Algerian War الثورة الجزائرية Tagrawla Tadzayrit Guerre d'Algérie |
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Collage of the French war in Algeria |
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Belligerents | ||||||||||
FLN MNA PCA |
France |
FAF (1960–61) OAS (1961–62) |
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Commanders and leaders | ||||||||||
Saadi Yacef Mustapha Benboulaïd † Ferhat Abbas Houari Boumedienne Hocine Aït Ahmed Ahmed Ben Bella Krim Belkacem Frantz Fanon Larbi Ben M'Hidi † Rabah Bitat Mohamed Boudiaf Ali La Pointe † |
Alphonse Djamate (1931–2001) Paul Cherrière (1954–55) Henri Lorillot (1955–56) Raoul Salan (1956–58) Jacques Massu (1956–60) Paul Aussaresses Maurice Challe (1958–60) Jean Crepin (1960–61) Fernand Gambiez (1961) |
Pierre Lagaillarde Raoul Salan Edmond Jouhaud Jean-Jacques Susini Said Boualam |
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Strength | ||||||||||
300,000 identified 40,000 civilian support | 470,000 (maximum reached and maintained from 1956 to 1962) plus 90,000 Harkis |
3,000 (OAS) | ||||||||
Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
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100 dead (OAS) 2,000 jailed (OAS) |
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300,000 Algerian casualities and 1 million Europeans forced to flee |
Military stalemate
FLN political victory
Évian Accords
The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of Independence or the Algerian Revolution (Berber: Tagrawla Tadzayrit; Arabic: الثورة الجزائرية, Al-thawra Al-Jazaa'iriyya; French: Guerre d'Algérie or Révolution algérienne) was a war between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (French: Front de Libération Nationale - FLN) from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, and the use of torture by both sides. The conflict also became a civil war between loyalist Algerians supporting a French Algeria and their Algerian nationalist counterparts.
Effectively started by members of the National Liberation Front (FLN) on November 1, 1954, during the Toussaint Rouge ("Red All Saints' Day"), the conflict shook the foundations of the weak and unstable Fourth French Republic (1946–58) and led to its replacement by the Fifth Republic with a strengthened Presidency and with Charles de Gaulle as President. Although the French military campaigns greatly weakened the FLN militarily, with most prominent FLN leaders killed or arrested and terror attacks effectively stopped, the brutality of the methods employed by the French forces failed to win hearts and minds in Algeria, alienated support in metropolitan France and discredited French prestige abroad.