Colonial Trauma (Critical South) by Karima Lazali

Author:Karima Lazali [Lazali, Karima]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2021-01-21T18:30:00+00:00

In spite of the various calls to join ranks behind the “national” cause, the fighting continued and progressively consumed the united cause from within. A sort of incurable disease was eating away at the “national” body. Its symptoms consisted of suspecting and hunting down perceived enemies and obsessing over conspiracies and supposed betrayals. This was inevitably followed by the physical removal of the enemy. With the high number of losses within the MNA, the internal fighting between the FLN and MNA slowed, but the war then spread among the ranks of the FLN itself. War steadily grew from within. The killing of brothers-in-arms accelerated at an alarming pace after the assassination of Ramdane Abane.

This assassination inaugurated the reign of fratricide. In other words, it marked the “rejection” of fraternity. During the FLN’s first few years, Ramdane Abane was a unifying force and party leader. He put forth a vision for building an Algerian nation that would be plural and ruled by its citizens. His execution occurred right when he was recognized by the majority of FLN members as the new “father” of the Front. Those suspected of killing him include Lakhdar Ben Tobbal, Abdelhafid Boussouf, and Krim Belkacem, who would also be executed by his comrades, in 1970.

Detailing all the atrocities and internal attacks occurring within the FLN would require its own separate work. For our purposes here, it is worth citing the account provided by Ferhat Abbas, President of the Provisionary Government of the Algerian Republic (Président du Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne, or GPRA) and an important nationalist militant who dedicated his memories, Autopsie d’une guerre,20 to Ramdane Abane. Abbas recounts how he himself was many times targeted and how his nephew was killed by the FLN in this period of fratricidal violence by being mistaken for him. He paints a chilling portrait of the internal violence raging among nationalist militants and is struck by this re-enactment of colonial violence, which draws on its same methods and techniques:

The abuses we are guilty of are stains on the history of the FLN. … The El Halia massacre, the red night of La Soummam, the executions in Melouza, the pointless killings and torture all could have been avoided. … In countless cases, the behavior of some leaders and some resistance fighters was appalling. Innocent people were assassinated in order to settle old scores, which had nothing to do with the fight for Independence. We condemned France’s use of torture, but we practiced it on our own brothers.21

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