Terrorism in Algeria

Reading so much material on why terrorism does not work, and then seeing a terrorists' organization crumble have provoked thoughts about the Iraq war, and the insurgents there. I now begin to see the difficulty in hating terrorists and again the idea that it is impossible to distinguish between the good side and the evil side has been reinforced. But when I started to write a paper about what exactly terrorists are, it really got me thinking. Are we the terrorists from the Taliban's point of view because we invaded Afghanistan? Were our Founding Fathers who fought in the American Revolutionary war considered terrorists? Do the terrorists identify themselves to an extent with the revolutionaries in the American Revolutionary War?

Terrorists, to me, are an individual or group of people independent of other nations that perform acts terrorism, or acts of violence in order to force a government to change certain political policies. In the past few decades, terrorists have been associated with terrible acts of violence against civilians-chief among them are the 9/11 attacks. But watching the film The Battle of Algiers put the FLN, who are in the strictest sense, a terrorists group, in a different life that made them seem more innocent because like the Americans, they fought for the wonderful ideals of freedom. Then another idea emerges-primarily that the word "terrorists" is not a word of negative connotation, but is instead just a word that can be used to describe people. In effect, a stereotype has been created from the word "terrorists" and that stereotype is the root cause of the unpopularity of terrorists. Thus no one in particular decides who terrorists are in the public discourse, but instead the stereotype that the whole entire nation of America created is what decides who terrorists are, and who "well-meaning patriotic nationalists that are seeking freedom" are.

To focus on a more defined example of a terrorists group, this discussion will move onto the film The Battle of Algiers where the focus is on two groups: the FLN (terrorists) and the French (counter-insurgency). In the film, the FLN are portrayed as a group whose goals were to gain independence from France, while France's objective was to retain Algiers as part of the French empire. In order for FLN to achieve its objective at freeing Algiers from French control, they implemented tactics such as giving women bombs to implant in restaurants and even airports, drive by shootings, ordinary man to man shootings, and sometimes even ramming people with a car. Such tactics at establishing a presence in the public are evidently violent in nature, and thus it can be considered as terrorism.

While the FLN committed immoral acts against civilians, the French did no better in its effort to suppress the FLN. The French oppressed the FLN, tortured members of the FLN with just completely horrible methods that ranged from shocking a person's brain to burning that person's chest with a propane torch. And not only did the French torture the people, but they also attacked the FLN with paratroopers and bombs that outclassed whatever the FLN had. And in a sense, the French were terrorists themselves. By inspiring fear in the members of FLN with violence, they were able to rip apart the FLN and capture/execute the leaders of FLN.

In both cases, the violence that happened was unjustifiable or morally defensible. For the FLN, they showed a scene of one truck with two people inside it. One person was driving and the other was shooting anybody who showed their face on the streets with an automatic rifle. And when they ran out of ammunition, they rammed their car into a crowd. How can you defend that horrible act of violence? It's impossible because they had no grounds for doing it, and neither did it achieve anything for the terrorists group. They did not kill any military personnel, French officials or FLN traitors, but they killed civilians who had no part in the suppression of FLN.

The torture technique used by the French was just as inexcusable, if not even worse than what the FNL did. Today, water boarding is considered bad-what the French did to those Algerians was ten times as worse. As mentioned above, the French applied painful procedures to "interrogate" the insurgents that would have been very heavily criticized by the media and governments from all over the world.

Violence on the scale demonstrated in the film is never justifiable. But if what the French did was wrong, than what should they have done? Quite frankly, terrorists groups only function well as long as the civilians are in favor of those terrorists groups. Look at the Ku Klux Klan, for example. In the beginning, they were viewed favorably in the South, and only when racism became frowned upon, did the Ku Klux Klan truly begin to sink into the background of American daily life. In the same way, the French should have established good will with the Algerians, and attempted to keep the civilians happy. But perhaps the French had already gone beyond the point and had lost the opportunity at establishing goodwill. If that happens, than the French should have simply backed their bags and left, because it is shown to be impossible time and time again, that when the majority of the people in a nation dislike a regime, the regime is overthrown and given the boot (This actually happened to the French and Algeria is now an independent nation).

Violence never did solve any problems-it only provoked retaliation and anger. Thus, terrorism is in fact, not an effective stratagy at trying to change government policies. Only through changing the people's mindset and perceptions on the government can people change the government policies.