The Battle of Algiers was a campaign of urban guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks carried out by the National Liberation Front (FLN) against the French authorities in Algiers, and by the French authorities, army, and French terrorist organizations, against the FLN. Both sides targeted civilians throughout the battle. The conflict began with attacks by the FLN against the French forces and Pieds-Noirs (European settlers) followed by a terrorist attack on Algerian civilians in Algiers by a group of settlers, part of the terrorist group "La Main Rouge", aided by the police. Reprisals followed and the violence escalated, leading the French Governor-General to deploy the French Army in Algiers to suppress the FLN. Civilian authorities gave full powers to General Jacques Massu who, operating outside legal frameworks between January and September 1957, eliminated the FLN from Algiers. The use of torture, forced disappearances and illegal executions by the French later caused controversy in France.
Background
In March 1955, Rabah Bitat, head of the FLN in Algiers, was arrested by the French. Abane Ramdane, recently freed from prison, was sent from Kabylie to take the political direction of the city in hand. In a short time, Ramdane managed to revive the FLN in Algiers. On 20 August 1955, violence broke out around Philippeville, drastically escalating the conflict.
In 1956, the "Algerian question" was to be debated at the United Nations. During the summer of 1956, secret negotiations between the French and Algerian separatists took place in Belgrade and Rome.
The Pied-noirs began to organise themselves into a paramilitary group under André Achiary, a former officer of the SDECE and under-prefect of Constantinois at the time of Sétif massacre.
First phase
On 19 June 1956 two FLN prisoners were executed by guillotine at the Barberousse Prison. Abane Ramdane ordered immediate reprisals against the French and Yacef Saâdi, who had assumed command in Algiers following Bitat's arrest, was ordered to "shoot down any European, from 18 to 54. No women, no children, no elder." A series of random attacks in the city followed with 49 civilians shot by the FLN between 21 and 24 June.
On the night of 10 August 1956, helped by members of Robert Martel's Union française nord-africaine, Achiary planted a bomb at Thèbes Road in the Casbah targeted at the FLN responsible for the June shootings, the explosion killed 73 residents.
In September at the Soummam conference, the FLN adopted a policy of indiscriminate terrorism. Larbi Ben M'Hidi and Yacef Saâdi were ordered to prepare for an offensive.
Peace talks broke down and Guy Mollet's government put an end to the policy of negotiations. Ben M'Hidi decided to extend terrorist actions to the European city as to touch more urban populations, Arab bourgeoisie in particular, and use Algiers to advertise his cause in metropolitan France and in the International community.
Yacef Saâdi proceeded to establish an organisation based within the Casbah. On the evening of 30 September 1956, a trio of female FLN militants recruited by Yacef Saâdi, Djamila Bouhired, Zohra Drif and Samia Lakhdari, carried out the first series of bomb attacks on three civilian targets in European Algiers. The bombs at the Milk Bar Café on Place Bugeaud and the Cafeteria on Rue Michelet killed 3 and injured 50, while the bomb at the Air France terminus failed to explode due to a faulty timer.
On 22 October 1956, a Moroccan DC-3 plane ferrying the foreign affairs personnel of the FLN from Rabat to Tunis for a conference with President Bourguiba and the Sultan of Morocco was re-routed to Algiers. Hocine Aït Ahmed, Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohammed Boudiaf, Mohamed Khider and Mostefa Lacheraf were arrested.
In December, General Raoul Salan was promoted to commander in chief of the army of Algeria. Salan was adept in the theory of counter-insurgency; he chose veterans of the First Indochina War as his lieutenants, most notably General André Dulac, Colonel Goussault (psychological operations), General Robert Allard, and Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Trinquier. On the FLN side, a decision was made in late 1956 to embark upon a sustained campaign of urban terrorism designed to show the authority of the French state did not extend to Algiers, Algeria's largest city. Abane Ramdane believed that such a campaign would be the "Algerian Dien Bien Phu" that would force the French out of Algeria. It was decided to deliberately target pied-noir citizens as a way of breaking French power as one FLN directive put it: "A bomb causing the death of ten people and wounding fifty others is the equivalent on the psychological level to the loss of a French battalion."