A Pilgrim’s Digression

Battle of Algiers

Military helicopters hover ominously overhead. Platoons of soldiers go house to house in a city that has become a zone of occupation. Men, women, and children are dragged from their homes still in their night shirts as soldiers search their homes for weapons or hidden terrorists. Homemade bombs explode in marketplaces, cafés, and airport terminals. Terrorists gun down police in drive-by shootings. Meanwhile, the military and police resort to ever more brutal tactics to suppress the insurgents.

This is Algiers, 1957.

There is a scene about mid-way through the film in which the commanding General of the colonial forces, General Mathieu, is holding a press conference. The reporters present are questioning him hostilely about the use of torture to obtain information from suspected rebels.

General Mathieu asks rhetorically, “Do we all agree that France must remain in Algeria?” There is no answer from any of the reporters; the general assumes the answer is “yes.” He continues: “In the beginning, even the Communist press was in agreement that this insurrection must be suppressed. If then France must remain in Algeria, we must accept the consequences.” What he means is that victory may come with a high moral cost.

The press conference is immediately followed by scenes of torture. Men are shown bloody from beatings. A man is shown strung up by his hands, almost crucified, as a soldier applies a blowtorch to his side. Another man has water poured into his mouth from a faucet until he almost drowns.

Battle of Algiers is not an easy film. Quite possibly, people of both Left and Right political persuasions can find in it ammunition for their arguments. People on the Right will watch the film and see how if only the politicians would give the military a free hand, these attritive guerilla wars, such as we are fighting in Iraq, can be won finally and for all time. People on the Left will watch the film and see an example of how occupying forces can win every battle but lose the war because of popular resistance.

One of the Front de Libération Nationale [FLN] leaders, Jaffar, says at one point that “Terrorism is effective in the beginning.” But terrorism must be followed by popular revolution. The FLN uses acts of terrorism to both revenge the humiliation of Muslim peoples and to stir the police and military to ever greater acts of brutality. The end result is that the FLN leaders are all killed, but in their wake, the masses rise up and destroy the will of the political class to remain in Algeria.

There are no exact parallels between Algeria in 1957 and Baghdad in 2005, and for me to draw parallels would be as bad as the Bush Administration’s gratuitous use of World War II as a metaphor for the War on Terror. Those who see the film will inevitably draw their own conclusions about its meaning.

However, I do not deny that there is much that remains relevant about this forty year old film. General Mathieu would find himself right at home on Donald Rumsfeld’s staff. In one scene reporters follow him up some stairs to a meeting he is attending, asking questions all the way. One of them asks him if he thinks France can win this war. He says wryly, “Gentlemen, that depends on you.” One of the reporter says, laughing, “What, are you going to conscript us?”

General Mathieu replies, “God, I hope not. What are they saying in the Paris papers today?” One of the reporters replies, “Nothing, only another essay by Sartre.”

Mathieu sighs and says, “Why is it the Sartre’s of the world are always born on the other side?”

The implication is that wars are won and lost in the realm of ideas, and specifically in the subsidiary realms of politics and the press. In which case, the war in Iraq may be lost already, only no one is yet willing to admit it. The Sartre’s of our age have been on the “other” side since before the war began.