[Marxism] Algeria, FLN, Harkis

[Aaron Aarons]

>From: Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com>
>Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:19:49 -0400
>Subject: Re: [Marxism] BOLIVIA: What the hell is going on in the Bolivian
>
>On Sep 17, 2008, at 12:47 PM, Marvin Gandall wrote:
>> ...I recall many ARVN troops going over to the NLF, and I
>> think also Muslim FLN sympathizers from the French army of 
>> occupation...
>
>Not so.  Conscription did not apply to Muslim Algerians, so the French 
>Army included very few Muslims.

Do you mean that it didn't apply to French citizens of Algerian Muslim background or ancestry?

>However, the French forces included hundreds of thousands of anti-FLN  Algerians, the so.called harkis, 

The harkis were mostly Muslims, but had, for mercenary or other reasons, fought for the colonial power against the independence movement. It would be interesting to know what those other reasons might have been. Was there, for instance, any correlation between the Arab-vs.-Amazigh (Berber) division and that between supporters and opponents of the FLN? (Were there less world and had I more time, I would look into it more.)

>who were betrayed by deGaulle even more shamefully than the Algerians of European origin, all of whom at least were allowed to escape with  their lives.

The "harkis" were clearly treated with wildly excessive vengeance by those they had fought _against_, and with racist callousness, or worse, by those they had fought _for_. (Even Daniel Pipes says the French treatment of the harkis was racist!)

As for the settler-colonists, I'm not sure what Shane would have wanted deGaulle to do for them.

BTW, I recall that, shortly after the Evian Accords, the deal ending formal French rule in Algeria, was announced, Shane took advantage of the fact that the SWP hadn't officially came out in support of it yet to use a 15-minute commentary slot on New York's WBAI to attack the deal as a sellout of the anti-imperialist struggle. This was the position of the "revolutionary minority tendency" (RMT) of the SWP, of which Shane was a member( and I joined shortly thereafter). (The Wohlforth/Mazelis group, the future Workers League, was still part of the RMT, although it split from the future Spartacist League a few months later.)

>Shane Mage
>
>Chirac at mass demonstration welcoming him to Algiers:
>"Qu'est-ce-que vous voulez de nous?"
>Hundred thousand young Algerians:
>"Des Visas! Des Visas!"

When was this? And, given the horrors of the dirty war between the neo-colonial Algerian army and Islamists, wouldn't millions of Algerians rather be almost anywhere else?

 - Aaron