{"id":111865,"date":"2024-12-02T13:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jazairhope.org\/?p=111865"},"modified":"2024-12-01T19:31:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-01T18:31:28","slug":"vietnam-algeria-palestine-passing-on-the-torch-of-the-anti-colonial-struggle-part2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jazairhope.org\/en\/vietnam-algeria-palestine-passing-on-the-torch-of-the-anti-colonial-struggle-part2\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnam, Algeria, Palestine : Passing on the torch of the anti-colonial struggle \u2026 Part2"},"content":{"rendered":"
National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon.<\/em>\u2019\u00a0<\/em>Frantz Fanon, 1961 (Fanon 1967)<\/p>\n The Algerian independence struggle against French colonialists was one of the most inspiring anti-imperialist revolutions of the twentieth century. It was part of the wave of decolonisation that started after the Second World War in India, China, Cuba, Vietnam and many countries in Africa. It inscribed itself in the spirit of the Bandung Conference and the era of the \u2018awakening of the South\u2019, a South that has been subjected for decades (and in many cases for more than a century) to imperialist and capitalist domination under different forms, from protectorates to proper settler colonies (as was the case for Algeria).<\/p>\n Retrospectively, French colonisation of Algeria can be seen as unique, as Algeria was the first Arabic-speaking country to be annexed by the West and one of the first countries in Africa to be officially subjugated by a Western empire, long before the Berlin Conference in 1884, when different European empires (British, French, German, Belgian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) met to carve up the continent amongst themselves.<\/p>\n France invaded Algeria in June 1830. The French army was to spend the next 50 years suppressing an insurgency, 15 of them fighting the brilliant, fierce and dedicated resistance leader Abd-El-Kader. France\u2019s war of conquest was conducted without let-up, especially under the command of the ruthless Marshal Bugeaud, who adopted a scorched earth policy (Fisk 2005), committing atrocities ranging from population displacement to land expropriation, massacres, and the infamous\u00a0enfumades,<\/em>\u00a0where the French army eliminated whole tribes through asphyxiation.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Alongside Marshal Bugeaud\u2019s “pacification” campaign, France actively encouraged colonisation of Algeria by its own population. In a statement before the National Assembly in 1840 Bugeaud said: \u2018Wherever there is fresh water and fertile land, there one must locate colons [settlers], without concerning oneself to whom those lands belong<\/em>\u2019. (This is exactly the approach the Zionists were to apply in Palestine, a century later). By 1841, the number of such colons\/settlers already totalled 37,374, in comparison with approximately 3 million\u00a0indig\u00e8nes<\/em>\u00a0(native peoples) (Horne 2006). By 1926, the number of settlers had reached some 833,000, 15% of the population, and it increased to just under 1 million by 1954.<\/p>\n Colonisation involved the expropriation of the basic factor of production, land, from the indigenous peasantry and its redistribution to the settlers, destroying the foundation of the peasant subsistence economy (Lacheraf 1965). The rural masses fought the encroachment of the colonial army until 1884, but the core of the Algerian rural resistance to colonialism was smashed in 1871, when the big politico-agrarian revolt that had spread over three-quarters of the country was finally crushed. This historic peasant uprising was a reaction to a series of disastrous confiscatory measures during the 1860s that outraged the majority of rural Algerians and led them to fear for their lives and livelihoods. Their situation was made worse by drought, harvest failures, famine, locust invasions and disease, which resulted in the deaths of more than 500,000 victims (around one-fifth of the population). In the period between 1830 and 1870 it is estimated that several million Algerians died (Bennoune 1988, Davis 2007 and Lacheraf 1965).<\/p>\n The Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin has described how the Algerian rural population transformed the colonial conquest into a protracted and devastating war:<\/p>\n \u2018The collapse of the regency government and the war of extermination undertaken by the French army gave this early period (1830\u20131884) certain special characteristics, which are not found elsewhere \u2026 faced with military power, the urban ruling class was thrown into thorough disarray and could think of no other alternative but flight \u2026 as for the peasants, flight was out of the question. Faced with the threat of extermination, they turned the Algerian countryside into the terrain for a fifty-year war which claimed millions of victims.<\/em>\u2019 (Amin 1970)<\/p>\n French colonial rule in Algeria lasted for 132 years (in comparison to 75 years of colonial rule in Tunisia and 44 in Morocco), having a duration and a depth that was unique in the experiences of colonialism in both Africa and the Arab world. In 1881, Algeria was administered for the first time as an integral part of France. With this extension of civilian rule to the country came the application of second-class status to Algeria\u2019s Muslim population. The exclusion of Muslims was reflected at all levels of political representation, anti-Muslim discrimination was built into the electoral system, and the inferior status of Muslims was inscribed in law under the loathsome\u00a0Code de l\u2019Indig\u00e9nat<\/em>\u00a0of 1881 (McDougall 2006).<\/p>\n After the French success in violently suppressing Algeria\u2019s anti-colonial rebellions, the last of which took place in the 1870s and 1880s, over half a century was to pass before the Algerian resistance movement once again took up the fight, in the shape of Algerian nationalism in its modern form.<\/p>\n 8 May 1945: \u2018Victory in Europe Day\u2019 and massacres in Algeria<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u2018It was at Setif<\/em>\u00a0that my sense of humanity was affronted for the first time by the most atrocious sights. I was sixteen years old. The shock which I felt at the pitiless butchery that caused the deaths of thousands of Muslims, I have never forgotten. From that moment, my nationalism took definite form.<\/em>\u2019\u00a0<\/em>Kateb Yacine, Algerian writer and poet (quoted in Horne, 2006).<\/p>\n On 8 May 1945 there were joyful celebrations across Europe as news spread of the Nazi capitulation. France rejoiced at being delivered from a five-year occupation. At precisely the same time, events in Algeria began that would lead to the colonial massacre of thousands of Algerian Muslims over the next two months.<\/p>\n On Victory in Europe Day, while Europeans celebrated, Algerians marched in Setif for independence and an end to colonisation, deploying banners bearing slogans such as \u2018For the Liberation of the People, Long Live Free and Independent Algeria!\u2019 They also brandished for the first time what would later become the flag of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) liberation movement. The French colonial authorities violently repressed the march, triggering a rebellion that led to the murder of 103 Europeans.<\/p>\n