The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Algeria 1955-1957 [Hardcover]

General Paul Aussaresses (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2002

This memoir by the infamous "torturer of Algiers" is now relevant to the new realities of America in Iraq and the treatment of terrorists as prisoners. A book that has caused a furor in Europe and that is being read by the US military. Exerpts to be published by Amnesty International.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A disturbing and sensational memoir!" -The Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2001 "Once you have seen with your own eyes as I did, civilians, men, women, and children quartered, disemboweled and nailed to doors [by the rebels], you are changed for life. What feelings can anyone have towards those who perpetrated such barbaric acts and their accomplices?" -General Paul Aussaresses, quoted in Le Monde, May 4, 2001" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

General Paul Aussaresses was a career French army intelligence officer with an excellent military record during World War II. He was dispatched to eastern Algeria in 1955 where he and his unit fought the rebels of the FLN. He retired after having served a

Product Details

• Hardcover: 206 pages
• Publisher: Enigma Books; 1st English Language Ed edition (August 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 192963112X
• ISBN-13: 978-1929631124
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #982,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for students of counterinsurgency., March 20, 2006

By 

Jack Stone - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Algeria 1955-1957 (Hardcover)

I believe many of those who wrote reviews of this book are writing from their hearts as opposed to cooly assessing this excellent work. Afterall, it is hard for one to embrace the author's premise that physical torture and summary executions were the only way to effectively deal with Algerian insurgents.

Although one may not want to accept this methodology, many influential members in French military and political circles accepted this as the price to pay to keep Algeria French. Because these senior leaders were able to get men like Paul Aussaresses to do their dirty work for them does not make their hands any cleaner. Aussaresses obviously could not have done what he did for so long without the approval of his chain of command.

I commend the author for having the moral courage to admit his own actions when everyone else involved has taken the different approach of sweeping it under the rug. Admitting to crimes against humanity is nothing to be proud of, but Aussaresses was certainly the implementer of French political will just as Adolf Eichmann was for Germany.

This is an important work for understanding to what extent nations will go to, to secure their empires. It is also important for understanding counterinsurgency and the limits of violence. Whatever your political/moral take on the author, this is an interesting, unique book and well worth the time spent reading it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read... With a Few Grains of Salt, October 12, 2006

By 

rampageous_cuss (Under Billy Penn's Hat) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Algeria 1955-1957 (Hardcover)

This is a fascinating but brutal account of a desperate period in history: France's effort to preserve its overseas "departement" from takeover by the main Algerian revolutionary organization, the ultra-violent FLN. The author, then a captain, was the secret counter-insurgency commander in the then-regional capital, Algiers. Essentially, he met terrorism with terror, and justifies his brutal absolutism with grim historical facts that are excluded from Pontecorvo's historically-inaccurate propaganda film, "The Battle of Algiers." Although France was ultimately to lose the war, Aussaresses (as confirmed even by his opponents) won the battle!

It puzzles me that so many reviewers refer to Aussaresses as cold-blooded and unfeeling. The book owes its many stylistic faults to the passion and obvious defensiveness of a very emotional man. This gives the brutal story moments of unintentional humour, as in the bizarre anecdote of the Franco-Algerian farmer, his head "split in half" by a radicalized Moslem, who goes home to bed to die, first relating his experience to the local police chief!!!

The claim has been made that Aussaresses' methods had a major political impact on the war's outcome, but I doubt it. As in America's war in Vietnam, France's war was chiefly fought by draftees in the countryside, and it was the growing bodycount amoung the children of native Frenchmen, fighting for the privileges of a colonial population that was not ethnically French, that lost the war politically. Likewise the issue for the local native population was the cruel reality both of second-class citizenship and of FLN terrorism, as anyone whose political stance was not in accord with theirs was murdered, often with unspeakable brutality. Anyone examining this book in terms of other counter-insurgency operations, like America in Iraq, must bear these facts in mind. The appropriate context in which to weigh Aussaresses' account is the thorny question of whether order is more important than law or vice versa!

As this book focusses almost exclusively on Aussaresses' experiences in and around Algiers it needs to be read with more comprehensive works on the Franco-Algerian war such as Alastair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace." As other reviewers have pointed out, however, it makes for an excellent counterpoint to the rose-colored romanticizations of Pontecorvo, and I strongly recommend it. Aussaresses must be applauded for speaking with a frankness that has eluded his opponents.

22 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How to crush an insurgency the Nazi Prison Guard Way, November 5, 2004

By 

Kevin Clark - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Algeria 1955-1957 (Hardcover)

The author served as the lead military intelligence officer for the French Army unit fighting in Algiers in 1957. The matter-of-fact, unapologetic tone of the atrocities he committed to win the battle struck me as one of the most chilling accounts I've ever read. By his own admission, he and the organization he led killed 3000 and tortured 25000 during the Battle of Algiers.

Those who tout this book as a tactical manual for winning the war on terror clearly overlook several major problems. First, the FLN, while it had tens of thousands of supporters in Algiers, had nowhere close to 25000 operatives in Algiers. That means that for every terrorist captured, the French tortured a handful of fence-sitters, passive supporters, or non-participants. Secondly, though they were poorly treated, the Arabs were, in fact, French citizens and Algeria was deemed an integral part of France -- just as Michigan with its large Arab population is part of the United States. The actions of the French Army almost completely alienated the very population they were trying to pacify and include in their empire. I would hope that if Al Qaeda established cells in Detroit, we would not employ the same tactics there that the French did in Algiers. Thirdly, while the author may have the psychological make-up of a Nazi Prison guard, most soldiers do not. Many of them struggled to come to grips with their actions for the rest of their lives. It's hard enough to deal with killing without also becoming a torturer.

Most importantly, the French lost the war. While you would never guess it by the outcome, French society initially almost unanimously supported retention of Algeria in the empire-- even some of the Communists. Torture completely fractured support for the war in France and around the world. Those same torturers, confronted with the fact that they might lose the war after leaping into a moral abyss, mutinied not once but twice. DeGaulle ultimately decided he had to get the French Army out of Algeria before it destroyed itself and all of France.

That said, the book provides valuable insight into the mindset of one particular school of counterinsurgency doctrine -- a failed school. This isn't to suggest that terrorists should be coddled; ultimately, we will have to kill most. As the fallout from Abu Gharab suggests, however, this isn't the way.

Kevin Clark
MAJ, US Army
US Mission Iraq