The tragedy of French Algeria
In this article we will end the story of the long and bloody Algerian war, we will talk about the flight of the "blackfoot", evolves and harki from Algeria, and about some of the sad events that followed this country's independence.
The End of French Algeria
Despite the desperate resistance of the Blackfoot and the OAS, in referenda in France (April 8, 1962) and Algeria (July 1, 1962), the majority of those who voted in favor of granting independence to this department, which was officially proclaimed July 5, 1962.
The most outrageous thing was that people who were most interested in its outcome were excluded from participating in the April 1962 referendum - the "black-footed" Algeria and local Arabs who had the right to vote: this was a direct violation of the third article of the French Constitution, and the vote was legitimate could not be considered.
One of the consequences of this act was the exodus (actually flight) of more than a million "black-footed", hundreds of thousands of Loyalist Arabs (evolves), tens of thousands of Jews and over 42 thousand Muslim soldiers (harki) from Algeria to France.
In fact, this is one of the most tragic pages stories French people, which the current "tolerant" authorities of this country would like to forget forever. This outcome of a biblical scale is now remembered mainly only by the descendants of these people.
In total, about 1 people left Algeria. This flight was complicated by the lack of seats on ships and in airplanes, in addition, water transport workers in France, whose selfish interests turned out to be higher than the blood price of Algerian French, also went on strike. As a result, in Oran, the day of the declaration of independence of Algeria was overshadowed by a large-scale massacre of the European population - according to official data recognized by the Algerians themselves, more than three thousand people were killed.
In 1960, 220 thousand “black-footed” and 210 thousand Arabs lived in this city. By July 5, 1962, up to 100 thousand Europeans still remained in Oran. The Evian agreements that were concluded between the French government and the Algerian National Liberation Front on March 16, 1962, guaranteed them safety. But de Gaulle in May 1962 declared:
And it became clear to everyone that the black-footed Algeria, as well as the local Arabs-evolves and harki are doomed.
Indeed, immediately after the declaration of independence of Algeria in large cities, a real hunt began for them.
According to rough estimates, about 150 thousand people were killed (“rough” because only men were counted, while women and children from their families were also often exterminated with them).
Sorry for this photo, but look what the TNF militants did with the remaining harki in Algeria:
And this is not Algeria and not Oran, but Budapest in 1956, and the Hungarian communist was brutally killed not by “wild wickedness” from the TNF, but by “civilized” European rebels:
Very similar, isn't it? But for some reason, the attitude to these events both here and abroad has always been very different.
Against this background, the Kharkov deputy from the Party of Regions in December 2014, of course, was very “lucky”: the current “activists” of independent Ukraine are still far from their idols of the times of Shukhevych and Bandera:
And in this photo, not the harki of Algeria are standing on their knees in front of the raging crowd, but the soldiers of the Ukrainian special forces police unit “Berkut” in Lviv:
In Algeria or Oran in 1962, they would, of course, have their throats cut in 5 minutes after this “photo shoot” - there it was very scary at that time.
The massacre of Europeans found its greatest scale in Oran: people with a European appearance were shot on the streets, cut in their own homes, tortured and tortured.
The French soldiers were forbidden to intervene in what was happening, and only two officers dared to violate this order: Captain Jean-Germain Krogenenek and Lieutenant Rabach Kellif.
Captain Krogenenek was the commander of the 2nd company of the Second Zuava Regiment. But Lieutenant Rabah Kheliff (Rabah Kheliff), who commanded the 4th company of the 30th motorized infantry battalion - an Arab from the evolves family, his father was an officer in the French army. Keliff himself served from the age of 18 and participated in the battle at Dienbenfu, where he was seriously wounded.
Upon learning that the TNF militants were driving “black-footed” trucks near the prefecture’s building, Keliff turned to the regiment commander and received an answer:
Spitting on the possible consequences, Keliff led his soldiers (only half of the company) to the indicated place, where he found hundreds of Europeans, mainly women, children and the elderly, who were guarded by armed TNF militants. It was very easy to free the "black-footed": now the "revolutionaries" who had emboldened themselves remembered very well how very recently the French soldiers had driven them through the mountains and the desert. Keliff found the prefect (!) And said:
The problem was that the liberated people had nowhere to go: the same fighters were waiting for them in their own houses. Keliff again arbitrarily set patrols on the roads leading to the port and the airport, and personally transported refugees to the port in a service jeep. During one of these trips, he was captured by militants and injured, but the soldiers recaptured him.
From the article “Algerian War of the French Foreign Legion” we remember that most of the Iranian "black-footed" were of Spanish origin. Therefore, the authorities of this country also assisted in their evacuation by providing the ships that took them to Alicante. Thirty thousand Iranian refugees stayed in Spain forever.
Slave Keliff also had to leave his native Algeria, in the same 1962. He served in the French army until 1967, having retired with the rank of captain, he died in 2003.
Monument War
Having got rid of the “damned colonialists”, TNF activists began to “liberate” the country they inherited from French monuments.
This monument to soldiers of the Foreign Legion previously stood in the Algerian city of Sidon. The "black-footed" who left Algeria took him with them to save him from abuse. Now it can be seen in the Corsican city of Bonifacio:
This is how the monument created by Paul Maximilian Landowski (the author of the statue of Christ the Savior in Rio de Janeiro) looked like the monument to the fallen in the First World War until 1978: France, a European soldier and an Arab soldier held a shield with the body of a murdered hero:
And here is what it looks like now: a concrete cube and hands clenched into fists, breaking the shackles:
So, probably, “much better”, what do you think?
In this photo there is a monument to the fallen in World War I, which since 1925 stood in the Algerian city of Tlemcen. The figures symbolize the European and Algerian soldiers and France:
In 1962, he was transported to the French city of Saint-Aigulph:
Here TNF activists smash one of the French monuments:
Around the same time, Soviet monuments are being handled outside of Russia. Here, for example, the city of Ciechocinek in Poland. On December 30, 2014, the monument of Thanks and Brotherhood of the Soviet Army and Polish Army was destroyed here:
And this is Odessa, February 4, 2020: nationalists ruin the last bas-relief of G.K. Zhukov:
And quite recent events in Prague. On April 3, 2020, a monument to the Soviet Marshal Konev was dismantled here, the troops of which were the first to enter the city, abandoned by the Vlasov division, and still still controlled by the Germans:
And here, too, after the “victory of democracy”, zombie extremists threw down monuments - let's not forget about it.
This is Moscow, on August 22, 1991, under the cries of a drunken crowd, they demolish the monument to F. Dzerzhinsky:
Smug dwarfs trampling a stone giant:
And Kiev, December 8, 2013. Vandals smash the monument to V. Lenin:
Very similar pictures, right?
Degradation of Independent Algeria
The proclamation of the Algerian People's Democratic Republic dates from September 20, 1962. In the presidential election in 1963, Muhammad Ahmad bin Balla (Ahmed bin Bella), a World War II participant in the French army and the failed central midfielder of the Marseille football club Olympic, was one of the leaders of the TNF who learned Arabic only in a French prison. where he sat from 1956 to 1962.
And a year later, independent Algeria grappled with the independent kingdom of Morocco. The cause of the conflict was the Moroccan claims for iron ore deposits in the province of Tindouf.
By the fall of 1963, Soviet specialists cleared the main part of the border between Algeria and Morocco free of charge (one died, six were seriously injured), and now nothing could stop the neighbors from fighting a little.
On October 14, 1963, the Moroccan army struck in the area of Colomb Béchard, advancing 100 km. Both sides used Tanks, artillery and aviationand Moroccans were armed with Soviet MiG-17s, and Algerians had MiG-15s donated by Egypt. On October 15, one MiG of the warring parties even entered into a battle, which ended to no avail. And on October 20, 1963, Moroccan fighters forced the "lost" Algerian Mi-4 helicopter to land, on which there were 5 Egyptian "observers", which was the reason for Morocco to accuse Egypt of military intervention.
On the side of the Algerians, the Cuban contingent, led by Efichenio Ameiheiros, also appeared. This conflict was not stopped until February 1964, when an emergency session of the Council of Ministers of the Organization of African Unity reached an agreement on the cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of troops to their original positions. The parties to the conflict were invited to jointly develop this field. The ratification of this agreement was delayed: the government of Algeria did this on May 17, 1973, and the Moroccans - only in May 1989.
But back to Ahmed bin Bella, who liked to say:
However, the first president of Algeria was then compared not with these prominent figures, but with Nikita Khrushchev, who, before his resignation, managed to present him not only the international Lenin Peace Prize, but also the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union.
As in the USSR under Khrushchev, under the new president, economic problems began in Algeria, and entire sectors of the economy quickly fell into decay.
Algeria, which exported food under the French, now provided itself with food only 30%. Only oil production and refining enterprises worked more or less stably, but after the fall in prices in the 80s. Algeria lost almost the only source of foreign exchange earnings. Social stratification and tension in society grew, the influence of the Islamists increased. Very soon, ordinary Algerians already looked enviously at their compatriots living in France. On June 19, 1965, Ahmed bin Bella was removed from his presidency and arrested. Under the new president, Bumediene, the remaining Jews in the country were taxed additionally; the Islamists launched a campaign to boycott Jewish enterprises and shops.
On June 5, 1967, Algeria declared war on Israel. The Algerian Supreme Court even declared that Jews were not entitled to judicial protection. And on July 23, 1968, militants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked the plane of the Israeli civilian airline El Al 426, flying from Rome to Tel Aviv. The organization, by the way, was created in 1967 by an Arab pediatrician and Christian George Habash.
The hijackers forced the pilots to land the aircraft in Algeria, where they were hospitably greeted by the authorities of this country, who placed the hostages at one of the military bases. Airliner personnel and male passengers were detained despite official protests by the UN Secretary General, leaders of several Western countries and a boycott of the International Association of Civil Aviation Pilots, announced to Algeria on August 12. The last measure, apparently, turned out to be the most effective, because on August 24 the hostages were nevertheless released - in exchange for 24 terrorists convicted in Israel. Trying to “save face”, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Even stated that this “humanitarian gesture” was not a fulfillment of the conditions of the PFL militants.
However, FNOP did not stop at this “achievement”. On August 29, 1969, the TWA 840 airliner, flying from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv, was captured and sent to Damascus by two terrorists who suggested that the ambassador of Israel to the United States, I. Rabin, was flying this flight. The operation was led by 23-year-old Leila Hamed, who liked to hijack planes so much that on September 6, 1970 she made another attempt, but was neutralized and transferred to the British authorities at Heathrow Airport.
Hamed escaped with a slight startle: on October 1, she was exchanged for hostages of the other four aircraft seized on September 6-8, four of which were landed in Jordan at an airfield arbitrarily seized by Palestinian militants near the city of Irdib. This ended with the fact that the King of Jordan, Hussein, who realized that the Palestinians intend to seize power in the country, began a military operation against them on September 16, during which 20 thousand militants were "utilized" and about 150 thousand were expelled (Black September, about This was briefly described in the article. “Russian volunteers of the French Foreign Legion”).
Hamed in the rank of a national heroine, promising to "behave herself", she settled in Amman, married, gave birth to two children, and in an interview even called DAISH (ISIS, banned in the Russian Federation) "agents of world Zionism."
But we will return to Algeria, where the Islamic Salvation Front formed in 1991 won the first round of parliamentary elections in 1981, after which the voting results were canceled, the IFS was banned and launched a large-scale terror campaign against government officials and civilians.
1991-2001 entered the history of Algeria as the “Black Decade” (in other words, it is called the “Decade of Terror”, “Years of Lead” or “Years of Fire”) - in fact, all this time there was a war between the government and the Islamists.
In 1992, a new coup d'etat took place in the country, as a result of which General Lamin Zerual, the former commander of the Air Force and ground forces of Algeria, a graduate of military schools in Moscow (1965) and in Paris (1974) came to power.
In 1993, the Islamic Salvation Front declared in Algeria “a war against foreigners, during which, for example, 19 Catholic priests and monks were killed (everyone was cut off their heads).
Former Algerian army officer Habib Suaidia wrote the book Dirty War about the events of those years, in which he accused the Minister of Defense of Algeria, a member of the Supreme State Council, Hamed Nezzar and other Algerian generals, of "responsibility for the killing of thousands of people carried out not without the involvement of the Islamic armed group" . The International “Association to Combat Impunity" Trial claims that under Khaled Nezzar in Algeria,
In turn, Nezzar stated that:
Independent researchers agree that the Islamic Front and the Algerian security forces have approximately the same number of victims. For 19 years, from 1992 to 2011, a state of emergency was in effect in Algeria.
The fundamentalists intensified their activity in 2004, and the country was shocked by high-profile terrorist attacks.
Algerian Islamists did not forget about the “damned colonialists” from France.
On December 24, 1994, four terrorists were captured by an Air France Airbus A-4 that flew from Algeria to Paris, carrying 300 crew members and 12 passengers on board. They wanted to blow up this plane over the Eiffel Tower, but when refueling in Marseille, the “French National Gendarmerie Intervention Group” took the plane by storm, destroying all the terrorists.
On December 3, 1996, militants of the Algerian Islamic armed group blew up a gas cylinder filled with nails and metal shavings in a carriage at the Port Royal Royal metro station in Paris: 4 people were killed and more than a hundred were injured.
There were other incidents in France involving Algerians.
In February 2019, as a result of popular unrest that swept Algeria, Abdel Aziz Bouteflika, who has held this post since 1999, was forced to refuse to participate in the presidential election. And at present, the situation in Algeria is far from calm: this state is on the list of 10 most dangerous countries to visit in the world.
Read the article "The Time of Skydivers" and "Je ne regrette rien" remember that Charles de Gaulle declared in 1958:
His attempt to close France from Algeria failed. Almost immediately after the victory of the TNF, emigration to France became the dream and meaning of life for many independence fighters, their children and grandchildren.
In 2006, Marcel Bijard, a man who became a legend in the French army (we have already spoken about this several times in the articles of this series) wrote a book “Farewell, my France”, in which there are such lines:
I do not think that the modern French have heard these words of one of their last heroes, about which the American historian Max Booth said:
He called Bijar "a perfect warrior, one of the great soldiers of the century."
But let's not talk about sad things.
In the following articles, we will talk about the French Foreign Legion of the second half of the XNUMXth century and the beginning of the XNUMXst century, the operations it conducted in the Congo, Mali, Chad, Gabon, the Central African Republic and some other countries. And also about how some French legionnaires in the second half of the twentieth century found a new area of application for their talents, about the famous condottieres of the twentieth century, amazing and fascinating African adventures of "wild geese" and "soldier of fortune".
In preparing the article, the materials of the blog of Urzova Ekaterina were used:
The Story of Slave Keliff.
The Story of Pierre Chateau-Jaubert.
Some of the photos were taken from the same blog, including pictures of the author.
- Ryzhov V.A.
- Ryzhov V. A. “Dogs of War” of the French Foreign Legion
Ryzhov V. A. Russian volunteers of the French Foreign Legion
Ryzhov V. A. The most famous Russian “graduates” of the French Foreign Legion. Zinovy Peshkov
Ryzhov V. A. The most successful Russian “legionnaire”. Rodion Malinovsky
Ryzhov V. A. French Foreign Legion in the First and Second World Wars
Ryzhov V.A. Foreign Legion against Vietnam and the Dienbienf Catastrophe
Ryzhov V. A. "Fire in the Empire." Foreign Legion after World War II
Ryzhov V.A. Algerian war of the French Foreign Legion
Ryzhov V.A. Battle of Algeria
Ryzhov V. A. Commanders of the Foreign Legion in the Algerian War
Ryzhov V. A. "The Time of Skydivers" and "Je ne regrette rien"
Ryzhov V.A. OAS and Delta: against de Gaulle and TNF
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