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“HUMANIZE THE CONFLICT”: ALGERIAN HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATIONS AND PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGNS, 1954–62

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2012

Jennifer Johnson Onyedum
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Abstract

This article explores the vitally important yet often neglected role of medicine and health care in the conduct of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). Using French, Swiss, and recently opened Algerian archival materials, it demonstrates how Algerian nationalists developed a health-service infrastructure that targeted the domestic and international arenas. It argues that they employed the powerful language of health and healing to legitimize their claims for national sovereignty and used medical organizations to win local support, obtain financial and material aid from abroad, and recast themselves as humanitarians to an increasingly sympathetic international audience. This research aims to situate Algerian efforts into a broader history of decolonization and humanitarianism and contributes to rethinking the process through which political claims were made at the end of empire.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 4: Maghribi Histories in the Modern Era , November 2012, pp. 713 - 731
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

The Algerian Red Crescent, stained with the blood of our martyrs, will continue to rise in our brilliant sky of stars from the twilight of servitude until the dawn of our liberation.

—Omar Boukli-Hacène, president, Algerian Red Crescent, 1957

In the late 1950s, at the height of the Algerian War of Independence, the National Liberation Front (FLN) published a pamphlet entitled “Aspects of the Algerian Revolution.” The cover features four armed National Liberation Army (ALN) soldiers standing over a map of the country and gazing attentively into the distance. These men are poised to protect and defend their nation as they await the challenges ahead. The pamphlet, which has a particular emphasis on health, includes photos of an Algerian doctor setting up a temporary medical station in the countryside. In one of these, above the caption “Care is dispensed to both combatants and civilians during organized ALN visits,” men, women, and children crowd around the physician, waiting their turn to be examined. A second set of images presents uniformed Algerian nurses with Red Crescent armbands, in what appears to be mountainous terrain, preparing a sterile bandage for an older man. Another photograph depicts nine young women gathered around a male instructor with pens and notebooks in their hands; the heading explains that after the completion of these “nursing courses,” they would “join the ALN units.”Footnote 1

Sustained military violence and deliberate attempts by the French colonial state to restrict the availability of pharmaceutical products and medical materials for those involved in the anticolonial struggle presented the FLN with one of its most pressing issues. The Algerian leadership understood that concern for the population's welfare conveyed a powerful message, and it hoped to demonstrate an organized and vibrant medical sector. Nationalists were committed to protecting their soldiers and the Algerian people and seized the language of health care to argue “that they could care for the welfare of ‘their’ populations better than [could an] alien colonial government.”Footnote 2 They also recognized the value of being regarded as humanitarians by an increasingly sympathetic international audience and developed strategies to accomplish that goal.

While the literature on the Algerian war continues to expand, few studies have focused on medicine and on the health care organizations that the FLN created specifically to bolster nation–state claims and solicit international aid.Footnote 3 Throughout the war, both the French and the Algerians launched extensive medical and health care propaganda campaigns. While the colonial administration developed health-related strategies to simultaneously win over the population and isolate the rebels, Algerians nationalists created their own health care services, as portrayed in the previously mentioned pamphlet, to counteract these aims.

This article investigates Algerian health care organizations and argues that they were deployed for both social and political ends. The first section concentrates on the development of the FLN–ALN domestic Services de Santé (hereafter referred to as the health-services division) from 1954 to 1957, illustrating the nationalists’ commitment to the civilian population and establishing the context for understanding their broader political strategy and its connection to international developments in subsequent years. The second section examines the Algerian Red Crescent (CRA), a de facto national Red Cross society that nationalists established to supplement their domestic health care efforts and to add an international dimension to them.

The CRA, an instrumental component of the Algerian anticolonial movement, has gone unnoticed in the scholarship. It demands attention as one of the most active and vocal organizations that advocated for Algerians throughout the war and that employed the language of humanitarianism to the nationalists’ political advantage. Drawing upon original research, including underutilized Algerian sources, I show that the FLN–ALN health-services division and the CRA found ways to convert Algerian health care problems and medicine shortages into international concerns. The scholarly literature on modern imperialism has explored at length how colonial regimes manipulated health and medicine; this article argues that Algerian nationalists also used the provision of medicine and health care to gain the support of the local population and to sway international public opinion.Footnote 4

ALGERIAN HEALTH CARE SERVICES

From its inception, the FLN recognized the strong correlation between medical care and civilian support, yet the first two years of the war (1954–56) were extremely challenging for the Algerian health-services division due to poor coordination among the political leadership. Despite FLN claims that its participants agreed on the methods it should pursue to achieve independence, its leaders were divided about the direction the war should take.Footnote 5 The initial FLN heads shared an end goal but faced logistical challenges related in part to their dispersed geographic locations; they thus struggled to establish a centralized health-service organization that would adequately address the needs of both their soldiers and the civilian constituency they claimed to represent.

During this period, communication between different regions of the country was limited, and the ALN did not have standard procedures or trained medical personnel upon whom to rely, resulting in what Mohammed Harbi, a former Algerian political activist, calls a “relatively inefficient” health system.Footnote 6 In December 1954, fewer than 1,900 doctors in Algeria (of whom only seventy-five were Algerian) served a population of roughly nine million Muslim Algerians and one million Europeans and pieds-noirs.Footnote 7 As a result, FLN and ALN participants worked with limited expertise and made creative use of inadequate supplies.Footnote 8

Two important events, the May 1956 strike (La grève du 19 Mai 1956) and the August 1956 Soummam Congress, transformed the FLN–ALN health-services division, which reported directly to the army, and enabled nationalists to argue that they were prepared to assume responsibility for the people's welfare.Footnote 9 In the spring of that year, the General Union of Muslim Algerian Students (Union Générale des Etudiants Muselmans Algériens, UGEMA) organized what turned out to be an extremely effective recruiting tool for the wartime medical division and inaugurated a new phase of the conflict. On 19 May, the union called on Algerian students to walk away from their classrooms and devote themselves to national service. It questioned the nature of their coursework and the value of their diplomas in such a time of crisis, when their “mothers, spouses, [and] sisters are raped, when [their] elderly die by machinegun fire, bombs, and napalm.”Footnote 10 The UGEMA urged students in all disciplines to suspend their studies immediately and indefinitely, “desert university benches,” and commit themselves to “more urgent and glorious tasks.”Footnote 11

Hundreds of students joined the maquis in the spring of 1956, a moment that doctor and historian Ahmed Benkhaled calls “a crucial turning point in the history of the Algerian health services during the national liberation struggle.”Footnote 12 In 1956, there were only 360 Algerians enrolled at the University of Algiers and, of that group, only 128 were studying medicine.Footnote 13 Medical students’ knowledge and skills were in high demand, especially considering how few of them there were, and any student was a valuable asset.

Many medical students had not finished their training, but they were a welcome addition to FLN ranks.Footnote 14 A number of Algerian students pursuing medical degrees abroad responded to the UGEMA call. In Lyon, Bensalem Djamel-Eddine (Bin Salim Jamal al-Din) and some of his fellow classmates interrupted their coursework to return to Algeria. In December 1956, Djamel-Eddine took a boat to Tunisia, where he practiced medicine in Sousse for several months and worked closely with Dr. Mohammed Nekkache (Naqqash), a member of the Algerian health commission in the east. In May 1957, he entered into Algeria and began working in Wilaya 1.Footnote 15

Doctors and nurses supporting the nationalist effort helped train new recruits for propaganda and basic medical care in clandestine safe houses and other secret locations.Footnote 16El Moudjahid, an FLN newspaper that was printed in both French and Arabic, reported that the ALN took the time to instruct an elite cadre of medical personnel before sending them to the maquis. Out of a group of roughly 300 soldiers preparing for combat, forty were selected to receive intensive instruction in triage and basic surgical procedures—skills “the struggle required,” noted the ALN supervisor. After one month, they were rotated back out to the larger group, and forty more recruits would start their medical training.Footnote 17 This degree of preparation was rare but it speaks to the concerted FLN effort to bolster its medical presence in Algeria as well as to publicize that presence.

The second major development in health care recruitment and organization in 1956 was the Soummam Congress, which began on 20 August in the Soummam valley. The main impetus behind the congress was political. The FLN needed to unite its different leadership factions, generate a coherent strategy, and refine its goals. This summit, attended by sixteen delegates from around the country, established political rule over the organization's military wing and prioritized the internal leadership over the external one operating in Cairo.Footnote 18 The attendees issued a platform outlining cease-fire and negotiation conditions; the role of women and youth; and the FLN's relationship with peasants, trade unions, the Jewish community, communists, and pieds-noirs. They also divided Algeria into six wilāyāt or provinces for organizational purposes and established new executive hierarchies throughout the country.

After the fall of 1956, the FLN's wartime health care system operated within the new territorial infrastructure of the wilāyāt, each of which was further divided into zones, regions, sectors, and finally subsectors. Each health-services unit within this hierarchy was expected to maintain detailed reports on the patients it treated and submit them to the unit above it. Several accounts depict the ALN–FLN health-services division as functioning relatively smoothly during this phase, with medical personnel following the proper chain of command.Footnote 19 They suggest that doctors filled out patient reports and sent many wounded individuals for further treatment or rehabilitation abroad.Footnote 20

However, the system described in these sources is an idealized version of how the medical sector actually functioned.Footnote 21 One doctor remembers that “people did what they could” and that the health care services “were not dependable.”Footnote 22 Another activist explains that the unit's location greatly impacted the amount of supplies it received. For example, Mustafa ʿAmirush, who fought primarily in Wilaya IV, recalls that medical units closest to the Moroccan and Tunisian borders were the most successful in obtaining essential supplies.Footnote 23 Others remember that the health-services division during this period was not very visible and that it operated on a day to day basis.Footnote 24 These descriptions challenge the picture described in the official FLN documents and highlight the discrepancy between the leadership's intentions and the reality experienced by many maquisards.

Attempting to construct a viable medical sector, the FLN–ALN issued strict instructions about the aims of the health branch and how maquisards were expected to behave. According to a doctor who served in Wilaya IV, the four main goals of the wartime health division were to conduct regular visits to soldiers; prevent infectious diseases; treat combatants, refugees, and political militants; and, finally, care for wounded civilians.Footnote 25 Accomplishing these tasks and obtaining the necessary supplies required cooperation between different military, political, and social groups.

The French military seized some of these reports as they circulated clandestinely and noticed that part of the new Algerian health initiative targeted rural and remote areas. In June 1957, General Raoul Salan discovered that the FLN–ALN health-services division was treating not only soldiers but also Algerian civilians. Mobile medical teams passed through villages and the countryside—as did the French Sections Administratives Spécialisées—offering treatment that was previously unavailable. Salan noted what a “psychological effect” the “rebel commanders” could have on the rural population. He thought offering medical treatment was one of the “best FLN propaganda tools” he had seen to date and commented on the important moral dimension of this kind of work.Footnote 26 The nationalists intended to win support through their health programs and, to borrow an expression from Sandra Sufian, thereby “heal the land and the nation.”Footnote 27 Given their limited resources and personnel, it is difficult to assess the full impact of FLN–ALN medical offerings in isolated parts of Algeria. However, French officials and army generals had to acknowledge that they were not the only players on this field.

The psychological effect of medical care on the civilian population thus became strategically significant for Algerian nationalists. In one FLN–ALN service note, Lakhdar, a captain in Wilaya IV, reminded his personnel to “periodically visit and treat the population.”Footnote 28 In reports about morale and social conditions, medical officers often commented on their successes winning over the Algerian people. “Mahmoud,” an ALN member in Wilaya IV, wrote that “the population always receives [doctors and nurses] with great satisfaction. They never pass through a village without providing care to a large number of children and the elderly. The people know the difficulties we face in procuring medication and appreciate our efforts even more.”Footnote 29 Monthly reports issued by the FLN and ALN noted that medical care was “an excellent psychological weapon to use against the French” and observed “how happy civilians were to see Arab physicians” caring for and encouraging them.Footnote 30

One doctor explained that the FLN deployed Algerian doctors to areas that might benefit from medical propaganda.Footnote 31 They tried to reassure the population that the nationalist organization could “take care of them” and stressed that its leaders were “interested in their lives” and would “not let them die” in poor conditions.Footnote 32 Similar to strategies employed in other colonial contexts in Africa and the Middle East, Algerian political leaders tried to equate its own medical services with those of a future sovereign state and employed a social welfare framework to show that they “[spoke] for the masses and their well-being.”Footnote 33

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL AMBITIONS: THE ALGERIAN RED CRESCENT

From the beginning of the anticolonial movement, the FLN attended to both local and international dimensions of the Algerian struggle for independence, and this attention also applied to the medical division. The student strike and the Soummam Congress contributed to establishing a more sophisticated domestic health sector, even while the brutal conditions of war made it difficult to adequately meet all of the population's needs. In 1957, the nationalists concentrated on expanding their health care system beyond Algeria. They had already received assistance from doctors in the newly sovereign states of Morocco and Tunisia; throughout the conflict, in the latter country especially, hospitals regularly reserved beds for wounded Algerians.Footnote 34 They wanted to build upon Arab alliances and viewed the internationalization of medical aid beyond these spheres as a critical tactic in gaining additional support.

The FLN worked closely with Arab and Eastern Bloc governments to supplement its health care instruction efforts. In December 1958, Egyptian president Jamal ʿAbd al-Nasir invited a group of Algerian nurses to participate in an internship at the Egyptian Red Crescent. He told El Moudjahid he was “convinced that if a young Algerian girl is determined to fight for her country, her faith will be rewarded, and God will bestow victory and dignity upon Algeria.”Footnote 35 The nationalists also reached out to the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia for help. These governments developed a system that allowed the ALN to regularly send its wounded to treatment facilities abroad. Several articles in El Moudjahid describe trips that Algerian soldiers made in order to receive treatment unavailable in the Maghrib.Footnote 36 Another Algerian doctor recalled the important role that Eastern countries played in providing treatment and physical therapy for the wounded.Footnote 37 The FLN considered this to be a “concrete gesture” that signified a larger commitment to independent Algeria.Footnote 38 It can also be interpreted as an instance of Cold War alliances in the global South such as those Matthew Connelly and Odd Arne Westad have analyzed.Footnote 39

The nationalists wanted to expand their support network further to include organizations with international ties; one already active in Algeria was the French Red Cross (CRF), a national society of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) based in Geneva. According to ICRC regulations, each sovereign country was permitted one national society linked to the international organization to carry out humanitarian activities according to local needs. Though associated with the founding branch in Geneva and expected to uphold the principles of neutrality and impartiality, national societies approved by the central organization were not under its direct authority and maintained their own staff.Footnote 40 In theory, the CRF in Algeria could have been a place for French and Algerian doctors to join forces openly, where patients of all backgrounds could feel safe from both government and FLN attacks. Instead, it found itself torn between a colonial mission and a humanitarian one and in fact systematically assumed a position of sympathy for the metropole.

During the decades preceding the war for independence, the CRF in Algeria organized national health days, contributed aid to tubercular North African patients in France, assisted veterans of World War II and Indochina, and matched Algerian host families with young French missionaries for the Christmas and New Year holidays.Footnote 41 The evidence suggests that during this time the CRF maintained a low profile and was not a target of significant criticism from either the European or Algerian population. But this changed after 1954, when FLN representatives accused it of being “a vessel of colonialism” and “a puppet of the French authorities,” thrusting it into the national and international spotlights.Footnote 42

Internal CRF reports from the start of the war in November 1954 until late 1956 rarely mentioned the conflict or even any increased demand for medical services in Algeria.Footnote 43 A short internal letter from 1956 noted that the CRF intended to collect funds for and assist “those hit by the events.”Footnote 44 But the national society's annual reports for 1954 and 1955 focused primarily on its relief efforts for the September 1954 earthquake in Orléansville. The only indication in these reports that the CRF was affected by the war are references to “insurrectional conditions” and to the French army's need for aid, suggesting a political orientation toward the colonial authorities.Footnote 45 The CRF monthly magazine continued to publish interest stories about French physicians who served with the colonial military in Indochina and who debated the disorder of medical infrastructure in times of war.Footnote 46 The CRF appeared to carry on as though nothing transformative in Algeria was taking place.

In 1957, the CRF began to refer more regularly, albeit still euphemistically, to “the events” and to acknowledge the reality of a “pacification campaign,” French code for the war.Footnote 47 It was also forced to expand its programming as the conflict created more need for medical assistance throughout the country. The 1957 annual report, in contrast to those from the first three years of the war, stressed the organization's social and humanitarian spirit and its commitment to helping “victims of the calamitous events . . . regardless of race or religion.”Footnote 48 While the organization's official discourse asserted its enthusiasm for helping all victims of the war, in practice it maintained a stronger working relationship with the French army than with the FLN and devoted significant resources to assisting wounded French soldiers.Footnote 49 Accounts in newspapers and magazines such as Le Monde, L'Echo d'Alger, and Vie et Bonté (a monthly CRF magazine) seem to suggest that a primary objective of the CRF was to boost French morale by visiting soldiers in hospitals and providing them with cigarettes, candy, and games.Footnote 50

The FLN leadership was consistently critical of the CRF, accusing it of siding with the French army and European settler population. In January 1957, it decided to develop a separate national society, the Algerian Red Crescent (CRA). Given that the CRF had been operational in Algeria for decades, the Geneva-based ICRC was unlikely to recognize the newly conceived CRA. But the Algerian leadership was not deterred by the probability of the international organization only granting their national society de facto status, if any status at all. In his history of the Algerian Red Crescent, its former secretary general, Mustapha Makaci, explained that “revolutionary Algeria was not in the position to fulfill ICRC conditions . . . The Algerian government did not exist in this period . . . Yet meeting the population's needs was urgent. We had to consider an intermediary solution, a convenient solution.”Footnote 51 Members of the Comité de Coordination et d'Exécution (CCE), the precursor to the Algerian Provisional Government (GPRA), believed it was necessary for “wounded Algeria to create and have at its disposal a mouthpiece close to the international committees of Red Crosses and Red Crescents, to solicit and receive aid.”Footnote 52 They envisioned that the CRA would work closely with the ICRC; the former's first president, Omar Boukli-Hacène (ʿUmar Buqli Hasan), a lawyer from Tlemcen, expressed hope that “de jure recognition [of the CRA] would be linked to Algerian independence.”Footnote 53 The CRA would be the kind of organization that other countries around the world would respect. Its delegates would monitor and report French violations of human rights and of the Geneva Conventions in Algeria. The nationalists’ early articulation of CRA responsibilities shows a shrewd political awareness of the boundaries the new organization could contest, and the issues it could exploit, in the future.

Algerians met as early as September 1956 to discuss the possibility of forming a Red Crescent.Footnote 54 In December 1956, the CCE—the FLN chief executive body—approved the creation of the CRA, with the understanding that it would follow FLN directives and would be “perfectly integrated” into the existing executive FLN–ALN war branches. It would function as a much needed social wing of the revolutionary movement, supplementing its primary political and military initiatives.Footnote 55 The CRA would pursue a complementary agenda to that of the FLN and ALN, yet it would have different responsibilities from those branches because it would use humanitarian ideals, principles, and rhetoric to expand support by merging Algerian “political questions with humanitarian ones”—a dangerous combination, from the perspective of ICRC representative Pierre Gaillard.Footnote 56

Appropriating humanitarian language was a key component of CRA strategy; it projected an awareness of and commitment to international norms, demonstrating that Algerian leaders were capable of translating a vocabulary developed by Western institutions into one that served their own ends and through which they could make claims for sovereignty.Footnote 57 CRA representatives drew freely from ICRC literature in formulating the central elements of its mission, which included treating the injured, assisting war victims, serving as an intermediary between prisoners of war and their families, and facilitating ICRC missions to Algeria.Footnote 58 Additional CRA concerns were to assist the growing Algerian refugee population in Morocco and Tunisia; supply medicine and medical personnel to the ALN–FLN health-services division; and integrate Algeria into a global international aid movement.Footnote 59 The Algerians’ international ambition to align themselves with the Geneva-based organization and its humanitarian principles was clearly defined from the foundation of the CRA.Footnote 60

The CRA established its first offices in Tangiers and Tunis in early 1957; later that year it created branches in Geneva and Cairo. According to the first secretary general, Geneva was chosen because it was where the Red Cross and Red Crescent committees and international organizations were concentrated and Cairo because it could serve as a center “to receive donations and ensure their distribution.”Footnote 61 A general overview of CRA activities, likely written by one of its early officials, highlighted Cairo's strategic importance for connecting with “Middle Eastern brothers.”Footnote 62 In the same report, the author recounted the day-to-day tasks that the Tangier office performed—“foreign correspondence, continuous contact and discussion with ICRC representatives [contacts et discussion sans fins avec les Représentants du CICR], to make them recognize the CRA,” and “sending propaganda documents”—and encouraged those working in other cities to emulate them.Footnote 63 FLN delegates and early CRA leaders considered contacting sympathetic organizations for aid and lobbying the ICRC crucial components of their work. The CRA set out to establish relationships with influential representatives of humanitarian organizations and communicate regularly with national Red Cross societies around the world, hoping to show the extent of its dedication to conducting the war in a humane fashion.

Just four weeks after radios announced the creation of the CRA on 8 January 1957, at the height of the battle of Algiers and shortly before the FLN eight-day strike initiative, the new organization's representatives were sending letters to national societies abroad and enlisting their support.Footnote 64 For example, a letter from Boukli-Hacène to the president of the English Red Cross in London on 7 February informs the latter that “the CRA had been established in Tangiers” and that it “pursued the exact same goals” as other national societies around the world. Boukli-Hacène stresses “the long-lasting feelings of solidarity that motivate your organization and your great nation,” to act on behalf “of the suffering” and asks that the English Red Cross “respond with aid for Algerian soldiers, the sick and wounded, and orphans and refugees.”Footnote 65

By March 1957, CRA leaders were writing to and meeting with ICRC representatives. On 8 and 9 March, the CRA president, general secretary, and treasurer arrived in Geneva from Tangiers and met with FLN delegates and ICRC delegate Claude Pilloud. CRA President Boukli-Hacène had prepared a lengthy memo explaining why the ICRC should recognize the CRA; however, none of the reasons given were tenable according to ICRC conditions for an official national society. The two parties discussed prisoners, ICRC visits to Algeria, and the possibility of sending trained medical personnel to aid the Algerians. The Algerian delegates also used the meeting to raise “a long list of French atrocities and inhumane treatment,” including “executions, torture, hostages, attacks, pillages, and rapes” committed by French authorities.Footnote 66 Even though Pilloud does not make any definitive recommendations about how the international organization might proceed with the Algerians, securing a face to face meeting with the ICRC was an achievement for the new organization because it unofficially legitimized CRA action.

The motivations for the creation of the CRA were not lost on Pilloud, who voiced concerns about the aims of the organization and “the delicate position” in which it had placed the ICRC. Pilloud remarked that

the goal of creating this organism is to have an institution, distinct from the FLN, that will be able to negotiate with the ICRC and humanize the war. There is a tendency from my FLN interlocutors to send all problems that might interest the ICRC to the Algerian Red Crescent . . . Upon their return to Tangiers, they were going to assemble the CRA committee and [re]examine the problem in light of [what I said].

He worried that by meeting with CRA representatives he had recognized their activities and, by extension, their organization. He promised “to do my best to avoid difficulties for the ICRC,” though “this [would] not be easy.”Footnote 67 Pilloud's concerns were not unfounded. Association with the reputable humanitarian institution provided the Algerian nationalists an opportunity to present their agenda as analogous to that of the ICRC and to create a broader international platform from which to make appeals.

1958: SOLIDIFYING A HUMANITARIAN AGENDA

The year 1958 was a turning point in the war. Charles de Gaulle returned to power in France and began a gradual four-year shift in official policy toward Algerian independence; many of the original FLN leaders, including Hocine Aït Ahmed, Rabah Bitat, Mohamed Khider, and Mohamed Boudiaf,Footnote 68 established the Algerian Provisional Government (GPRA) in Cairo; and revelations about the systematic use of torture started to change French public opinion about the conflict.Footnote 69 As Matthew Connelly has shown, the Algerians “employed human rights reports, press conferences, and youth congresses” as weapons to rally “majorities against France at the United Nations, [win] accolades of international conferences, and [gain] twenty-one-gun salutes in capitals across the globe.”Footnote 70 Internationalizing the conflict through diplomacy was always a central component of nationalist strategy, and, as Connelly's work shows, after 1958 the GPRA was increasingly successful in achieving this aim.

Yet a vital dimension of the Algerian nationalists’ global outreach has been overlooked. Beginning in the fall of 1958, GPRA leaders, and its president Ferhat Abbas in particular, worked closely with the CRA to create an image of themselves and the Algerian people as humanitarians. Two ways they did this were by organizing French-prisoner releases attended by representatives of the European and Maghribi press and by expanding their propaganda and solicitation campaigns for aid. These efforts yielded millions of dollars in donations from countries as far away as Japan, Korea, the Soviet Union, and Cuba and helped the CRA obtain crucial medical supplies that the French government had purposely withheld. Nationalists used the Red Crescent as a launch pad to construct a version of the Algerian struggle and colonial oppression that it wanted the world to hear.

French colonial discourse had long portrayed Algerians as “intensely violent by nature,” a myth that predates 1830 but that the French military manipulated throughout the conquest in the 19th century. Similar claims were made during major uprisings against the colonial regime in the wake of World War II, most notably after the Sétif and Guelma protests in May 1945.Footnote 71 The war for independence provided the French government with a new occasion to demonize its enemy. The FLN was described as a violent group that “neglected all the laws and customs of war” and could not overcome its internal divisions and personal struggles for power.Footnote 72 Others, such as a pied-noir farmer at Ménerville, approximately forty miles east of Algiers, portrayed Algerians as ruthless people who “don't kill because they have anything against you. These days they kill for the sake of killing.”Footnote 73

French government and military officials regularly depicted the FLN and ALN as organizations of brutal savages. However, confirmation of French torture in 1958—a dominant military strategy until 1960—galvanized French domestic opinion against the government's actions.Footnote 74 Algerian nationalists exploited the torture revelations to recast the colonial administration as an abuser and violator of its own republican ideals. Moreover, with the help of the CRA, the FLN shifted the focus of the debate, casting its members as liberal, generous humanitarians willing to voluntarily follow the Geneva Conventions.

The CRA and ICRC corresponded continually during the first eighteen months of the former's existence, often on the issue of prisoners. Central elements of the ICRC's mission were providing relief for prisoners of war on both sides, tracing missing persons, and reporting on the wounded.Footnote 75 The ICRC had initially hoped that the CRA, even though not officially recognized, would provide the international organization with information about French POWs. (It asked the same of the French military regarding Algerian POWs.) Despite repeated efforts by Ferhat Abbas and Djilali Bentami (Jilali bin Tami, a CRA delegate and doctor in Geneva) throughout 1957 and the first half of 1958, they could not obtain reliable information from the FLN and ALN regarding the whereabouts and health of French prisoners. After a summer 1958 meeting in Geneva, ICRC delegate I. Zreikat's report hinted at frustration when working with the Algerians. He wrote that “Dr. Bentami understands the necessity of an FLN gesture and that it observe the Red Cross humanitarian principles if it wants reciprocity.”Footnote 76 Up until this point, he added, it had not done so.

This changed later in the year with the creation of the GPRA. Abbas had been in contact with the ICRC for nearly two years by the time he was named head of the GPRA and was thus familiar with Red Cross concerns about French prisoners. In one of his first official acts, on 3 October 1958, Abbas, along with GPRA Vice President and Minister of the Armed Forces Krim Belkacem and Minister of the Interior Lakhdar Ben Tobbal, issued a prisoner release decree that extended “a general amnesty to certain categories of detainees.”Footnote 77 It specified that “all detainees who were in local FLN and ALN units with the exception of those pursued or condemned for high treason or collaboration with the enemy” were entitled to amnesty and liberation. The official notice concluded that “certain French soldiers” held by the ALN also would “be liberated without conditions and returned to their families by delegates of the International Red Cross of Geneva.”Footnote 78 This decree would soon have an undeniable impact on improving relations with the ICRC and on reshaping the image of Algerian nationalists. The GPRA and CRA had interacted with the ICRC long enough to know that prisoner safety was one of the international organization's priorities, and Abbas hoped to prove that he and CRA representatives were worthy interlocutors on whom the ICRC could depend. The GPRA and CRA also had a chance to combat the negative press, propaganda, and derogatory portrayals the French government was circulating globally.

The nascent Algerian government wanted to project a positive image of Algerian men and women fighting for national liberation, one that suggested they believed in human rights, treated French prisoners with respect, and embraced the Geneva Conventions. Eleven days after the 3 October decree, an unnamed GPRA member discussed the potential impact prisoner releases could have on the organization and recommended that they should be brought to the attention of local press, political personalities, and organizations such as the Red Cross. He stressed that it was “very desirable that the accent be put on our liberalism and our concern for humanity.”Footnote 79 In the event that prisoner releases “need[ed] to be explained in political terms to your interlocutors,” he recommended that it should first be made clear that “it is an act of good will on our part [and] implies to our adversary that we respect the Geneva Conventions.” Second, “it is from a position of strength that we are able to be liberal and generous. [Our actions] are not a sign of weakness.” And third, “we await a French Government response to our eminently humane initiative” that shows “the same good will.” When possible, he concluded, “it is in this way that newspaper editorials should be oriented.”Footnote 80 The nationalists’ willingness to tackle the delicate matter of POWs was a deliberate strategy to demonstrate to the ICRC that they intended to comply with humane practices.

The Algerian leadership did not waste any time preparing their first prisoner-release ceremony in Tunisia. Two and a half weeks after Abbas announced the decree, the ALN released four French prisoners it had captured near Sakhiet-Sidi-Youssef on 11 January of that year and had held for ten months.Footnote 81 Working in conjunction with the Tunisian Red Crescent (CRT), the CRA organized a ceremony for their release on 20 October 1958. El Moudjahid reported that Aziz Djellouli (al-ʿAziz al-Jaluli), president of the CRT, and ICRC delegates Jean de Preux and Pierre Gaillard presided over the occasion, which lasted just under one hour. Roughly sixty members of the international press and radio were on hand to witness the French soldiers returning to their families.Footnote 82 According to the GPRA press statement, an unidentified representative of the political organization told the crowd that this occasion was a result of the 3 October decree and was not contingent upon the release of Algerian POWs by the French.Footnote 83 This effort demonstrated the commitment of the GPRA, the CRA, and the CRT to work together and to distance themselves from the colonial administration's accusations that the FLN was a terrorist group. The GPRA, in its infant stages, facilitated this event and successfully coordinated various Algerian organizations, signaling a renewed interest in incorporating CRA work into the broader nationalist political strategy.

Additional prisoner releases throughout North Africa followed the initial one in Tunisia. On 3 November 1958, Colonel Amirouche (ʿAmirush), the influential leader of Wilaya III, supervised the ALN release of six French soldiers in Kabylia.Footnote 84 Muhammad Yazid, GPRA minister of information, wrote a memo from Cairo one week later saying “these six French prisoners publicly recognized, in declarations that were reproduced by the French press on 5 and 6 November, that they were well treated by the ALN.” Yazid remarked that “global opinion will not fail to realize that this new release of French prisoners is taking place at a moment when the French Government is violating international laws of war more than ever.”Footnote 85

In Morocco, as in Tunisia and Algeria, an ICRC delegation assisted ALN officials and the CRA in a prisoner-release ceremony, held during the second week of December 1958. According to “Nadir,” a GPRA external-affairs representative, the nationalists counted on “the maximum amount of publicity,” and, if possible, the coverage should underscore that the Algerians’ actions reflected their government's respect for the laws of war, which the French army violated daily. This latest release was indicative of new humanitarian gestures that would define future GPRA, FLN–ALN, and CRA politics.Footnote 86 In two short months, the GPRA and CRA worked with the CRT, Moroccan officials, and ICRC intermediaries in three Maghribi countries. These ceremonies provided a stark contrast to the images and stories about Algerian barbarism published in the French press. They were meant also to serve as “positive gestures” that “clearly expressed” the desire to “unilaterally humanize the conflict.”Footnote 87 The Algerian leaders wanted to present themselves as operating according to international humanitarian principles.

Building upon the success of the prisoner-release ceremonies, the GPRA, the CRA, and the FLN–ALN focused on publicizing the plight of Algerian refugees to broaden their strategy for soliciting financial and material aid and garnering international sympathy for their anticolonial struggle. The French government had begun creating regroupement centers in Algeria as early as 1955 in an effort to pacify the countryside. The number of regroupement centers increased dramatically after 1957, when they were systematically implemented as part of French military strategy. Three years into the war, there were almost 240,000 Algerian civilians living in 382 temporary and permanent centers. By early 1960, there were approximately 1.5 million Algerians living in over 1,700 centers, and later that year nearly one-fourth of the Algerian people had been forcibly resettled into them.Footnote 88 During the course of the French army's efforts to relocate the indigenous population within Algeria, several hundred thousand became refugees in Morocco and Tunisia. By 1959, over 200,000 Algerians had fled their homeland and were in need of food, clothing, and medicine.

The CRA began producing pamphlets and memos detailing the plight of these refugees. One publication, titled “Les réfugiés algériens,” included graphic images of refugees and the deplorable conditions in which they lived due to the destructive nature of French military action.Footnote 89 The pamphlet called on readers to recognize common human characteristics and to get involved in the CRA relief effort. The Algerian national society took full advantage of the ICRC network and circulated its materials to as many national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies as it could contact. CRA publications were a direct rebuttal of French accusations of Algerian brutality and provided compelling evidence that France had violated international law. This new phase of Algerian propaganda aimed to publicize the war; familiarize the world with Algerian refugees; demonstrate severe financial, medical, and material need; and ask for aid. The CRA refined this method of solicitation and received millions of dollars during the second half of the war.

The CRA sent a “call on behalf of refugees” to Arab allies in Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, Khartoum, Amman, Benghazi, and Jeddah, imploring them to apply pressure on their governments and on social organizations in their countries. The plea described refugee conditions in Morocco and Tunisia and asserted that “more than 300,000 Algerians, 50 percent of whom are children, 35 percent women, and 15 percent elderly individuals,” lived across the borders. The Moroccan and Tunisian governments had made significant relief contributions, but they could not provide aid sufficient to meet the need.Footnote 90 Therefore, the CRA was calling on concerned Arab neighbors to respond and send donations.

The fundraising campaign succeeded in raising funds from across the Arab world; donations came in all materials and amounts and were sent to CRA offices in Tunis and to the Moroccan and Tunisian Red Crescent societies. The Libyan Red Crescent's Central Committee sent $25,000 for child refugees in combat zones.Footnote 91 Jordan sent approximately 80,000 Swiss francs to the CRA office in Tangiers.Footnote 92 Syria sent 60,000 French francs worth of flour and cornmeal.Footnote 93 Donations to the CRA for refugee aid continued to arrive through 1962: Tunisia sent over 200 kilograms of medication and several shipments of clothesFootnote 94; Jordan sent more than 5,000 pieces of clothingFootnote 95; and Lebanon sent thirty-two million francs worth of medication,Footnote 96 to name just a few of the Arab nations that participated in the war relief effort.

But even more telling of the CRA's aid solicitation success was the extent to which countries and organizations outside the Arab world responded to its calls for help. Countries such as Italy and Portugal began sending clothes, blankets, milk, and cloth as early as 1958, as did Japan, Canada, Chile, and Norway.Footnote 97 The Turkish Red Crescent donated thirty tons of sugar and medicine.Footnote 98 North Vietnam sent medicine and rice to the Casablanca office.Footnote 99 The East German Red Cross contributed 250,000 marks worth of medication for refugees in February 1958.Footnote 100 French military intelligence even noted that the CRA received donations from nations such as China and Sweden, including medication, money, and bed covers.Footnote 101 International organizations also increased their aid after 1959.Footnote 102 In November and December 1960 alone, the CRA received seventy-five kilograms of “personal effects” from Italy and 410 kilograms of medication and general supplies from Switzerland.Footnote 103 In 1961, aid continued to stream into CRA offices from diverse organizations; the Indian Congress Committee sent 550 cotton blankets, 427 pounds of tea, and 1,000 vials of penicillin to Tunis, and the Vatican pledged $100,000 for refugee relief work.Footnote 104 The ICRC made large donations to the CRA throughout the war, especially after 1958. The global response is a powerful indicator of the CRA's success in constructing a compelling humanitarian message that went beyond Arab alliances and anticolonial movements.

CONCLUSION

The Algerian nationalist leadership created a formidable set of complementary health organizations that permitted them to engage in domestic and international outreach, proving the existence of a vibrant world beyond the French colonial state that was able to transcend national boundaries and interests. During the first half of the war, the FLN–ALN Services de Santé offered a counterpoint to colonial medical services and enabled nationalists to promote a state welfare agenda. In 1957, nationalists founded the Algerian Red Crescent, which not only provided an institutional link between Algerian political leaders, military officials, and medical personnel but also helped to develop and refine wartime strategies. By associating itself with the ICRC, emphasizing French torture, staging prisoner-release ceremonies, and publicizing the plight of Algerian refugees to garner aid, the CRA appropriated universal discourses of health and humanitarianism to reshape international perceptions of Algerians and their war for national liberation. This article has aimed to situate their efforts within a broader history of decolonization and international humanitarianism and to contribute to rethinking the process through which political claims were made at the end of empire.

Footnotes

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Frederick Cooper, James McDougall, Philip Nord, and Helen Tilley for encouraging me to pursue this project and for commenting on earlier versions of the work. I am grateful for generous grants from the Princeton University History Department, the Princeton University Center for Health and Wellbeing, and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies that made this research possible. I am indebted to my interviewees for sharing their stories and to Clifford Rosenberg and Muriam Haleh Davis for reading earlier drafts. My argument was strengthened by presentations at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, the American Institutue for Maghrib Studies Public Health Conference, Columbia University's Seminar on Contemporary Africa, and the helpful comments of four anonymous IJMES reviewers and the editors.

1 Centre d'Archives Outre Mer (hereafter CAOM) 81f 528, Ministre d’État chargé d'Affaires Algériennes, Croissant Rouge Algérien, “Aspets de la Revolution Algérienne,” n.d.

2 Amrith, Sunil, Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930–65 (New York: Palgrave, 2006), 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Prakash, Gyan makes a similar argument in Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), chap. 5Google Scholar.

3 Important scholarship analyzing the international diplomatic dimensions of the Algerian conflict includes Connelly, Matthew, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Elsenhans, Hartmut, La guerre d'Algérie 1954–62: La transition d'une France à une autre, le passage de la IVème à la Vème République (Paris: Éditions Publisud, 1999)Google Scholar; Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; and Byrne, Jeffrey James, Pilot Nation: Revolutionary Algeria in the Third World's Vanguard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar. Algerian literature on the war tends to stress the significance of the international arena to the nationalists’ political strategy. See, for example, Harbi, Mohammed, Aux origines du FLN (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1975)Google Scholar; idem, Le FLN: Mirage et réalite (Paris: Éditions Jeune Afrique, 1980); idem, Les archives de la révolution algérienne (Paris: Éditions Jeune Afrique, 1981); idem and Meynier, Gilbert, Le FLN, documents en histoire, 1954–1962 (Paris: Fayard, 2004)Google Scholar; Haroun, Ali, La 7ème wilaya. La guerre du FLN en France, 1954–1962 (Paris: Seuil, 1986)Google Scholar; and Meynier, Gilbert, Histoire intérieure du FLN, 1954–1962 (Algiers: Éditions Casbah, 2003)Google Scholar. For recent French scholarship emphasizing the significance of military and judiciary abuses, see Branche, Raphaëlle, La torture et l'armée pendant la guerre d'Algérie (Paris: Gallimard, 2001)Google Scholar and Thénault, Sylvie, Une drôle de justice: Magistrats dans la guerre d'Algérie (Paris: Éditions La Decouverte, 2001)Google Scholar.

4 The global context of the war remains crucial to understanding how the FLN diplomatically defeated the French and forced them to leave in 1962. Matthew Connelly's work has shown the strategic significance of the Cold War to the Algerian war, including in the domain of public health. Connelly, Matthew, “The Cold War in the Longue Durée: Global Migration, Public Health, and Population Control,” Cambridge History of the Cold War; Endings, ed. Leffler, Melvyn P. and Westad, Odd Arne (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 466–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article addresses the internationalization of the Algerian war through health care, but the full role of the Cold War is beyond its scope.

5 The internal leadership, which included influential figures such as Abane Ramdane (ʿAban Ramadan) and Amar Ouamrane (ʿAmmar ʿUmran), focused its efforts on military action within Algeria. Ahmed Ben Bella and Hocine Aït Ahmed (Husayn Ait Ahmad) headed the external leadership from Cairo and concentrated on international political outreach. For further explanation of various nationalist factions, see Services Historiques de l'Armée de Terre (hereafter SHAT), 1H/2582 Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN), “La Génèse et l'evolution du FLN/ALN,” no date [1956]; Harbi, Le FLN: Mirage et réalité, 96–107, 115, 389; Carlier, Omar, Entre nation et jihad: Histoire sociale des radicalismes algériens (Paris: FNSP, 1995)Google Scholar; Collot, Claude and Henry, Jean-Robert, eds., Le mouvement national algérien: Textes 1912–1954 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1978)Google Scholar; Haroun, La 7ème wilaya, 5–27; McDougall, James, History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Stora, Benjamin, Messali Hadj, pionnier du nationalisme algérien, 1898–1974 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1988)Google Scholar.

6 Harbi, Le FLN: Mirage et réalité, 170.

7 Ageron, Charles-Robert, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine: Tome II, de l'insurrection de 1871 au déclenchement de la guerre de libération (1954) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 538–40Google Scholar.

8 Wounded ALN soldiers were often forced to improvise and treat themselves and each other with only alcohol and mercurochrome. Commandant Azzedine, Si, On nous appelait fellaghas (Paris: Éditions Stock, 1976), 78Google Scholar; Teguia, Mohamed, L'armée de libération nationale en Wilaya IV (Algiers: Éditions Casbah, 2002), 71Google Scholar.

9 Amir, Mohammed Benaïssa, Contribution à l’étude de l'histoire de la santé en Algérie: Autour d'une expérience vecue en ALN Wilaya V (Algiers: Office des Publications Universitaires, 1986), 109Google Scholar.

10 “Actes de la Journée Commémorative du 19 mai 1956: Journée de l’étudiant,” Bulletin d'Information de la Faculté de Médecine d'Alger, 19 May 2007, 3.

11 Ibid.

12 Benkhaled, Ahmed, Chroniques médicales algériennes: Les années de braise (Algiers: Editions Houma, 2004), 24Google Scholar.

13 Khiati, Mostefa, Histoire de la médecine en Algérie (Algiers: Editions Anep, 2000), 28Google Scholar.

14 Meynier, Histoire intérieure du FLN, 497.

15 Djamel-Eddine, Bensalem, Voyez nos armes, voyez nos médecins: Chroniques de la Zone 1, Wilaya III (Algiers: Entreprise National du Livre, 1984), 17–24Google Scholar. In 1956, the FLN divided Algeria into six wilāyāt or provinces for organizational purposes; they were Wilaya I (Aurès region), Wilaya II (North Constantine region), Wilaya III (Kabylia region), Wilaya IV (Algiers region), Wilaya V (Oran region), and Wilaya VI (Sahara and the surrounding area).

16 Interview, Jeanine Belkhodja, 25 March 2007, Algiers. Between 2007 and 2009, I conducted interviews in Algiers with seven Algerian physicians (six men and one woman) who practiced medicine during the war. Some names have been changed.

17 “ALN forme ses cadres: Des infirmiers d’élite,” El Moudjahid 2, 15 January 1959, 130–31.

18 The sixteen men in attendance were Youcef Zighoud (Yusuf Zighud), Lakhdar Ben Tobbal (Lakhdar bin Tubbal), Mustafa Benaouda (Mustafa bin ʿAwda), Brahim Mezhoudi (Brahim Mazhudi), ʿAli Kafi, Rouibah Hocine (Ruwibah Husayn), Krim Belkacem (Karim Balqasim), Said Mohammedi, Colonel Amirouche (ʿAmirush), Kaci Hamai (Qasi Hamai), Amar Ouamrane, Saddek Dehilès (Sadiq Dihilas), M'Hamed Bouguerre (Muhammad Bukir), Ali Mellah, Abane Ramdane, and Larbi Ben M'Hidi (al-ʿArabi bin Mhidi). Meynier, Histoire intérieure du FLN, 1954–1962, 191.

19 Benkhaled, Chroniques médicales algériennes, 34–37.

20 Amir, Contribution à l’étude de l'histoire de la santé en Algérie, 118–27.

21 SHAT/1H 1681/2, FLN Service de Santé and SHAT/2582/1, Armée de Libération National contain letters and reports seized by the French military during tactical operations and from the bodies of dead Algerian combatants that indicate a level of precision in reporting the number of sick and wounded. ALN service directives dictated rudimentary skills it expected medical personnel to perform and issued instructions for how this information was to be sent from sectors, regions, and zones. Apart from these two files and statements in some Algerian memoirs that such a medical hierarchy existed, there is little evidence to suggest that the FLN–ALN medical division was able to operate this efficiently.

22 Interview, Khalid Khatib, 10 June 2009, Algiers.

23 Interview, Mustafa ʿAmirush, 23 June 2009, Algiers.

24 Interview, Khalid Khatib, 10 June 2009, Algiers.

25 Amir, Contribution à l’étude de l'histoire de la santé en Algérie, 109.

26 SHAT/1H 1691/2, FLN Service de Santé, Organisation du service de santé rebelle, Letter from French Army General, Raoul Salan, to the inter army Superior Command, 10ème Région Militaire, 1 June 1957, Algiers.

27 Sufian, Sandra, Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920–1947 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sufian's study focuses on Palestine under the British Mandate (1920–47) and argues that the anti-malaria campaigns supported by the Zionist movement were a deliberate effort to reshape both the physical bodies of Jews and the physical landscape of the land.

28 SHAT/1H 1691/2, FLN Service de Santé, Organisation du service de santé rebelle, FLN–ALN service notice from zone 1 captain, Mr. Lakhdar, 8 December 1956, Wilaya IV.

29 SHAT/1H 1691/D2, FLN Service de Santé, Organisation du service de santé rebelle, 1957–1960, Report on social conditions written by ALN medical assistant in Wilaya IV, Zone 1, 7 February 1957.

30 SHAT/1H 2582/1, Armée de Libération, October 1956 Monthly report, Wilaya IV, no author.

31 Djamel-Eddine, Voyez nos armes, voyez nos médecins, 97.

32 Ibid., 98–99.

33 Historians of medicine have made similar arguments about Egypt and Zambia. See Shakry, Omnia El, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007), 6, 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ferguson, James, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

34 Meynier, Histoire intérieure du FLN, 497.

35 “Une promotion d'infirmières algériennes au Caire,” El Moudjahid 2, 8 December 1958, 98.

36 “Actualité et point to repère: Des blessés de l'ALN partent pour l'USSR et la Tchecoslovaquie,” El Moudjahid 2, 31 August 1959, 441; “Le Litva emporte nos blessés vers Odessa,” El Moudjahid 3, 73, and 24 November 1960, 319; “Actualité: Pour nos blessés,” El Moudjahid 3, 15 April 1961, 459.

37 Interview, Jeanine Belkhodja, 25 March 2007, Algiers.

38 “Actualité et point de repère,” 441.

39 Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution; Westad, The Global Cold War.

40 “What is the ICRC's relationship with national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies?” http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/5fmjhl.htm (accessed 15 June 2012). Histories of the organization include Berry, Nicholas, War and the Red Cross: The Unspoken Mission (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Forsythe, David, The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ian Reid, The Evolution of the Red Cross (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1975).

41 CAOM/GGA/1K/678, French Red Cross reports, 1942–1957.

42 Archives Nationales d'Algérie (hereafter ANA) GPRA/78(i), “Plan du Travail du CRA établi à l'Intérieur de CCE,” Internal Algerian Red Crescent signed by Hadj Omar Boukli-Hacène, CRA President, Comité Centrale, Tunis, 26 September 1957.

43 CAOM/GGA/81F/1650, Aide médicale et sociale, Report on the “Conventions entre Délégation Régionale des Amitiés Africaines en Algérie et la Délégation Générale de la Croix-Rouge Française en Algérie,” 1953.

44 CAOM/GGA/1K/678, French Red Cross reports, 1942–57, Letter from the Prefect, Cabinet Director, Jacques Pernet, to the Algiers Prefecture, 21 April 1956, Algiers.

45 Archives de la Croix-Rouge Française (hereafter CRF), Rapports sur les activités de la Croix-Rouge Française en Algérie, 1954, 1955.

46 Vie et Bonté, Organe Officiel de la Croix-Rouge Française, no. 69, September-October 1955, 16–17.

47 CAOM/GGA/12CAB/150, Rapports sur les activités de la Croix-Rouge Française en Algérie, 1956, and CRF, Rapports sur les activités de la Croix-Rouge Française en Algérie, 1957.

48 CRF, Rapports sur les activités de la Croix-Rouge Française en Algérie, 1957.

49 CRF, Rapports sur les activités de la Croix-Rouge Française en Algérie, 1957 and 1958.

50 These news sources repeatedly published articles about CRF visits to French military and civilian hospitals. Often CRF nurses would pose alongside injured French soldiers, and the caption would describe the rejuvenating nature of their visits. Around Christmas, the CRF made an extra effort to visit hospitals around the country and hand out gifts to the French soldiers.

51 Makaci, Mustapha, Le Croissant Rouge Algérien (Algiers: Éditions Alpha, 2007), 82Google Scholar. This work draws on the author's experiences and on notes he took in the late 1950s and includes an annex with invaluable CRA documents, correspondence, and pictures from the war years.

52 Ibid., 82–83.

53 ANA/GPRA/78(i), “Plan du Travail du CRA établi à l'Intérieur de CCE.”

54 Algerian leaders in Tetouan, Morocco first contacted Boumediène Bensmaine and pharmacist Merad Abdellah (Murad ʿAbdallah) to compile a report entitled “The Algerian Red Crescent Organization.” This organization was modeled on the Tunisian Red Crescent. Benatia, Farouk, Les actions humanitaires pendant la lutte de libération (Algiers: Éditions Dahlab, 1997), 80Google Scholar.

55 Makaci, Le Croissant Rouge Algérien, 84.

56 International Committee of the Red Cross Archives (hereafter ICRC) BAG/210/008/001, Prisonniers français en mains rebelles, 1956–57, Report from ICRC representative, Pierre Gaillard, regarding his meeting with CRA representative and Geneva delegate, Dr. Bentami, Geneva, 15 October 1957.

57 El-Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory, 14. Frederick Cooper has shown how African laborers made effective claims by seizing “the new discourse of [French and British] administrators and [turning] assertions of control into demands for entitlements: if colonial officials wanted Africans to work like their idealized European workers, they should pay them on a similar scale and bargain with them in good faith.” Cooper, Frederick, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Benatia, Les actions humanitaires pendant la lutte de libération, 255.

59 Ibid., 80. Morocco and Tunisia had already established emergency care committees in early 1957 to assist the massive influx of Algerian refugees into their respective territories. However, the committees’ funds were insufficient to meet the level of care and assistance the refugees required. ANA/GPRA/78(h), Rapport Général d'Activité du CRA, Cairo, 1957.

60 The international political dimension is also outlined in an early CRA work plan written by unnamed CCE members in 1957. ANA/GPRA/78(i), “Plan du Travail du CRA établi à l'Intérieur de CCE.”

61 Makaci, Le Croissant Rouge Algérien, 82.

62 ANA/GPRA/78(h), Rapport Général d'Activité du CRA, Cairo, 1957.

63 Ibid.

64 Benatia, Les actions humanitaires pendant la lutte de libération, 81.

65 Quoted in ibid., 265.

66 ICRC/BAG/210/008/003, Confidential report on the Algerian Red Crescent written by Claude Pilloud, Rabat, 18 March 1957.

67 Ibid.

68 Husayn Ait Ahmad, Rabah Bitat, Muhammad Khidir, and Muhammad Budiyaf.

69 See Alleg, Henri, La question (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1958)Google Scholar; Branche, La torture et l'armée pendant la guerre d'Algérie; and Lazreg, Marnia, Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution, 4.

71 McDougall, James, “Savage Wars? Codes of Violence in Algeria, 1830s–1990s,” Third World Quarterly 26 (2005): 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These caricatures of violence persisted through the 1990s and were invoked to explain the civil conflict in Algeria. See Roberts, Hugh, The Battlefield, Algeria, 1988–2002: Studies in a Broken Polity (London: Verso, 2003)Google Scholar.

72 France-Soir, 12 May 1958, quoted in Thénault, L'histoire de la guerre d'indépendance algérienne, 160, see also 88.

73 Quoted in Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006), 330.

74 Henry Alleg's 1958 publication of La question provided concrete evidence of French torture. Other personal accounts and observations of torture and general prison experiences in Algeria were published often in Le Monde and Libération from 1958 to 1960. One example is Dénis Berger's retelling of an encounter he had with an Algerian while detained. The Algerian prisoner told him he had been tortured with electricity, and Berger says he saw the long, thin scars covering the man's body. “Un nouveau témoignage sur ‘La Gangrène,’” Le Monde, 12 December 1959. For other accounts of torture, see Belkhodja, Amar, L'affaire Hamdani Adda (Tiaret, Algeria: Éditions Mekkloufi, n.d.)Google Scholar; Branche, La torture et l'armée pendant la guerre d'Algérie; Einaudi, Jean-Luc, La ferme Améziane. Enquête sur un centre de torture pendant la guerre d'Algérie (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1991)Google Scholar; Sylvie Thénault, Une drôle de justice; Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, La torture dans la République (Paris: Minuit, 1972)Google Scholar; and Maran, Rita, Torture: The Role of Ideology in the French–Algerian War (New York: Praeger, 1989)Google Scholar. Aussaresses, Général, Services Spéciaux: Algérie, 1955–1957 (Paris: Perrin, 2001)Google Scholar confirms many of the earlier accounts about torture.

75 International Red Cross Handbook (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1983), 551.

76 ICRC/BAG/210/008/001, Prisonniers en mains rebelles, 1956–57, Report by ICRC representative, I. Zreikat regarding a meeting with CRA delegate, Dr. Bentami, 14 June 1957, Geneva, ICRC/BAG/210/008/001, Prisonniers français en mains rebelles, 1956–57, Report by ICRC representative Pierre Gaillard regarding a meeting with CRA representative, Dr. Bentami, 10 July 1957, Geneva.

77 ANA/GPRA/83(5), “Libération de prisonniers français par l'ALN 1958,” Official notice from Ferhat Abbas, GPRA President, 14 October 1958, Cairo.

78 Ibid.

79 ANA/GPRA/83(5), “Libération de prisonniers français par l'ALN 1958,” letter written by “Nadir” who worked for the Minister of External Affairs, 1 December 1958, Cairo, Emphasis added.

80 Ibid.

81 The prisoners were Vincent Morales, Jacques Reléa, Jean Jacob, and Jean Vialaron.

82 Le Monde reported the release of these four French prisoners in the 19–20 October 1958 edition with an article titled “Le FLN annonce comme imminente la libération d'un groupe de prisonniers français: Deux délegués de la Croix-Rouge attendus à Tunis.” It published a follow-up front page story on 21 October 1958 titled “Libérés par le FLN à Tunis: Quatres prisonniers français sont attendus se soir à Paris.”

83 “Pour le respect des lois de la guerre,” El Moudjahid, 1 November 1958, 15. This article is accompanied by a picture of smiling French soldiers at the press conference.

84 Harbi, Le FLN: Mirage et réalite, 182–84, and Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 222.

85 ANA/GPRA/17(a), “Communiqué du M. I. Sous le titre: Libération des six prisonniers français par Amirouche,” Cairo, 9 November 1958.

86 ANA/GPRA/83(5), “Libération de prisonniers français par l'ALN, 1958,” Note from External Affairs representative, “Nadir,” 1 December 1958, Cairo.

87 “Premier Décret du Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne,” El Moudjahid 2, 10 October 1958, 15.

88 Bourdieu, Pierre and Sayad, Abdelmalek, Le déracinement: La crise de l'agriculture traditionnelle en Algérie (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1964), 13Google Scholar; Sutton, Keith, “Army Administration Tensions over Algeria's Centres de Regroupement, 1954–1962,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26 (1999): 257CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sylvie Thénault estimates that nearly 400,000 Algerians lived in regroupement centers by early 1958. Thénault, Histoire de la guerre d'indépendance algérienne, 99. Also see Cornaton, Michael, Les camps de la guerre d'Algérie (Paris: Harmattan, 1998)Google Scholar; Sutton, Keith, “Population Resettlement—Traumatic Upheavals and the Algerian Experience,” Journal of Modern African Studies 15 (1977): 279–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, “Algeria's Socialist Villages—A Reassessment,” Journal of Modern African Studies 22 (1984): 223–48.

89 CAOM/81f/528, Algerian Red Crescent Pamphlet, exact date unknown but likely published after spring 1959.

90 ANA/GPRA/78(j), Croissant Rouge Algérien, 1958–1962, “Appel du CRA aux pays Arabes,” letter from Minister of Social Affairs, M. Benkhedda, to Minister of External Affairs, 10 November 1958.

91 ANA/GPRA/78(d), Croissant Rouge Algérien, 1958–1962, “Besoins des Réfugiés Algériens,” letter from Libyan Red Crescent, n.d. [late 1958].

92 ICRC/BAG/280/008/002, Secours demandés par le CRA, CICR, 1957–1963, Letter from ICRC representative, Pierre Gaillard, to ICRC delegate, de Traz, 23 January 1958, Geneva.

93 Makaci, Le Croissant Rouge Algérien, 163.

94 ANA/GPRA/98(a), Croissant Rouge Algérien, 1960–1961, Report on “Dons en nature reçus au CRA pendant la première quinzaine du mois janvier, 1961.”

95 ANA/GPRA/53(3), Croissant Rouge Algérien, Letter to the Minister of External Affairs regarding donations for refugees, 1 October 1959, Cairo.

96 ANA/GPRA/34, “Éxpédition de médicaments de Beyrouth, 1961,” Note d'Ait Chaalal, chef de la mission diplomatique au Liban, adressé au Ministre des Affaires extérieures au Caire, portant l'expédition des médicaments au profit du CRA, 5 June 1961, Beirut.

97 Makaci, Le Croissant Rouge Algérien, 163.

98 ANA/GPRA/107, Mission de Lakhal (CRA) en Turquie, 1961, Compte rendu de la mission de Mostapha LAKHAL vice président du CRA relatif à son voyage effectue en Turquie, 1961, Ankara, 3 September 1961.

99 ANA/GPRA/53(1c), MAE/MAS, Telegram from the Minister of External Affairs to CRA delegate in Rabat, 19 September 1959.

100 ICRC/BAG/280/008/002, “Secours demandés par le CRA, 1957–1963,” Letter from ICRC delegate in Tunisia, J. P. Robert-Tissot, to the Director of the Assistance Bureau, Edward Windhall, 15 February 1958.

101 SHAT/1H 1755/1, Croissant Rouge Algérien, French report on CRA activity, 18 March 1958.

102 See Benatia, Les actions humanitaires pendant la lutte de libération.

103 ANA/GPRA/98(a), CRA report, “Dons en Nature Reçus par le Croissant Rouge Algérien pendant la première quinzaine du mois de Novembre 1960.”

104 ANA/GPRA/78(m), Correspondance émanant du Croisant Rouge Algérien, 1959–1962, Letter from CRA President, Benbahmed to the President of the National Committee, U.N. Dhebar, 11 January 1961, Tunis.