Regroupment camps interned over a million Algerian villagers in squalid conditions

Evidence

By July 1959 over one million Muslim villagers had been transferred to “re-groupment camps”, which varied from resembling the fortified villages of the Middle Ages to the concentration camps of a more recent past. In the latter conditions were nothing short of scandalous. Hunger first, and cold secondly, were the enemies. At one camp just outside Constantine, inmates were found eating grass in the field, and in the overcrowded, tented encampments for nomads of the south infants were often found dead of cold in the mornings. Tuberculosis and other ailments of malnutrition raged. Of one regrouped Kabyle village, designed for 3,000 but now holding 15,000, Jules Roy wrote: “As for leaving—at the gates of the village there is a garrison, barbed wire, an armed sentry, and trenches. And where is there to go? The land has been burned. A few onions are sprouting at the bottom of the wadis.” — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1021

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on earlier chapters’ treatment of regroupment; the fish/water metaphor itself is a recurring conceptual thread. — connects to: Regroupment camps produced physiological deterioration severe enough to defeat medication; Algerian women regrouped in camps turned displacement into revolutionary political organization; Regroupment camps held a million Algerians in dead-of-cold, starvation conditions. (+5 more)

Related

• Regroupment camps held a million Algerians in dead-of-cold, starvation conditions. (similarity 0.96)
• The regroupment policy displaced over a million Algerian villagers into camps with scandalous conditions. (similarity 0.95)
• French regroupement policy relocated over a million Algerian peasants into guarded camps. (similarity 0.93)
• French regroupment camps caused severe physiological deterioration among Algerians (similarity 0.91)
• Regroupment camps produced physiological deterioration severe enough to defeat medication (similarity 0.89)
• France regrouped a million Algerians to sever the army from the people (similarity 0.83)
• Regroupment camps won militarily but drove Algerians into F.L.N. ranks (similarity 0.81)
• Regrouped Algerians deteriorated physiologically to the point that medication stopped working. (similarity 0.81)
• Regroupement bred resistance even as it hampered the A.L.N. militarily. (similarity 0.79)
• Resettlement camps won ground militarily but created enduring political grievance for the F.L.N. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• France regrouped a million Algerians to sever the army from the people #expands (0.85) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 99
• Forced evacuation of mechtas restructured Algerian perceptual and social reality #expands (0.80) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 388