Algerian Chronicles
This volume had already been set in type and was about to appear when the events of May 13 occurred.1 After giving some thought to the matter, I decided that it was still worth publishing, indeed, that it was in a way a direct commentary on these events, and that given the current confusion, the positions and possible solutions set forth here deserved more than ever to be heard. Minds in Algeria have changed a lot, and these changes arouse great hopes as well as great fears. But the facts have not changed, and someday these will have to be recognized if we are to achieve the only acceptable future: a future in which France, wholeheartedly embracing its tradition of liberty, does justice to all the communities of Algeria without discrimination in favor of one or another. Today as in the past, my only ambition in publishing this independent account is to contribute as best I can to defining that future.
1. On May 13, 1958, an insurrection of French settlers began in Algeria. Eventually this uprising led to General de Gaulle’s return to power and, much to the dismay of the insurrectionists, ultimate independence for Algeria.
Preface
This book is a selection of articles about Algeria. They cover a period of 20 years, from 1939, when almost no one in France was interested in the country, to 1958, when everyone is talking about it. A single volume would not have been enough to contain these articles as originally written. Repetitions had to be eliminated, overly general commentary had to be compressed, and, above all, facts, figures, and suggestions that might still be useful had to be identified and retained. These texts summarize the position of a man who, having confronted the Algerian plight from the time he was very young, tried in vain to sound the alarm and who, being long aware of France’s responsibility in the matter, could not approve of either a conservative or an oppressive policy. Owing to long familiarity with Algerian realities, however, I also cannot approve of a policy of surrender, which would abandon the Arab people to even greater misery, tear the French people of Algeria from their century-old roots, and do nothing but encourage the new imperialism that threatens the liberty of France and the West, to no one’s benefit.
In the present situation, such a position will satisfy no one, and I know in advance how it will be received by both sides. I am sincerely sorry about this, but I cannot force myself to feel or believe what I do not. By the same token, no one else speaking out on the subject satisfies me either. That is why, finding it impossible to join either of the extreme camps, recognizing the gradual disappearance of the third camp in which it was still possible to keep a cool head, doubtful of my own certitudes and knowledge, and convinced that the true cause of our follies is to be found in the way in which our intellectual and political society habitually operates, I have decided to stop participating in the endless polemics whose only effect has been to make the contending factions in Algeria even more intransigent and to deepen the divisions in a France already poisoned by hatred and factionalism.
There is in fact a peculiar French nastiness, which I do not wish to compound. I am only too well aware of what this nastiness has cost us in the past and continues to cost us now. For the past 20 years, we have so detested our political adversaries that we have been prepared to accept anything else instead, including foreign dictatorship. The French apparently never tire of playing such lethal games. They are, as Custine observed, a singular people, who would rather flaunt their ugliness than be forgotten.
If their country disappeared, however, it would be forgotten, no matter how it had been portrayed, and in an enslaved nation we would no longer have even the freedom to insult one another. Until these truths are recognized, we must resign ourselves to speaking only for ourselves, with all the necessary precautions. And speaking for myself, I must say that the only actions that interest me are those that can prevent, here and now, the pointless shedding of blood, and the only solutions that interest me are those that preserve the future of a world whose woes weigh on me too heavily to allow me to grandstand for the sake of the audience.
I have still other reasons for avoiding these public jousts. In the first place, I lack the assurance necessary to think I have all the answers. On this point, terrorism as practiced in Algeria has greatly influenced my attitude. When the fate of men and women who share one’s own blood is linked directly or indirectly to articles that one writes so effortlessly in the comfort of one’s study, then one has a duty to weigh the pros and cons before taking up one’s pen. For my own part, while I remain sensitive to the risk that, in criticizing the course of the rebellion, I give aid and comfort to the most insolent instigators of the Algerian tragedy, I am also afraid that, by retracing the long history of French errors, I am, with no risk to myself, supplying alibis to the criminal madmen who would toss grenades into crowds of innocent people who happen to be my kin.
Yet when I merely acknowledged this obvious fact in a recent statement, it drew some peculiar commentary. People who are unfamiliar with the situation I describe cannot readily judge it. As for those who are familiar with it yet continue to believe heroically that their brothers should die rather than their principles, I shall confine myself to admiring them from afar. I am not of their breed.
Not that those principles are meaningless. A conflict of ideas is possible, even between armed camps, and it is right to try to understand one’s adversary’s reasoning before defending oneself against him. But the use of terror as a tactic changes the priorities of both sides. When one’s family is in immediate danger of death, one might wish that it were a more generous and just family and even feel obliged to make it so, as this book will attest, and yet (make no mistake!) remain in solidarity against the mortal threat, so that the family might at least survive and therefore preserve its opportunity to become more just.
To my mind, this is what honor and true justice are—or, if not, then nothing I know is of any use in this world.
Only on this basis does one have the right and the duty to say that the armed struggle and repression that the French have undertaken are in some respects unacceptable. The reprisals against the civilian population of Algeria and the use of torture against the rebels are crimes for which we all bear a share of responsibility. That we have been able to do such things is a humiliating reality that we must henceforth face. Meanwhile, we must refuse to justify these methods on any grounds whatsoever, including effectiveness. Once one begins to justify them, even indirectly, no rules or values remain. One cause is as good as another, and pointless warfare, unrestrained by the rule of law, consecrates the triumph of nihilism.
Whether intentionally or not, this takes us back to the law of the jungle, where violence is the only principle. Even those who have heard enough talk of morality must understand that even when it comes to winning wars, it is better to suffer certain injustices than to commit them, and that such actions do us more harm than a hundred enemy guerrillas.
When, for example, these practices are used against those in Algeria who do not hesitate to massacre the innocent or torture or excuse torture, are they not also incalculable errors because they risk justifying the very crimes that we seek to fight? Can a method really be “effective” if its result is to justify the most unjustifiable actions of one’s adversary?
We must therefore confront head-on the most important argument advanced by those who have decided to use torture: it may have cost us something in the way of honor, they say, but it saved lives by leading to the discovery of 30 bombs. But it also created 50 new terrorists, who will employ different tactics in different places and cause the deaths of still more innocents.
Even if dishonorable methods are accepted in the name of realism and effectiveness, they are therefore useless, except to discredit France both at home and abroad. Ultimately, these fine exploits will infallibly lead to the demoralization of France and the abandonment of Algeria. Censorship, which remains stupid whether imposed out of cynicism or shame, will not alter these basic truths. The government’s duty is not to suppress protests against the criminal excesses of repression, even if the protesters are acting in the interest of one side in the conflict. It is rather to suppress the excesses themselves and to condemn them publicly, so as to avoid making every citizen feel personally responsible for the misdeeds of a few and therefore compelled either to denounce or defend them.
If, however, we wish to be useful as well as fair, we ought to condemn with equal force and in the bluntest of terms the terrorism practiced by the FLN1 against French civilians
