A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (70 page)

On the way de Gaulle had had an illuminating private conversation with a remarkable Muslim, Mahdi Belhaddad, a veteran who had lost his right arm at Cassino, currently sub-prefect of a one-horse town on the fringes of the Aurès, the only Muslim to hold such a post. Taking Belhaddad aside, the President had asked him for his views on the exposé of the situation that the local military had just given. Belhaddad began by complaining of the limitations imposed upon his own freedom of action, and at the fact that—after all the administrative reforms of the past years—there was still no other Muslim sub-prefect apart from himself, and that there was no Muslim in Delouvrier’s cabinet. He then offered the opinion that no genuine pacification could be achieved without a cease-fire. Expecting that this would provoke de Gaulle’s wrath, Belhaddad was astonished to hear him reply:

That’s exactly my opinion and I am happy to hear you say it, you whose courage and loyalty are well-known. Yes, the fighting must be halted. There must be peace, it’s indispensable, the people are too unhappy, peace must be brought back. Then the Algerians will freely decide their own fate….

The following day, however, de Gaulle did lose his patience at the headquarters of General Faure, the sporting general carpeted for his rash involvement in the first of the Algiers plots against the Fourth Republic. After Faure had returned once too often to the theme of how greatly military operations would be helped if only de Gaulle would declare decisively for
Algérie française
, de Gaulle had exclaimed: “
Ah, écoutez, Faure, j’en ai assez!
” and broken off the discussion.

Then, at Challe’s headquarters, where the Commander-in-Chief and some hundred generals and staff officers were hoping for maximum approbation on the success of the offensive, the President of the Republic made a top-secret speech, “to be used verbally for the information of officers only”, charged with messages of another kind. On a note of only moderate praise, he began: “What I have heard and seen here in the course of this inspection gives me full satisfaction. I have to say that to you [
je tiens à vous le dire]
. But the problem is not solved.” De Gaulle then listed its three basic ingredients: the predicament of the Algerians, which had become intolerable because France after a hundred and twenty years had not done enough for them; the progressive enfeeblement of France herself; and the present world situation, where France could no longer cock a snook at global opinion. In Algeria, “We shall not have the Algerians with us, if they do not want that themselves…. The era of the European administration of the indigenous peoples has run its course.” In the outside world, “there is an international situation almost entirely and openly against us. This will not change if we seem to have to keep Algeria in the position where it is vis-à-vis ourselves.” After paying tribute to the troops he had just seen in action, de Gaulle concluded with a solemn and direct appeal to the senior officers present:

As for yourselves, mark my words! You are not an army for its own sake. You are the army of France. You only exist through her, for her and in her service. This is your
raison d’être
….

It is I who, in view of my position, must be obeyed by the army in order that France should survive. I am confident of your obedience, and I thank you, gentlemen.

Vive la France!

In his memoirs de Gaulle declares that, “In saying this I was giving my audience an inkling of my intention to recognise Algeria’s right to self-determination,” and he adds that before leaving Challe that day he informed him in private “precisely what I was soon to announce publicly. Challe replied: ‘It’s feasible!’ and assured me that I could count on him whatever happened.” Challe, however, insists that he was left no wiser than any of the hundred other officers present at the earlier briefing, and never once in his whole
tournée des popotes
did de Gaulle actually mention the key-word, “self-determination”, which was to create such a furore a few weeks later.

16 September 1959: “self-determination”

On 16 September, at 8 p.m., de Gaulle spoke to the nation. In Algiers there was an unusual hush as everybody clustered round radio and television sets, sensing that a major pronouncement was to be made. They were not disappointed; it was the longest and most important speech consecrated to the Algerian problem that de Gaulle was ever to make. “Our recovery is proceeding,” he began, but “the difficult, blood-soaked problem of Algeria remains to be settled.” Eschewing all “various over-simplifications” France would solve it “as a great nation should, choosing the only path worthy of being followed. I mean by the free choice of what the Algerians themselves want to do with their future.” In a tone of the utmost solemnity of which he was capable, de Gaulle continued:

Thanks to the progress of pacification, of democracy and of social evolution, we can now look forward to the day when the men and women who live in Algeria will be in a position to decide on their destiny, once and for all, freely, in the full knowledge of what is at stake. Taking into account all these factors, those of the Algerian situation, those inherent in the national and the international situation, I deem it necessary that recourse to self-determination be here and now proclaimed.

In the name of France and of the republic, by virtue of the power granted to me by our constitution to consult its citizens, granted that God let me live and that the people lend me their ear, I commit myself to ask, on the one hand, of the Algerians in their twelve departments, what it is they finally wish to be and, on the other hand, of all Frenchmen to endorse their choice.

The fateful word was now out: “self-determination”. The question, de Gaulle went on to explain,

will be put to the Algerians as individuals. For since the beginning of the world there has never been any true Algerian unity, far less any Algerian sovereignty; the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Syrian Arabs, the Cordoba Arabs, the Turks, the French, have one after the other penetrated the country without there being at any time in any shape or form an Algerian state.

As for the time of the election, I will decide upon it in due course, at the latest four years after the actual restoration of peace, that is to say, once a situation has been established whereby loss of life, be it in ambushes or isolated attempts, will not exceed 200 a year.

The following span of time will be devoted to resuming normal existence, to emptying the prisons and the camps, to allowing for exiles to return, to restoring the free play of individual and public freedom and to enabling the population to be fully aware of what is at stake.

I would like to invite, here and now, observers from all over the world to attend, without let or hindrance, the final culmination of this process….

De Gaulle envisaged that the Algerians, thus consulted, would have but three choices for their “political destiny”:

Either—secession, where some believe independence would be found. France would then leave the Algerians who had expressed their wish to become separated from her. They would organise, without her, the territory in which they live, the resources which they have at their disposal, the government which they desire.

This would, in effect, be the terrible renunciation of grace that Sékou Touré’s Guinée had chosen, alone of the French Commonwealth, in 1958. Then, secondly, there was the option of “out-and-out identification with France, such as is implied in equality of rights…Dunkirk to Tamanrasset”. i.e., the old principle of “integration”. Or, finally:

the government of Algeria by the Algerians, backed up by French help and in close relationship with her, as regards the economy, education, defence, and foreign relations. In that case, the internal regime of Algeria should be of the federal type, so that the various communities— French, Arab, Kabyle, Mozabite—who live together in the country would find guarantees for their own way of life and a framework for co-operation.

De Gaulle regarded the first option, secession, as

incredible and disastrous. Algeria being what it is at the present time, and the world what we know it to be, secession would carry in its wake the most appalling poverty, frightful political chaos, widespread slaughter, and soon after the warlike dictatorship of the Communists.

By the emphasis of his words, there was little doubt that de Gaulle’s own personal choice was the third, that of “association”. To the F.L.N. de Gaulle renewed his year-old offer of the
paix des braves
, adding an assurance of “unhindered return” on the path towards self-determination. At the same time he let it be known that any failure to grasp this new olive branch would rest squarely upon:

the work of a group of ambitious agitators, determined to establish by brute force and terror their totalitarian dictatorship and believing that they will one day obtain from the republic the privilege of discussing with it the fate of Algeria, thus building up these agitators into an Algerian government.

This last statement, coupled to his earlier emphasis that the key question would be “put to the Algerians as individuals”, seemed to convey an assurance that de Gaulle would never negotiate with the F.L.N. as a body, let alone hand over to them the future of the country. But with whom else could he, in the long run, negotiate? The bloody events of the preceding five years, as has already been seen, had gone far in destroying any viable “third force”, or what used to be known as an
interlocuteur valable
. Thus, once again, as in the previous autumn, de Gaulle’s future options were to some extent doomed to remain a prisoner of his own words. In a world of such rapid change it was also unreal to suggest that four whole years would have to elapse between any cease-fire and the referendum deciding, on de Gaulle’s three options. Given the precedent of past bad experiences with French government promises for the future, from Blum—Viollette onwards, it was asking a lot of trust and confidence from the Algerian Muslims of all political hues. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to believe (as does Edward Behr) that “Had such an offer been made in the first three years of the rebellion, it is virtually certain that it would have been immediately accepted by the rebel leaders.” It is also no exaggeration to regard de Gaulle’s “self-determination” speech of 16 September 1959 as one of the most decisive events of the whole war. Here was a true watershed; nothing that went before was any longer relevant, and nothing could be the same again. There could no longer be any convincing prospect of
Algérie française
. The genie was out of the bottle; once the fateful word “self-determination” was spoken, it could never be corked up again. In retrospect this was also, perhaps, the last moment in the war when there was a possibility of a compromise peace by which the
pieds noirs
could have remained in their beloved homeland, one way or another. If nothing else, certainly here was an end to
indetermination
.

First reactions

In metropolitan France de Gaulle’s speech evoked general approbation.
Le Monde
intoned, “De Gaulle has given France back her old prestige as the great liberal nation.” Wherever he referred to his decision, says de Gaulle, “the crowds went wild with enthusiasm”. On 16 October the Assembly passed a vote of confidence by a huge majority; only the extremes of Left and Right remained unpersuaded. But a great new gap now began to open up between metropolitan France on the one hand and the army in Algeria and the
pieds noirs
on the other. Two weeks later Challe wrote a sharp letter to Debré, noting that

One does not propose to soldiers to go and get killed for an imprecise final objective…. This is the difference, moreover, between the mercenary army and the citizens’ army. One can thus only ask of soldiers of the army of Algeria today that they die in order for Algeria to remain French.

At the end of October, says Challe, Delouvrier—whom he had “harassed”—returned from Paris with an assurance from Debré that “we can say both that the government wishes Algeria to remain French and that that is what the army is fighting for”. Although this seems to have been curiously at odds with the message of the “self-determination” speech, Challe was appeased—at least temporarily.

Some of his subordinates, however, immediately placed a much less favourable view on de Gaulle’s intent. At the 1st Para Regiment of the Foreign Legion, encamped next to Challe’s headquarters in the Djurdjura, Captain Sergent told his commanding officer, Colonel Dufour: “For me, the F.L.N. flag is floating over Algiers from now on. Algeria will be independent.” Dufour replied, “You’re much too pessimistic.” But at this moment Sergent says he asked himself, “What was the point any more?…on 16 September 1959 I felt myself the very old citizen of a very old country.” Up on the Morice Line, Jules Roy met a disgruntled captain who declared: “The French intellectuals want peace. We don’t have much faith in the French intellectuals; they give up too easily.” Later the captain added: “I think the army will obey. But I also think you had better not ask me to do anything more for the West.” One senior officer who reacted even more passionately was forty-five-year-old Colonel Jean Gardes, now running the Cinquième Bureau (psychological and political warfare) as a successor to Colonel Godard. On his hearing de Gaulle’s “self-determination” broadcast, Yves Courrière, the author (who was present at the time), records that Gardes “exploded”. There and then “he had made his choice”—and it was not one of the three recommended by President de Gaulle.