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Algeria
War of Independence
Algeria
War of Independence
In the early morning hours of All Saints' Day, November 1,
1954, FLN maquisards (guerrillas) launched attacks in
various parts of Algeria against military installations, police
posts, warehouses, communications facilities, and public
utilities. From Cairo, the FLN broadcast a proclamation calling
on Muslims in Algeria to join in a national struggle for the
"restoration of the Algerian state, sovereign, democratic, and
social, within the framework of the principles of Islam." The
French minister of interior, socialist François Mitterrand,
responded sharply that "the only possible negotiation is war." It
was the reaction of Premier Pierre Mendès-France, who only a few
months before had completed the liquidation of France's empire in
Indochina, that set the tone of French policy for the next five
years. On November 12, he declared in the National Assembly: "One
does not compromise when it comes to defending the internal peace
of the nation, the unity and integrity of the Republic. 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."
Data as of December 1993
