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Abstract
In the middle of the Algerian War of Independence, the French military and government launched an elaborate campaign to ‘liberate’ Algerian Muslim women. The timing of its inception indicated one of the strongest motivations behind this elaborate series of policies. Indeed, French propagandists and officials, prompted by the appearance on the international stage of ‘modern’-looking female Algerian nationalist agents, scrambled to uphold the myth that Algerian Muslim gender relations in the territory were ‘backwards’ and only they could rectify this shortcoming in Algerian society. They consequently embarked upon the emancipation campaign mainly in pursuit of convincing outsiders of France's purported ability and duty to make Algeria ‘modern'. For this reason, the production of photographic evidence capable of visually demonstrating that Muslim women were becoming French and liberated under French guidance was one of the campaign's central aims. In order to obtain such evidence, military agents exploited and falsified representations of Muslim women, a process this article examines. The present work additionally elucidates many of the hypocrisies inherent in the French army's exploitation of Muslim women and their bodies through their elaborate propagandist efforts; through their actions on the ground in Algeria, French soldiers and military leaders, including individuals directly implicated in the ‘emancipation’ campaign, were actually confining, abusing, and torturing Muslim women rather than freeing them.
Notes
1 This description is based on MacMaster (Citation2009, 133–135).
2 Documents from the colonial archives reveal that the governor general along with many of this colleagues worried about the reaction of the UN and its CSW to the reality that Algerian women still did not have the right to vote in the early 1950s. ‘Debates on the Women's Condition at the Economic and Social Council', letter 12 March 1952 from Roger Léonard to Minister of the Interior, CAOM 10 CAB 22.
3 In the summer of 1952, the Association of Muslim Girl Scouts Summer Camps took 178 Muslim 15-year-old girls on a trip to France. The report on the trip noted that Some of the girls (the minority) are from rich and bourgeois families but most are from modest or impoverished neighborhoods. Some live veiled while some have not yet taken up the veil due to their young age and still others have received from their families, often after some struggle, permission to not wear the veil. Some of the more mature young girls have for many years already been leading a life that requires them to take on great responsibilities, but the majority leads a primitive existence; they have never learned how to budget, plan a trip, take out money, send a money order, or use a telephone.
4 These included polygamy, the right of a husband to repudiate the wife, the veil, and exclusion of women from public spaces.
5 For instance, this code outlawed polygamy and marriage of anyone under the age of 15 and made consent necessary on the part of both spouses for marriage, among other measures (MacMaster Citation2009, 83).
6 Several American newspapers reported favourably on Bourguiba's reforms. See, for instance, Special to the New York Times (1957).
7 French administrators made no announcements to the international community about their intention to get rid of the Muslim personal status at this time. It seems that those in charge of the project kept it secret out of fear that the Muslim community would react violently and perceive it as an attack on their faith.
8 CAOM 12 CAB 207 (1 December 1956) letter from Villeneuve to the Director General of Political Affairs.
9 At this time, though, French officials denied that a war was underway in Algeria. They thus argued that prisoners they captured were outlaws and exempt from rules applying to the treatment of prisoners of war. For more on this, see Reid (Citation2005).
10 The group was the Democratic International Federation of Women, CAOM 81 F 903.
11 The Time magazine article referred to Bouhired as ‘pretty’ and ‘doe-eyed’ (‘Tac-Tac-Tac', 1958, 27). Translation of Bouhired's statement is taken from the article.
12 Mujāhidāt is the Arabic term for female fighters used to describe Muslim women who fought with the FLN.
13 CAOM 12 CAB 144. Letter from Robert Lacoste, then governor general of Algeria.
14 This film was The Nurses of the Bled (MacMaster Citation2009, 90–98 and 161).
15 A document entitled, ‘FLN Directive on the subject of Propaganda and Counter-propaganda to carry out vis-à-vis the Muslim woman’ that the French military found on a political adjunct for the nationalist movement killed in November 1958 gave April 1957 as the date when the French began their propagandist efforts towards Muslim women, SHAT 1 H 2461.
16 26 April 1958. General Massu to the Prefect of Algiers, the Inspector General of the Administration in Extraordinary mission, CAOM 14 CAB 162.
17 At one point, army officers expressed dismay that they could not monitor public bathhouses as efficiently as they would like. Intelligence officers also uncovered FLN documents showing that the nationalist movement was using women because of French police and military hesitancy to search Algerian Muslim women. This revelation likewise may have prompted the French to want women to discard veilings and headcoverings and thus may have incited them to persuade the latter to unveil CAOM 7G 1143A.
18 The Indochina war, in which communist forces used psychological techniques on French prisoners of war, convinced French military officers of the need to persuade the population through methods to which they themselves had been subjected. The rise of communism and fascism in the 1920s and 1930s as well as Second World War also stressed to the French military the usefulness of propaganda for population control and advancing political causes (MacMaster Citation2009, 86–88).
19 This thought derived from ethnographers’ and scholars imagined ideas about the Middle East. Typically, they believed Muslims to be lascivious. They fetishised local gender and marriage practices such as veiling and polygamy. For examples of such works, see the postcards from Alloula. For instances of how this work weighed heavily on the works of Fifth Bureau propagandists, see MacMaster (Citation2009, 70–78 and 89–90, 154–160) and SHAT 1 H 2460 and SHAT 1 H 2461. MacMaster also makes the point in his work about the influence of Orientalist ideas on these propagandists. The term ‘Orientatlism’ is Edward Saïd's. See Saïd (1978). Another work which closely looks at European views of Muslim women, including Algerian, from an earlier period is Taraud (Citation2003).
20 Algerians were not at this point in an economic position to be supporting such costly institutions. For instance, Horne cites the 1955 Maspétiol Report stating that one million Algerian Muslims were ‘totally or partially unemployed, and that another two million were seriously underemployed’ (Horne, Citation1977, 62–63). For example, propagandists referred to ‘harems’ in a way that highly replicated Orientalist ideas about Muslim society. A document titled ‘Condition of the Muslim Woman in Algeria’ dating to 2 April 1957 stated of ‘the Algerian Muslim woman', ‘constrained to wearing the veil, she lives cloistered in a “harem”’ (CAOM 81 F 74).
21 This referendum, which took place in France as well as across the empire, was on the new constitution De Gaulle had offered; if the majority of citizens voted yes to the referendum, then the constitution would go into effect (Horne, 304–305).
22 CAOM 81 F 439. In document entitled, ‘Dossier on Algeria: From October 1958–November 1959', under subheading of ‘Referendum: the Response of Algeria', 6–7.
23 CAOM 81 F 1450. The section of the pamphlet with the heading ‘Muslim Women Voted’ declared that for women to vote ‘is often to accomplish an act of faith, it is to believe in the New Algeria, that will witness equality between man and woman, in the field of the family as well as in the civic field'.
24 CAOM 10 CAB 155. This file contains police reports about women's involvement with the MTLD.
25 Connelly (Citation2002, 216), citing Robert W. Shofield, dir., The Falling Veil, Tangent films, circa 1960, CAOM.
26 Connelly makes the link between the use of the term ‘electric shock’ and the French use of electricity in the torture of Algerian Muslims during the war. See Connelly (Citation2002, 216).
27 CAOM 81 F 1450. ‘The Revolution of May Has Emancipated the Algerian Muslim Women’ sent to ministry of foreign affairs, French newspapers abroad liaison and diffusion, pro-Gaullist French political party UNR (Union pour la nouvelle république) La peyronnie, and Chilean journalists.
28 Many of the photos from these events located in CAOM 81 F 88 have captions with women crying ‘kif kif … .’
29 Scholars have elaborated elsewhere the story of how and why the women came to serve as delegates as well as details of their personal background, such as their regional origins, how they became involved with the cause of French Algeria, etc. The concern here is to delineate the meaning French propagandists attached to their election and their subsequent inclusion in the National Assembly and the political field. Khedira Bouabsa and Nafissa Sid Cara were members of Algeria's small urban Muslim elite. Both spoke French fluently and had been educated. What is known of Rebiha Kebtani's life will be described further below (Seferdjeli Citation2004b, 47–54).
30 The Mouvement de Solidarité Féminin was one of the European-led women's groups that supposedly sought to assist Muslim women during the war. Lucienne Salan and Suzanne Massu created this association in May 1958 after the generals’ coup. For more on this organisations, see MacMaster (Citation2009, 178–208).
31 Although all of the women were voted into power, at least in the case of one, Nafissa Sid Cara; then Interior Minister Michel Debré and De Gaulle approved her running for office well in advance of the elections. As Debré penned in his autobiography, I mentioned in front of the General my wish to include at least one woman in the government. The General said neither yes, nor no and asks me which woman? I suggested Nafissa Sid Cara who is the sister of a deputy of Algeria who was made a Minister by the Fourth Republic. She has just been elected deputy of the suburb of Algiers. She would be the symbol of a transformation and advancement that we wish for Algerian society. The General considers my initiative odd but did not resist. ‘If you suggest her to me, I will accept’.Thus, Sid Cara's nomination appears to have been decided by the higher echelons of French power. Quotation as cited in Seferdjeli (Citation2004b), ‘Muslim Women's Emancipation', 51, note 139. This is not to suggest, however, that once these women were in power that they did not act to effect change. Sid Cara certainly proved that these women had a certain level of agency in the state when she promoted the reforms of the Muslim personal status laws (Seferdjeli Citation2004b, 51–52).
32 Men made up the majority of delegates in the National Assembly from 1958 to 1962. See for a list of delegates. See ‘Liste alphabétique des députés de la Ire législature 1958–1962. Also, the fact that Kebtani could be publicly nicknamed ‘the pin-up’ attests to the misogynist culture that reigned in France's legislative body at this time.
33 Women in Algeria wore different types and styles of headscarves. Some of the women Amrane interviewed discussed the variety of veils and veiling practices. For instance, women from the M'zab in the northern Sahara wore veils that covered one of their eyes at all times. See Amrane (Citation1994). Her interviews also contain details about how Muslim women belonged to different socioeconomic classes and how women's customs and roles varied from region to region. The French were highly aware of this diversity in local female attire and veiling patters; Frantz Fanon rightfully points out in his essay, ‘Algeria Unveiled’ that the French used the absence of headscarves among the Imazighen in order to depict the population as being superior to its Arab counterpart as part of their divide and rule policy there. See Fanon (1967, 36, note 1). As for linguistic divides, Algerian dialectal Arabic does vary from region to region and the Amazigh, who make up about one-third of Algeria's population today, do not speak Arabic.
34 In a booklet titled, ‘Evolution of the Algerian Muslim Woman’ sent to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Latin American press, French newspapers abroad, and the French military's liaison and diffusion offices asserted, Everything started in May 1958. Those days, in Algiers, some Muslim women rejected their white veil, the haïk, a symbolic gesture that translates the immense hope … to shake the yoke of constraints and traditions that have deprived them for centuries the most elementary rights.This pamphlet was also printed in Spanish, CAOM 81 F 1450.
35 The French actually did start education Muslim girls in the 1950s, but in 1954, only 10.7% of girls received any form of education (MacMaster Citation2009, 155).
36 On 13 May 1958, former governor general of Algeria Jacques Soustelle along with the Generals Salan and Gracieux and Colonel Massu overthrow the government in Algeria and called for, the dissolution of France's Fourth Republic, in disarray at this point, the creation of a French Fifth Republic, and the return to power of General Charles de Gaulle. The political instability in France made the French army in Algeria and the European settlers feel that the government in Paris could no longer ensure French victory in the territory. For this reason, the generals launched the coup that European settlers overwhelmingly supported.
37 The Fifth Bureau particularly wanted to combat the idea the international press was putting forth at this time that the generals were acting in the style of General Franco in 1936 Spain and thus represented a Fascist movement (MacMaster Citation2009, 115–116).
38 Propaganda posters located in SHAT 1H 2464.
39 SHAT 1 H 2504, 28 August 1958. Document from General Delegation of the Government, Commander in Chief of forces in Algeria, Command Superior of the Interarmies for the 10th military region. This appears to have been a list of messages to be propagated among the female Muslim population.
40 CAOM 12 CAB 207 – document 10 page F.
41 Concerning the textual and historical bases for veiling practices, see Ahmed (Citation1992) and Mernissi (Citation1987).
42 ‘Discussion of a Subject Briefly Dealt with’, Journal de Marche du Comité d'Action Sociale et de Solidarié Féminine, September 4, 1958. This was one of the newspapers of the French-controlled women's groups. On pages six and seven, one of the authors wrote that they said to Muslim women, ‘I am not attacking your religion, because it is not said in the Coran [sic] to wear the veil … Currently, Algeria is the only place where women are still veiled', CAOM 81 F 74.
43 Page four of a pamphlet for EMSI volunteers on ‘establishing contact with the female population', SHAT 1H 2570. Underlined sections of this citation were underlined in the original text. Thus, the emphasis is not my own but rather the original author's.
44 Haïk is the Algerian term for the white veil Algerian women wear, misspelled here at haïck.
45 The document, ‘FLN Directive on the subject of Propaganda and Counter-propaganda to carry out vis-à-vis the Muslim woman’ that the French military found on a political adjunct for the nationalist movement, Si Boumediènne, killed in November 1958, SHAT 1 H 2464.
46 CAOM 10 CAB 155 contains many documents from the intelligence police about women's engagement in nationalist groups from 1948 to 1953.
47 12 CAB 207, E–F; September 3, 1956 ‘Note of Orientation: on the Topic of the Muslim Woman's Status'.
48 An FLN document entitled ‘Directives’ dated November 16th, 1958 includes details about marriages between male and female combatants. It states that women had to give consent for marriage and they set an age minimum for marriage, stipulations that could not be found in the Muslim legal code under the French government. The nationalists most likely knew at this time that the colonial government was planning to reform the Muslim code's laws on women. Still, the fact that they had taken measures to give women a say in marriage plans shows that they were open to slightly more progressive ideas on marriage, SHAT 1 H 2582.
49 MacMaster (Citation2009, 128) asserts that two women from the photographs of the 17 May ceremony appear to have been assisting the others in shedding their headscarves.
50 Amazigh is the politically correct term for ‘Berber’, the indigenous population of North Africa. Amazigh women's lack of veiling was one of the reasons for which the French argued that the Amazigh were superior to Arabs. See Lorcin (Citation1995).
51 As Kirstin Ross has theorised, French methods of torture during the war took on ‘modernising’ dimensions. Running water and electricity were considered very modern in France at this time because they had only recently become widely installed in French households. Indeed, in 1954, only 59% of French homes had running water. Also, the lack of running water and electricity up until this point fuelled French feelings of inadequacy when compared to the USA, where these utilities were more commonly found in homes. See Ross (Citation1995, 113, 118–120, and 215), note 64.
52 CAOM FM 81 F 903. A French dossier on Algerian Muslim women's accusations of rape and mistreatment at the hands of French soldiers contains two documents about pregnant women being tortured. One of these contains an account of a woman who had French men torture her by sitting on her stomach while she was four months pregnant.
53 In the testimony of Fatma Baichi, a mujâhida in the Battle of Algiers, she describes that, upon her capture by paratroopers, ‘They undressed me, bound me (ligotée) in a veil left by I don't know what woman, they drenched me in water, they poured a bucket of water and passed the gégène over me’ (Amrane Citation1994, 119). As will be explained below, the gégène was an electrical device that delivered a shock to the victims.
54 It should be noted that police forces in Algeria prior to the war also employed rape as a form of punishment predated the war – In a file on accusations of rape hurled at the French during the war, French included a note from an Ahmed Cheriet, apparently an Algerian Muslim, written from Blida on 8 May 1950 to the Procurer General accusing the police of submitting his wife to ‘moral torture’ while he was absent, CAOM 81 F 903.
55 Massu denied remembering her specific case and said he did not give the order for her to be tortured or raped. All in all, he responded to her accusations by admitting for the first time that torture was used on a wide scale during the war and that it was ‘regrettable'. See Beaugé (2000b).
56 Aussaresses declared in an interview with the French periodical Le Monde that he and Massu discussed in Massu's office which Algerian combatants they had arrested should survive to see another day (Beaugé 2000c).
57 MacMaster (Citation2009, 186) also notes the strange position of Suzanne Massu. The contradiction between the roles of Suzanne and Jacques Massu is also discussed in Donald Reid's article, ‘The Worlds of Frantz Fanon's “l'Algérie se dévoile”’ Reid (Citation2007, 460–1, 472). It is important to note that not all rapes during the war occurred in torture chambers. French soldiers and their Algerian Muslim assistants also raped women in cities and towns while carrying out searches of homes and these rapes may have constituted the majority of rape cases during the war (Branche Citation2002, 127).