From the Battle of Algiers to the Bombs of the Organization of American States, a Novel of the “Dirty War”

At the end of the summer of 2003, while the United States was combating attacks in Iraq, the Pentagon organized for about forty officers a performance of “The Battle of Algiers” by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo. Released in 1966, still censored in France in the early 1970s, virtually absent from theaters until 2004, the film until then had primarily been training rebels around the world, including American opponents of the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s . So realistic, it narrates not a military battle but a gigantic and brutal police operation carried out by the French army between January and October 1957 to keep a handful of bombers from the National Liberation Front (FLN). Yassef Saadi, head of the National Liberation Front in Algiers, worked closely on the film and played his own role.

Here is what the Pentagon sent to the show’s guests: How to win the battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shooting from a point at soldiers. Women planting bombs in cafes. And soon the whole Arab population rises up with frenzied enthusiasm. looks familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically but fails strategically.