The Battle of Algiers & the struggle in Africa
By G. Dunkel
The film "The Battle of Algiers" vividly
captures the political and human drama of Algeria's struggle to
end 130 years of French colonialism. Although it was shot in
1965, it has been re-released with new subtitles and is
currently playing to sold-out theaters in selected U.S. cities.
It should be available on DVD soon.
Gillo Pontecorvo, the director, fought the Nazis as a member
of the Italian resistance and was a member of the Italian
Communist Party for a while. Saadi Yacef, the leader of the
National Liberation Front (FLN) during the battle of Algiers,
wrote the book on which the film is based, produced it and
plays himself (El-hadi Jafaar).
What shines through in so many of the scenes is the interest
and participation of the people of Algiers, who had lived
through the battle. "In 1965," when this film was shot, Yacef
said, "the wound was still bleeding." And the wound went deep:
According to Algerian historians, over a million Algerians died
in the struggle.
In the last scene, which takes place two years after the
French have crushed the NLF's organization in Algiers, the
people show where their hearts are and where their allegiance
lies. They come out into the streets in mass, aggressively
confronting the French tanks, waving thousands of Algerian
flags--made overnight with no tipoff to the French and their
informers.
The enthusiasm and verve of the performances make it clear
that the actors were reprising roles that they had previously
played in real life.
The grand demonstrations made it clear that while the French
might have won the campaign, they had lost the political
struggle. The Algerians were letting the world know that.
The Algerians' political methods and motives are presented
so clearly in the film. How they responded to the French
military, organized themselves, their bravery, self-sacrifice
and determination are shown so graphically that revolutionaries
from the Black Panthers to the Irish Republican Army, the
Palestinians to South America have reportedly studied the
film.
Not only revolutionaries have studied it. Last summer, the
Pentagon's Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict office
sent out an e-mail for a private screening: "How to win a
battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children
shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in
cafés. 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 Pentagon planners obviously were looking for insights,
useful for the campaign the United States is currently waging
in Iraq.
The United States is not alone in this. According to the
Irish Times (Jan. 17), the British Army in the Six Counties of
northern Ireland also studied the film for tips on confronting
the Irish Republican Army as that struggle developed.
Since the film concentrates on Algiers--very important but
just a small part of a bit country--it leaves the impression
that it was the change in public opinion in France and
throughout the world that led to the signing of the Evian
Accords on March 18, 1962.
The "Atlas de la Guerre d'Algérie" (Paris, 2003)
points out that the FLN, using donations of heavy military
equipment from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, had been
able to build a powerful, modern army in Tunisia and Morocco,
Algeria's neighbors. The military threat to the French Army was
growing, especially since it was tied down by low-intensity
guerrilla warfare throughout a vast country.
Role of the French Communist Party
In the film, the French paratrooper commander--Col. Carol
Mathieu, played by Jean Martin, the only professional actor in
the cast--asserts at a news conference that L'Humanité,
the newspaper of the French Communist Party (PCF), supports the
presence of his paratroopers in Algiers.
Mathieu does not really misrepresent the PCF's position. On
a national, official level the PCF opposed the French Army's
oppression and violations of human rights in Algeria. But it
did not support Algerian independence.
PCF militants and members often had close political
relations with the FLN, and took great risks, and some
casualties, in supporting them. Maurice Audin, a member of the
PCF and a mathematics teacher in Algeria, was tortured to death
by the army, which was trying to extract information about his
connection to the FLN. Another member of the PCF was
guillotined.
Scores of PCF members went to jail because they resisted the
draft. Others set up safe houses, raised money and agitated in
support of the FLN and a free and independent Algeria.
On Oct. 17, 1961, the FLN led a demonstration. Although
French troops were starting to withdraw from Algeria, French
colonialism was still trying to hang onto the oil-rich section
of Algeria in the Sahara desert.
The demonstration was called to protest a curfew imposed on
Algerians living in Paris. Small contingents of young members
of the PCF marched with their Algerian comrades, but the march
was overwhelmingly Algerian, with whole families coming
out.
Maurice Papon, the prefect of the Paris region--equivalent
to a governor in the United States--was in charge. He was later
convicted of crimes against humanity for his role in shipping
Jews to Auschwitz during the German occupation. On Oct. 17, the
cops attacked the demonstration, beat hundreds of
demonstrators, shot some, and threw them, dead or alive, into
the Seine River. Demonstrators either drowned or died from the
beatings.
Out of 35,000 demonstrators, 15,000 were arrested. Police
beat some of them to death in the detention centers.
The cops, in their subsequent cover-up, ignored reports of
bodies pulled from the Seine for months. For more details see
the French web site: http://17octobre1961 .free.fr/.
Three months later, on Feb. 8, 1962, the French Communist
Party called for a mass demonstration under the slogan "Peace
in Algeria and no to the OAS." The OAS--Secret Army
Organization--in the words of the PCF "was hostile to any peace
and any kind of independence for the Algerian people, and had
launched a terrorist campaign in Paris beginning in early
1961."
At the Charonne subway stop, the cops, still under orders
from Papon, attacked and beat eight demonstrators to death in a
battle that left blood dripping from the station's ceiling.
Outrage was so great that hundreds of thousands took to the
streets in a general strike a few days later. That sealed the
defeat of French imperialism and made holding onto Algerian oil
impossible.
But Charonne also displaced the memory of Oct. 17. Only a
long, stubborn struggle on the part of some French and Algerian
progressives in the 1990s brought those memories back
alive.
Impact of the Algerian Revolution
Even before Algeria won its independence, the FLN's National
Liberation Army, the ALN, was training cadres from the South
African and Angolan liberation struggles at bases in Morocco
and Tunisia. Nelson Mandela was one of the top African National
Congress leaders trained in Algeria. A few years later the ALN
was training cadres from Mozambique's FRELIMO, in both Algeria
and Tanzania.
The ANC's obituary for Johnstone Makatini, who was popularly
called Johnny and represented the ANC at the United Nations for
many years, captures the flavor of the times and the ferment
that was brewing in the FLN camps in Morocco and later in
Algiers. 1962, Johnny was among the first group of volunteers
from Natal to be sent out of the country for military training.
...
"In Morocco he worked and struck a close friendship with
leaders of liberation movements from the then Portuguese
colonies, among them Marcelino Dos Santos of Mozambique, Dr.
Agostinho Neto of Angola and Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau.
In 1963, Algeria became independent. ... Algeria, which hosted
many liberation movements, mainly from Africa and including the
Palestine Liberation Organization, was a beehive of political
activity involving solidarity support for the liberation
struggle."
The prestige of Algeria was so high and its support among
the more progressive countries in sub-Saharan Africa was so
strong that when the Organization of African Unity was formed
in 1963 it was naturally a Pan-African organization, which
considered the Sahara as a bridge rather than a barrier.
The strength and passion revealed in this film explains why
the Algerian Revolution, which is still unfinished, had such an
impact on the continent of Africa, and indeed, the world.
It is worth seeing the new version of the "Battle of
Algiers" even if you have seen it before because it is a very
powerful film.
Reprinted from the Feb. 12, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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