BY ROBERT MAISEY In https://www.jacobinmag.com/
A War on Two Fronts
The Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) that then emerged was an organization that valued action over theoretical nuance, and unity over distinctiveness. On November 1, 1954, the FLN unilaterally declared war on France. The war began before the FLN had even taken concrete political shape, and the core leadership gambled on attracting immediate popular support for the struggle. It was a wager based on the desires of the FLN leadership, mostly soldiers rather than scholars, to turn ineffectual rhetoric into decisive action — and it worked.
The French reacted to the challenge as they had always done in the past: with swift, brutal repression. However, in the new international context, the old methods produced diametrically opposite results. Sensing the winds of change blowing across the colonized world, Algerians flocked to the banner of the FLN, first in their thousands, and then in their millions. The French responded with an intensified anti-insurgency campaign in which the use of torture, concentration camps, and the murder of civilians became nothing short of official policy.
The FLN were quick to recognize the importance of the new international dynamic and opened a war on two fronts. On the ground, they adopted a Leninist-Maoist party organization suitable for waging a protracted guerrilla war. They made use of assassination and terror, singling out French administrators and Muslim collaborators in particular, deliberately deepening the polarity of the conflict and forcing the population into a binary choice between sides. They also made intense use of political agitation, especially among the rural populations they relied upon for shelter and support. The FLN’s political commissars emphasized the social revolutionary aspect of the war and established the movement as a shadow state under the noses of the French. Much like the Viet Cong, from whom they drew inspiration, the FLN set about providing health care, welfare, and education services to a rural population of subsistence farming peasants.
The second front was international, with a diplomatic cadre fronted by charismatic revolutionaries like Ahmed Ben Bella. The struggle was transposed from the open bled to the debating chambers of the United Nations. Despite not yet representing a state of their own, the FLN had sent delegations to internationally significant gatherings, including the Bandung conference in Indonesia. In the United Nations, at Bandung, and elsewhere, they pressed their case to the superpowers, as well as to the great and the good of the emerging Third World, including India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, China’s Zhou Enlai, and Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Part 4 : tomorrow
