🇫🇷 French Panhard EBR Cavalry Squadron

🇫🇷 The French Army Panhard EBR Armored Car Squadron of the late 1950s and early 1960s. These were part of the divisional cavalry regiments (the Régiment de cavalerie blindé léger or CBL) of Armored Divisions before 1959 and the Type 59 division post 1959.

Elizabeth Hawes, Camus, A Romance

The “11 of the independence”

In 1957 the FLN decide to take the fight to free Algeria on an international level. They also want French people in France to know that this is not a small uprising and just some random events happening in Algeria like the government has been telling them for almost 4 years. It’s an actual war against people determined to take back their freedom from the French colonizer. To do so they decide to use sport. More specifically football. (Of course other ways were used but I’ll talk about football here)

For 8 months the FLN plans everything to create the first Algerian National Football team. The “11 of the independence” the “Football fellagha” the “FLN football team”. Once the plan is ready the FLN send Boumezrag to go an meet some Algerian players in France to tell them they need to leave France to form an Algerian team for their country. The 9 players approached are in the major league, some of them like Mekhloufi, Zitouni or Bentifour are even in the French National team that was meant to play the World Cup a couple weeks later. But those men gave up everything they had, money, fame, glory for the liberation of Algeria. Some of those men like Amar Rouai immediately accept before Boumezrag even tell him the plan because Rouai lived through May 8, 1945 in Algeria when the French killed 45000 innocent Algerians in Setif Guelma and Kherrata so he wants to fight to bring freedom to his people. Mekhloufi on the other hand is the last one approached they wanted him from the beginning because he was a great famous footballer but his father was a cop. They know that 22 years old Mekhloufi might ask his father for advice before accepting or refusing the offer and they don’t know how his father will react. Decades later Mekhloufi will admit that he was completely apolitical he wasn’t active in any party or group but like Rouai he was in Setif on May 8, 1945 he was 9 years old and saw horrific things his people getting slaughtered by white French people. He knew what the French of Algeria thought about Algerians. How they looked down at Algerians, hated them, oppressed them constantly and wanted them dead. That’s why he accepted.

During the night between April 13 and 14 the players form small groups to leave France in secret crossing the Swiss and Italian borders. Unfortunately on April 13 during the day Makhloufi gets hurt and the people who were supposed to help him leave have to disguise themselves in nurses and doctors to go get him in the hospital. Because of that Mekhloufi’s group end up leaving late and by the time people realize that 9 Algerian players disappeared Mekhloufi and his group are still in France. On top of it Mekhloufi was leaving during his military service so he was also considered to be a deserter. When they arrive at the Swiss border the border agent recognize Mekhloufi and stops him. Fortunately the border agent didn’t listen to the radio yet so he stops them just to get an autograph talk a bit with the famous football players and let them go. They finally all reach Tunisia where they can become the first Algerian team in history. Meanwhile in France countless headlines about them are out everyone knows what happened and people who thought it was just a small meaningless uprising in Algeria that Algerians wouldn’t have the independence start realizing that there’s actually a war going on and that there’s consequences.

That’s how the first Algerian football team was created. Of course the French Football Federation put pressure on the FIFA so the team is not recognized and team who accept to play against them are sanctioned but a lot of countries (mainly communist countries) still decide to play against this new team. In the four years leading the independence they played 83 games. They won 57 of them had a tie for 14 of them and lost 12 of them. Their first official game was in May 1959 against Morocco and they won. The very first time the Algerian flag was raised during a football game was in February 1959 in Irak. They went mainly in Asia and Eastern Europe. In Vietnam they win the game and the General Giap tells them “We won against France, today you won against us so you will win against France too and win your independence”. Poland invites them but once the team is there they try to house them in unsanitary rooms but they refuse. Poland also refuses to play the Algerian anthem and put the Algerian flag, the players refuse to play saying “We are not homeless we have a homeland that we represent and it is Algeria so if you want us to play if will be with our flag and anthem”. Eventually Poland has to accept Algerian’s conditions.

By forcing the French to face how serious the situation was, by spreading the Algerian struggle on an international level, by getting support and donation during all their games, by showing that Algerians in Algeria and abroad supported the liberation of Algeria those men helped us get the independence. They are heroes.

Note: I am personally convinced that these men are the reason why Algerians love football so much. I personally know that they are the reason I do love football and support the national team.

"The Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS) had no such scruples. With General Raoul Salan as its figurehead, this sinister alliance of diehard pieds noirs and mutinous paras and légionnaires turned to indiscriminate terrorism after the failure of its April 1961 uprising. With no real goal beyond the preservation of settler supremacy, its declared enemies included General de Gaulle himself, the security forces, Communists, peace activists (including Jean-Paul Sartre), and, especially, Algerian civilians. (Oddly enough, the OAS seldom confronted the FLN directly.) 

In order to disrupt the Evian peace talks between de Gaulle’s representatives and the Algerian leaders, the OAS launched a series of festivals de plastique (380 bombings throughout Algeria in July 1961 alone), using the 4132 kilos of plastic explosive and 1000 electric detonators that it boasted of having liberated from army arsenals. Chief of the OAS’s dreaded “Delta Commandos” was Roger Degueldre, a 36-year-old veteran of Dien Bien Phu who led 500 Légionnaire deserters and Algérie française ultras from his hiding place in the petit blanc district of Bab-el-Oued. In early 1962, as de Gaulle began to yield to FLN demands for complete independence, Salan declared “total war” and ordered Degueldre to unleash the Deltas against both Algeria and France.

….

Although the OAS was effectively decapitated in April 1962 with the arrests of Salan (codename: “The Sun”), Degueldre and other key leaders, the at-large middle leadership – les colonels – was even more fanatically fixated than the generals on provoking an Algerian Götterdämmerung. Their almost insane strategy was to massacre so many ordinary Muslims that the otherwise highly disciplined FLN would be forced to break its truce with French forces and retaliate massively against the pieds noirs. The OAS “bunker,” in other words, was deliberately fomenting a race war that they hoped might topple de Gaulle and lead to a “Rhodesian” or “Israeli” solution." - Mike Davis, Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb. Verso, 2017 (2007). p. 42-43

filmafric - film magazine from france, maghreb north africa 1936-1963

*

c'est un village d'algérie..., philippe este 1949

A Marseille sorrow

Marseille, June 1962 “Mommy? Why is the Lady crying?” “It’s nothing, Darling. Probably a speck of dust in her eye.” * We were stranded in Marseille. Lived in West Africa at that time. Conakry, in former French Guinea, now independent. My father was the Air France manager there. We’d flown to France for the summer as usual. But. But. There were minor connecting flight issues. We were supposed…

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there are actually TWO countries that have used nuclear weapons in war. the second is france, which did “strategic nuclear testing” in algeria during and after the algerian war of independence.

On March 8, 2013, Le petit soldat was screened at the New York Film Festival.

A scarecrow made from a French Foreign Legion uniform and a human skull in Algeria, 1958

ITALIAN NEOREALIST CINEMA MEETS THE FERVENT SOCIO-POLICIAL CLIMATE OF '50s NORTH AFRICA.

FILM: "The Battle of Algiers" (1966)

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Marcello Gatti

DIRECTOR: Gillo Pontecorvo

SCREENPLAY: Franco Solinas

GILLO PONTECORVO: "The writings of Frantz Fanon were also very important for Franco Solinas, the screenwriter, and myself. We were there for a few months before the liberation and we saw everything, the hope and the joy, and we remember young people talking on the street all night. During the long months of preparation and of talking with the people, we saw that the struggle against colonialism diminished the mental state and the customs of the people. To fight colonialism they had to change themselves from what colonialism had made them."

Sources: www.proquest.com/docview/204845804, The New Arab, Los Angeles, Times, X (formerly Twitter), The New Review of Film & Television, various, etc...

disrespecting Zidane like that when he was a legend as a player and his coaching career is pretty much impeccable... I see no logical explanation other than racism. no wonder the FFF does nothing to defend Mbappé and its other players of color when they're attacked by white supremacists smh, I hope Mbappé turns Le Graët's last years into a living hell

Today is November 1st. It’s the 69 anniversary of the beginning of the Algerian war of liberation.

A Palestinian woman refugee in France made a tweet that was absolutely not related to it. She talked about being a refugee and having to see Zionist pieces of shit on Twitter all the time.

French Zionists are in her replies and quote tweet saying “IF YOU WANT TO KNOW REAL SUFFERING THINK ABOUT THE SETTLERS WHO HAD TO LEAVE ALGERIA”. 61 years after the independence they still see themselves as the good guys because they refuse to acknowledge the horrors of colonialism. 61 years later settler colonialism still exist because they refuse to acknowledge the horrors of colonialism.

So you end up with people who think they were the good guys during colonialism despite the fact that they enslaved, killed and torture people just because they were not white. They think that their settlers white supremacists parents had it worst than Palestinians right now.

A decade ago I would have said “they need to be educated they don’t know any better” but now? Fuck them. They don’t acknowledge these horrors because they don’t see us as humans not because they are uneducated. Fuck them.

Palestine will be free no matter what happens just like Algeria gained its liberation and kicked out the settlers after 132 years of colonialism.

“Nobody can stop a people on the path for their destiny”

History is crystal clear: an alliance between the far left and muslims always leads to the FIS (Front islamique du salut : Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria and the mullahs of Iran.

People will quote Those who don’t learn from History are doomed to repeat it but when do you ever see people learning from the past?

Never.

star wars is dead. i made a joke about this like 7 months ago but i didn’t think they would actually cast another white brunette lady

Tocqueville in Algeria

"Great events have just taken place in Algeria; we can believe that others are still in preparation. So the time is ripe, Monsieur, to do as you wish and tell you what I know about Algiers. I do so all the more willingly because, although there has been much discussion about this country, very little is understood about it..." -Alexis de Tocqueville, 1st Letter on Algeria Alexis de Tocqueville is widely considered to be the Father of American Liberalism. A French aristocrat with deep affinities towards the liberalizing movements of his day, Tocqueville is most famous for his book Democracy in America which described the emerging state of American society soon after the War of Independence. What he is less well known for is his role in the colonization of Algeria, being one of its most influential advocates and forwarding a mixed policy of "partial colonization" and "total domination" which mixed the purchase of land for French settlers with the burning of crops, mass detainment of women and children, and destruction of "everything that resembles a permanent aggregation of population or, in other words, a town.”

Previously unpublished, Tikhanov Library is proud to announce for the first time the translation of Tocqueville's writings on Algeria into English. Read Alexis de Tocqueville's "First Letter on Algeria" on our substack: https://tikhanovlibrary.substack.com/p/alexis-de-tocquevilles-first-letter Or support us and future translations like this by buying the complete collection of his writings in paperback: https://tinyurl.com/u8fckmah This book and more are available as paperback and ebook on our website at www.tikhanovlibrary.com