Algeria · War Crimes & Atrocities

The Darkest Hours

The Algerian War was characterized by atrocities committed by all parties, though the scale and systematic nature of French state violence vastly exceeded that of the FLN. France deployed systematic torture as official policy during the Battle of Algiers, used napalm and chemical weapons against civilian populations, forcibly resettled up to two million Algerians in conditions that caused mass death, and in the post-independence period effectively abandoned 200,000 Harki fighters to massacre. The FLN for its part committed massacres of civilians — both European and Muslim — that supported rival nationalist organizations, and conducted a campaign of political assassination against moderate Algerians who advocated negotiation. The war left scars that neither country has fully reckoned with: France only acknowledged the torture was systematic in 2018, while Algeria's authoritarian governments have used the memory of the war selectively to legitimize the ruling system while suppressing historical research that complicates the nationalist narrative.