Last week I watched the The Battle of Algiers a 1966 movie from Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo about the events of 1954-1962 in Algiers that lead to the independence of Algeria from the French.
The movie has been claimed to be an unbiais account of the events, but I can’t help to think that there is a clear bias towards the Algerian cause. I’m not implying that the actions from the French were just, far from it. For a start, it is clear that by stripping the Algerian from civic rights and the attempt to suppress their true cultural identity thru control over education were recipe for disaster. There was certainly much abuse, bombing and torture by a foreign occupying force.
In my opinion, it lacks the perspective of the common European folks (the pieds-noirs) who were born in a land they embraced as theirs and simply wanted to live a normal life. They did not have much money, servants, land nor partake in action associated with colonialism. They got along and assimilated in the melting pot of these three cultures (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) as embodied in their rich culinary diversity. Those people were trapped between an hostile uprising of the Algerian and a complete lack of support from the French government. After the independence, they abandoned the little possessions they had and fled in masses. Upon their arrival in France, a country they knew little about, they got treated as 2nd class citizens by the metropolitan French population.
Nevertheless, this is an important movie that will open anyone’s eye to the futility of occupation, military intervention, terrorism and torture amidst a civil war. Sounds familiar to anyone? It makes me apreciate how sensible the French were to not get entangled in the messy situation in Iraq. If only everyone else could learn from history and try to not repeat it.
