rights discourse as tools for their liberation.41 Algerian nationalists were not on the periphery watching rights debates happen around them. They were at the center of them, shaping many of these political contests and defining their outcome. They seized words and ideas, albeit in a piecemeal approach, that could benefit their nationalist cause. In many cases, they thrust themselves onto the international stage armed only with universal terminology about health, humanitarianism, and self-determination.
With the help of universal rights, as broadly defined by Kenneth Cmiel, the FLN acted as a functional state before Algerian independence in 1962. Algerian leaders juggled the provision of medicine and health care, aid, and political representation at the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations, and combined these efforts with a laser-sharp deployment of recently reconceived terms, ideas, and concepts. The massive changes to the international system enabled Third World actors to seize their place on the political battlefield, articulate claims, and seriously challenge their European oppressors in a way that was never possible on a military battlefield.42
The exchange between Ferhat Abbas, president of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic, and ICRC president Léopold Boissier illuminates how Algerian nationalists tested the principles and limits of the postwar order to claim sovereignty of Algeria. The FLN took advantage of all the available tools—ideological, political, and rhetorical—and developed a comprehensive domestic and international strategy to claim Algeria as its own. Nonstate actors around the world would emulate this strategy, transforming international understandings of sovereignty and rights.43 This transformation begins in Algeria with the FLN forcing the world to consider the Third World.
Chapter 1
The Long Road to War
On Monday, 20 August 1956, a warm summer day two years into the Algerian war, six National Liberation Front (FLN) leaders, Mohamed Larbi Ben M’hidi, Ramdane Abane, Amar Ouamrane, Belkacem Krim, Lakhdar Bentobbal, and Youcef Zighoud, gathered in northern Algeria, in the Soummam Valley, to convene the Soummam Congress and discuss the future of their struggle for national liberation. The previous twenty-one months had been disappointing for FLN leaders. They struggled to recruit participants, obtain vital arms and financial support, eliminate and absorb their political rivals, and simultaneously combat aggressive French military action and repressive policies such as the April 1955 State of Emergency and March 1956 Special Powers Law, both of which suspended civil liberties and granted the military carte blanche. The FLN needed revitalization and a renewed focus and the Soummam Congress was just the event to do so.
Ben M’hidi and Abane, two central FLN figures who did not live to see independent Algeria, worked together to create an agenda for Soummam.1 The men prioritized ten major areas to cover throughout the day, including financial and political matters, administrative and material needs inside and outside of Algeria, engaging with the United Nations and negotiating cease-fire terms.2 The wide variety of agenda items targeted local, national, and international dimensions that facilitated controlling the land and people within Algeria’s territorial borders and could yield external recognition of Algeria’s right to sovereignty.
Belkacem Krim, one of the six men who planned the 1 November 1954 attacks that began the war and whose name by the summer of 1956 had taken on a “quasi mythical dimension,” gave the first substantial regional report on Kabylia. He explained significant progress had been made in recruitment and finances. He claimed that the number of FLN soldiers had risen from 450 in November 1954 to 3,100 in August 1956. Krim shared similarly impressive financial increases for the same period, noting that at the start of the war Kabylia had one million francs, whereas at the time of the Soummam Congress, it held 445 million francs. He told the other five men that the people and combatants’ spirits were “very good,” but that “everyone is asking us for arms.”3 Amar Ouamrane, a former soldier in the French army who belonged to several political parties in the late 1940s and early 1950s before joining the FLN in 1954, delivered a report for the Algiers region that revealed miniscule soldier numbers in November 1954 (only fifty). But he presented the steady increase to one thousand in August 1956, and he boasted 200 million francs in the region’s war chest. Ben M’hidi gave the status update for the Oran region and, although the number of soldiers had not surpassed 1,500 in May 1956, he proudly conveyed “excellent” relations between the FLN-ALN and the people. Ben M’hidi echoed Krim’s words when he told the room that the people and combatants’ spirits were “very good.”4 They concluded the morning session by outlining their principal political tasks that lie ahead, organizing and educating the people and propaganda. They also reiterated the importance of “psychological war,” which the minutes explained as establishing “relations with the people, the European minority, and prisoners of war.”5 This revised political agenda would contribute to strengthening how the FLN operated, in general terms, in Algeria.
During the afternoon sessions, the nationalists discussed political structures and international efforts that would secure external recognition of their right to rule Algeria. They created the thirty-four-person National Council of the Algerian Revolution (Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne, CNRA), which they wanted “to meet annually as long as the hostilities continue.”6 They also established the five-member Coordination and Execution Committee (Comité de Coordination et d’Exécution, CCE), made up of Ben M’hidi, Abane, Krim, Benyoucef Benkhedda, and Saad Dahlab, and granted it “the power to control the political, military, economic, and social organisms.”7 The congress participants specified “political primacy over that of the military” and the supremacy “of the interior over the exterior,” taking direct aim at FLN comrades abroad.
It was the Soummam Congress’s ninth agenda item, calendar of work, where Abane, Ben M’hidi, Ouramane, Krim, Zighoud, and Bentobbal revealed the depths of their political acumen and demonstrated an appreciation for the international political climate and mastery of acceptable codes of conduct. The men agreed that “only the National Council of the Algerian Revolution is authorized to order the cease-fire whose framework will be based on the United Nations platform…. The interior will have to provide all of the information we have to facilitate the task of our representatives at the United Nations.” They issued strict orders to soldiers regarding their treatment of civilians and prisoners and said, “no officer, no matter his rank, henceforth has the right to pronounce a death sentence … slitting throats is formally forbidden in the future, those sentenced to death will be shot. The accused has the right to choose a defense. Mutilation is officially prohibited.” They banned “the execution of prisoners of war” and advised that “a prisoner of war service be created in each wilaya [province],” for in their estimation, “it would be essential in popularizing the legality of our struggle.” In closing, they briefly mentioned the need to build up a health-services division and that “each new recruit undergo a medical visit, when possible.”8 The leadership’s attention to these particular matters suggests a fluency with the contemporary state of international laws of war, most notably the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and their desire to transform the FLN and ALN into modern entities their allies and opponents would have to recognize. They wanted to implement humane practices at every level and send a clear message that the FLN was committed to and capable of running a modern nation-state, even though it would not be internationally recognized as such for six more years.
This historic one-day event, initiated at the behest of Ramdane Abane, was one of the most important political developments for the Algerian nationalist side throughout the eight-year conflict. The Soummam Congress crystallized the direction of the party for years to come and influenced the shape and tenor of the liberation struggle until its conclusion in 1962. The summit’s positive outcomes, however, could not mask harsh political realities and internal conflicts within the FLN. Nationalist representatives outside of Algeria, notably Ahmed Ben Bella, future first president of independent Algeria, Mohamed Khider, future Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) minister of information, and Hocine Aït Ahmed, future
