THE RISE OF ALGERIAN RESISTANCE

How the anti-colonialist struggle around the globe helped inspire Algeria’s liberation movement to organise and fight back

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The Second World War ravaged Europe’s economy and infrastructure, leaving imperial powers like France unable to hold on to the vast empires they’d controlled for years. All over the world, independence movements now began to challenge the colonial system, in many cases taking up arms against their European overlords. By 1954, France had been defeated by the Viet Minh army in Indochina and forced to withdraw from its former colony there. Meanwhile closer to home, in the Maghreb of northwest Africa, Tunisia and Morocco were also on the brink of booting out the French.

Inspired by the events taking place around them, Algeria’s independence movement now made its move. At its vanguard was a new organisation, the Front de libération nationale (FLN), which became a rallying point for a spectrum of political views. On 1 November 1954, the FLN went on the front foot when it launched a series of attacks against military and police targets across Algeria.

From its headquarters in Cairo, its leadership broadcasted an appeal for Muslims throughout Algeria to join a national struggle for the “restoration of the Algerian state, sovereign, democratic and social, within the framework of the principles of Islam”.