THE ALGERIAN WAR: GUERRILLA WAR AND DECOLONIZATION week 1

• History
• Secondary Education

THE ALGERIAN WAR: GUERRILLA WAR 

AND DECOLONIZATION

A Recap of guerilla warfare

B 1.2 Causes of the Algerian War

C 1.3 Combatants

D Exit ticket

Lesson plan week 1

Definition:

A form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactics, and mobility, to fight a larger and less-mobile traditional military.

• Use of a small attacking, mobile force against a large, unwieldy force
  
• Largely or entirely organized in small units that are dependent on the support of the local population
  
• Focus on avoiding head-on confrontations with enemy armies
  
• Guerrilla tactics are rarely used for anything other than defence

The the victory of Mao’s people’s army over the Chinese Nationalists in 1949

• mobilized his initially meagre resources to conquer and rule the third largest country in the world, using a well-honed model of revolutionary war

• An example of the success of guerrilla movements

against European colonizers can be found in the Algerian War of Independence often referred to simply as the Algerian War

decolonization

The global movement in the second

half of the 20th century toward

independence for territories that had

been ruled as colonies of European

states.The movement was especially

prevalent in South Asia and Africa during

this period. Decolonization could be

accomplished by either peaceful or

violent means.

1.2 Causes of the Algerian War

Long-term causes 

• pattern of colonization
• poverty
• disenfranchisement
  
• resistance

pattern of colonization:

• In the 1830s and 1840s, Algeria had become a French colonial possession. Thousands of European settlers arrived in the area as France increased its control over it

poverty:

• 90% of the wealth of the country lay in the hands of 10% of the population. These economic inequalities were made worsedaily by the high Muslim birth rate

disenfranchisement:

• Successive French governments aimed to assimilate Algeria both administratively and culturally, attempting to make it an integral part of France

resistance:

• Natives resisted the assimilation with guerrilla-style attacks on French troops and European settlers. The combination of the military campaigns and the European settlement (bringing European illnesses) meant that by the 1870s the native population of Algeria was declining
• aggravated Muslim discontent with the colonial regime.
  

The first half of the 20th century

France:

• occupation in the two world wars
• a disastrous victory and a humiliating defeat

• Conflicting ideas

 a desire to recapture the glory, influence

and power of 19th-century France

there was a desire to break with the past and

reject the values and systems that had brought France to the brink of destruction

Short-term causes

''The end of the Second World War can be seen as providing a more immediate cause of the Algerian War''

•  Celebrations marking the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 turned violent when Algerian nationalists staged demonstrations and were in turn confronted by European settlers. This revealed the three sides that would become involved in the Algerian War nine years later: the French government, the pieds noirs and Algerian nationalists

The Union Democratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA)
The Algerian nationalist movement:  sought negotiated equality and autonomy within a French state

the Ulema

The older strand of nationalism: favoured statehood based on traditional Islamic law

Movement for the Triumph of Democratic

Liberties (MTLD)  (after 1945)

combined a reverence for traditional Islam, a left-wing social agenda and complete independence from France

the FLN led by Ahmed Ben Bella

•  from the MTLD and its militant branch the Organisation Spécial (OS) 
• aspirations were fuelled by poor economic conditions for Algerian Arabs, income differentials and the accompanying inaccessibility of land ownership

Outside influences

• Mao’s example: , having taken control China in 1949
• the United States to a standstill in Korea
• The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and their subsequent withdrawal from Indo-China

•  Unlike the Viet Minh, the FLN did not have any particular ideological orientation.
•  While the Viet Minh enjoyed the sponsorship of a major power, China, the FLN had no such aid.
•  While Indo-China was geographically remote from France and thus more difficult to support, Algeria was close.
• French law prohibited the use of conscripts in Indo-China, but there were no such restrictions on the use of French conscripts in Algeria.

 

● Algeria was considered an integral part of Metropolitan France

whereas Indo-China had been a colony. The war in Indo-China,

therefore, was managed by a combination of military, foreign

ofce and colonial ofce ofcials. There were no such bureaucratic

inefciencies in the Algerian War.

 1 November 1954 

FLN conducted a number of coordinated bomb attacks across Algeria

This marks the start of the Algerian War

1.3 Combatants

The FLN

The FLN: military wing the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN)

• organized the country into six military zones – Wilayas
•  military operations, but also recruiting, political indoctrination, taxation, assassinations an intimidation 
• The Central Command of the FLN: Tunisia or Morocco
• 1957 they had roughly 15 000 full-time guerrillas and a further 15 000 to 20 000 part-time guerrillas

The French

• 74 000 soldiers at the start of the war
• Expanded to 400 000 and stayed constant for the duration of the conflict
• legionnaires (French Foreign Legion ) and paratroopers were the core of the fighting strength 
• bulk of the French forces were reservists, conscripts and irregular formations of sympathetic Algerians – harkis
• 15% of it was made up of professional soldiers

Equipment

The FLN (ALN)

•  At the outbreak of the war bombs and grenades

were assembled at various points throughout Algiers and weapons gathered from a variety of sources

• lacked both the funds to purchase weapons
  

on the open market and a national sponsor

• Support from Egypt: mostly small arms -> keeping the size of FLN operations small

The French

• well-equipped modern army
  
•  Small arms were far more standardized than the early days in Indo-China
• The terrain of Algeria allowed for a far more effective use of armour and mechanization
• Tanks, half-tracks, weapons carriers and truck transport
•  helicopter transport
• French airborne forces rode into battle in the belly of troop-carrying helicopters

Exit ticket

Work cited

Smith, David. Causes and Effects of 20th Century Wars. Oxford University Press, 2015.