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Oct. 22, 2004 It is sad that we do not have the French on board in this Iraq war thing. They nearly won the Alegerian war which lasted from 1954 to 1960. For years I had thought that they had been beaten terribly but after doing a bit of research was suprised to find that they had managed to counter every move the ALN made from the sealing off of the Tunisian and Moroccan borders, to the taking back of Algiers where -le paras -using a system of 1500 informers each watching a single family, alley, street etc took the place back from armed gangs in a matter of months. I was further amazed to hear that when General Challe subsequently took over he reorganized the army tasking each 100 man commando unit with the elimination of a single Katiba -less than a company-company sized unit -and of the successful conclusion of the operation. At times the ALN were taking casualties akin to those inflicted during the first world war, French casualties by comparison very modest. An interesting inovation was the Bureau five, a psychological warfare unit where messages were bombarded on prisoners extolling the virtues of Muslim French cooperation backed up with text, discussion. An amazing number were convinced to cooperate with the French and even to join the military intelligence. With the elevation of De Guelle and his talk of eventual independence the FLN - the political arm -ceased all combat and concentratd upon the interationalizing of the conflict. What was even more interesting than all of the military things was the level of criminality occurring within the various rebel groups who were, as they fought the French, at war with one another. The communists would accuse the FLN of collaboration, who would in turn send them against impossible odds. Torture of civilians was the norm and if they refused to cooperate they were killed along with family members. With the hand over Algeria became involved in the supporting terror groups such as the IRA, the Basques, the PLO, the MPLA etc. Even to this day Algeria has had 45,000 casualties since 1993 due to the war the western Sahara France was never given credit for trying to prevent terrorism so I guiess she wonders why some Americans are now asking her to partake again in the war agaist terror. ------------ About the author Mike Haran: I write articles for military and hobby publications. I Hope to eventually combine some of them into a book. More commentary -opinionated short stories,mainly sci-fi -history at: http://www.geocities.com/manzikertca Email: 4258529II@canada.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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