ALGERIAN WAR OF INDEPENDECE
Years: 1954-1962 | Est. deaths: 223 744
Published prior to 2013
The Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) was a period of guerrilla strikes, maquis fighting, terrorism against civilians on both sides, and riots between the French army and colonists in Algeria and the FLN ((Front de Libération Nationale) and other pro-independence Algerians. Although the French government of the time considered all Algerian violence, including violence against the French military, to be crimes or terrorism, some French people, such as former anti-Nazi guerrilla and lawyer Jacques Verges have compared French resistance to Nazi German occupation to Algerian resistance to French occupation.
The struggle was touched off by the Front de Libération Nationale (or FLN), an organization of Algerian nationalists in Algeria and in exile. The FLN started its struggle in 1954, only two years before France was forced to give up its control over Tunisia and Morocco.
The FLN’s main Algerian rival — with the same goal of Algerian independence — was the later National Algerian Movement (Mouvement National Algérien, MNA) whose main supporters were Algerian workers in France. The FLN and MNA fought against each other in France, and sometimes in Algeria, for nearly the full duration of the conflict.
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Source: excerpt from article in the open dictionary Wikipedia. Read Article