Algerian War: the tumultuous history of the Évian Accords
Signing of the Evian Accords on March 18, 1962 at the Hôtel du Parc in Évian-les-Bains, France Photo by REPORTERS ASSOCIES/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Text by: Tirthankar Chanda Follow
13 mins
On March 18, 1962, sixty years ago, the French authorities and a delegation from the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) made history by signing the Évian Accords.
They put an end to 132 years of French colonial presence in Algeria and to one of the fiercest wars that the African continent has known in the 20th century.
These agreements were the culmination of eighteen months of secret talks and compromises between French and Algerian negotiators.
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“
Article 1: There shall be an end to military operations and to all armed action on the whole of Algerian territory on March 19, 1962, at 12 noon….
Article 2: Both parties undertake to prohibit…
Article 3: The fighting forces of the FLN…
”
Thus begins the text of
the Évian Accords
, signed on March 18, 1962, sixty years ago, after long and difficult negotiations by the ministers of the French government and the representatives of the Algerian
National Liberation Front
(FLN).
The ninety-three-page document, divided into two parts and seven subsections, includes a ceasefire agreement, and several political declarations relating to the future of Algeria and Franco-Algerian relations.
For the record, March 18, 1962 was a Sunday, and the signing ceremony of the agreements dragged on on the shores of Lake Geneva, because the Algerians had insisted on initialing all the pages of the document, obliging their French counterparts to make same.
The signing of these agreements was indeed a resounding victory for the Algerian negotiators for whom it represented the end of 132 years of colonization.
These agreements also put an end to seven and a half years of a war of liberation which was bloody and costly for both sides, and prepared the ground for the accession to independence of Algeria.
Independence was proclaimed on July 5 of the same year, in the wake of a referendum, which proposed to the Algerian population to ratify the Evian agreements.
As one might expect, in the self-determination ballot of July 1, 1962, the Algerians voted overwhelmingly in favor of taking charge of their own destiny, with 99.7% of favorable votes.
This veritable plebiscite may have given the impression that Algerian independence was a logical and inevitable step, whereas at the start of the talks in 1961 between the ministers of the French government and the representatives of the Algerian resistance, this prospect seemed at the very least uncertain.
The Prime Minister at the time,
Michel Debré
himself, had he not let it be known publicly that he did not believe in the independence of Algeria, except on the horizon of half a century?
Under these conditions, for many observers, the settlement of the Algerian question through diplomatic channels was a miracle.
"An African colony like no other"
Algeria Tizi N'Berber, Constantine region.
May 9, 1956. Raising the colors at the 21st colonial infantry regiment.
© Raymond Varoqui/ECPAD
The 1960s coincided with the disintegration of the French colonial empire, with 17 former colonies in Africa gaining independence early in the decade.
The march towards the decolonization of Algeria is part of this general change in colonial France, but as Renaud de Rochebrune, co-author of
The Algerian War as seen by the Algerians
(1), reminds us, "
Algeria was not an African colony like the others.
Essentially a settlement, this country counted at the time of independence, some 1 million settlers of French and European descent, colloquially known as the "pieds-noirs".
Many of these settlers had lived in Algeria for three to four generations.
The stakes were therefore not at all the same
”.
Another peculiarity of colonial Algeria: conquered in 1830, this territory had been very early administratively integrated into metropolitan France, starting with the coast in 1848, before being completely assimilated to the metropolis under the Third Republic by the system of departmentalization. .
This explains why, in the minds of many French people, Algeria was France.
This is why when the war of liberation was launched by the FLN militants, on
November 1, 1954
, claiming total independence, they were not taken seriously by the French political class who bet on the armed forces to put out of harm's way those they designated as mere "
rebels
".
However, the “
rebels
” proved to be particularly tenacious and persevering.
Aided by Arab countries, notably
Nasser
's Egypt , and largely supported by the Algerian population, the FLN fought for eight years against one of the most seasoned and powerful armies in the world.
The war was devastating in terms of loss of life, 300,000 on the Algerian side and 30,000 on the side of the French army and the European civilian population, according to the most likely estimate of the victims of the
Algerian war
.
Due to the exorbitant human cost of the war and the moral cost of the brutal repression perpetrated by the French army accused of torture, the need to find a negotiated solution to the conflict very quickly became apparent on both sides.
The first contacts between the French government and the Algerian resistance fighters date from 1956, but they were interrupted following the hijacking, on October 22 of the same year, by France of the plane carrying five historical leaders of the FLN.
It will then be necessary to wait for the return of General De Gaulle to power, in 1958, after the fall of the Fourth Republic, so that the threads of the negotiations are renewed.
It is paradoxical that the man who was called to power precisely to "
save French Algeria
either the first French statesman to evoke the unthinkable, or an “
Algerian Algeria
”.
"
The paradox was only apparent
", affirms Renaud de Rochebrune, who recalls that "
if we had listened carefully to the entirety of De Gaulle's famous speech 'I understood you', delivered in Algiers, and received as a homage to the Pied-noir population, we would have seen that the remarks carried the seed of the independence of Algeria.
By affirming that there will henceforth be a single category of Algerians without distinction of race or religion, the General was already preparing the ground for the advent of a different country.
The man had long since emerged from the colonial logic.
»
Now is the time for negotiations
General Marcel Bigeard with General de Gaulle during his first visit to Algeria in 1956 © S012/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
It is indeed under the aegis of
Charles de Gaulle
that the first serious negotiations opened between the colonial authorities and the emissaries of the Algerian insurrection.
This had not prevented the general, when he came to power in 1958, from intensifying military action on the ground.
The launch of the famous Challe plan, named after the joint commander-in-chief Maurice Challe, was intended to weaken the rebels.
This objective was easily achieved and the military potential of the National Liberation Army (ALN), the armed wing of the FLN, was seriously undermined at the end of the 1950s. But for De Gaulle, as Renaud de Rochebrune explains, “
if military victory on the ground was not impossible, the military solution alone was no longer enough to settle the Algerian problem definitively.
The General's real objective was to weaken the enemy so that he could better negotiate from a position of strength
”.
The first meeting between French and Algerians took place from June 25 to 29, 1960 at the prefecture of Melun, in France, but it ended in failure, for lack of agreement on the prerequisite for the surrender of arms by the rebels.
In January 1961, De Gaulle convened a referendum which authorized him to engage in talks with the Algerians to prepare " self-
determination
".
The word is out.
It is a historic moment because, by pronouncing the taboo word, the French political class accepted to substitute the principle of the self-determination of colonized peoples for the century-old republican dogma of French Algeria.
It is on this basis that the official negotiations on the future of Algeria begin on May 20, 1961 with the leadership of the FLN.
They take place in the border town of Evian, located on the French side of Lake Geneva, better known for its mineral waters marketed in bottles than for any role hitherto in international diplomacy.
The choice of this city was the result of a compromise between the French who wanted the meeting to take place on the territory of their country and the Algerians who would have preferred Geneva where they were on neutral ground.
Ultimately, it is the Head of State who has decided.
As for the composition of the two delegations, the French delegation was led by Louis Joxe, Minister of State for Algerian Affairs in the French government and the Algerian emissaries by Krim Belkacem,
From the first sessions, the differences that will lead to the failure of the meeting emerge.
They covered most of the points on the agenda of these negotiations: ceasefire, guarantees on the status and security of the European minority in Algeria, status of the oil-rich
Sahara
and particularly suitable for experiments in nuclear material that the French want to exclude from the scope of self-determination, timetable for the withdrawal of French military bases from the Sahara and the naval base of
Mers-el-Kébir
.
Finally, it is the question of the Sahara which occupies a crucial place in the debates, which will cause the conference to fail.
The Algerians had been instructed not to let go of their fundamental objectives, which were: total independence, safeguarding the unity of the Algerian people and the integrity of the national territory.
It must be said that the GPRA negotiators were subject to constant and divergent pressure from their hierarchy, itself divided, according to Renaud de Rochebrune, "
between the military, who are more ideological, and the politicians, who are more pragmatic and concerned with conducting their country towards independence in cooperation with France
".
After the failure of these first negotiations at Evian, the peace talks resumed, from July 20 to 28, in Haute-Savoie, at the Château de Lugrin, only to end in another failure.
The intransigent positions of both sides condemned in advance any move to find a negotiated solution to the conflict.
However, the year 1961 saw the political situation on the ground deteriorate, with the rise of
the OAS
(Secret armed organization, made up of demobilized soldiers and radicalized settlers) which posed threats of attacks, both in Algeria and in mainland France, with the aim of bringing down the regime.
De Gaulle was in a hurry to get the country out of the Algerian trap in order to tackle the modernization of the country and give France back its room for maneuver on the international level thanks to the control of its nuclear strike force.
Exhausted by eight years of bloody and asymmetric warfare, the Algerian insurgents were on the verge of defeat.
In the eyes of the French authorities as in the eyes of the FLN, a diplomatic agreement seemed the only way forward.
So they decided to reconnect.
Back to É
vian
Promotion of the Evian Agreements.
Getty Images
It is on the initiative of the Elysée that the talks resume between French and Algerians at Les Rousses, in the Jura.
These conversations, carried out in the most absolute secrecy, took place in two stages, first during the last quarter of 1961, then in February 1962, allowing the negotiators to work out a compromise text accepted by the French government and the National Council of the Algerian Revolution.
Return to Evian where the pre-agreement concluded in the secret of Les Rousses will be finalized and signed by the official representatives of the two camps.
The compromises contained in the document which will be submitted to the Franco-Algerian ministers and plenipotentiaries relate essentially to the French military presence.
The deadline for the concession is fixed, in the Sahara at five years and in Mers el-Kébir against the initial request for a lease of ninety-nine years.
The strategic interest of the great naval base of Mers el-Kébir having weakened in favor of Kourou in Guyana, the French finally evacuated it long before the expiration of the concession period.
The French authorities are also loosening ballast on the Sahara, having meanwhile modernized the infrastructures in Polynesia for their nuclear tests.
The status of French people wishing to stay in Algeria after independence had also been fiercely debated in Les Rousses, before finding common ground on a three-year reflection period granted to settlers to choose Algerian nationality or keep French nationality.
Those who opted for the second solution had to agree to be treated in accordance with the laws governing the status of foreigners.
The second Evian conference was held from March 7 to 18, at the now defunct Hôtel du Parc.
The Evian agreements, which are not yet called as such, but more prosaically "conclusions of the Evian talks", were initialed on March 18, on the Algerian side, by Krim Belkacem, the Minister for Algerian Affairs within the GPRA, and , on the French side, by Louis Joxe, his colleague from Public Works and Transport Robert Buron and the Secretary of State for Algerian Affairs, Jean de Broglie.
Above all, the agreement sets the conditions of the ceasefire applicable the day after its signing, at 12 noon, throughout Algeria.
May 1962 in Algiers, despite the Evian Accords, the OAS continues its scorched earth policy.
© FERNAND PARIZOT/AFP
It is peace.
Immediately after the signing, the French Head of State, General de Gaulle, hastened to proclaim the good word in a radio and television address to the nation, expressing the wish that "
the two peoples will be able to walk fraternally together on the road to civilization
”.
After the self-determination referendum of July 1, 1962, provided for in the agreements of March 18 and won triumphantly by Algeria's FLN, France will be the first country to recognize the sovereignty of its former "province".
Since their signing, the Évian Accords have been much vilified on both sides, with the supporters of French Algeria calling the negotiations a series of concessions, and the Algerians pointing the finger at the "hidden side" of the agreements which, in the words of President Boumediène, "
aimed to make Algeria a country dependent on French neo-colonialism
".
Moreover, May 18, 1962 is hardly celebrated in Algeria.
The fact remains that the agreements signed in Evian, sixty years ago, gave new impetus to the long common history of Algeria and France, two sovereign and close nations that the Mediterranean should not separate. .
(1)
The Algerian War seen by the Algerians
, by Renaud de Rochebrune and Benjamin Stora.
In two volumes (Volume 1: From the origins to the Battle of Algiers and Volume 2: From the Battle of Algiers to independence).
Editions Denoël, 2011 and 2016.
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