Algerian Defense Minister General Khalid Nezzar: memoirs

Military Review, March-April, 2003 by Youssef H. Aboul-Enein

Of the nations that supported the FLN, Nezzar credits Tunis with providing safe havens for refugees. The movement of those refugees offered the perfect mechanism for transporting supplies and fighters across borders. Nezzar also reveals that Tunisia's restriction against allowing pursuing French army units to cross the Tunisian border gave the FLN a chance to use the border to target French Army units, then withdraw to hit them again. This allowed them to know the exact locations where units would stop to try to direct and concentrate fire.

A Maginot Solution?

In response to terror tactics in Algeria's major cities, which included assassinations of French police, civil servants, and military personnel, the French erected electronic fences across Algeria's borders and around towns and villages. Nezzar describes how the electronic fence was interspersed with guard posts, mines, and a rapid heliborne response force. French tanks, artillery batteries, and mobile radar units reinforced the fence. Named the Morice Line after French Defense Minister Andre Morice, the fence was enhanced with motion-detecting tripwires.

Nezzar details the challenges of penetrating the Morice Line and the ALF guerrilla tactics of attacking one area of the line as a diversion while amassing forces to over-run a smaller garrison or watchtower elsewhere. Nezzar writes that careful reconnaissance by Algerians sympathetic to the independence movement carefully watched the deployment of French fighter-bombers and helicopters in major coastal airports. The sympathizers gave the FLF important information with which to assess whether diversions had succeeded.

A few FLN fighters were veterans of Diem Bien Phu and understood that to force the French to withdraw, the FLN had to inflict massive losses. Nezzar calculated that French casualties reached 350,000 with 39,000 dead, which proved to be the limit to France's will to fight.

Nezzar discusses other key factors, such as the ALN's methods of gathering information. The movement monitored newspapers, paying particular attention to French casualty lists. The ALN acquired skills to conduct reconnaissance from the sea, and it developed specialized units to penetrate the Morice Line and to clear mines. Diversionary attacks were made to allow sappers and wirecutters time to penetrate electrified fences. The ALN also took great care in selecting key terrain, not just for ambush but to monitor French military convoys, command post activity, and roads. Ever mindful of helicopters, the ALN made great efforts to track all French military air assets based in Algeria.

The French wanted to win battles with overwhelming force and would meet 60 FLN guerrillas with the same pattern of tanks; command and control helicopters; and trucks carrying infantry as they would have if they were confronting a larger force. The FLN discovered the pattern of French attacks and using the terrain and the time of their own choosing, summoned overwhelming force. Their objective was to inflict casualties then withdraw to fight in another location. Or, they would lure French forces to the Tunisian border, knowing the French would stop at certain locations where they would be met with mortar tire. These tactics were the same as those Vietnamese General Giap used against French forces in Indochina and later against U.S. forces in Vietnam.