that more showings would probably be held.
No details of the discussion were provided but if the talk was confined to
the action of the film it would have focused only on the battle for the
city, which ended in 1957 in apparent triumph for the French with the
killing of La Pointe and the destruction of the network. But insurrection
continued throughout Algeria, and though the French won the Battle of
Algiers, they lost the war for Algeria, ultimately withdrawing from a
newly independent country ruled by the F.L.N. in 1962.
During the last four decades the events re-enacted in the film and the
wider war in Algeria have been cited as an effective use of the tactics of
a "people's war," where fighters emerge from seemingly ordinary lives to
mount attacks and then retreat to the cover of their everyday identities.
The question of how conventional armies can contend with such tactics and
subdue their enemies seems as pressing today in Iraq as it did in Algiers
in 1957. In both instances the need for on-the-ground intelligence is
required to learn of impending attacks. Even in a world of electronic
devices, human infiltration and interrogations remain indispensable, but
how far should modern states go in the pursuit of such information?
Mr. Pontecorvo, who was a member of the Italian Communist Party, obviously
felt the French had gone much too far by adopting policies of torture,
brutal intimidation and outright killings. Though their use of force led
to the triumph over La Pointe, it also provoked political scandals in
France, discredited the French Army and traumatized French political life
for decades, while inspiring support for the nationalists among Algerians
and in much of the world. It was this tactical tradeoff that lies at the
heart of the film and presumably makes it relevant for Pentagon study and
discussion.
But this issue of how much force should be used by highly organized states
as they confront the terror of less sophisticated enemies is far from
simple. For example, what happens when a country with a long commitment to
the Geneva Convention has allies who operate without such restriction.
Consider the ambivalent views over the years of General Massu, the
principal model for the film's Colonel Mathieu.
In 1971, General Massu wrote a book challenging "The Battle of Algiers,"
and the film was banned in France for many years. In his book General
Massu, who had been considered by soldiers the personification of military
tradition, defended torture as "a cruel necessity." He wrote: "I am not
afraid of the word torture, but I think in the majority of cases, the
French military men obliged to use it to vanquish terrorism were,
fortunately, choir boys compared to the use to which it was put by the
rebels. The latter's extreme savagery led us to some ferocity, it is
certain, but we remained within the law of eye for eye, tooth for tooth."
In 2000, his former second in command, Gen. Paul Aussaresses,
acknowledged, showing neither doubts nor remorse, that thousands of
Algerians "were made to disappear," that suicides were faked and that he
had taken part himself in the execution of 25 men. General Aussaresses
said "everybody" knew that such things had been authorized in Paris and he
added that his only real regret was that some of those tortured died
before they revealed anything useful.
As for General Massu, in 2001 he told interviewers from Le Monde, "Torture
is not indispensable in time of war, we could have gotten along without it
very well." Asked whether he thought France should officially admit its
policies of torture in Algeria and condemn them, he replied: "I think that
would be a good thing. Morally torture is something ugly."
At the moment it is hard to specify exactly how the Algerian experience
and the burden of the film apply to the situation in Iraq, but as the
flier for the Pentagon showing suggested, the conditions that the French
faced in Algeria are similar to those the United States is finding in
Iraq.