Proclamation of the Algerian National Liberation Front

Impact

While the words of the proclamation rang out a challenge, the Algerian National Liberation Army initiated simultaneous attacks against government military installations, police stations, and infrastructure across Algeria. The immediate response of the French government was to declare war. While the French had lost in Indochina (its colonial empire in Southeast Asia, comprising mainly Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), the situation in Algeria was different; there could be no secession of the Algerian departments because they were one with the French Republic.

Atrocities were committed by both sides. The FLN used terrorist tactics to challenge France's greater military force. It drew on the heroic and historic past when Abd al-Kader (also spelled Abd al-Qadir) fought a thirteen-year guerrilla war against the initial French invasion. The French proceeded with a scorched-earth policy by erecting electrified fences along Algeria's borders to stop FLN attacks from outside and by interring Algerians in concentration camps so they could not help the FLN inside the country. The French tortured and massacred entire villages. Yet the colons thought the French were not doing enough to destroy the Muslims and created their own terrorist group, the Secret Army (Organisation de l'armèe secréte), which worked in France and Algeria. World opinion turned against France because of these events and France's inability to put an end to the war.

In 1959 Charles de Gaulle was inaugurated as president of France's Fifth Republic. He attempted to resolve the Algerian crisis but came to understand that this was a war that could not be won. His attitude was seen as a betrayal of the colons. In 1962 a cease-fire was called, and the FLN and the French government agreed to the Évian Accords, which would allow Muslim Algerians parity with the European colons over a three-year period. After the accords were approved by 91 percent of the French electorate, there was a mass exodus of European colons, the Jewish community, and some pro-French Muslims. On July 1, 1962, the Algerian people voted nearly unanimously for independence. On July 3, De Gaulle proclaimed Algerian independence. However, the Algerians decided that their independence day would be symbolic, so they chose July 5, 1962, the 132nd anniversary of the French invasion.