A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (44 page)

Meanwhile, the French were resorting to new and subtler techniques of penetration. Under the inspiration of Captain Léger, an Arabic expert with the 11th Shock, selected turncoats clad inconspicuously in workers’ dungarees, or
bleus de chauffe
, were unleashed in the Casbah to mingle with their former terrorist associates and lead Godard’s intelligence operatives to the bosses’ lairs. The technique was to achieve such success that the expression
la bleuite
, or “the blues”, later assumed a particularly sinister connotation in the war as a whole. Its first coup was the tracking-down of “Mourad” and “Kamel”, the
noms-de-guerre
respectively of Yacef’s new “bomb squad” chief and his military deputy. On 26 August the two terrorists were pinned down in a second-floor apartment in the Impasse Saint-Vincent. With helicopters whirring overhead, a massive force of Bigeard’s 3rd R.P.C. closed in. In the first encounter two Zouaves had been killed and two more wounded but, for the sake of the information Mourad and Kamel might give on Yacef, the paras were prepared to take any risk to capture them alive. Through a loud-hailer a para captain offered to guarantee their lives if they surrendered. After some confabulation, the trapped men replied that they would accept, provided they could have it in writing. It was agreed that they would lower their terms of surrender to the paras in a basket. As two paras ran forward to take the basket there was a violent explosion seriously injuring the two men and wounding in the leg the battalion commander. Immediately the two terrorists tried to make a run for it through the front door of the building; but Kamel was shot down and Mourad blown to pieces by his own grenade in the act of throwing it at the paras.

Germaine Tillion’s secret rendezvous

Despite this setback for the French, another
bleu
was bringing them perilously close to No. 3 Rue Caton where, in a cunningly constructed cache, Yacef now incarcerated himself most of the time. But, in the meantime, an extraordinary encounter had taken place between the Casbah leader and a French representative. Having returned to France in January 1956, Germaine Tillion had become increasingly disturbed by accounts of torture and public executions in Algeria that percolated through to her from the
centres sociaux
she had set up under Soustelle’s administration. Consequently, reinforced by her own grim experiences of Ravensbrück, she had set to to organise a Commission Internationale contre le Régime Concentrationnaire en Algérie and, backed by a special dispensation from Prime Minister Mollet, she arrived with it in Algiers in June, just as Yacef’s new bombing offensive was getting under way. She was at once shocked to receive confirmation of just how bad the torture had become, and to discover how many of the liberal Muslims on whom had been founded her earlier hopes for a compromise peace were now incarcerated. On 2 July a Muslim woman friend came to the Hôtel Saint-George and told Germaine Tillion, elliptically, that “they” wanted to see her. At first disquieted by her friend’s involvement with the F.L.N., she expressed willingness to meet any of its leaders if they would contact her directly.

The next day Germaine Tillion received a note requesting her to be at the bus-stop opposite the hotel at two o’clock the following afternoon, from where she was to follow a young man recognisable to her “regardless of any changes of transport”. With considerable courage Germaine Tillion obeyed her instructions to the letter, changed buses three times, then—at a discreet distance—followed her guide into the Casbah, to No. 3 Rue Caton. Here she was received by Madame Fathia Bouhired, aunt of Djamila and whose husband had been killed by the paras some months previously. After a brief interval the door opened and in came Yacef, Zohra Drif and Ali la Pointe, the two men armed to the teeth with sub-machine-guns and grenades. Without giving his name, Zohra Drif introduced Yacef as
le grand frère
. At first the conversation was strained. “We did not know what to talk about, either of us—so we discussed economics!” recalls Madame Tillion, and she pointed out to them that she was the only one in the room “to know exactly what it was like to die of hunger”.

Then our conversation shifted to the French Resistance, talking about the traitors who had betrayed us (I was betrayed by a priest, for money) —hence
our
understanding of their situation. Yacef insisted, “But we have no traitors.” In fact, had they only known it, they had, and were being betrayed at that very moment—which, of course, I didn’t know at the time.

She vigorously assured Yacef that the F.L.N. would never defeat the French forces; to which
le grand frère
exclaimed in a desperate tone: “Then I shall never be a free man!”

From there they began to talk about the immediate horrors in Algiers, the bombings, reprisals and torture. Yacef revealed himself to be deeply concerned both by the fate of Djamila Bouhired, then in French hands, and the human consequences of his own bombings. But he claimed:

“We are neither criminals, nor assassins.” Very sadly and very firmly, I replied: “You
are
assassins.” He was so disconcerted that for a moment he remained without speaking, as if suffocated. Then his eyes filled with tears and he said to me, in so many words: “Yes, Madame Tillion, we are assassins…. It’s the only way in which we can express ourselves.”

Yacef then claimed that he had visited the scene of the Casino bombing, as usual disguised as a woman, and had been shocked to discover that one of the dead was a
pied noir
“football friend” and that his fiancée had lost both legs. “Perhaps you won’t believe me, but I cried all night.” He then added, to Germaine Tillion’s amazement: “I’ve had enough. There won’t be any further attack against the civil population of Algiers!” He explained, however, that the bombings had been undertaken only in riposte to the executions of the previous summer; and that if he were to halt the bombings, then the French government would have to reciprocate by “ceasing to guillotine patriots”.

The conversation lasted over four hours, and at the end of it Germaine Tillion undertook to fly at once to Paris to inform the new Bourgès-Maunoury government (Mollet having fallen in May) of Yacef’s proposed deal.[
2
]

In retrospect, it seems that Yacef may well have been motivated by no more transcending intention than to save his devoted Djamila Bouhired from the imminent prospect of the guillotine. At the time, however, Germaine Tillion felt passionately that the “hysteria of the two populations constituted an almost total obstacle to any solution”, and that nothing could be achieved without first lowering the temperature of hatred and terror. Now here, at last, there seemed a small glimmer of light; if only there could be a reciprocal deal, ending the bombing of European civilians in exchange for a halt to the executions…. It was, in effect, something like a renewal of Camus’ abortive quest for a “civil truce” of a year and a half earlier. In Paris Madame Tillion immediately made contact with a close friend on Bourgès-Maunoury’s staff. Yacef’s “deal” was passed on to the premier, and the first indications were encouraging. She was asked to return to Algiers and resume contacts with Yacef; but “at your own risk and peril”. (“Imagine!” she snorted afterwards: “to what a state French authority in Algiers had been reduced, in reality, that I had to go back at my own peril!”) At the same time she had also taken the opportunity of calling upon her old wartime chief, General de Gaulle, in his private office in the Rue Solférino. He had listened to her gravely as she described the horrors of the prison executions and of the tortures she had learned about in Algiers, and then made a remark that would seem full of significance a few years later: “This proves that one must talk, negotiate,
prendre langue
. One cannot abandon a people—whoever they may be—in quarantine!” But he refused her request that he intervene personally, adding gloomily, “If I make a declaration, it will be taken the wrong way by everybody.” As she left he remarked, by way of giving comfort, but enigmatically: “Everything that we do which is human earns its reward one day…” (pause) “But generally after we are dead!”

No deal
.…

Then, on the very morning of her return to Algiers on 20 July, Germaine Tillion was telephoned from the premier’s office to be told that. despite everything, two executions were scheduled for the 25th. She wept tears of frustration, and considered cancelling her flight. Nevertheless, she returned to discover that Yacef had exploded a further ten bombs following the sentencing to death of Djamila Bouhired and Taleb Abderrahmane; but miraculously not a single civilian had been harmed. On the 23rd she wrote to Yacef, in thinly disguised allusion, informing him of the forth-coming executions and begging him not to retaliate—“despite the breach of faith by my old father [the French government]”. She added: “My uncle [de Gaulle] deplores what is happening.” Yacef replied in a similar vein:

Chère cousine
,

I have received your letter which, I must admit, did not surprise me excessively. The
volte-face
of your father was not unexpected….

…we are totally responsible for what we do. But, alas, in your family, what is its line of conduct? One never knows. When we believe that at last reason is going to prevail, we are, alas, destined for a disappointment….

I am anxious to draw your attention to the fate of my two young sisters [the two condemned terrorists]. If they succumb to their injuries, I and my brothers and all the family and kinsmen of Algiers will be very strongly affected. Their reactions will be very violent….

The next day Germaine Tillion was horrified to discover that not two but a further three terrorists had been guillotined; the third being the man wrongfully condemned for the murder of Amédée Froger. The day after that eight more bombs exploded in Algiers, one quite close to Germaine Tillion herself. In disgust she decided to return forthwith to Paris. Then she learned that, in fact, the bombs had been so placed that there had not been a single civilian victim. Changing her mind, she settled down to wait for another summons from Yacef, which she hoped would lead her to one of the C.C.E. leaders. Another two weeks elapsed before it came, and this time Germaine Tillion had to disguise herself as a Muslim woman in order to penetrate the para blockade of the Casbah without betraying Yacef’s whereabouts. It was the first time that she learned the true identity of Yacef.

With Zohra Drif once again in attendance, Germaine Tillion told Yacef: “If there had been one single victim after the explosion of those bombs, I should not be here…. We can thank God!”

To which Yacef replied: “I had taken my precautions. It’s not God that must be thanked, but me!”

She duly thanked Yacef and, after a further discussion, left. A week later, on 16 August, there were two further executions. On the point of returning to Paris, Germaine Tillion wrote a last hasty and frantic note to Yacef, on her own initiative, begging him—despite her inability “to apply brakes, on the French side, to this ferocious and stupid mechanism”—not to retaliate in kind, and to adopt unilaterally a “position of moderation”. In reply, Yacef “let me know that there would not be any reprisals, and there were not any”. It was the last time she was to see Yacef, or any other F.L.N. leader. She returned to Paris gravely disheartened, feeling that if the “deal” with Yacef could only have been implemented,

then at least we could have
talked
. But I failed. That was the last moment when I felt it might be possible to talk; after the Battle of Algiers it always seemed to be too late. For that was the moment when—Lacoste having handed over responsibility to the army—the French ceased to govern Algeria….

3
Rue Caton

In any event, after the hunting down of Mourad and Kamel on 26 August, time was rapidly running out for Yacef. Like Montgomery with the ever-present photograph of his adversary, Rommel, hung up in his desert caravan, Godard had come to know every feature of Yacef’s face and, through intelligence received from Captain Léger’s
bleus
, he had also managed to pinpoint the Rue Caton. In this dark street, so narrow that the overhanging houses almost meet on the first floor, Yacef had his final hideout—alternating between No. 3 and No. 4 opposite. But, employing his own system of “doubles”, whereby the widow Bouhired—owner of No. 3—presented herself to the paras as an informer, Yacef managed with a mixture of adroitness and extraordinary good fortune to lead them off the track a little longer, and to preserve immunity of search for the Bouhired household. Sick with flu and a minor heart condition, as well as suffering from the intense heat inside the cache, Yacef confided to Zohra Drif that in a nightmare he had repeatedly dreamt he was about to be captured. On 22 September Ali la Pointe, the former pimp and Casbah layabout, also told Yacef: “I’m going to give food to forty old paupers.[
3
] I’m going to die.” Yacef ordered the headquarters to split up. Zohra Drif and he would remain in No. 3; Ali la Pointe, Hassiba Ben Bouali and Yacef’s twelve-year-old nephew and courier, “Petit Omar”, would move across the street to No. 4. He then wrote an urgent letter to Ben Khedda in Tunis, pointing out how desperate their situation was and requesting immediate help. His despatch carrier was a man called Hadj Smain, alias Djamal, and it so happened that he had been the principal intermediary between Yacef and Germaine Tillion. The very next day, however, Djamal was picked up by Godard’s men—acting, apparently, on a tip-off, but through no fault whatever of Germaine Tillion. Under extreme pressure Djamal gave away the secret of No. 3 Rue Caton; at the same time he revealed all the details he knew of the parleys that had taken place between Germaine Tillion and Yacef with the blessing of the French government. News of this association with the arch-enemy, Yacef, was regarded by the para leaders as a piece of sheer duplicity on the part of a civil government they were already growing increasingly to distrust and despise.