J’ai Été Fellagha, Officier Français, et Déserteur: Du FLN à L’OAS by Rémy Madoui. Éditions du Seuil, 27, Rue Jacob, 75006 Paris, France, 2004, 400 pages, €22.

Anyone fighting insurgents or building democracy in Islamic countries today can gain useful insights from this memoir by an insurgent who fought in the bloody Algerian War of Independence, 1954–62. Written in French, the book describes one young man’s remarkable odyssey during the war in which Algeria freed itself from France. The author became a teenaged Front de Libération National (FLN) guerrilla fighter against the Armée de Terre (French army). He fought as an insurgent for five years until his fellow FLN members, suspecting him of being a spy, imprisoned and tortured him. Escaping his torturers, Madoui defected to the French side and became a French army lieutenant in a commando unit that hunted his former FLN cohorts. Later, as Pres. Charles de Gaulle conceded defeat, the author deserted the army to join the Organization Armée Secrète (OAS), a renegade group led by senior French army officers and others who violently opposed de Gaulle’s policy. The author’s OAS career proved short-lived when the army soon captured and imprisoned him. He emigrated to the United States after his release.

More than an engaging adventure story, the book is a window into today’s insurgencies, describing in detail the FLN’s operating techniques, membership, and structure. The FLN began as a popular uprising against French colonialism, espousing democratic principles as it politically mobilized the Algerian people. However, like today’s insurgent groups, the FLN consisted of competing tribal and regional factions that engaged in fratricidal struggles for power. As time passed and bloodshed increased, extremist elements gained control of the FLN and killed almost as many Algerians as the French did.

Readers will note that Algerian insurgents had different motivations than the insurgents we face today. The FLN was primarily an anticolonial, nationalist movement in which the Islamic religion played only a secondary role. Madoui’s book emphasizes freedom and democracy but scarcely mentions religion. In fact, he devotes nearly 10 percent of it to publishing “The Soummam Platform,” an FLN manifesto of 1956 that outlines an ultimately unfulfilled blueprint for a democratic Algeria. Today’s insurgents aggressively oppose democracy, but religion is a highly prominent motivation for most of them.

Madoui presents a perspective seldom seen in books about the Algerian war. Readers seeking a broad, scholarly perspective of the conflict can consult Alistair Horne’s famous book The Savage War of Peace. Accounts by French and Algerian authors tend to be rather impassioned since the war traumatized the French as much as the Vietnam War traumatized Americans. Many French military and civilian leaders have written about the war, but few insurgents have produced accounts that one could consider objective. Rather than glorifying his own actions, Madoui’s gritty memoir recounts in vivid terms the deaths of many comrades and the severe privations he suffered during a long struggle in deserts and mountains. He bolsters his story’s credibility by including the names and photographs of many Algerian and French army people with whom he interacted.

In one sense, the book is a tragic tale of how Algeria missed its chance for democracy when undemocratic elements brutally subverted the FLN’s early agenda, yet it also suggests there is no inherent reason why Islamic cultures cannot become democratic. Hopefully an English-language edition of the book will appear soon. In any event, Madoui’s account is well worth reading for the insights it gives into contemporary events.

 Lt Col Paul D. Berg, USAF
Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.