BY ROBERT MAISEY In https://www.jacobinmag.com/

At the Center of the World

Nasser, a pan-Arabist who styled himself as the political figurehead of the whole Arab world, was particularly keen to show his support for the FLN. He, in turn, was held in high regard by the Algerians, who saw him as living proof that revolutionary self-liberation was possible in the Arab world. The Cairo-based radio Voice of the Arabs amplified FLN propaganda across the Middle East and North Africa, giving them an outsize global presence and reinforcing the legitimacy of their revolution in the eyes of Arabs and Africans everywhere.

The Egyptians also acted as a broker for arms sales to the FLN, funneling Czech, Yugoslav, and Chinese ordinance to the Algerian mujahideen. These were put to use alongside guerrilla military tactics learned from the Chinese and North Vietnamese communists, with whom the Algerians maintained close contact. Morocco and Tunisia, Algeria’s neighbors to the west and east, allowed the FLN to use their territory as bases of operations for their military high command.

The Saudis, who detested Nasser, viewing him as a godless socialist and a direct threat to their own claims to leadership in the Arab world, competed to offer financial support. They also offered the use of Saudi passports with which to travel freely around the world, including to New York to attend summits of the United Nations, where the FLN set up a permanent office from which to press their claim for independent statehood.

As the savagery of the war continued to escalate, the FLN’s high-profile diplomatic team did everything in their power to keep the eyes of the world firmly focused on the conflict. Even as the military situation in the country worsened, the diplomatic pressure on France intensified and, as a result, the FLN began to place their hopes on a politically mediated end to the conflict.

Abane Ramdane, commander of the Algiers section of the front and one of the FLN’s foremost ideologues, attempted to resolve the war on two fronts by launching a spectacular, all-out insurrection in the capital city. The Battle of Algiers, though much mythologized afterward, did not have the desired effect and resulted in the near total destruction of the underground organization in the city. Ramdane, fleeing to Morocco shortly after, was assassinated by his own peers in the high command.

Even as global fascination with the Algerian struggle reached its apex, tensions were escalating within the secretive FLN leadership. Rural section commanders, camped out deep in the bled, resented the heavy losses they were expected to bear while the diplomatic campaign was waged by their rather more luxuriantly accommodated comrades. When France fortified both the Moroccan and Tunisian borders and began rounding the rural population up into resettlement camps, the ability of the armies in the field to access reinforcement and resupply was dramatically reduced. However, even as the French began to reap military advantage from these tactics, their indiscriminate violence, including the bombing of Tunisian villages across the border, stoked fresh outrage on the world stage.

The terroristic methods employed by the FLN in return were given theoretical rationale in the writings of Frantz Fanon. Fanon was a psychiatric doctor from French Martinique who, while working in Algeria, had joined the ranks of the liberation forces. Fanon eloquently framed imperialism in terms of stark racism, describing the dehumanization of the conquered people, and strongly advocated revolutionary violence as a form of mass redemption. Fanon’s views intersected with the liberation movement’s prevalent socialist and nationalist currents, to help define the ideological field of the entire Third World project.

Within the FLN camps in Morocco, Tunisia, and Mali, revolutionaries from across the African continent — including Nelson Mandela — received military and political training. Before they had even liberated their own homeland, the Algerians had already placed themselves at the center of pan-African and global Third World politics.

Part 5 : tomorrow