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🪵 The Threshold

French intelligence planted forged documents that triggered murderous internal purges

Properties2
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@horne_savage_1977, loc. 807

5 min read

French intelligence planted forged documents that triggered murderous internal purges

Evidence

Léger’s coup was a success that more than atoned for such past debacles as Oiseau Bleu, Kobus and even Bellounis. The destruction of the post-Yacef network in Algiers was so complete that, in effect, the Z.A.A. was never to be usefully re-created until the last months of the war. But even more far-reaching were the consequences of the mistrust it had sown in Wilaya 3. By what was more or less a random shot, Léger had struck at the Achilles’ heel of the whole F.L.N.: the mutual distrusts, hatreds and fears of betrayal that, as one now knows, seethed constantly just beneath the surface. Immediately Amirouche, like a Stalin in microcosm, launched the most savage and self-perpetuating series of purges. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 807 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Under mounting French military pressure, a fresh set of rifts had been provoked in the higher echelons of the F.L.N., both between the Wilayas and the “exterior” of the G.P.R.A., and within the various Wilayas themselves. The years of 1958 and 1959 were, above all, a time when the Wilaya leaders were scourged by terrible apprehensions of treachery, or purported treachery. Genuine acts of betrayal had existed, certainly, but they had been used with extreme cunning by French intelligence operatives to demoralise the maquis through playing upon the innate suspiciousness of the Algerian. It has already been noted how teams of bleu double-agents controlled by Captain Christian Léger during the Battle of Algiers had subsequently succeeded in penetrating the Western Zone headquarters of Wilaya 3 (Kabylia), rounding it up in its entirety. Colonel Godard, the expert on counter-revolutionary warfare, followed up the confusion and distrust generated in the wake of this coup by adroitly “dropping” incriminating correspondence with French intelligence among other immaculate leaders in the Wilayas. The bait was snapped up greedily by Amirouche, the jeweller from the Beni-Yenni and the most ruthless of any Wilaya commander, entering into the “game” with unparalleled zest and instituting massive purges like a latter-day Vyshinsky. Under appalling inquisitions supervised by an F.L.N. captain nicknamed “La Torture” who had worked with the S.S. during the Second World War, admissions of treachery were extorted which led to vast chain-reactions of suspicion. Orders were given to arrest all recent Muslim deserters from the French forces, and any recruits who had come from Algiers since the beginning of the battle. A kind of madness seized Amirouche, who is said to have caused the execution of possibly as many as 3,000, women as well as men, in the course of his reign of terror. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 980 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The worst occurred at the end of September, when Chihani allowed his headquarters at Djeurf, deep in the most inaccessible wastes of the Nementchas, to be surrounded by French troops. Refusing to heed the urgings of his aides, Adjoul and Laghrour, to break out of the net, Chihani lost most of his escort and all his arms; and gravest of all, a large quantity of undestroyed documents, including directives from Ben Bella, that were to present the French Deuxième Bureau with its most valuable windfall to date. Chihani himself made a miraculous escape, having been buried for six days underground after the French had dynamited the entrance of the cave in which he was hiding, but his prestige had gone, and Adjoul and Laghrour decided on his execution. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 442 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: French disinformation exploiting Algerian internal mistrust triggered murderous self-purges — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 807; French intelligence triggered self-destructive purges within the F.L.N. Wilayas. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 980; Losing documents to French intelligence triggered Chihani’s execution by his own men — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 442 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

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