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[email protected] doi:10.1093/fh/crn062, available online at www.fh.oxfordjournals.org
‘WE’VE NEVER HAD A VOICE’: MEMORY CONSTRUCTION AND THE CHILDREN OF THE HARKIS (1962–1991) CLAIRE ELDRIDGE*
Abstract—When riots broke out in the Bias Camp east of Bordeaux in May 1975, few in France had heard of the harkis, the Algerian auxiliaries who fought for the French during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). This began to change, however, as the rapidly spreading protests instigated by their children garnered increasing media coverage. Seeking to end their status as les oubliés de l’histoire, the children of the harkis sought recognition for the history of their parents, particularly the sacrifices they had made for France and the suffering endured as a consequence. What is particularly interesting about this campaign is that the children of the harkis were not alone in this desire and in fact were relative latecomers to the harki activist scene. The years since the end of the Algerian War had witnessed a range of representations offered by a series of self-appointed spokespersons who, in the absence of direct testimony from within the harki community, and often serving their own objectives, took it upon themselves to speak on behalf of the harkis. This article seeks to analyse the relationship between these external narratives, put forward by actors including the Algerian and French governments, the former Muslim elite of colonial Algeria, French veterans and the pied-noir community and those offered by the children of the harkis in order to illustrate some of the issues pertaining to the mobilization and transmission of France’s colonial past in a postcolonial context.
On 7 May 1975, the normally peaceful town of Sainte-Livrade to the east of Bordeaux was wracked by violence as youths from the nearby Bias camp embarked upon a series of destructive riots. Across France that evening, people turning on their television sets were confronted with images of young men of North African appearance, their faces frequently masked by keffiahs, holding aloft sticks and rocks as they clashed with police against a backdrop of burning cars. As the unrest rapidly spread, the profile of the orchestrators rose in tandem with the media coverage they attracted. This is how many people came to learn of the harkis, Algerian auxiliaries who had fought for the French during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), and also of their impoverished and
* The author is a doctoral student and teaching assistant at the University of St Andrews. She can be contacted at
[email protected]. The author would like to thank Stephen Tyre and the French History reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions during the preparation of this article. The generous financial assistance of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Society for the Study of French History and the University of St Andrews is also gratefully acknowledged. All translations are by the author unless otherwise indicated.
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marginalized status in contemporary France. Hidden from view and effectively imprisoned, often behind barbed wire, in camps or forestry hamlets situated in remote rural areas, the historical trajectory of the harkis was encapsulated by the prominent protest slogan ‘After betrayal, abandonment; after abandonment, exile; after exile, oblivion.’1 By 1975, conditions in these camps, which were only ever designed to be temporary but had now been in use for over a decade, had deteriorated. This, in combination with the continued harsh discipline and lack of freedom to which residents were subjected, had begun to generate significant frustrations particularly among the descendants of the harkis, many of whom were now entering adulthood. When these simmering tensions boiled over during the summer of 1975, they were framed by demands not only for the practical amelioration of the situation of the harkis and their families but also for a revalorization of their history. Tired of being les oubliés de l’histoire, the children of the harkis were determined to gain recognition on behalf of their parents for the sacrifices they had made for France and the suffering they had endured as a consequence.2 However the children of the harkis were not alone in this desire and in fact were relative latecomers to the harki activist scene. The thirteen years since the Algerian War ended had witnessed a range of collective discourses constructed by groups external to the harki community. Algerian and French governments proposed reductive characterizations of the harkis as either traitors or loyal patriots in the service of their respective national historical narratives, whereas the former Muslim elite of Algeria, veterans and the piedsnoirs all professed a connection to, and sense of responsibility for, the harkis. Enjoying material and cultural advantages not available to most harkis or their descendants, these groups were able to dominate the portrayal of the harkis in the years immediately following independence. It was not until 1975 that their presentations began to be challenged by an emerging core of activists from within the harki community, and not until 1991 that these activists could classify themselves as an organized and mature collective memory carrier with their own distinctive voice and their own interpretation of their past. This article begins by surveying the events that brought the harkis and their families to France, and their experiences once there, in order to highlight the reasons underlying the initial reluctance of the first generation to speak of the past. This explains why external commentators were initially able to dominate representations and why the internal reappropriation of the past was an
1 M. Hamoumou, with A. Moumen, ‘L’histoire des harkis et français musulmans: la fin d’un tabou?’, in La guerre d’Algérie 1954–2004: la fin de l’ amnésie, eds. M. Harbi and B. Stora (Paris, 2004), p. 339. 2 Although the gender-neutral phrase ‘children of the harkis’ has been used in this article, it should be noted that activism by this group in the period under discussion was overwhelmingly male dominated and directed. While the wives and widows of harkis were often a consideration for these activists and some women did participate in protests, it was not until after 2000 that females from the harki community assumed a prominent role, notably Dalila Kerchouche and Fatima Besnaci-Lancou.
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endeavour undertaken primarily by the second generation as opposed to the harkis themselves.3 The images presented by groups outside of the harki community and the motivations behind them will be examined, juxtaposed with the portraits of the harki community disseminated through the French media. The article will then trace the ways these representations were variously accepted or rejected by the children of the harkis before being mixed with their own memories and experiences to produce a composite version of the past around which to base their activism. The year 1991 provides a natural end point, signifying both the attainment by the children of the harkis of the status of a coherent and independent memory carrier and a turning point in the commemoration and discussion of the Algerian War in France. Although les oubliés de l’histoire remains the phrase most frequently employed to describe the harkis, it is, historiographically speaking, no longer accurate. Since the beginning of the 1990s, numerous books and articles have appeared that explore the history of the harkis and their families, frequently written by historians and sociologists who are themselves descended from harkis.4 In light of the long-standing silence that surrounded this aspect of the Algerian War, these works have tended to focus primarily on establishing a comprehensive account of the war and post-war years. Other authors, however, have chosen to concentrate on the second generation and have adopted a more sociological approach, highlighting the difficulties these men and women have had integrating into French society and the crisis of identity of a community torn between two countries and cultures.5 However, in a field where studies of memories of the war have been so prominent, what is unusual is how little attention has been devoted to this aspect of harki history. Although recent years have witnessed a more concerted effort to obtain testimonies from within the harki community, this corpus remains relatively small.6 It is also characterized
3 The terms ‘first generation’ and ‘second generation’ are used here simply to indicate that there are several generations with Algerian heritage currently resident in France. It does not imply that the identity of the parents is automatically transferred to their children but is used instead to distinguish between memories specific to those who lived through the war as adults, the first generation, and those of their children, the second generation. 4 See in particular: M. Roux, Les harkis: les oubliés de l’histoire 1954–1991 (Paris, 1991); M. Hamoumou, Et ils sont devenu harkis (Paris, 1993); J.-J. Jordi and M. Hamoumou, Les harkis, une mémoire enfouie (Paris, 1999); L. Muller, Le silence des harkis (Paris, 1999); N. Boulhaïs, Histoire des harkis du nord de la France (Paris, 2005). 5 M. Hamoumou, ‘Révoltes des enfants d’anciens harkis: quelques clés pour comprendre’, Esprit, 174 (Sept. 1991), 112–14; L. Muller, ‘Le silence des pères et l’identité problématique des enfants de harkis’, Cultures et Sociétés, 8 (1996), 39–48; S. Abrial, Les enfants de harkis de la révolte à l’intégration (Paris, 2001); E. Brillet, ‘A remarkable heritage: the ‘daily round’ of the children of the harkis, between merger and vilification’, Immigrants and Minorities, 22 (2003), 333–45; G. Enjelvin, ‘Les harkis en France: carte d’identité française, identité harkie à la carte?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 11 (2003), 161–73. 6 For collections of received testimony: B. Derrieu et al. , Le cité de tapis: une communauté de rapatriés d’Algérie (Pézenas, 1997); S. Gladieu and D. Kerchouche, Destins de harkis: aux racines d’un exil (Paris, 2003); F. Mauro and B. Mahious, Compiègne, terre d’accueil pour les harkis: témoignages (Agincourt, 2004); F. Besnaci-Lancou, Nos mères: paroles blessés (Léchelle, 2006); ead. Treize chibanis harkis (Paris, 2006).
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by a lack of sustained analysis of the mechanisms of transmission at work, the role of actors and narratives outside of the community and of the impact of evolutions in the broader social and commemorative context in France, particularly the climate of greater openness about, and interest in, the Algerian war which has produced a resurgence of memories from all sides of the conflict. It is hoped that this article will begin to redress the balance by focusing on the process of transition from external to internal representations of the history and memory of the harki community. The reasons underlying this change and the means by which it was achieved are instructive for enhancing our understanding of the complex relationship between elite and grassroots constructions of the past. Analyzing the composition of both the initial external characterizations of the harkis and the bricolage interpretation that came to be championed by their descendants is further conceived as a move away from Pierre Nora’s conception of collective memory which tends to equate ‘collective’ with ‘national’.7 Instead, this study is concerned with exposing the many interactions that can lie behind representations of the past articulated by certain groups, as well as the composite and fluid nature of these representations. It is therefore an attempt to put into practice the concept of ‘collective remembrance’ by Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, which emphasizes the role of social agency and recognizes that remembrance is ‘a process, dependent upon groups of people who act over time’.8 Applying these concepts to this specific case study will hopefully provide some insights into the mobilization and transmission of France’s colonial past in a postcolonial context. I
Before discussing representations of the harkis, it is briefly necessary to situate them historically. Harki derives from the Arabic harka meaning movement. Created in February 1956, harkas were mobile units that undertook offensive military operations, although as the War of Independence progressed harki increasingly became a generic term for all native auxiliaries.9 The number of harkis so defined fluctuated throughout the war, peaking at 210,000 in 1958, but falling considerably in the final months of the conflict.10 Principally of rural origin, illiterate, and unskilled, harkis were very different to the indigenous Muslim elite of colonial Algeria, many of whom had opted for French nationality
7
P. Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols (Paris, 1984–92). J. Winter and E. Sivan, eds., War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 9, 18. 9 Harki could thus refer to the moghaznis assigned to protect the Sections administrative spécialisées, the French doctors, social workers and teachers charged with winning the hearts and minds of the Algerian people; the men who comprised the Groupes d’auto défense tasked with protecting isolated villages; the Groupes mobiles de sécurité of the rural police force, and finally the ‘assas or guardians. 10 C. R. Ageron, ‘Le “drame des harkis”: mémoire ou histoire?’, Vingtième Siècle, 68 (2000), 3. 8
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prior to 1954, and whose support of the French cause was often motivated by conviction rather than compulsion or necessity.11 Following the ceasefire accords signed at Evian on 19 March 1962, the majority of harkis (21,000, or 81.2 per cent of those still in active service) returned to civilian life hoping that guarantees from the Front de libération nationale (FLN) and the substantial numbers of French troops still present in Algeria would be enough to protect them from reprisals. Such hopes were, however, quickly shattered as waves of terrible violence broke across the country. There is no agreement on how many were killed during this period with estimates ranging from ‘plusieurs milliers’ to 150,000, although perhaps a better sense of the magnitude of the killings can be gained from consideration of anecdotal evidence such as that of Fatima Besnaci-Lancou’s mother who lost twenty-eight members of her family and closest friends during this period.12 The scale and ferocity of this violence made the position of the harkis and their families in the newly independent Algeria untenable. France was the obvious choice of refuge, but with strictly enforced quotas in place, crossing the Mediterranean to safety was not a simple matter. Once again, there is no consensus for how many harkis made it to France, although at least half of these new arrivals, and certainly the vast majority of those who came through official channels, were initially placed in centres d’accueil.13 As with the European settler population, or pieds-noirs, the French government had not anticipated a mass influx of harkis and thus neither strategies nor structures were in place to provide for them. Camps were either hastily constructed or modified and many harkis ended up living on sites that had recently housed suspected FLN militants. These camps, in places such as Larzac, Rivesaltes and Bias, were conceived as temporary expedients that would gradually become obsolete as the harkis integrated into French society.14 And
11 This elite comprised locally and nationally elected representatives; notables such as Caïds, Bachagas and Aghas; members of the liberal professions such as teachers and lawyer; as well as career soldiers and officers. 12 The earliest estimate came from the Le Monde journalist Jean Lacouture who advanced a figure of 10,000 on 13 Nov. 1962. Thirty years later, he revised his calculation upwards to 100,000. This is also the statistic quoted by the majority of harki and pied-noir associations. More recently, André Santini, former ministre aux rapatriés, claimed in Le Figaro that 150,000 had been killed. Academics however, tend to congregate around the range 60,000–75,000, although Charles-Robert Ageron always refused to be more specific than ‘plusieurs milliers’. W. B. Cohen, ‘The harkis: history and memory’ in Algeria and France 1800-2000: Identity, memory, nostalgia, ed. P. E. M. Lorcin (Syracuse, NY, 2006), p. 168; Roux, Les Harkis, p. 203; C. R. Ageron, ‘Les supplétifs algériens dans l’armée française pendant la guerre d’Algérie’, Vingtième Siècle, 48 (1995), 12, 20; F. Besnaci-Lancou, Fille de harki: le bouleversant témoignage d’une enfant de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris, 2005), p. 37. 13 William Cohen claimed that government-organized repatriation programmes brought 25,000 harkis and their dependents to France between 1962 and 1967, while a further 68,000 entered the country by unofficial means, frequently with the assistance of their former officers who acted in direct contravention of orders from their metropolitan-based superiors. Other academics however, have advanced figures of between 65,000 and 100,000. Cohen, ‘The harkis’, p. 169; E. Brillet, ‘La contingence et la geste: le harki, l’indicible du “mouvement de l’histoire”’, in L’époque de la disparition: politique et aesthétique, eds A. Brossat and J.-L. Déotte (Paris, 2000), p. 33; Roux, Les harkis, p. 230. 14 For a full list of the camps and their locations: C. Wihtol de Wenden, ‘Harkis: le paradoxe identitaire’, Regards sur l’actualité, 175 (1991), 36.
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indeed some of the estimated 42,500 people who passed through them between 1962 and 1969 remained there only briefly before being dispersed into the wider populace. Others, however, were not so lucky and were simply transferred to other forms of government-allocated accommodation such as the specially created hameaux forestiers, which operated along the same principles as the camps, albeit with slightly greater freedoms and employment in the forestry service for the men. An additional potential fate, especially in later years, was for harkis to be regrouped in purpose-built cités urbaines located on the outskirts of towns such as Lodève in the Hérault. The unluckiest harkis were those deemed incapable of integrating, on grounds such as age or injury, and for whom the camps became their long-term homes. In 1981 there were still 28,500 people, or 3560 families, living in what the government termed zones à forte concentration.15 These institutional environments have become emblematic of the harki experience in France and were home to many second-generation activists during their formative years. Yet despite the intensity and magnitude of these experiences, a harki memory of the War of Independence and its immediate aftermath is notable by its absence, even within the private realm of the family: ‘We never again spoke of our past, as if our country of origin had never existed.’16 Silence was due firstly to the fact that as a socially disempowered, overwhelmingly illiterate minority, many of whom did not speak French, the harkis lacked both the means to disseminate their experiences and an audience willing to listen. This situation was compounded by the physical isolation of those living in institutional settings where the only autochthonous French people they came into contact with were the military personnel and pieds-noirs in charge, or members of the Croix Rouge who came periodically to donate clothes and make inspections. The harkis reacted to their marginalization by turning in on themselves as a community.17 In addition to the practical obstacles to any organization and transmission of memory, there was an even more potent lack of will to carry out such tasks on the part of the harkis themselves. Within the home, the perpetuation of Islamic and North African traditions to which the majority of harkis adhered linked silence to paternal deference, which discouraged parents, especially fathers, from volunteering information and children from asking questions. Outside the home, a pervasive sense of fear further inhibited the transmission of the past. The zones à forte concentration essentially exported and replicated the mentality and power structures of colonial Algeria with all the attendant exploitation and mistreatment, particularly as the running of these camps
15 By this point these zones consisted principally of the hamlets and cités, as opposed to the camps. Hamoumou, ‘L’histoire des harkis’, p. 339. 16 Besnaci-Lancou, Fille de harki, p. 109. 17 However, the harki community was not a natural phenomenon. The camps were a mix of tribes, regions, and dialects; any sense of unity was based on a shared experience of loss, isolation, and deprivation rather than any inherent ethnic commonality.
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tended to be entrusted to pieds-noirs or military personnel who had spent part of their career in Algeria, or at least North Africa. Insults, arbitrary discipline and deprivations were suffered in silence, not least because harkis and their families were desperate to avoid being punished by being sent to a disciplinary youth centre, or to Candélie, the harki psychiatric hospital—or ultimately sent back to Algeria. These fears existed alongside the trauma arising out of the violent end of French Algeria with the activist Boussad Azni describing the camps he grew up in as being full of people ‘imprisoned in their thoughts as surely as behind the barbed wire’.18 Finally silence was a response to the difficulty of explaining the ‘choice’ the harkis had made, which was to be either traitors or loyal patriots, depending on whether one was in Algeria or France. Of course the reality of their situation was infinitely more complex and the notion of ‘choice’ distinctly problematic, but whatever the nuances of individual histories, the years 1954–62 were difficult for the majority of harkis to assume themselves, let alone communicate to others. The publication of harki Saïd Ferdi’s autobiography, Un enfant dans la guerre, therefore made an important contribution to restoring the complexity of the historical narrative.19 Aged just thirteen, Ferdi was arrested by the French military on his way home from school. He was taken to the local barracks where he was interrogated, tortured and then held prisoner. Because the French did not immediately release him, the villagers concluded that Ferdi had chosen to enrol. They therefore ostracized and threatened his family, leaving Ferdi no option but to don a French uniform and serve as a harki for the duration of the war. At the end of the conflict he was evacuated to France by the army where he attempted to come to terms with all he had experienced and to start a new life, although he found it impossible to forget the old one. ‘I will always be missing the best years of my life, stolen by those men’, he wrote.20 Ferdi’s powerful and moving story thus called into question the idea that harkis chose, of their own volition, to join one side or the other during the war. It was also significant as the first unmediated testimony to emerge from the harki community itself. Yet although Ferdi eventually found the courage to speak of his experiences, for the majority of harkis their fears proved too powerful to overcome, producing a silence so potent that one child was left wondering ‘if our parents hadn’t lost their memory?’21 Therefore in contrast to other communities connected to the war, such as the pieds-noirs, there was neither initial outpouring of memoirs nor any politicized collective mobilization from the harki population. Instead, it took over a decade and the emergence of a new generation for this silence to be definitively broken. The organized, public presence of the harkis dates from the 1970s with the Mouvement d’assistance 18 19 20 21
B. Azni, Harkis, crime d’Etat: généalogie d’un abandon (Paris, 2002), p. 117. S. Ferdi, Un enfant dans la guerre (Paris, 1981). Ibid., p. 198. Cited in Jordi and Hamoumou, Les harkis, p. 123.
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et de défense des rapatriés d’Afrique du Nord (MADRAN), formed in August 1971 by Ahmed Kaberseli, widely regarded as the first harki-led association.22 Although there were only forty such associations in 1973, by 1991 up to 400 were believed to exist and the most recent surveys put the total at over 540.23 This new-found visibility has been overwhelmingly inspired and led by the second generation. II
However, with their access to the past effectively blocked off by a wall of parental silence, these increasingly mobilized descendants were forced to look outside their community for answers to questions about their history and identity. The most obvious starting points in their quest yielded little, with neither the Algerian nor the French governments offering what could be regarded as supportive narratives from which to assemble and articulate a version of the history of the harkis. From the Algerian side, descendants of the harkis faced the myth of an entire nation united in a nationalist struggle for independence, propagated by the FLN-dominated government in order to legitimate itself. The logic of their mantra ‘one hero, the people’ dictated the denial of any internal divisions or substantial pro-French element meaning that the only role available to the harkis was that of a minority of ‘traitors’, or ‘collabos’ in the often-drawn analogy to the French during the Second World War. This has been the unwavering official line from 1962 to the present. However, events like ‘Black October’ and the violence of the 1990s have been used by some to advance the argument that, rather than a bad choice, the decision of the harkis to support France rather than the FLN was in fact judicious and far-sighted. This has had little impact in Algeria, though, where school textbooks continue to teach that the harkis were ‘groups of people who preferred to sell themselves to the enemy and to fight against their own brothers’.24 As current president Abdelaziz Bouteflika made clear during his state visit to France in 2000: ‘The time has not yet come for visits from the harkis, it is exactly as if one asked a Frenchman of the Resistance to shake the hand of a collabo.’25 On the opposite side of the Mediterranean, the harkis faced ‘a complicit silence’ as a Gaullist vision of decolonization took root which presented the process as a historical inevitability that allowed France to relieve herself of her burdensome colonial commitments and focus on modernization.26 Turning the 22
Abrial, Les enfants de harkis, p. 48. M. Hamoumou, ‘Les harkis, un trou de mémoire franco-algérien’, Esprit, 161 (1990), 40; Hamoumou, ‘L’histoire des harkis’, p. 341. 24 B. Stora and T. Leclère, La guerre des mémoires: la France face à son passé colonial (Paris, 2007), p. 59. 25 JA2 20 heures, ‘Duplex Bouteflika’, aired 16 June 2000 (Channel A2). For further analysis of Algerian politics in the post-war period: M. Evans and J. Phillips, Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed (New Haven, CT, 2007). 26 M. Faivre, ‘Les français-musulmans dans la guerre d’Algérie: les représailles et l’oubli de la France’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 180 (1995), 164. 23
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page on this inglorious and embarrassing past was made a priority and the harkis were the principal casualties of a state-sponsored effacement. Yet paradoxically this commemorative absence was accompanied by an almost excessive practical preoccupation with the harkis. Far from having forgotten the community, successive governments paid great attention to their material conditions, providing housing, education and financial benefits. Unfortunately, these measures seem to have succeeded only in keeping the harki community together and to the edges of French society. Housing policies have produced and reproduced ghettos, while the administration of the community stands accused of having fostered a culture of dependence and passivity that spans generations. ‘France has made our parents into dependents, she has made us into Palestinians’, was the bitter assessment of one activist.27 The silence emanating from the French state was further compounded by the fact that many harki children who grew up in the camps in the 1960s and 1970s also received their education there. But even those lucky enough to receive a mainstream education would still not have gleaned much about their family history since the War of Independence was not introduced into the troisième until 1980 and the terminale until 1983. Even then, textbooks either omitted the harkis altogether, or mentioned them only briefly, usually as an appendix to the pied-noir exodus of 1962. Moving beyond official historical interpretations to sub-state groups who concerned themselves with the harkis, in the immediate post-war years the most famous champion of the harki cause was the Bachaga Saïd Boualam. The Bachaga was born in 1906 into a family of Muslim notables with a long history of co-operation with the French. In 1946, after a twenty-year career, the Bachaga left the French army in order to administer his family’s vast estate. He entered the National Assembly in 1958 as a deputy, rising to the position of vicepresident, which he held until 1962. During the War of Independence, he was an ardent supporter of the French cause, and in July 1956, he was placed in charge of the harka for his region. At the end of the war, the French government evacuated the Bachaga and his sizable entourage of approximately sixty people, installing them on an estate in the south of France which rapidly became a focal point for the local harki and pied-noir populations. Widely regarded as the ‘emblematic personality’ of the harki community, the Bachaga was charismatic, articulate and politically savvy. This self-appointed spokesman used his considerable reputation and means to campaign on behalf of ‘his’ harkis whom he considered to have been cruelly betrayed in 1962.28 The Bachaga, along with the majority of indigenous elites, viewed the harkis as the logical continuation of a long tradition of French military service, which
27
André, cited in A. Méliani, Le drame des harkis (Paris, 2001), p. 193. ‘Récits d’atrocités’, Libération, 30 Aug. 2001, p. 1. The Bachaga also somehow found the time to pen three books in as many years, all in defence of the harkis. For a history of this: Mon pays … la France (Paris, 1962); Les harkis au service de la France (Paris, 1963); L’Algérie sans la France (Paris, 1964). 28
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had taken their fathers to Monte Cassino and their grandfathers to Verdun. ‘Since the beginning’, remarked one Captain, ‘we learned to die for the flag.’29 The harkis were considered to be indisputably French, having acquired this right through le sang versé. Addressing the French people, the Bachaga stated his case unequivocally: ‘The blood of yours and mine has mixed in order to defend this land of France … The Boualams, they have died in the four corners of the world in order to defend France, and after that they dare to say that we are not French?’30 This is also the source of the debt the Bachaga believed France did not honour at the close of the conflict when the army failed to protect its auxiliaries. In general, indigenous notables such as the Bachaga benefited from, and thus supported, the presence of the French in Algeria. In terms remarkably similar to those of the pieds-noirs, they evoke a pre-war atmosphere of harmonious interethnic co-existence. ‘The Europeans were our friends; as children we played together. There wasn’t any friction between the communities.’31 Algeria, according to this interpretation, was a country that would have been nothing without French impetus, but which was collectively constructed in an atmosphere of fraternal co-operation for the benefit of all. Although mistakes were acknowledged, particularly not integrating the native inhabitants into the administrative structures of their own country, these were attributed to out-oftouch politicians in Paris, thus conveniently exculpating the pieds-noirs as well as notables such as the Bachaga.32 Out of this perception comes the argument that the people of Algeria did not want independence, merely more autonomy and equality within the framework of continued affiliation with France. As the Algeria-born, Saint-Cyr educated Colonel Abd-el-Aziz Méliani revealed: ‘For a long time I dreamed of a decolonization which would not be a rupture but an alliance.’33 Enrolling on the French side when the war broke out was therefore considered by the Bachaga to be the natural course of action. The decision of the harkis was presented as a choice, freely made without any external pressures allowing the war to be presented as ‘primarily an uprising against cut-throats and thieves and the complete fraternization of the Muslims and the French against this explosion of hate’.34 Given the apparent strength of this pro-French sentiment, combined with the vastly superior resources at France’s disposal, the eventual loss of the war could therefore only be explained by weak-willed government in the capital. This sets up a convenient opposition between the treachery of
29 Officer K cited in M. Hamoumou, ‘Comment pouvait-on être harkis?’ Migrations études, 23 (1991), 2. A family history of military service for France was often cited by harki children when seeking to explain why their fathers donned a French uniform during the Algerian War. 30 Boualam, Mon pays … la France, pp. 14, 47. 31 Brahim F. quoted in Mauro and Mahious, Compiègne, p. 49. 32 Ibid., p. 34. 33 A. Méliani and D. Bernard, ‘“J’ai choisi la France”: entretien avec le Colonel Aziz Méliani’, in L’Algérie des français, ed. C. R. Ageron (Paris, 1993), p. 292. 34 Boualam, Mon pays … la France, p. 31.
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France in her short-term political incarnation and la France profonde to which the harkis and the Bachaga remained loyal. ‘We do not confuse true France with the one who has betrayed us’, explained the Bachaga.35 This distinction allowed him to decry the abandonment of the harkis without jeopardizing his argument that they had been right to choose France and deserved to be compensated for their sacrifices. As part of an educated and privileged elite, the Bachaga was in no way representative of the harkis on whose behalf he spoke, but he was their public face until the mid-1970s when ill health forced him to retire. The Bachaga was also something of an anomaly within his own community of notables since early harki-orientated activism was characterized by a lack of elite participation. Despite possessing significant material and cultural advantages, few seem to have been willing to employ these on behalf of their more disadvantaged countrymen. In 1975, MADRAN president Ahmed Kaberseli sent 130 letters to prominent figures like the Bachaga asking if they would be willing to assist the harki population; he received only two affirmative replies.36 Not only were elites reluctant to get their hands dirty with the practical aspects of campaigning, they appear to have preferred not to be associated with the harki population at all. Mohand Hamoumou’s contention that ‘it seems that they fear devaluing themselves by rubbing shoulders with the former auxiliaries’, is born out by the reaction of Colonel Méliani upon being referred to as a harki in the course of an interview: ‘Excuse me,’ he pointedly interrupts the host, ‘I am not a harki, I am a St Cyrien.’37 However, despite his isolation within the elite milieu, the Bachaga’s presentation of the harkis and their history remained potent because it closely corresponded with that of two other groups who also campaigned on behalf of the harkis during this period: veterans and the pieds-noirs. French soldiers and officers who had served in Algeria were quick to concern themselves with the harki community, whether through harki-specific groups such as the Amicale de la demi-brigade des fusiliers-marins established in March 1962 or as part of the remit of broader veterans groups such as the Union nationale des combattants et des anciens d’Afrique du Nord. The harki cause was taken up on the basis of their status as brothers in arms, and their concomitant right to pensions and other ancien combattant benefits. The practical preoccupation of such associations was indicated by titles such as Comité de soutien aux harkis, or Comité d’accueil des français musulmans. However, these groups also advanced a particular historical interpretation that cast the harkis, once again, as loyal soldiers who chose to fight for France because they wished to remain French and who were betrayed at the end of the war by the politicians, bringing shame
35
Ibid., p. 92. Hamoumou, Et ils sont devenus harkis, p. 39. 37 The irony is that Méliani is one of the handful of elites who has opted to speak on behalf of the harkis, albeit from a clearly established position of superiority. Ex libris, ‘Algérie: de la France à la guerre civile des blessures toujours à vif’, aired 21 Sept. 1995 (Channel 1). 36
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and dishonour to the army. The desire to alleviate this sense of shame, by emphasizing their personal commitment to ‘their’ harkis, both in 1962 and subsequently, appears to lie behind the activism of many. The dedication in Georges Fleury’s book, Le combat des harkis, reads: ‘To all those Muslims who remained loyal to us … despite everything!’38 This attitude is also very much in evidence in the collection of memoirs from the higher ranks of the army.39 The stress in these accounts is placed on the bravery and unstinting loyalty of harkas, although it is notable that the harkis themselves are rarely presented as displaying initiative, there is always a French officer close at hand dispensing orders and leading missions. The experience of fighting alongside the harkis is regarded as having given these men a privileged insight into the ‘true’ sentiments and motivations of the supplétif, which they then sought to share with the wider French public. Like the Bachaga, these men felt the need to assume a paternalistic responsibility for ‘their’ harkis on a historical as well as practical level, speaking on behalf of those they deemed incapable of doing so themselves. The wartime mentality of the bled was thus in many ways transported back to the mainland along with the troops. Yet just as the harkis were only part of the French forces during the conflict, after the war they formed only a fraction of the agenda of the main veterans’ associations. Attention was directed towards them only sporadically, and then always as a special category of troops: veterans who were entierèment à part rather than à part entière. Even the existence of specifically dedicated associations and the support of high-profile figures produced very few tangible gains for the harkis in the years leading up to 1991. In conjunction with the Bachaga and veterans, pied-noir activists occupied themselves with the harkis on the basis that they were all part of the same rapatrié community. In the eyes of many pieds-noirs, they and the harkis shared the status of having been proud French citizens deliberately deceived by de Gaulle and who were forced to flee their homeland in fear of their lives as a consequence of independence. The harkis therefore had the same right to recognition and recompense from the French nation that the pieds-noirs so vehemently agitated for. As Jo Sohet declared passionately in the pied-noir journal L’Algérianiste: ‘To break the silence, complicit with lies, to add a stone to the edifice of truth, to render homage and above all justice to the harkis, brothers and comrades in arms by free choice, soldiers of France, that is my wish, my ambition.’40 Yet as Joëlle Hureau has pointed out, this support was by no means disinterested. ‘For the pieds-noirs,’ she argued, ‘the situation of the harkis is an amplification of their own.’41 Whatever the pieds-noirs had suffered—exile, déracinement,
38
G. Fleury, Le combat des harkis (Versailles, 1989). For example: B. Moinet, Journal d’une agonie (Paris, 1965, reprint, 1999); M. Faivre, Un village de harkis des Babors au pays drouais (Paris, 1994); F. Meyer, Pour l’honneur avec les harkis: de 1958 à nos jours (Tours, 2005). 40 J. Sohet, ‘Les harkis, ces oubliés de l’histoire 1962–1978’, L’Algérianiste, 5, 15 Mar. 1979, 27. 41 J. Hureau, La mémoire des pieds-noirs de 1830 à nos jours (Paris, 2001), p. 174. 39
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discrimination, deprivation—the harkis’ experience had been, and continued to be, much worse. As the most disfavoured segment of the rapatrié population, the harkis were therefore useful to the pied-noir case for the terrible and unnecessary suffering caused by the end of French Algeria. However, the harkis also provided a perfect alibi against charges of racism and exploitation. The real fraternity that pieds-noirs claim characterized relations in colonial Algeria is, for them, proven by the decision of over 200,000 Algerians to risk their lives in order to defend this French Algeria. The Bachaga was particularly valuable in this regard; he was invoked frequently. His status was used to refute the suggestion that indigenous Algerians were treated as second-class subjects, rather than as fully equal citizens. ‘You are in death, as in life, the symbol of the fraternity between the populations of Algeria’, read one of the many pied-noir tributes at the Bacahaga’s funeral in 1982.42 Therefore, although the pieds-noirs position themselves in contrast to political parties who were only interested in the harkis when it served their own ends, such as in the run up to elections, in truth, their representations were equally selfserving.43 Even campaigns such as ‘Hommage aux harkis’, launched in 1987 by the association Jeune pied-noir, an organization which has consistently focused on the harki population on account of the fille de harki status of its co-founder, Taouès Titraou, failed to ‘honour’ the harkis on their own complex terms. The association instead presented them as inextricably linked to the history of the pied-noir community by playing down issues such as the various pressures that lay behind enrolment in favour of a narrative stressing the harkis’ ideological commitment to keeping Algeria French. This is just one example of the fact that the pied-noir population acts first and foremost as its own memory carrier, evoking the harkis only if and when they are useful to their own cause. Co-operation between the former Muslim elite, veterans and the pieds-noirs is a long-standing phenomenon. The connections between the three are multiple and over the years have enabled them to create a dense network through which to propagate their mutually reaffirming discourses about the harkis. They enjoyed nothing like the power of the state in terms of disseminating their historical interpretations. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that due to the importance placed by the French authorities on a ‘good knowledge’ of the ‘Muslim mentality’ when making harki-related administrative appointments, these were generally the people employed to oversee the camps and hamlets.44 42
‘Un grand français nous a quitté’, Aux Echos d’Alger, 4 (May, 1982), 10. Because most harkis possess French nationality they can vote. Consequently, there have been attempts to present the harkis as possessing block-vote potential in a bid to enhance their bargaining position vis-à-vis the government. However, in truth the community is too heterogeneous to deliver a substantial vote for any one party or individual. The evidence also indicates that the main political parties, with the exception of the Front National, have never regarded the harkis as a significant electoral force since they have done little to court their votes. 44 T. Charbit, ‘Un petit monde colonial en métropole: le camp de harkis de Saint-Maurice-l’Ardoise (1962–1976)’, Politix, 76 (2006), 45. This policy has also been noted in relation to Algerian immigrants who lived in Société nationale de construction de logements pour les travailleurs (Sonacotra) foyers during the same period: C. Hmed, ‘“Tenir ses hommes”: la gestion des étrangers “isolés” dans les foyers Société nationale de construction de logements pour les travailleurs Sonacotra après la guerre d’Algérie’, Politix, 76 (2006), 11–30. 43
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As one former Rivesaltes inhabitant explained, ‘There was always an administrator, a French chief of the camp, almost always a pied-noir, who directed everything.’45 Outside of representations offered by those with a vested interest in the harki community, another vector of transmission was the French media. Coverage in the televised news and the press tended to revolve around moments of crisis such as the ‘hot’ summers of 1975 and 1991 when protests instigated by the second generation spread across France, punctuated by hunger strikes designed to highlight the community’s ongoing plight.46 These features were generally accompanied by short, factual summaries of the latest developments and lacked all but the briefest historical context. In the opinion of Stéphanie Abrial, they were also alarmist in tone, presenting a negative collective image of the harki community as ‘all profoundly affected by the malaise of the banlieues, they are all rebellious, they are all in a situation of failure’.47 The small number of harki-dedicated documentaries broadcast prior to 1991 were little different, focusing on the arrival, installation and adaptation of the harkis, rather than evoking the reasons behind their presence in France. C’étaient les harkis, which aired in 1963, presented a series of newly arrived harkis who nervously described themselves as French and professed, in broken French, loyalty towards their new homeland. The state was depicted as facilitating the integration of this community, while the closing shots lingered on a harki family whose children had been given French first names, implying that the seeds of successful assimilation had been sown.48 However, the picture painted in 1977 by Dossiers de l’écran was less positive, stressing the harkis’ ongoing financial and social difficulties. The majority of the community were described as ‘without work, without family, without housing … without justice’, although the producers did try to balance this negative image with harki success stories, such as the butcher and teacher who had purchased a house in a ‘French’ neighbourhood. 49 More attention was devoted to the many reasons behind enrolment, although Abdallah’s motivation—‘I engaged in order to provide for my children’—was the most commonly cited. However, in contrast to this stood the local mayor, a pied-noir for whom the harkis remained those who ‘made a choice’ for France.50 Thus while the documentary sought to nuance the historical picture by giving space to a range of motivations, the pied-noir mayor preferred to reduce the harkis to a single, homogeneous block. This juxtaposition highlights the distance that often exists between the attitudes of the harkis themselves and the perceptions of those seeking to use them to make a historical and/or ideological point. Unusually, the programme was followed by a studio 45 J. Delarue, ‘La malédiction des enfants des harkis’, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, 26 (1992), 31. 46 See, amongst others, Grève des harkis, aired 20 Feb. 1987 (Channel 1); Santini chez les harkis, aired 16 Apr. 1987 (Channel 1); Drame harkis, aired 25 Dec. 1988 (Channel 1). 47 Abrial, Les enfants, p. 53. 48 Cinq colonnes à l’une, ‘C’étaient les harkis’, aired 7 June 1963 (Channel 1). 49 Les dossiers de l’écran, ‘Harki’, aired 17 May 1977 (Channel 2). 50 ‘Harki’, 17 May 1977.
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debate featuring prominent figures within the embryonic harki associational movement, including Kaberseli and M’hamed Larradji, president of the Comité des français musulmans rapatriés d’Afrique du Nord et leurs amis (CFMRAA). This deviated from the usual pattern of inviting pieds-noirs to discuss the harkis as a brief segment within programmes dedicated to their own community.51 What all these representations have in common is that they offered a simplified and selective picture of the harkis in accordance with the priorities of the group responsible for them. However, in spite of their initial dominance, these interpretations were eventually challenged through the activism of the children of the harkis. The process by which they sought to reclaim their community’s past will now be examined. III
At the height of the 1991 protests, journalist Philippe Bernard observed with respect to the harkis that ‘the children have a sudden thirst for this hidden history which is also theirs’.52 The source of this thirst seems quite obvious: how do people root themselves in a society when they do not know where they come from? With such a vital imperative driving them, it is tempting to argue that the children of the harkis simply collected fragments relating to the past, wherever available, and fitted them together as best they could to form a picture that was at least comprehensible. In support of this contention, it is possible to cite the strong similarities between the vocabulary used by the children of the harkis in their early campaigns and that used by commentators external to the community. The most striking examples revolve around the image of the harkis as ‘French through blood spilled’, a placard slogan seen repeatedly during the 1991 protests. There were also numerous references to the long history of military engagements for France, such as Boussad Azni’s assertion ‘Our parents were faithful in their engagement until the end.’53 Another dominant theme centred on the argument that the French army disarmed and then abandoned the harkis following the signature of the Evian Accords, leaving thousands to be massacred by a vengeful FLN and ‘marsien’ Algerians.54 MADRAN’s campaigns were particularly focused on what Benjamin Stora refers to as the ‘martyrology’ of the harki community, with the association arguing consistently that the harkis were ‘abandoned, defenceless and in the most ignominious conditions’.55 Indeed, one of the components most strongly 51 For examples of this latter type of programme: Quatrième mardi, ‘L’Algérie dix ans après’ (part 2) , aired 30 May 1972 (Channel 1); Droit de réponse aux pieds-noirs, aired 8 Nov. 1986 (Channel 1); Camera 2, ‘Rapatriés: 25 ans de nostalgie’, aired 22 June 1987 (Channel 2). 52 P. Bernard, ‘Harkis: au nom des pères les enfants des anciens supplétifs dénoncent l’injustice dont ils sont victimes’, Le Monde, 10 July 1991, 1. 53 Harkis: le crime, aired 12 Feb. 2002 (ARTE). 54 ‘Marsien’ refers to those Algerians who remained on the fence until the outcome of the war was certain, at which point they came forward claiming a long-standing allegiance to the FLN. These men and women are often accused as having been most violent towards the harkis in an attempt to prove their pro-FLN credentials. 55 A. Kaberseli, Le chagrin sans la pitié (Paris, 1988), pp. 44, 94; Stora, La gangrène et l’oubli, p. 208.
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internalized by the second generation is a sense of collective injustice and the concomitant status of themselves and their parents as victims, a sentiment reinforced by the objective conditions of their daily lives. Finally, there is the recurrent image of the harkis as caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of official narratives, with their history ‘denied by Algeria and repressed by France’.56 For the sociologist Emmanuel Brillet this phenomenon of incorporation can be explained by the absence of an internally generated collective memory. This exposed the children of the harkis to a ‘situation of loss of inherited identity’, which in turn made them vulnerable to externally imposed definitions.57 While there is undoubtedly some truth in this, as a global explanation it oversimplifies the complicated process of memory recuperation and reconstruction undertaken by the children of the harkis. The discourses of others have not simply been passively absorbed and regurgitated; instead, there has from the outset been a clearly articulated desire on the part of the children of the harkis to write their own history and thus to take back control of their community’s identity and destiny. ‘They have stolen our past and our memory, France has made us bastards of history’ complained Akim, one of the 1991 demonstrators, while prominent activist Hacène Arfi explained how he ‘truly had a need to reconstruct this past in order to envisage the future’.58 Reappropriating the past was thus seen as a way for the second generation not only to obtain retrospective historical justice but also to situate their own identity in the present. This impulse is by no means unique to the children of the harkis, it is common to all who have been denied the right to speak for themselves. John Wandsbrough’s comments in 1968 concerning the preoccupation of the Algerian government with ‘the construction of an image of themselves for their own contemplation and for export to the world outside’ are equally applicable to the process embarked upon by the children of the harkis a decade later.59 These two very different groups of people are thus connected by a shared desire to ‘decolonize’ a history, which had for so long simply been written about them, rather than by them. That it took a generation longer for the harki community to reach this stage is explicable primarily by reference to the institutionalized environments they lived in: unlike the homeland they left behind, the harkis themselves were never decolonized; they never had the opportunity to participate collectively in symbolic acts of decolonization such as the annual Independence Day celebrations. Meanwhile, their day-to-day treatment in places such as Saint-Maurice-l’Ardoise—aptly labelled by Tom Charbit as ‘a small colonial world in the metropole’—gave the distinct impression that they remained subjects rather than citizens.60
56
Hamoumou, Et ils sont devenus harkis, p. 293. Brillet, ‘A remarkable heritage’, 340. 58 Cited in Méliani, Le drame, p. 193; cited in Muller, Le silence, p. 53. 59 J. Wandsbrough, ‘The decolonization of North African history’, Journal of African History, 9 (1968), 643. 60 Chabrit, ‘Un petit monde colonial’, 33. 57
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Although the process of reappropriation began earlier, 1991 is regarded as the key turning point, signalling ‘the end of objectification’ and the transition from ‘denunciation to enunciation’.61 However, untangling themselves from more established groups with an interest in their cause was not a simple process, as illustrated by M’hamed Larradji, a protest instigator at Bias in 1975 who became the symbolic figure of the harki community during that summer. Although he demanded justice for the harkis and their families, Larradji in fact came from an elite background and seemed quite happy to ally with the piednoir community both during and after 1975.62 This decision distanced him from many of those he claimed to be representing, particularly the younger elements who strongly criticized him. This criticism intensified following the co-option by certain pieds-noirs of the revolt’s momentum and visibility which they then used to pressure the government over the issue of indemnification for their own community, eventually securing new measures which failed to make any provision for the harkis. Yet despite these limitations, Larradji was important as a figurehead who galvanized many within a previously apathetic community. ‘He is the first harki who dares publicly to brave the authorities. He thus shatters the image of the eternal submissive auxiliary, docile and faithful’, Dalila Kerchouche explained, recounting the impact Larradji had on the harkis in the camp where her family were living.63 Lessons were learned from 1975, which came to be known as l’été des dupes and in the years following there was a concerted effort by the children of the harkis to stand alone with harki association journals such as le Rappel, full of warnings about the dangers of external manipulation. These examples are illustrative of a broader process which involved the children of the harkis taking back control of the presentation of their own past by contesting and rejecting certain interpretations advanced by others. Chief among these was the notion that their fathers were traitors who betrayed their Algerian brothers, an accusation frequently cited as having tainted both parents and children. Interviewed for the aptly titled documentary Harki: un traître mot, Abdelkrim Klech, who has achieved iconic status among the harkis through his frequent and lengthy hunger-strikes, deemed the transference of guilt from father to son to be inevitable given that the notion of culpability was, for many years, simply stated as fact in various media.64 This ‘definitive sentence’ was reinforced by the environments in which Klech’s generation grew up, the experience of camps like Rivesaltes prompting children like Besnaci-Lancou to ask: ‘If we were undesirable, almost pariahs, were we not therefore guilty?’ 65 Growing up with such a sense of stigma explains why, when these activists did
61
Enjelvin, ‘Les harkis en France’, 169. Larradji’s father was close to the Bachaga Boualam and both men were honorary presidents of Larradji’s association, the CFMRAA. 63 D. Kerchouche, Mon père, ce harki (Paris, 2003), p. 181. 64 Harki: un traître mot, aired 29 Apr. 2002 (France 5). 65 Besnaci-Lancou, Fille de harki, p. 75. 62
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find their voice, rejecting the notion of treachery and calling for a revalorization of the history of their parents were so prominent in their agendas. In addition to accepted or rejected images from external narratives, the memory advanced by the children of the harkis also included internally generated components. Firstly, despite protestations that ‘the past—our parents didn’t speak of it’, those who have spent time collecting second generation testimonies note a surprising amount of factual and anecdotal knowledge about the past.66 Laurent Muller rationalizes this apparent paradox by suggesting that harki family histories are ‘over determined by a sort of secret which no one speaks of, but everyone knows’.67 These secrets of the past appear to have been partially divulged to the children of the harkis in accordance with the process of familial memory transmission observed by David Lepoutre. Family memory, he claims, ‘does not transmit itself like accumulated knowledge, nor through specific methods of communication, but it is acquired like ordinary knowledge, in the course of daily interactions within the family’.68 Anecdotes related by mothers to their children concerning life là-bas, outbursts of paternal anger or emotion following Algeria-related news items, parental conversations overheard and relayed by the oldest sibling—all these scenarios suggest ways in which fragments of the past could have been received, consciously or not, by the children of the harkis while growing up. However, perhaps more significant than these quotidian scraps is the fact that the second generation, particularly the older members, have shared their parents’ experiences. They too have lived through the grief of exile and learned to live with a sense of déracinement from a homeland many never really knew. As Boussad Azni put it, ‘We have all more or less lived the same heartbreaks.’69 Therefore when articulating the history of their community, the personal experiences of activists feature strongly. These memories tend to revolve around three pivotal events: the war, departure from Algeria, and arrival in France. Hacène Arfi thus related how his family fled Algeria after his father was stabbed four times in the throat by the FLN, walking through the night in order to reach the port of Algiers. Once safely on a boat bound for France, Arfi described the atmosphere as one of oppressive silence, broken only by the subdued weeping of the women.70 This is confirmed by Besnaci-Lancou’s own memory of boarding a boat for France: ‘we went aboard as one enters a cathedral’, she asserted before going on to describe her first night in the Rivesaltes camp where everything was ‘so unreal’ she felt as if she had ‘left the human world’.71 The majority of memories, however, relate to time spent in the various centres d’accueil. Initial perceptions remain vivid even many years later; Larbi Bouzaboun, upon returning to Bias in 2006, stated: ‘the
66 67 68 69 70 71
Derrieu et al., Le cité de tapis, p. 36. Muller, Le silence, p. 95. D. Lepoutre with I. Cannoodt, Souvenirs de familles immigrés (Paris, 2005), p. 290. Azni, Harkis, crime d’Etat, p. 100. Contre courant, ‘Harkis: des français entièrement à part?’, aired 25 Apr. 2003 (France 3). Besnaci-Lancou, Fille de harki, pp. 62, 67.
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images that march through the mind are truly atrocious … humiliation, oppression … a concentration camp.’72 According to Géraldine Enjelvin, all constructions of identity require a spatial point of reference.73 The camps filled this role perfectly: they were a veritable passage obligé, where the harkis and their children spent months, if not years, and from which they were often unable to come and go freely, fostering a sense of historical continuity between generations. These internally generated elements therefore form a significant aspect of the historical interpretations that the children of the harkis came to champion. IV
The interpretation of the past articulated by the children of the harkis on behalf of their parents was very much a composite entity, constructed from a combination of internal and external narratives available in the post-war decades. The years leading up to 1991, but particularly from 1975 onwards, were crucial in its gestation; they were a period not only of mounting tension and frustration, but also of a gradual gaining in confidence among the second generation which ultimately enabled them to assert their own understanding of the history of the harkis, instead of allowing the continuing domination of the field by outside commentators. Within this evolution, the existence of externally generated elite discourses about the harkis was crucial, giving the second generation something both to react against and to borrow from. The content of these elite narratives is valuable not only as a point of comparison to the version of the past proposed by the children of the harkis, but also because of what it reveals about the agendas, priorities and self-conceptions of those seeking to speak on behalf of the harkis, many of whom, particularly indigenous notables such as the Bachaga and the pied-noir community, continue to lack serious and sustained scholarly treatments. Furthermore, the very existence of such discourses challenges the persistent image of the Algerian War as the ‘war without a name’ by demonstrating that the conflict and those who participated in it had always been a preoccupation of various groups, from the state level downwards, even if this preoccupation often remained under the radar of the general French population because not enshrined in public commemorative rituals. Yet if 1991 was a turning point for the children of the harkis as a memory carrier in their own right, it was also a key year for the portrayal of the Algerian War of Independence in France. This was the moment at which the ‘silence’ perceived as shrouding the conflict was definitively broken. This was in part due to the renewed attention being devoted to another ‘dark’ episode in French history, the Vichy years.74 However the conflict was also kept in the spotlight 72
Documents x3, ‘Amère patrie’, aired 13 Oct. 2006 (France 5). Enjelvin, ‘Les harkis en France’, 164; Gladieu and Kerchouche, Destins de harkis, p. 13. 74 This was especially the case following the trial of Maurice Papon (Oct. 1997–Apr. 1998) for crimes against humanity during the Second World War. The trial further brought to light his role as Chief of Police in Paris during the infamous 17 Oct. 1961 ‘Battle of Paris’ when up to three hundred unarmed Algerians were killed, thus fixing the idea of some kind of continuity between the two conflicts in the minds of many. 73
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by events such as the outbreak of the first Gulf war and the so-called ‘Second Algerian War’; the coincidence in power of President Jacques Chirac, who had served in Algeria, and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who had cut his political teeth as an active opponent of the conflict; the debates over access to the archives sparked by the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the war; and parliament’s acknowledgement in 1999 that rather than simply ‘operations to maintain order’, the events in Algeria between 1954 and 1962 had in fact been a ‘war’. Finally, at a cultural level, the broadcasting of the documentary series Les années algériennes by Benjamin Stora and Peter Batty’s La guerre d’Algérie introduced large numbers of French people to the complexities and controversies of the war.75 Consequently, from the early 1990s onwards, the War of Independence was a far more prominent and openly contentious subject in French society. Since the collective history and memory of a group are far from static, these developments naturally had, and continue to have, a considerable impact upon all representations of the harkis discussed here. Being able to trace the evolutions of these various presentations of the past, illuminating the imperatives that lie behind them and the ways in which they interact with each other, is thus an important part of establishing a more complete understanding of the place occupied by the Algerian War of Independence in France and how this has changed during the forty-five years since the end of the conflict. By focusing on the specific case study of constructions of the history of the harkis, this article has endeavoured to highlight some of the broader processes at work and the issues pertinent to the study of the mobilization and transmission of France’s colonial past in a postcolonial context.
75 Les années algériennes (four episodes), aired 23 Sept. 1991 to 8 Oct. 1991 (A2); La guerre d’Algérie (five episodes), aired 12 Aug.–13 Sept. 1990 (France 3).
