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Summer Session Kansan Friday, June 29. 1962
Focus on Algeria
Sunday, the Europeans and Moslems of Algeria will go to the polls and will undoubtedly vote for independence from France.
Shortly, after this referendum, Algeria will be faced with the problem of setting up a constituent assembly. Here will the new government of the North African nation take its form. Experts say it will be a strongly socialistic Moslem government. France hopes that the new government will continue to cooperate, and toward this end plans to continue the heavy economic aid Algeria needs.
ONE THING is certain. Because of its many internal problems, Algeria will have to turn to other countries for aid. It can turn to the Communist bloc, it can turn to the West, or it can play the game of neutrality.
Most observers feel the government will be neutral, tying themselves to the Communist bloc as well as the West. The last 20 years has proven that the Communists will do their utmost to move in.
For seven and one-half years the Secret Army
Organization has waged a terrorist campaign toward keeping Algeria tied to France. It appears now that they have failed, but even after the referendum Sunday, they could continue to create chaos.
THE SCENE in Algeria is not completely bright. The hoped for peace could easily turn out to be nothing but a dream. Algeria is not yet ready to set up a self-contained government. They will have to look to France or somewhere for economic and technical aid.
Problems on these two fronts, will cause Algeria to perhaps look for political aid as well. They could turn back to France, or they could turn to the Communists. The United States will undoubtedly have a role to play in Algeria's new peace.
The Communist bloc will stand poised waiting for a chance to step in. To prevent this, the United States, France, and other Western countries must be constantly on guard. The next few years in Algeria will be interesting ones; they could be painful ones for the Western world.
—Karl Koch
New Questions in Algeria
By Alain Raymond United Press International
ALGIERS—French rule of Algeria is in its last days.
Algerians will vote Sunday in a referendum that will make the North African territory an independent nation after 132 years under the banner of France.
If the highest hopes are realized the voting will ring down the curtain on $7 \frac{1}{2}$ years of conflict which has bled France's economy of more than $15 billion and taken the lives of nearly 400,000 persons. But if the Secret Army Organization (OAS) refuses to cease it killing and bombing the blood-letting may go on for days, weeks, or even months.
With independence at hand, Algeria faces these questions:
Will the OAS join in the peaceful building of a new Algeria?
Or will the diehards fight on in a last-ditch struggle that could turn the country into another Congo?
MOST OF Algeria's Europeans, who numbered about one million before the recent mass exodus, are expected to abstain from the referendum that revolves around this question: "Do you want independence and continued cooperation with France?"
But the great majority of the territory's nine million Moslems are considered certain to vote "yes."
Still unknown is exactly what kind of government will eventually come into being in the new Algeria.
Some of its characteristics already are certain.
It will be a Moslem government that is strongly socialistic in its economic and political program which will include sweeping agrarian reforms and redistribution of land.
THE FRENCH hope it will continue to cooperate closely with France and look more to the West than to the Communist world. But experts believe it will be a "neutralist" regime like Morocco, Tunisia and the United Arab Republic with considerable ties to the Communist bloc as well as to the West.
Mohammed Ben Bella, whose release from more than five years of French captivity was one of the Evan agreements which led to the referendum, is expected to become the prime minister and "strong man" of the new government.
The present premier of the government-inexile, Ben Youseff Khedda, probably will be steered into the largely honorary job of president.
As soon as the result of Sunday's voting is announced—possibly by late Monday—French rule here will cease. Sovereignty and responsibility for law and order is to be handed over to the mixed Moslem-European provisional executive which has headquarters present at Rocher Noir. 30 miles east of Algiers.
The provisional government has been acting as a temporary government since April. Its first task after the referendum and proclamation of
independence will be to organize country-wide general elections—possibly on July 22—for a constituent assembly.
From that assembly will emerge the first representative government of independent Algeria.
THE ALGERIAN war began on Nov. 1, 1954 when 30 bands of armed Moslem rebels, in scattered but simultaneous attacks, killed hundreds in the first orgy of violence. The death toll in the bitter conflict has been staggering: 17,250 French soldiers, 141,000 Algerian rebels and an estimated 200,000 civilians.
France rushed reinforcements here and for more than seven years maintained 500,000 men in Algeria. They faced a vicious guerrilla warfare of sneak attacks by rebels on isolated farms and outposts and murders in quiet streets.
Rebel forces in the field probably never exceeded 10,000 men at any one time but another 30,000 or 40,000 men were trained and equipped in Tunisia and Morocco.
In June 1958 Gen. Charles de Gaulle came into power in France on a pledge to end the conflict which brought the downfall of France's Fourth Republic. However army generals and most of the Europeans in Algeria fiercely opposed independence and the end of French rule.
Algiers erupted in virtual civil war in January 1960 when armed Europeans took to the barricades to try to block De Gaulle's move toward Algerian independence. But the revolt failed.
THEN IN April 1961 European rightists and paratroopers headed by Gen. Raoul Salan, former commander-in-chief in Algeria, launched another revolt against De Gaulle. It collapsed after four days because the bulk of the French armed forces refused to back it.
A first round of peace talks between French and Moslem rebel delegates held at Evian, on the French shore of Lake Geneva, in May 1960 failed. But another round of negotiations at Evian this year succeeded when a cease-fire agreement was signed there last March 18.
BUT THE extremist OAS refused to respect the Evian accord and carried out a relentless terrorist campaign to keep Algeria French. Since the beginning of this year more than 5,000 persons were killed and more than 10,000 wounded by terrorists.
It was subsequently approved by the French people in a nationwide referendum last April 8.
Aside from setting up Sunday's referendum, the principal terms of the Evian agreement were:
- France agreed to pull out its army gradually during the next year. But it won the right to maintain 80,000 troops here for the next three years, to hold certain bases for five years, and to retain the big naval base near Oran for 15 years.
- The Algerians won sovereignty over the oil-rich Sahara but it was agreed that they and the French would exploit it jointly.
- In return for continued Algerian cooperation. France promised to keep up massive economic aid without which the fledgling state could not hope to stand on its own feet.
Day-by-Day
The Struggle From 1954 to the Present
ALGIERS—(UPI)Following are the significant dates in Algeria's seven-and-a-half-year struggle for independence:
Nov. 1, 1954. All Saints Day massacre by 30 armed bands of Moslems striking simultaneously throughout the country kills hundreds and launches Algerian war. The rebel revolutionary committee of unity and action in Cairo proclaims a fight for total independence from France.
- May 20, 1955. French Premier Edgar Faure announces France is withdrawing troops from NATO to reinforce the army in Algeria.
- Feb. 6, 1956. French Premier Guy Mollet flies to Algiers and is bombarded with tomatoes by angry Europeans when he appeals to rebels to conclude a cease-fire and promises free elections within three months.
- Aug. 20,1956. Secret Congress of National Liberation Front (FLN) in Soummam Valley drafts a political program.
- June 2, 1958. The Fourth Republic is overthrown and Gen. Charles de Gaulle returns to power pledged to end the Algerian conflict.
- Sept. 19, 1958. Moslem rebel leaders in Cairo announce formation of a provisional government-in-exile and proclaim their determination to continue fighting for total independence.
- Jan. 8,1959. De Gaulle is inaugurated as President of France and offers Algeria a "chosen place" within the French community.
- Sept. 16, 1959. De Gaulle in a broadcast offers the Algerian people a free choice between secession, internal self-government and full integration with France. He also appeals for a cease-fire.
- Jan. 24, 1960. Europeans in Algiers launch an abortive barricades revolt against De Gaulle's plans to give Algeria self-determination. The revolt ends Feb. 1.
- mation. The revolt ends Feb. 1.
• June 25, 1960. First peace talks between French and Moslem rebel delegations open at Melun near Paris, but break down July 1.
- December, 1960. De Gaulle visit to Algeria touches off fierce rioting in which more than 100 Moslems are killed.
Jan, 8, 1961. A nationwide referendum vote wins a sweeping majority in metropolitan France in favor of De Gaulle's self-determination policy for Algeria but a much smaller majority and heavy abstentions in Algeria.
abstentions in Nigeria.
• May 20, 1961. Peace talks between France and the Moslem rebels open at Evian but break down soon afterwards. Renewed talks at Lugrin in July also collapse.
talks at Lugo. In this article, I discuss Aug. 27, 1961. Ben Youseff Khedda, 39, takes over from Ferhat Abbas as premier in a shakeup of the rebel government-in-exile in Tunis.
- October, 1961. Secret talks between France and the rebels resume in Switzerland and Italy.
- January, 1962. Outbreak of new wave of terrorism by both Moslems and Secret Army Organization (OAS) results in more than 560 killed and nearly 1,000 wounded in a single month.
- Feb. 11-18, 1962. Secret peace talks between French and Algerian rebel delegations are held at Les Rousses in Jura Mountains of France.
- March 7, 1962. Final round of formal peace talks opens at Evian.
i. March 18, 1962. Evian cease-fire agreement is signed.
- April 8,1962. Evian agreement is approved by French people by a huge majority in national referendum.
THE LOG OF A COWBOY, by Andy Adams. Doubleday Dolphin, 95 cents.
Real western buffs know that for authenticity about the American cowboy one must turn not to Zane Grey or Owen Wister but to Andy Adams and Eugene Manlove Rhodes. Adams' "The Log of a Cowboy" is an important work in the local color tradition of American realism. Though it is not a novel, it has the pace and vigor of one.
Adams was a Texas cowboy, raised in the South during the Civil War, driving cattle north from Texas in the seventies and eighties. "The Log of a Cowboy" is about a cattle drive, from the southern Texas border to the Blackfeet Indian reservation in Montana. There are no trail town vendettas, no dance hall girls, and little romance. The life of a cowboy was drudgery, not excitement.
Take the swollen rivers, which had to be forded, and in which cattle were drowned or stuck in quicksand. Take wind and drought and hunger and monotony. This was the lot of the cowboy, as Adams describes it.-CMP
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
N A
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Steve Clark and Karl Koch
Steve Clark and Karl Koch Co-Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT Bonnie McCullough and Bill Woodburn Co-Business Mgrs.
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