power and global security often interfere with one another, as national delegates discovered in San Francisco when they met to create the United Nations. However, ICRC neutrality was supposed to eliminate politics and national interests from the equation. But, as Mark Lewis has shown, that was not the case during the Geneva Convention revision debates.96 “The revision project,” he writes, “was dominated by a European/North American perspective, reflecting both post-war imperial politics and the ICRC’s Eurocentric perspective.”97 In light of the ICRC’s overall neglect of the Jewish population during the war and the harsh criticism it received for this, in 1946, acting president Max Huber was interested in revising the conventions in order “to gain enhanced powers to inspect prisons and camps, improve the rules for the treatment of POWs, establish baseline rules for the treatment of detained civilians, and strengthen the ICRC’s legal and practical ability to deliver food and clothing to POWs.”98 The legal parameters set out in the final version of the Geneva Conventions did not pertain to civil or internal conflicts, technically what the French colonial administrations called the Algerian war. Yet, they provided a legal framework that was respected by its signatories and recognized worldwide as an ideal to strive for. Algerian nationalists would work both of these angles, especially after 1957. The FLN and the Algerian Liberation Army became well versed in the Geneva Conventions and tried to hold the French government, a signatory of the 1949 conventions, and its military accountable to them, while also claiming to recognize and follow the prescribed guidelines for proper codes of conduct in war. This post–World War II text laid out a how-to guide for nonstate actors to engage in diplomatic, military, and humanitarian negotiations with powerful army leaders and representatives from the renowned ICRC.
Conclusion
The evolution of nationalism in Algeria was a competitive forty-year process, the results of which could not have been predicted even in 1950. FLN members in 1954 lived through numerous iterations of political parties and failed reforms and most felt they had exhausted every viable option for achieving their aims. The FLN had a firm agenda for complete independence and was in a unique position in November 1954 to set off coordinated attacks throughout Algeria. However, as the opening vignette on the 1956 Soummam Congress showed, not all Algerian nationalists agreed that the FLN was the sole party capable of winning the war for the Algerian people, and, beyond that, there were massive divisions within the FLN reflecting decades of ideological sparring. The nationalist leadership continued to work through these differences that threatened to derail their ultimate objective.99 In spite of these differences, the FLN managed to keep a firm grasp on dissenters and detractors and forge ahead in its mission of attracting international attention and support for its cause.
But for all of the nationalists’ ingenuity and creativity, other tectonic shifts at the regional and international levels enabled them to attain their position and experience an unprecedented degree of success in shaping public opinion and forcing the French to recognize Algerian sovereignty. FLN representatives explored numerous diplomatic and military strategies. But, as the following chapters demonstrate, it was their appropriation of medicine and health-care, humanitarianism, and rights discourses, all products of World War II, that yielded the most successful results. The nationalists deliberately used them as political tools and selectively deployed them depending on the moment and target audience. The FLN mastered these rhetorics and built a comprehensive strategy that operated at the local, regional, and international levels and could not be ignored. We now turn to the first layer of the FLN’s plan of attack, constructing a wartime health-services division and battling the French over winning the hearts, minds, and bodies of the population.
Chapter 2
Medical Pacification and the Sections Administratives Spécialisées
On 31 October 1954, nine “historic leaders,” Mourad Didouche, Hocine Aït Ahmed, Mohamed Boudiaf, Mohamed Larbi Ben M’hidi, Ahmed Ben Bella, Mustapha Ben Boulaïd, Mohamed Khider, Rabah Bitat, Belkacem Krim, bound by their belief that independence was only possible through armed struggle and revolution, drafted the Proclamation of the National Liberation Front. This document, released in conjunction with the coordinated attacks of 1 November 1954 the next day, announced the beginning of the Algerian war for national liberation.
The proclamation, addressed to the Algerian people, emphasized that “after decades of struggle, the nationalist movement had reached its final phase…. Our action is solely directed against colonialism, a stubborn and blind enemy who has always refused to grant the slightest liberty by peaceful means. Those are,” its authors believed, “sufficient reasons why our movement comes under the label of the National Liberation Front … offering the opportunity for all Algerian patriots from all social classes … to integrate themselves into the liberation struggle without any other consideration.” The FLN’s primary goal, as defined by the proclamation, was national independence by restoring “the sovereign, democratic, and social state of Algeria within the framework of Islamic principles” and by respecting “fundamental freedoms for all.”1
The nationalist leaders carefully outlined internal and external objectives that guided their activities through 1962 and that they believed would secure Algerian sovereignty. Domestically, they aimed to restore the national revolutionary movement to its true place by “ridding it of all vestiges of corruption and reformism” and to “gather and organize all the sound energy of the Algerian people to liquidate the colonial system.” The proclamation specified three external goals: internationalizing the Algerian problem, solidifying North African unity within an Arab Muslim context, and relying upon the United Nations Charter to demonstrate and attract solidarity for the principles articulated within it.2 This sophisticated and multidimensional FLN platform was the result of decades of political activity and reflected an engagement with contemporary trends such as Pan-Arabism and human rights, broadly defined, in the post–World War II era. Moreover, the platform reflected the central tenets of what Algerian nationalists thought would prove their sovereignty to the Algerian people, French colonial officials, and world leaders.
Despite the FLN’s announcement, the French government of Pierre Mendès-France neither recognized nor acknowledged a war was under way. Just a few weeks earlier, in October 1954, François Mitterand, minister of the interior, had traveled throughout Algeria and concluded in a report to French premier Mendès-France that “the climate is getting worse over there,” and he “recognized the urgent need … to integrate more Algerians into the colonial administration.”3 These cautionary words could not have been more true.
The French administration was not prepared for the long-term political divisions and struggles that would follow between moderates and ultraconservatives who ardently believed in Algérie française and were prepared to take any necessary steps to ensure its survival. For Mendès-France, who advocated a reformist agenda, navigating these factions immediately became a problem after 1 November. At the 12 November National Assembly meeting, he declared his unequivocal support that “the Algerian departments are part of the French Republic. They have been French for a long time, and they are irrevocably French…. Between them and metropolitan France there can be no conceivable secession.”4 For the remaining three months that Mendès-France’s government was in power, he grappled with accommodating various viewpoints and trying to find a peaceful solution similar to French policies in Morocco and Tunisia.5
One of Mendès-France’s most significant appointments during this period, before his government crumbled and that of Edgar Faure replaced it, was naming Jacques Soustelle as governor-general of Algeria in January 1955.6 Soustelle had long been active in French politics, dating back to World War II, when he joined Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Resistance movement. The two men remained close, and Soustelle served as secretary-general from 1947 to 1951 in de Gaulle’s Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF) party and he would later prove instrumental in orchestrating de Gaulle’s return to power in May 1958. Mendès-France anticipated
