Algeria

Algeria is the largest country in Africa by area (approximately 2.38 million square kilometers), located on the North African Mediterranean coast with Morocco to the west, Tunisia and Libya to the east, and the Saharan countries to the south. Algeria's population is approximately 45 million. The country was colonized by France beginning in 1830 and remained under French rule - first as a colony, then as departments of metropolitan France - until independence on July 5, 1962, following an eight-year war of independence that killed an estimated 300,000 to 1.5 million people and became one of the defining anti-colonial conflicts of the twentieth century.¹

The Algerian War and Intelligence Operations

The Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) was fought between the French military and the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN). The war was characterized by extreme violence on both sides: the FLN conducted urban bombings and rural massacres; the French military, particularly the 10th Parachute Division under General Jacques Massu, conducted systematic torture of detainees (documented in the "Battle of Algiers" of 1957) and summary executions. The French intelligence service, the SDECE (Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionnage), operated extensively in Algeria and used methods later associated with the "strategy of tension" employed in Italy - including pseudo-operations designed to attribute atrocities to the FLN.

The CIA had a complex relationship with the Algerian conflict. While the U.S. officially supported France as an ally, U.S. policymakers were concerned that French repression was driving Algerian nationalists toward the Soviet Union. The CIA station in Algiers maintained contacts with FLN political figures and assessed that Algerian independence was inevitable. This assessment created friction with France, which accused the U.S. of covertly supporting the independence movement.²

OAS and the Strategy of Tension

The Organisation de l'Armee Secrete (OAS) was a French paramilitary and terrorist organization formed in 1961 by French military officers and settlers ("pieds-noirs") who opposed Algerian independence and de Gaulle's negotiations with the FLN. The OAS conducted thousands of bombings and assassinations in Algeria and France, attempted multiple assassinations of President Charles de Gaulle (including the famous ambush at Petit-Clamart in August 1962), and recruited from networks with connections to Gladio stay-behind infrastructure in Europe.

The OAS's European connections - to Italian neo-fascist networks, the P2 lodge, and the NATO stay-behind apparatus - placed it at the intersection of the "strategy of tension" framework documented elsewhere in this vault. Several OAS veterans went on to participate in right-wing terrorist activities in Western Europe during the 1970s.¹

Post-Independence Algeria

Following independence in 1962, Algeria was governed by the FLN as a one-party state, initially under Ahmed Ben Bella and subsequently under Houari Boumediene after a 1965 coup. The military establishment (the Departement du Renseignement et de la Securite, DRS, formerly the Securite Militaire) became the dominant power in Algerian politics. Algeria developed extensive arms procurement relationships with the Soviet Union and maintained Cold War non-alignment while receiving substantial Soviet military equipment.

The 1990s Algerian Civil War (approximately 1991-2002) - between the military government and Islamist groups, primarily the GIA (Groupe Islamique Arme) - killed an estimated 150,000-200,000 people and included mass atrocities whose responsibility was disputed between the GIA and forces operating under or with the approval of the Algerian security services. Algeria's DRS had reputedly infiltrated Islamist groups to the degree that some GIA atrocities were attributed by investigators to DRS-influenced elements conducting false-flag operations.²