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Torture boomeranged against France in the Algerian war

Properties2
tagsja-picks, contrarian_or_surprising, singleton, xref, category/contrarian-or-surprising
aliases@horne_savage_1977, loc. 1659

4 min read

Torture boomeranged against France in the Algerian war

Evidence

For the rest of the modern world (and not least Southern Africa), the French experience in the Algerian War — a prototype of its kind — continued to offer its compelling lessons, most of them painful, for anyone prepared to heed them. There was the failure of a materially mighty Western power to combat a civil insurrection equipped with little more than ideology, without resort to the means one condemns in one’s enemy; in Algeria, the instrument of torture, as well as being fundamentally wicked in itself, was proved to be a boomerang weapon. There was the failure of the West to comprehend Third World aspirations; and the failure of the moderates everywhere to prevail against the extremist minority on either side; the Gironde is sent packing by the Montagne. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1659 (#expands, via linked claim)

The death of Ben M’hidi left, alive and at liberty, only Belkacem Krim out of the original neuf historiques of the F.L.N. Like an unsightly molehill, it also threw up the whole ugly but hitherto largely subterranean issue of the maltreatment of rebel suspects, of torture and summary executions; or what, in another context and depending upon the point of view, might perhaps be termed “war crimes”, and what in France came simply to be known as la torture. From the Battle of Algiers onwards this was to become a growing canker for France, leaving behind a poison that would linger in the French system long after the war itself had ended. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 580 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The vile hand of torture; of abuse, and counter-abuse. In the Algerian War what led—probably more than any other single factor—to the ultimate defeat of France was the realisation, in France and the world at large, that methods of interrogation were being used that had been condemned under the Nazi Occupation. At the dawn of the new century, the ugly ghosts of torture returned to plague France. In 2001, an eighty-three-year-old former general, Paul Aussaresses, published a book in which he unashamedly, indeed proudly, admitted to having tortured—in a good cause, he claimed. After a trial which gripped France, the aging general got away with a fine of one hundred thousand francs, on a uniquely worded charge “in the name of respect for the victims.” — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 51 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Torture’s contested truth made it a lasting canker for France; Torture destroyed the Muslim third force and turned French opinion against the war; Torture was effective in winning the short-term battle of Algiers — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 608 (+21 more)

Broader Connections

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