The FLN targeted native police to cripple French counterinsurgency.

Evidence

His troops also confronted a new and difficult style of warfare. “This is a war of Arabs,” Leclerc complained to Bonaparte. “We have barely passed before the blacks occupy the woods surrounding the road and cut off our communication.” His troops suffered at the hands of “rebels” who “hide themselves in the bushes” and in the “impenetrable woods that surround the valleys.” When they were repelled, they retreated to safety in the hills. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 951 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Each time an insurgent encampment was “destroyed or dispersed” it was “replaced by another, led by the same leaders, striking the same blows against the enemy, nourishing the same hopes.” Sans-Souci was particularly successful, using tried-and-true techniques to stave off French advances, fighting a war without clear fronts, in which small groups set up in advance posts would sometimes hold, and sometimes retreat and draw the soldiers into “murderous ambushes.” The French lost 400 soldiers in one September attack against Sans-Souci. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 1014 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• Weak insurgents can win by attacking native police rather than the army (similarity 0.83)
• French offensives forced insurgents to the mountains but could not defeat them (similarity 0.81)
• Guerrilla warfare made French suppression of the insurgency fail (similarity 0.80)
• French troops faced guerrilla warfare that negated their conventional military advantage. (similarity 0.80)
• Haitian insurgents used bait-and-ambush ruses that repeatedly fooled French troops (similarity 0.79)
• The French army’s NATO-style force was ill-suited to counterinsurgency warfare. (similarity 0.79)
• The army’s ambiguous pacification strategy left it unsuited to counterinsurgency (similarity 0.79)
• French tactical victories could not win a prolonged elusive insurgency (similarity 0.79)
• Guerrilla tactics and psychological deception defeated a French mountain expedition. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• FLN police-targeting strategy incapacitated the French Army and was copied in Iraq #expands (0.85)
• French troops faced guerrilla warfare that negated their conventional military advantage. #corroborates (0.50) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 951
• The French army’s NATO-style force was ill-suited to counterinsurgency warfare. #corroborates (0.40) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 353
• F.L.N. attrition tactics stalled the war in the Aurès and frustrated the French #expands (0.40) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 329
• Guerrilla warfare made French suppression of the insurgency fail #corroborates (0.40) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 1014