Wretchward

“The 130,000 soldiers are there to give the population some security”

I know, that is what our soldiers say too

“You can’t operate on the ground without the cooperation of the people. You’ll never have their cooperation if they are owned by the enemy. You’ll never wean them from the enemy unless you can free them of fear.”

but if the population hates you ? it doesn’t seem from my readings, that they globally don’t appreciate us there, so it will be difficult to get some good informations, they are muslims first !

<i<Fighting terrorism is not a matter of cleverness that the Americans lack.

uh did I say so ?

The French, who got booted out of Algeria, had an abundance of cleverness. They just never had the horses to tip the balance against the FLN. We know how that turned out. Quantity has a quality all of its own.

Nope
Benjamen Stora a true historian and an expert of this war doesn’t say anything like that,

Independence of Algeria was already in De Gaulle agenda when a kind of a putch from the french generals in Algeria brought him to power in 1958.

His first discouse was ponctuated with “l’algérie franaise”, he reverse it later for independence, which is seen as his political cleverness for historians and “viciousness” for the pieds noirs.

Hardly arrived at Elysees palace it would have been unwise for him to claim that he envisionned the independance of Algeria directly, above all, in front of the people that just brought him there.
Thus he took his time, in visiting each military casern in Algeria, in visiting the diverse opinions associations there, and finally uncovered his decision for the independance, from where comes the pieds noirs ressentment against de Gaulle

Though he had to prepear the Pieds Noirs and the french population. Until then the rebels were harshly fought, in the meanwhile negotiations were opened in Evian with the FLN leaders on the conditions to let Algeria accesses to its independence, among them, how the french population and the harquis would be treated after the independence. While de Gaulle was preapring a referrendum, where 70 % of the French nationals and Algerians pronounced themselves for Independence.

In the Evian agreements, not the whole population of pieds noirs was expected to leave Algeria, according the the insurances that the french negociators had from their algerian counterpart.

But it wasn’t counting with the spirit of revenge from the FLN fighters, what was set as a normally a pacifical independence, became ” the suitcase or the coffin”.

the pieds noirs chose the suit case, but still the major shame of de Gaulle’s decision was to not let the harquis chose the suite case too, lots of them were massacred by the FLN.

We lost Algeria, but not the war, I know that algerians pretend the contrary, they forget that 70 % of the vote spared them to be more pressed on, the quarteron of generals, among them Bigeard had the control of the situation, and the army still remained there until the wole french popuation had quitted the land, it was already independance, though they were forbidden to interven into the algerian affair anymore, also they were forbidden to help their brothers in arms, the harquis. This will be ever the black point of de Gaulle in history.