Michael T. Kaufman, "The World: Film Studies," New York Times, 7 September 2003, 3.
HEADLINE: The World: Film Studies; What Does the Pentagon See in 'Battle of
Algiers'?
CHALLENGED by terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare in Iraq, the Pentagon
recently held a screening of "The Battle of Algiers," the film that
in the late 1960's was required viewing and something of a teaching tool for
radicalized Americans and revolutionary wannabes opposing the Vietnam War.
Back in those days the young audiences that often sat through several showings
of Gillo Pontecorvo's 1965 re-enactment of the urban struggle between French
troops and Algerian nationalists, shared the director's sympathies for the
guerrillas of the F.L.N., Algeria's National Liberation Front. Those viewers
identified with and even cheered for Ali La Pointe, the streetwise operator who
drew on his underworld connections to organize a network of terrorist cells and
entrenched it within the Casbah, the city's old Muslim section. In the same way
they would hiss Colonel Mathieu, the character based on Jacques Massu, the
actual commander of the French forces.
The Pentagon's showing drew a more professionally detached audience of about 40
officers and civilian experts who were urged to consider and discuss the
implicit issues at the core of the film -- the problematic but alluring
efficacy of brutal and repressive means in fighting clandestine terrorists in
places like Algeria and Iraq. Or more specifically, the advantages and costs of
resorting to torture and intimidation in seeking vital human intelligence about
enemy plans.
As the flier inviting guests to the Pentagon screening declared: "How to
win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot
soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab
population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It
succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare
showing of this film."
The idea came from the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity
Conflict, which a Defense Department official described as a civilian-led group
with "responsibility for thinking aggressively and creatively" on
issues of guerrilla war. The official said, "Showing the film offers
historical insight into the conduct of French operations in Algeria, and was
intended to prompt informative discussion of the challenges faced by the
French." He added that the discussion was lively and that more showings
would probably be held.
No details of the discussion were provided but if the talk was confined to the
action of the film it would have focused only on the battle for the city, which
ended in 1957 in apparent triumph for the French with the killing of La Pointe
and the destruction of the network. But insurrection continued throughout
Algeria, and though the French won the Battle of Algiers, they lost the war for
Algeria, ultimately withdrawing from a newly independent country ruled by the
F.L.N. in 1962.
During the last four decades the events re-enacted in the film and the wider
war in Algeria have been cited as an effective use of the tactics of a
"people's war," where fighters emerge from seemingly ordinary lives
to mount attacks and then retreat to the cover of their everyday identities.
The question of how conventional armies can contend with such tactics and
subdue their enemies seems as pressing today in Iraq as it did in Algiers in
1957. In both instances the need for on-the-ground intelligence is required to
learn of impending attacks. Even in a world of electronic devices, human
infiltration and interrogations remain indispensable, but how far should modern
states go in the pursuit of such information?
Mr. Pontecorvo, who was a member of the Italian Communist Party, obviously felt
the French had gone much too far by adopting policies of torture, brutal
intimidation and outright killings. Though their use of force led to the
triumph over La Pointe, it also provoked political scandals in France,
discredited the French Army and traumatized French political life for decades,
while inspiring support for the nationalists among Algerians and in much of the
world. It was this tactical tradeoff that lies at the heart of the film and
presumably makes it relevant for Pentagon study and discussion.
But this issue of how much force should be used by highly organized states as
they confront the terror of less sophisticated enemies is far from simple. For
example, what happens when a country with a long commitment to the Geneva
Convention has allies who operate without such restriction.
Consider the ambivalent views over the years of General Massu, the principal
model for the film's Colonel Mathieu.
In 1971, General Massu wrote a book challenging "The Battle of
Algiers," and the film was banned in France for many years. In his book
General Massu, who had been considered by soldiers the personification of
military tradition, defended torture as "a cruel necessity." He
wrote: "I am not afraid of the word torture, but I think in the majority
of cases, the French military men obliged to use it to vanquish terrorism were,
fortunately, choir boys compared to the use to which it was put by the rebels.
The latter's extreme savagery led us to some ferocity, it is certain, but we
remained within the law of eye for eye, tooth for tooth."
In 2000, his former second in command, Gen. Paul Aussaresses, acknowledged,
showing neither doubts nor remorse, that thousands of Algerians "were made
to disappear," that suicides were faked and that he had taken part himself
in the execution of 25 men. General Aussaresses said "everybody" knew
that such things had been authorized in Paris and he added that his only real
regret was that some of those tortured died before they revealed anything
useful.
As for General Massu, in 2001 he told interviewers from Le Monde, "Torture
is not indispensable in time of war, we could have gotten along without it very
well." Asked whether he thought France should officially admit its
policies of torture in Algeria and condemn them, he replied: "I think that
would be a good thing. Morally torture is something ugly."
At the moment it is hard to specify exactly how the Algerian experience and the
burden of the film apply to the situation in Iraq, but as the flier for the
Pentagon showing suggested, the conditions that the French faced in Algeria are
similar to those the United States is finding in Iraq.
According to Thomas Powers, the author of "Intelligence Wars: American
Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda": "What's called a low-intensity
war in Iraq brings terrible frustrations and temptations -- the frustrating
difficulty of finding and fixing an enemy who could be anyone anywhere, and the
temptation to resort to torture to extract the kind of detailed information
from prisoners or suspects needed to strike effectively. How the United States
is dealing with this temptation is one of the unknowns of the war. We are told
that outright torture is forbidden, and we hope it is true. But as
low-intensity wars drag on, soldiers tell themselves, 'We're trying to save
lives, no one will ever know, this guy can tell us where the bastards are.'
"
If indeed the government is currently analyzing or even weighing the tactical
choices reflected in "The Battle of Algiers," presumably that is
being done at a higher level of secrecy than an open discussion following a
screening of the Pontecorvo film. Still, by showing the movie within the
Pentagon and by announcing that publicly, somebody seems to be raising issues
that have remained obscure throughout the war against terror.
GRAPHIC: Photo: French soldiers conducted brutal interrogations of Arab
suspects, torturing them to get information, in Pontecorvo's "The Battle
of Algiers." (Photo by Everett Collection)