The Mysteries of Algiers Read Online Free PDF

going to be present tomorrow were to do with arrangements at Reganne, but the way in which Chantal and the colonel do not discuss the matter now makes me doubt this.
    When we have been through the list, she leans back again. She is struggling not to show too much excitement. ‘Philippe, I’m just beginning to realize … It’s been coming to me all afternoon. I think I know who the traitor is. But I’m not sure …’
    ‘I’m not even sure that there is a traitor. Who do you think it is?’
    ‘Oh, I’m not sure yet. And besides it’s going to be my coup. I will perhaps suggest the name at tomorrow’s meeting. You go back to your archives, and that Arab you’ve got on the board. I shall be very interested to hear what you get out of him.’
    I go to the window and look down through the slats of the shutters at the Legion at drill below. The sex is OK, but how long can I keep up these games with Chantal?
    Chantal is looking thoughtful.
    ‘That board with the leather straps. Does it have to stay down in that dingy cell? Couldn’t you think of some reason to have it brought up here?’

Chapter Four
    We are three-quarters of the way through my lecture on insurgency technique. I used to be nervous about lecturing. A surprising number of soldiers who have seen action are. These days I reckon that if my shirt-tail isn’t hanging out and if my flies are done up, than at least the lecture has reached the minimum standard. The lecture is a waste of time. Only experience teaches us about the enemy. The platoon is squeezed together on what must be old school benches.
    ‘Men! Mao as we have seen described the guerrilla as moving among the people like a fish in the water, quiet as a goldfish in his pool. But this applies only to the first stage of guerrilla warfare. In the second phase our goldfish acquires teeth and becomes a shark cruising around among the other more innocuous fish. The aim now is to detach these innocuous fish, the “oppressed” from the “oppressor”, and the guerrilla’s trick is to get the “oppressor” to do most of his work for him. General Giap proved himself a master at this strategy.’
    I do not have to think about what I am saying. Instead I am reflecting that it is given to few people to think when they wake up in the morning, ‘Today I am going to murder a man,’ but that was my first thought this morning. I have yet to commit the murder. I have this lecture to get through first and then some work on those blasted files.
    ‘So now I want to turn to the tactics of outrage and how the terrorist and the guerrilla turn reprisals against terrorism to their advantage. A bomb is thrown. The authority – military or civil – must take reprisals. They can’t find the actual culprits, or it may be that they do have them in their net but they can’t distinguish the terrorist in their net from all the other fish. So they practise mass reprisals. Now we should note here that from the “oppressor’s” point of view – and, for the sake of argument, let us here classify ourselves as oppressors – this strategy is not as senseless as it seems. For often the original programme was ordered by a particular sector of the liberation movement, without authorization from the command cell. In any case the liberation leadership have certain responsibilities towards the people they are supposed to be liberating. So the bombing campaign may be called off. Corporate responsibility and mass reprisals can be made to work on behalf of the occupying power – in the short term. Look at Massu’s successful operation in the Algiers kasbah a couple of years back.
    ‘But more generally, and in the long run, mass reprisals and so forth only play into the hands of the insurgents, for they alienate a previously friendly or at least neutral populace. They make more visible to the masses the naked oppression of the occupying power. These ideas I am telling you about do not originate with the FLN , or with General