14 - 20 June 2001
Issue No.538
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 June 2001 Issue No.538 |
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One man's war?
Services spéciaux, Algérie 1955 -- 1957 (Special Services: Algeria 1955 -- 1957), General Paul Aussaresses, Paris: Perrin 2001. pp197In his memoirs, Special Services: Algeria 1955 -- 1957, Paul Aussaresses, a retired French army general and veteran of the Free French forces during the Second World War as well as of French army campaigns in Indo-China and in Algeria in the 1950s, has re-opened the debate in France over actions carried out by French forces during the Algerian war of independence. From 1955 to 1957 he was on "special mission" in Algeria, charged first with building up an information network on the activities of the FLN, the Algerian National Liberation Front, in the town of Philippeville, now Skikda, and then with carrying out a similar activity in the capital Algiers. During this period, the government of French prime minister Guy Mollet was voted "special powers" to combat the FLN, the army in Algiers being instructed to take over police powers and to "re-establish order" as it saw fit under the command of General Massu. Aussaresses comments in his book that "as urban terrorism could not be eradicated in the ordinary way via the police and the courts, the parachute regiment was asked to act as both judge and executioner." In so doing, he says, torture was routinely used, as was summary execution, the falsification of documents and faked suicide in detention, activities in which Aussaresses was personally involved. These allegations, as well as re-opening debate on the Algerian War, have now led to calls in France for an official enquiry and for the prosecution of those involved for "crimes against humanity."
Among Aussaresses's more spectacular allegations is that the civil authorities in Paris knew of and at least tacitly approved the army's activities in Algiers. Former French President François Mitterand, minister of justice in Guy Mollet's government, knew of what was being carried out in the name of the French State, Aussaresses says, but chose neither to intervene nor to resign. "I just want to be clear for the sake of those who either don't know or who pretend not to know... Robert Lacoste, a member of Guy Mollet's government... appointed General Massu to eradicate terrorism rapidly and by using all means necessary. I was called upon to carry out this policy by Massu..., knowing that such a result could not be achieved, unfortunately, without dirtying one's hands." Aussaresses, who describes himself as being a "military man, frank and direct," says that "the action that I was called upon to do in Algeria was for my country, and I did it as well as I was able, even if I did not like it." However, responsibility, he implies, properly belongs to those in the civil government who had called for "firmness" in Algeria "probably to reassure the [French] colonists." These included Pierre Mendès France who as prime minister had said that the government "would never budge" on the issue of Algerian independence, and François Mitterand who proclaimed that the only possible negotiation with "the enemies of the nation ... was war."
Paul Aussaresses was 36 years old and already well-known as a "specialist in hard knocks" before being sent to Algeria in 1955. Having joined de Gaulle's Free French forces in 1942, he had learnt the special serviceman's tools of the trade: "actions that were out of line according to conventional morality... robbery, assassination, sabotage and terror. I had learnt how to bust open locks, to kill without leaving traces, to lie, to be indifferent both to my suffering and to that of others, to forget and to make myself forget, and to do all this for France." He had had, he says, to forego a promising university career in order to do all this, "at worst a career as a diplomat," though there was time to complete a higher degree by submitting a thesis on "the Expression of the Marvellous in the Work of Virgil."
"The government of French prime minister Guy Mollet was voted "special powers" to combat the FLN, the army in Algiers being instructed to take over police powers and to "re-establish order" as it saw fit. Aussaresses comments in his book that "as urban terrorism could not be eradicated in the ordinary way via the police and the courts, the parachute regiment was asked to act as both judge and executioner."
photo: Al-Ahram Archives
Later, Aussaresses says that he was always willing to tolerate "a bit of craziness" in the way he ran his unit, implying that such tolerance came from his unorthodox background. "Perhaps this was why I was always seen as something of an original" in the army. "For the more narrow-minded, I was just an intellectual, in other words, a communist, homosexual and pacifist." Nevertheless, Aussaresses shows contempt in his book for the "Parisian intelligentsia," which was, as he saw it, engaged in an unpatriotic campaign against the French army in Algeria when the issue of torture and other human- rights violations was raised. These people were "Communists," Aussaresses says, or else they uncritically supported the fellaghas, or fells, of the FLN. Aside from the content of Aussaresses's memoirs, one of their less appealing aspects is the contemptuous tone the general adopts towards those fighting for their country's independence or those concerned by the human-rights violations carried out by the French army in Algeria. In general, he seems unable to see his actions through anything other than the narrowest of optics; the passage of years seems not to have caused him to reflect on his distorted image of France in whose name, and by his own admission, he tortured and murdered with cynical brutality.
Discussion of Aussaresses's book in the French press has concentrated on the new material that the book contains, as well as on the question of what official reaction to it should now be. On the first point, the historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, author of standard works on the Algerian War and interviewed in Le Monde, picked out three areas where Aussaresses has significantly added to knowledge of the period: the "suicide" of lawyer Ali Boumendjel, who according to the official record threw himself from the window of a building while detained for interrogation by French forces in March 1957; the similar "suicide" while in custody of Ben M'Hidi, FLN chief for the Algiers region; and the role played by Jean Bérard, a French judge, who apparently directly informed François Mitterand's office in Paris of events on the ground in Algeria.
Of Boumendjel, Aussaresses says that this well-known Algerian lawyer, in custody for 43 days on suspicion of supporting the FLN, could not be tried before a French court because he "would be set free after his brother had made a few telephone calls." Following an interview with General Massu, therefore, in which the later apparently said that Boumendjel "must not be allowed to escape," Aussaresses arranged for Boumendjel "to jump" from the sixth-floor of a building while being transferred from one cell to another. In the case of Ben M'Hidi, Aussaresses says on page 167 of his book that "we decided that putting Ben M'Hidi on trial was undesirable, since it would have caused international repercussions," and furthermore there was a possibility that he would not be found guilty. As a result, Aussaresses, having assured himself that he had been given "the green light" by the government, arranged Ben M'Hidi's "suicide" on an isolated farm to the south of Algiers.
For Vidal-Naquet, such new information adds to contemporary understanding of the system in place in colonial Algeria in the mid to late 1950s. "It is known that the FLN chief for the Algiers region was hung on the orders of Max Lejeune, Secretary of State for War in Guy Mollet's government. But it was not known that this happened on the farm of Robert Martel, a militant extremist of French Algeria... and it was not known either that the report on Ben M'Hidi's 'suicide' was written before his execution, which shows the totalitarian character of the system in place in Algeria at the time," where official procedures were manipulated, documents falsified and executions summarily carried out without recourse to the basic course of justice.
According to Aussaresses, "the judicial system was not designed for these exceptional circumstances. Even if Mitterand, the Minister of Justice, had sent cases concerning acts of terrorism in Algeria to military tribunals that would not have sufficed either. To send prisoners guilty of murder to camps while they waited for the judicial system to take care of them was also just as impossible; many of them would have escaped as they were transferred, thanks to the FLN. As a result, summary executions were an integral part of maintaining order... No on ever openly asked that such and such a prisoner should be executed; it happened of its own accord."
On page 155 of his book, Aussaresses says that "the use of torture was tolerated, if not recommended" in Algeria at the time. "François Mitterand had in fact an 'emissary' in Massu's office in the person of Judge Jean Bérard, who would cover up for us and who knew exactly what went on during the night. I always had excellent relations with him and never had anything to hide." Such statements have naturally tended to direct attention towards what Mitterand knew of events in Algeria, since according to an examination of this issue in Le Monde in May 2001, despite being one of the most prominent members of the Mollet government, Mitterand was in general "incredibly discrete" on the Algerian question "waiting for the storm to pass and probably hoping to be prime minister in the next government."
Vidal-Naquet comments that Aussaresses's allegations on this score, if true, are "exceptionally serious, meaning that the Minister of Justice and future President had two irons in the fire in Algeria," his official representative Jean Reliquet, who was Attorney General in Algeria, and someone "who tried in vain to combat" the corruption of justice in the country, and Bérard, who "carried out a form of justice unworthy of the name."
Aside from the book's contents, and the new light these have cast on the events and actors of the period, there is also the difficult question of what official reaction to it should now be. Aussaresses says in the "Introduction" to his memoirs that "even though I am aware that the content of what follows is likely to shock... I believe that today it would be useful if certain things were said, and, as I was, as will be seen, involved in certain important moments of the Algerian War, I consider that it is my duty to describe them. Before turning the page, it is necessary that the page be read, and, therefore, written." For the moment, French President Chirac, has said that he is "horrified" by Aussaresses's revelations, and that the latter's membership of the Legion d'honneur should be reviewed, as should the question of "disciplinary sanctions."
Similarly, Lionel Jospin, French prime minister, has said that he is "profoundly shocked" by the "revolting cynicism" of Aussaresses's book, but he has announced no moves against the general of the sort demanded by the International Federation of Leagues for Human Rights, a Paris-based group wanting to see Aussaresses tried for "crimes against humanity." He has also been vague on the question of setting up an official commission of enquiry into events in Algeria during the last years of the French colonial regime, as had been demanded by left-wing political groups in France, declaring himself in favour instead of the generalised opening of the archives. In a high-minded editorial that appeared in Le Monde, which managed to cite both French philosopher Paul Ricoeur and Sigmund Freud on "memory, forgetting and history," the French paper criticised both Chirac and Jospin for their failure, as the paper saw it, to back up fine words with meaningful action, desiring instead "the expression of real political will on the part of the authorities" in "freeing those who lived through it from the weight of the past."
Reading General Aussaresses's book, it is hard to see what could have persuaded him to write it, or, having made the decision to write it, to wait so long to do so. Better, perhaps, to have taken these particular secrets to the grave. Pierre Vidal- Naquet comments that he thinks there are points in the book on which the general is lying, for example in the latter's discussion of his involvement in the "Audin affair," in which a young mathematics professor from the University of Algiers "disappeared" after being tortured. (Aussaresses says only that the affair caused "a considerable noise in metropolitan France, thanks to the interpretation given it by the Communist Party and by the press that supported the FLN.") Nevertheless, Vidal-Naquet comments that the book has helped clearly to establish the responsibility of the French government of the time for the extra-legal events then taking place in Algeria.
One final, heartfelt response to the book has been that of Hélène Aussaresses, General Aussaresses's daughter. Writing in Le Monde, Madame Aussaresses says that she is unable to recognise her father in this book marked by "declarations tending towards megalomania." It is, she says, written in a way that is "neither his style, nor his spirit." In this book, she writes "my father, this mysterious person, has made people speak of him before his death in such a way as to plunge his family into consternation and despair, without even being aware of it."
Reviewed by David Tresilian
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