Unwinnable War
The Algerian Problem. By Edward Behr. (Hod- der and Stoughton, 21s., and Penguin, 3s. 6d.)
THE war in Algeria enters its eighth year this week. Probably' this will be the last year of the conflict in its present form. The French have come close to victory in the field, but urban terrorism persists and is now practised by Euro- peans as well as Moslems; full-scale racial war seems nearer today than ever before. The FLN has won a political triumph: before long its leaders will be ruling most of an independent Algeria. But since in the big cities the Europeans are as numerous, better armed and more des- perate than the Moslems, it is pretty certain that only General de Gaulle (if anyone) could install the FLN in Algiers and Oran.
The background to the conflict has now been described in an admirable book by the North African correspondent of Time, Mr. Edward Behr, who takes the story up to the generals' revolt of April and the Evian negotiations last summer. The author,expects to be 'charged with the reporter's habitual failings: partiality, over- simplification and superficiality'; only partisans would make such allegations. For Mr. Behr has been quite remarkably successful in explaining this immensely complex subject and doing justice to the claims and charges of both sides.
There are inevitably some small faults (a muddle about dates on p. 85, three wrong Christian names on p. 130 alone). There are one or two questionable statements (like the sugges- tion that General de Gaulle deplored the con- duct of his representatives at Melun in June, 1960), and regrettable omissions (few of the Moslem deputies have remained the puppets they
seemed when elected in 1958). There are ex- cellent photographs, but neither source refer- ences nor, deplorably, an index. But these are minor criticisms of a book which hits the right nails on the head time after time: the nine- teenth-century' antecedents .of the French Army's conduct both good and bad; the crucial influence on the FLN leaders of the brutal 1945 repression and of the rigged 1948 elections; the way in which weak French governments were frustrated and sabotaged overseas by their local sub- ordinates; the alarming French capacity for wishful thinking and their neurotic suspicion of foreign intentions; the success of de Gaulle in educating his own people despite the damage done by his 'tactics, his cautious timing, his pas- sion for secrecy'; and many more.
The author swallows the propaganda of neither side; his judgments are always sensible, informed and fair. He is as aware of the reforms introduced since the war as of previous French neglect. He is severe about the political follies of the European minority, yet he understands that their 'panic-stricken reflexes to anything that smacks of change result from memories of an earlier exodus and a previous struggle to acquire status, a living and a new nationality.' He sympathises with the demand for political independence, yet he shows that 'should any- thing occur which would compromise Franco- Algerian relations, the country will almost cer- tainly be plunged into the kind of desperate poverty and chaos from which it will be unlikely ever to recover.'
And here lies the book's one weakness. An optimist, Mr. Behr asserts that 'FLN and French views on the future of Algeria's Europeans were reconcilable.' But he may be wrong. On this one point the French Right may have been the realists and the Left the wishful thinkers. As he says, the FLN refusal of any special status or guarantee's to the Europeans, and in particular its attitude to the Jews, make it impossible to reassure even the most liberal Europeans. For paper treaties will not do: the problem (as the author well knows) is to convince the Europeans that they can live under a Moslem regime without fear of discrimination and despoliation.
France has come a long way. She has accepted not only self-determination but the Algerian Republic, not only independence but the in- evitability of FLN rule. She has excluded other Algerian groups from the negotiations. She has given way on the Sahara. Why should the FLN, having by their intransigence won so much for nothing, start making concessions now? Mr. Behr hopes that economic advantage will per- suade them. But whatever else last August's changes in the FLN government may mean, they seem to mark the supremacy of the dedicated young revolutionaries. De Gaulle once said that Algeria would be ruled at best by Houphouet- Boigny, at worst by Sekou Tourd: plainly the latter has won.
With no guarantees, with a European popu- lation organised and willing to fight, with a French government determined to get rid of its albatross, it is hard to see how Algeria can avoid a racial massacre, the expulsion of North African workers from France and 'desperate poverty and chaos.' With this as the frightful alternative, it may no longer be true that 'nobody, in France, really believed in partition other than as a threat'; the lack of realism of the French in the past and of the FLN at the moment of victory may yet conspire to produce in Algeria an outcome which no one has ever wanted and everyone has always repudiated.
PHILIP M WILLIAMS
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