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As the fighting spread from Algeria's mountains to its rich coastal strip and bustling cities, and as terror bombing deliberately sought innocent victims, the French army in response resorted to measures that outraged the world. When the rebels in August 1955 massacred 70 European settlers, including women and children, the French, adopting the doctrine of "collective responsibility," razed ten Algerian villages. In a report, which the
Paris government last year did its best to suppress, a commission composed of some of France's most distinguished civil servants, doctors, diplomats and soldiers stated, among many examples of brutality and injustice, that on three occasions Moslem "suspects" were locked up for the night in empty wine cellars; in the process 68 died of asphyxiation.
The F.L.N., loud in its denunciation of such French "barbarities," was no less brutal to French soldiers, European settlers or their own reluctant Moslem countrymen. In May 1957, to discourage the villagers of Kabylia from rallying to the cause of Messali Hadj—who had long since become the F.L.N.'s bitter enemy—F.L.N. gunmen herded more than 300 peasants into the village of Kasba Mechta (TIME, June 10, 1957), and, when darkness fell, passed among them shooting and stabbing until all were dead. Moslems who persisted in active loyalty to France risked F.L.N. "Execution"—or being found alive but minus ears, noses or tongues.
Will-o'-the-Wisps. Whether by voluntary allegiance or enforced support, the F.L.N. has grown steadily more powerful. After four years of the Algerian war, whole regions of the country (see map) have fallen into rebel hands, are effectively ruled by F.L.N. mayors, tax collectors and administrative officers. The National Liberation army itself has grown from scattered bands of fellaghas to a regular force of 120,000 men armed with Mausers, Lee-Enfields, Bren guns, German-made mortars and U.S. 75-mm. recoilless rifles. Between the Morice line and the Tunisian border the rebels have established a major supply depot and training center protected by antiaircraft guns. In Tunisia itself, with the open connivance of President Habib Bourguiba's government (which is not strong enough to resist them if it wanted to), there are five F.L.N. command posts, two replacement depots, eight hospitals, nine arsenals and three training camps.
Though now a highly organized and professional army, the F.L.N. sticks to guerrilla tactics and suffers when it does not. Sleeping by day and fighting by night, it moves in 40-man combat groups, attacks only when it has a French unit at a disadvantage, withdraws in the face of any major French force. Result is that although the overweight French army has won some local successes—notably the stamping out of terrorism in the casbah of Algiers by General Jacques Massu's hardened paratroopers—most of its time is spent in vain pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp opponent.