The army came to see prisoners only as sources of intelligence

Evidence

But the fact that in the army torture was by no means institutionalised yet seems to be implicit in Servan-Schreiber’s Lieutenant en Algérie (1957), which, highly critical as it is of French army excesses, omits any specific reference to torture as such. By way of explaining the essential atmosphere in which torture could become institutionalised within the French army in Algeria, one needs to take into account all those factors touched upon in the previous chapters: horror at the atrocities of the F.L.N., a determination not to lose yet another campaign, and the generally brutalising effect of so cruel and protracted a war. Noting the growing indifference to the “enemy” as a human being, such a tough para commander as Colonel François Coulet himself admits that the army had come to regard a prisoner as “no longer an Arab peasant” but simply “a source of intelligence”. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 587

Categorization

• XREF: The dehumanization feeding torture echoes themes from the earlier chapters on F.L.N. atrocities and the defeat in Indochina.

Related

• Brutalizing war and fear of losing drove army torture institutionalization (similarity 0.84)
• Army hierarchy institutionalized cover-up of torture and abuses (similarity 0.82)
• Torture became institutionalized in the French army during the Battle of Algiers (similarity 0.81)
• Institutionalized torture corrupts every institution it touches (similarity 0.80)
• Torture more than any single factor caused France’s Algerian defeat (similarity 0.78)
• Torture in Algeria left a lingering poison in the French system (similarity 0.78)
• The Battle of Algiers exposed torture as a lasting poison for France (similarity 0.78)