The Battle of Algiers

I recently watched the movie “The Battle of Algiers” after seeing it mentioned frequently on COIN reading lists and the like. The movie offers many insights into insurgencies and is worth watching. The DVD also contains interviews with many of the insurgents and a discussion of insurgency and revolutionary tactics with a SF operator and a State Department counter terrorism expert. If you watch the movie, it is important to take advantage of the extra interviews.

It is important to watch the movie in the context of international affairs. At the time of the uprising in Algeria, the French were reeling from their defeat in Indochina/Vietnam. Having lost to one insurgency, they seem resolved to prevent a similar fate in Algeria. History, however, was not in their favor.

The most significant lesson to take away form this movie is the importance of politics in an insurgency. Clausewitz is famous for his claim that warfare is but the continuation of politics by different means, and often people turn to war, specifically insurgent type warfare, when they have no political means through which to address their problems. Such was the case in Algeria.

Algeria was part of French territory and had contributed soldiers to both world wars. However, there were vast differences in the quality of life for Europeans and Muslims in Algiers. Interviews on the DVD compare it to an apartheid of sorts. This native Algerians, being considered French citizens but treated as second class at best, has few political rights, contributing to their reliance on revolutionary tactics.

The tactics used by the French are heinous and brutal at best and the movie depicts the torture the used to gain information and decimate the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) cells. These techniques, in the short term were effective and allowed the French to decimate the movement within the city of Casbah. Ultimately, however, the French lost the war. One FLN leader describes the French torture techniques as “a stroke of luck.” The torture allowed the resistance leaders to further demonize the French occupiers and sway public opinion to their side.

The French tactics, utilizing police work, intelligence and interrogations through torture, were a success in exterminating the insurgents in Casbah. But the French committed a fatal mistake: they failed to consider or solve for the reason behind the insurgent movement. Alternatively stated, the French addressed the problem militarily but not politically. Without solving for the political problems that were driving the insurgency, the French could not win.

The movie and interviews also touch on several other important points: One of the key FLN leaders, Ali la Pointe, originally became involved with the FLN while in jail, where he came to know and identify with others involved in the insurgency. The lack of French forethought when housing and compartmentalizing prisoners assisted the FLN in their recruitment attempts.

The FLN was deliberate in their use of terrorism early in the campaign to provoke retribution from the French police. The French reactionary methods, further alienated the Muslim population and caused many to identify with or join the resistance movement out of revenge. Had the French better restrained their response and isolated the parties responsible for the terrorism, they may well have prevented the growth of the FLN.

An tnterview after the movie note that the resistance movement had started in rural Algeria in the previous years and that the attacks occurring in the rural areas had little military value. Their only significance was that they continued in the face of the French inability to halt the movement. This is indicative of a key aspect of insurgency: the longer the insurgent group is able to exist and commit acts to prove their existence, the more likely they are to succeed. Their actions may grant them little in tactical value, but one must not discard political and psychological value. As an insurgency proves its staying power, the people have more faith in its success and are more likely to lend aid or join the movement, allowing the insurgency to grow in strength and lethality. If the insurgents foe is lacking in long term political will, as democracies usually are, the insurgents have the hope that the longer they exist, the more likely their enemy is to withdraw.

You should watch the movie!