It is not a stretch to say that we could learn something from the French. In post-World War II Indochina, the French fought and lost in Vietnam, being routed in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. Then, in the late 1950s, the French fought against Muslim insurgents in Algeria and, even while winning the famous Battle of Algiers, the French then awarded the North African country its independence.
With its bombings of civilians by the Algerian Muslims and the torture of prisoners – sometimes resulting in death – by the French, the conflict there is largely seen as the birthplace of modern Islamic terrorism and the fight against it. History does seem to be repeating itself.
“The Battle for Algiers,” a gritty 1965 film with the feel of a documentary, has been given a new life in the past few years after the Pentagon arranged a screening of the movie in 2003 for its senior officers and civilian advisers.
Now comes biographer and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ted Morgan’s memoir, “My Battle of Algiers,” which recounts, in straightforward and evenhanded terms, his time in Algeria as a French soldier.
Morgan, whose real name is Sanche de Gramont, is a French citizen who grew up in France and the United States. He graduated from Yale and was working as a daily journalist when he was drafted into the French army. Sent to Algeria as a second lieutenant, Morgan spent some time in the countryside fighting against the Muslim Algerian National Liberation Front.
He talks of fighting in the countryside, of how a prisoner died while Morgan was interrogating him.
When the opportunity comes for him to work in the teeming city of Algiers as a reporter for a military propaganda sheet, he jumps at it. It is here that Morgan learns of the torture routinely practiced by the French army, particularly by the so-called paras, or paratroopers.
The torture proved valuable – to a point. Sometimes, but certainly not always, it resulted in information that led the army to enemy leaders or allowed the army to foil plots that were being fomented by NLF. But it was the torture that eventually led to the French army’s downfall in Algeria. Once the French populace learned of the practice, public opinion turned against the military and eventually led to its downfall.
Morgan recounts his time in Algiers, how he came to know the mysterious section known as the Casbah, where the insurgents were able to find shelter in its narrow, twisting alleys and labyrinthine neighborhoods.
He tells of meeting Muslims and so-called “colons,” or people of French descent who had grown up as the ruling class in Algeria. He is interrogated for three long days by French military intelligence agents because he was seen in the company of American diplomats. He was nearly blown to bits when a bomb exploded in a casino as he was heading there for lunch with a friend.
Mainly, though, “My Battle of Algiers” is a cautionary story with relevance for the U.S. involvement in Iraq.
“The insurgents’ methods,” Morgan writes in the preface, “were targeted assassinations and the placement of bombs. … The killing of women and children was a deliberate tactic to create a climate of insecurity in the heart of the carefree capital of a colonized Arab country” and to force French reprisals, which, in turn, would turn more people toward the rebel cause.
Morgan doesn’t see things working out any better in Iraq. After Algeria received independence from the government of Charles de Gaulle in 1962, he writes, “The French never again fought another major colonial war, but the urban terrorism practiced by the rebels has found disciples in Iraq. De Gaulle realized that the Algerian war was unwinnable in that the rebels could never be extinguished. No matter how many battles were won, there would always be more. For the same reason, the war in Iraq, with its porous borders, is unwinnable.”
Staff writer Tom Walker can be reached at 303-820-1624 or twalker@denverpost.com.
My Battle of Algiers
By Ted Morgan
Collins/ Smithsonian, 284 pages, $24.95
