TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/50s/50alger

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 9KB | 174 lines

                n                                                              The Algerian Revolution


  [France's colonial possessions in North Africa proved even
more resistant to reasonable solution than Indochina. The
repercussions of that defeat, along with the tide of nationalism
flooding from Egypt, led to violent rebellion in Morocco,
Tunisia and Algeria, starting in 1954. Hundreds were killed in
vicious guerrilla fighting and terrorism. Tunisia and Morocco
gained independence in 1956, but Algeria's situation was
complicated by the presence of 1,000,000 white Frenchmen who
considered the territory both home and part of France. They
violently resisted any effort to deal fairly with the Muslim
majority.In May 1958, fearing that Paris about to sell them out
and turn the country over to the Muslim rebels, French officers
in Algeria launched an insurrection, while another French
officer, in retirement in France, waited to make his move.]

(May 26, 1958)

  As in Roman days, the revolt to bring down the regime began
with the general's taking power in the provinces, and waiting
for the capital to fall of its own weakness.

  Insurrection broke out first in Algiers when 30,000 French
colons, fearful that the new French government might abandon
Algeria, rioted in the streets, sacked the Government Building,
and were calmed only when Paratroop General Jacques Massu
announced that he had taken power in Algiers in defiance of
Paris. That left it up to Paris; to the National Assembly to
capitulate or fight back; to the mobs in the street to enlist
for or against the battered, precarious Fourth Republic.

  In the Paris streets loud-speakers rasped out the orders of
tough Maurice Papon recently brought from Algeria to become
police prefect of Paris: "Use your clubs! Use your clubs!" His
men complied. In the Place de la Concorde a mob of 6,000
right-wingers led by burly ex-Poujadist Jean-Marie Le
Pen--sporting the tricolor sash of a Deputy and the green beret
of his old paratroop regiment--came face to face with
rifle-toting police drawn up in columns four deep. For a time
the mob hesitated. Then, with cries of "Algeria is French!" and
"Throw the Deputies into the Seine!," the rightists made a wild
rush for the Concorde bridge leading to the National Assembly.
In minutes, they reeled back in flight, blinded by gas grenades,
battered by rifle butts, clubs and fists.

  The thwacking of Papon's night sticks and the defiance of the
Algerian generals could not be heard in the sleepy (pop. 365),
village of Colombey-ies-Deux-Eglises, 150 miles southeast of
Paris. But these were expectant sounds that reverberated in the
imagination of Colombey's first citizen, a towering man of 67
with an equine face and the stiff, awkward movements of a French
career soldier. And they were sounds that drove him at least to
pick up the telephone, and instrument he dislikes, and summon
an aide from Paris to receive a typically laconic statement:
"For twelve years France, at grips with problems too harsh for
the regime of political parties, has pursued a disastrous
course...Today, in the face of the troubles that again engulf
the country, it should be known that I am ready to take over the
powers of the republic."

  He had always made his terms clear. The idol of France at one
of the crises in its life, he had served an ultimatum upon his
countrymen: if they wanted him to take part again in the game
of French politics they must change the rules. Specifically they
must turn their backs on France's prewar system of parliamentary
supremacy and accept a chief executive empowered to make policy
without constant interference from the National Assembly. When
after World War II, a majority of Frenchmen opted for the old
rules De Gaulle retired to the sidelines and sat there for a
decade, croaking, like Cassandra, of impending disaster. Last
week his prophecies, like Cassandra's, were being borne out, and
the kind of our for which he was created was abut to strike once
again. For De Gaulle, as Historian Herbert Luethy noted, is
essentially a "politician of catastrophe," as it was catastrophe
that stalked France last week.


  [De Gaulle won over both the insurrectionists in Algeria and
the legislators of the moribund Fourth Republic.]

(June 9, 1958)

  As the hour hand of the clock high on the wall of the
National Assembly crept past 3, the hour of final reckoning
arrived for the Fourth Republic. In hushed silence the Deputies
watched General Charles de Gaulle in a single-breasted grey suit
stride to the podium, heard him proclaim in less than seven
minutes the terms on which he had accepted the summons to power.

  Then, by the unimpressive vote of 329 to 224, De Gaulle got
his way. Less than 18 years after the defeated Third Republic
voted itself out of existence in the Casino at Vichy, the
parliamentary government of France was again declaring itself
bankrupt. But this time France's Parliament was capitulating not
to foreign conquest, but to internal dissatisfaction. But this
time the man to whom France had turned was a symbol not of
defeat but of desperate hope.

  The illnesses that De Gaulle would have to treat were many
and grave. Above all there remained Algeria. De Gaulle's
high-flown rhetoric about Algeria had at one and the same time
encouraged both the right-wing French "ultras" in Algeria and
Arab leaders like Tunisian Premier Habib Bourguiba. Now it would
have to be translated into plans and actions. De Gaulle's
promised trip to Algeria would probably do more to reassure the
500,000 French troops there, who in De Gaulle's words had been
"scandalized by the absence of true authority," than it would
please the ultras, who may find his proposed solution for
Algeria less to their taste than they anticipated.


  [After his overwhelming victory in the October referendum on
his proposed constitutional reforms, De Gaulle traveled to
Algeria to offer reassurance--without, however, disclosing his
ultimate plans for the province.]

(October 13, 1958)

  On both sides of the broad Algerian boulevard stood columns
of red-bereted French paratroopers. Tommy guns slung across
their chests. Inside the square 15,000 Algerians--Moslem and
European--gazed expectantly at the towering figure on the
distant rostrum. They had come to hear General Charles de Gaulle
abandon his Delphic evasion and spell out his plans for
stanching the wounds of France and Algeria.

  "Last Sunday," boomed the deep voice from the rostrum,
"3,500,000 men and women of Algeria, without distinction of
community and in complete equality, gave France and myself their
vote of confidence...This fact is fundamental because it pledges
Algeria and France one to the other, mutually and forever."

  This ringing statement seemed to suggest that France would
never consent to independence for Algeria, and Constantine's
European settlers were cheered. But not for long. In fact,
within a few minutes, the leaders of Constantine's right-wing
Committee of Public Safety--seated not on the rostrum but in a
stand near by--stomped out angrily. They might have helped bring
De Gaulle to power, but the triumphant Premier no longer needed
them.

  The general still did not commit himself on Algeria's
ultimate political status: "I believe it would be completely
useless to petrify in advance in words something which our
enterprise itself will outline," he said. But he made it
abundantly clear that the day of European privilege in Algeria
was ending. "In two months," he said, "Algeria will elect her
representatives under the same conditions as Metropolitan
France. It will be necessary that at least two-thirds of her
representatives be Moslem citizens."

  De Gaulle outlined, too, an ambitious five-year plan to raise
Algeria's Moslems to something like economic equality with
Frenchmen. But this would require peace. "Therefore, turning to
those who are prolonging a fratricidal conflict, I say: Stop
this absurd fighting, and you will see at once a new blossoming
of hope all over the land of Algeria. You will see the prisons
emptying; you will see the opening up of a future great enough
to embrace everybody."

  His speech ended. De Gaulle solemnly began to intone the
Marrseillaise. Sullenly, the majority of his audience kept
silent. In lonely splendor the general carried on, his firm
voice ringing out over the loudspeaker.


  [But after four more years of bloody guerrilla warfare, and
a full-scale revolt by army officers in Algeria and France, De
Gaulle negotiated independence for the Muslims, and the bitter
French Algerians were uprooted back to France.]