The Algerian independence movement is said to have started during the last days of World War II. This places the movement and the ensuing years of independent Algeria under the shadow of the Cold War. By looking at the domestic issues of the United States, France and other countries, one can hope to gain understanding concerning these country’s paths concerning their respective foreign policy in regards to Algerian independence.
As early as 1948 the primary Algerian independence organization, the MTLD formulated a strategy for winning independence from France. As historian Matthew Connelly reveals in his piece, Hocine Ait Ahmend, who was put in charge of creating the strategy, put a focus on the international stage. “He analyzed both earlier [Algerian] rebellions against the French and examples from abroad-the 1916 Easter uprising in Ireland, the Yugoslavian resistance, Mao’s Long March, and Indochina- while incorporating insights from Carl von Clauewitz, Ernst Junger and B. H. Liddell Hart(Connelly, 222).”
Algerians faced several key problems that blocked their independence. Unlike virtually any other European colony, Algeria had been incorporated into the Metropolitan France for the previous century. Furthermore, Algeria’s population had been severely dislocated and impoverished during France’s rule. This severely hampered the efforts of the Algerian independence movements, as they would have to unify and mobilize the Algerian population before independence could be achieved. The FLN would emerge from the failed legacy of the MTLD and soon would become the internationally recognized voice of Algerian Independence. The consequences of this would be felt for decades to come. Another major factor hurting the independence movements was Algeria’s barren terrain. This made troop movements visible to airborne units. This was used by the French to attack Algerian fighters with devastating results.
One of the main reasons that the Algerians believed that they could not achieve a military victory alone was the strength of the French settler population, or pied noirs. They derived their political strength over their voting power in the French Assembly, where they often were able to cast the deciding vote concerning important issues, giving them effective veto power over decisions made by the French government. For these reasons, Ahmed believed nothing short of “ une grande for a truly revolutionary war, relating finances, logistics, morale, propaganda and foreign policy..(Connelly, 223)”would be necessary for victory.
Ahmed fundamentally believed that Algerian Independence could never be achieved without internationalizing the conflict. By internationalizing the conflict, and by utilizing both the world’s media and the United Nations General Assembly to raise awareness and international support for the Algerian cause. The Algerians would also use foreign emissaries to gain support. By placing Algeria in the international context, he set out to create a foreign policy of national liberation which could be used as a model for other oppressed people all over the globe.
By using the media and the General Assembly, the Algerians hoped to gain support within the domestic constituencies of as many countries as possible, especially the United States and France itself. The United States was itself founded on dislodging European control in a foreign land and France had both a large immigrant North African population as well as a population that was still recovering from the horrors of World War II; “The generation that controlled the political system of the Fourth Republic was largely composed of veterans of the Résistance. These veterans, along with the rest of France, had experienced first hand, the evil involved in counterinsurgency war under the Nazi occupation.(Merom, 111)” As public awareness of the conflict increased, it would be these same officers who would be resisting the French military policies from within its own ranks.
The French too looked for international support for their cause. As author Gil Merom points out, "Algeria was a part of sovereign France, and therefore the war could be convincingly portrayed as involving core national security interests. Furthermore, the war could be framed in the larger context of the Cold War, and thus be presented as a part of the effort to defend the free world from "the Communist threat." Finally, FLN savagery provided a moral justification of the war and the rest to "extreme" measures. For the last two reasons, France could also present the war not only as a matter of national security, but also as embodying a struggle between the forces of light against those of darkness."(Merom, 121)
In his volume The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, journalist Robert Fisk points out that the French didn’t only believe that they were fighting the Communist enemy. They also believed that they were fighting “middle eastern Islamic fanaticism” and this appeared in their claims for US support. Equally importantly, Ahmed was well-aware of the Soviet- Western rivalry as well as Sino-Soviet rivalry and the less then unified front that the West presented. His plan was to manipulate every Cold War rivalry in a way that Algerians would benefit. This strategy would shape the Algerian independence movements’ foreign policy as well as the foreign policy of the new republic. The various events and conflicts of the Cold War would play an important role in setting the context and international climate in which the French and Algerian forces would put forth their pleas for help.
During this period, Algeria looked to its neighbors for moral as well as economic and military aide. To a certain degree, Morocco and Tunisia owed a debt to Algeria because it was only when nationalistic fervor and independence started to become an issue in Algeria did France finally grant Algeria’s two neighbors complete independence in 1956. This fact, combined with the popular support and solidarity that existed for Algerian independence in the Maghreb made it next to impossible for the governments to oppose the Algerian independence movement.
One of the most vocal supporters of Algerian independence was the Egyptian leader Abdel Nasser. Shortly after seizing power in 1954, Nasser would make himself among the most vocal supporters of decolonization, Arab-Unity, and the non-aligned movement. Despite his strong rhetoric, he and the FLN had shaky relations. In fact, prior to the Suez Crisis, Nasser and France nearly came to an agreement over Egyptian support for the FLN and the French support for Israel. This ended up falling through however, and after France’s attack in 1956, Nasser redoubled his efforts in supporting the Algerians
One item that was historically a source of conflict between the countries was the historically undefined and porous borders. Tunisia brought itself into direct conflict with the French over the use of Tunisia as a staging ground for FLN attacks against French forces. Despite This continue to stir tensions between Algeria and itsTunisia after Algerian independence
In 1954, French troops faced a devastating defeat in Dien Bien Phu which forced them to withdraw from Indochina. The French would take the lessons learned from this loss and were determined not to repeat them in Algeria. Starting in 1945, the United States had started to send economic support and military support for the French forces fighting in Indochina. After the French withdrawal, the United States slowly took over combat operations.
1954 also marked the year that both the CIA and Great Britain’s MI6 sponsored Operation Ajax which removed the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq of Iran. Mossadeq, a secular nationalist, had started the process of nationalizing Iran’s foreign-controlled oil industry. The reinstatement of the Shah meant that the control of the oil would remain in the hands of British companies, and that Iran would maintain a strongly pro-Western country. The United States used this as a model for similar interventions conducted primarily in Latin America, but extending world-wide.
The events that were to transpire within France would have a critical factor in deciding the outcome of the war.
The events finally leading up to Algeria’s independence taught the country’s leaders some very important lessons
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the United States was faced a constantly expanding and vocal opposition to its United States foreign policy. Much of this criticism came from the anti-Vietnam war movements along with the Civil Rights movements. These groups, drawing on many of the same influences as the Algerians, saw a direct correlation between US policies abroad with US policy at home. They didn’t think that their struggles fighting racial oppression against African Americans all over the United States was very different then the ever-more apparent racial oppression of the Arabs in Algeria. The fact that Algeria was an African country also served to create links between the African American and Algerian communities.
Founded in 1963, The Black Panther Party of Oakland California was a radical organization that sought to oppose the violence carried out against African Americans. The Panthers along with the FLN two organizations read much of the same literature and had similar ideological world-views. Both were proponents of African Unity, decolonization, and their ideology both derived from the likes of France Fanon, Karl Marx, Mao and Che Guevera Similarly to the FLN, they believed that using violence was sometimes necessary for self-defense and self-preservation. For this reason, these two organizations maintained good relations. Panther co-founder Elridge Cleaver even fled to Algeria when he felt his life was threatened by the United States government.
Another figure in the Civil Rights Movement, Malcolm X was a proponent of in his words “Global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor”. This is significant because of their advocacy of armed revolution against the US government, and because of the perceived threat the US government believed that they posed. America’s most famous Civil Rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King while believing in non-violence, was also deeply opposed to US-Foreign policy. In one speech, he called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and actively supported opposition to racist regimes world wide.
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