Organisation armée secrète

The Organisation armée secrète (OAS, "Secret Army Organisation") was a far-right^[1]^[2]^[3] French dissident paramilitary and terrorist organisation during the Algerian War. The OAS carried out terrorist attacks, including bombings and assassinations, in an attempt to prevent Algeria's independence from French colonial rule.^[1]^[4] Its motto was L’Algérie est française et le restera ("Algeria is French and will remain so").

Secret Army Organisation
Organisation armée secrète (in French)
Emblem of the movement
Leader	Raoul Salan, Edmond Jouhaud, Yves Godard, Jean-Jacques Susini, Jean-Claude Perez
Dates of operation	11 February 1961 (1961-02-11) – 1962 (1962)
Motives	Opposition to Algerian independence from France
Active regions	France French Algeria Spain Portugal
Ideology	French colonialism French nationalism
Political position	Far-right
Notable attacks	Algiers putsch of 1961 Battle of Bab El Oued Attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle
Status	Inactive
Size	3,000 members
Flag

The OAS was formed from existing networks, calling themselves "counter-terrorists", "self-defence groups", or "resistance", which had carried out attacks on the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and their perceived supporters since early in the war. It was officially formed in Francoist Spain, in Madrid in January 1961, as a response by some French politicians and French military officers to the 8 January 1961 referendum on self-determination concerning Algeria, which had been organised by President de Gaulle.

By acts of bombings and targeted assassinations in both metropolitan France and French Algerian territories, which are estimated to have resulted in 2,000 deaths between April 1961 and April 1962, the OAS attempted to prevent Algerian independence. This campaign culminated in a wave of attacks that followed the March 1962 Évian Accords, which granted independence to Algeria and marked the beginning of the exodus of the pieds-noirs, and in Jean Bastien-Thiry's 1962 assassination attempt against president de Gaulle in the Paris suburb of Le Petit-Clamart. Another prominent target was the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who supported the FLN.

The OAS still has admirers in French nationalist movements. In July 2006, some OAS sympathisers attempted to relight the flame of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to commemorate the Oran massacre on 5 July 1962.^[5]

History edit

Demonstration against the OAS in January 1962

The OAS was created in response to the January 1961 referendum on self-determination for Algeria. It was founded in Spain, in January 1961, by former officers, Pierre Lagaillarde (who led the 1960 Siege of Algiers), General Raoul Salan (who took part in the 1961 Algiers putsch or "Generals' Uprising") and Jean-Jacques Susini, along with other members of the French Army, including Yves Guérin-Sérac, and former members of the French Foreign Legion from the First Indochina War (1946–1954). OAS-Métro, the branch in metropolitan France, was led by captain Pierre Sergent. These officers united earlier anti-FLN networks such as the Organisation de Résistance de L'Algérie Française. While the movement had a broadly anticommunist and authoritarian base, in common with the political outlook of many colons, it also included many ex-communists and a number of members who saw its struggle in terms of defending fraternal bonds between Algerians and the colons against the FLN.^[6] In France the OAS mainly recruited amongst overtly fascist political groups. In Algeria its makeup was more politically diverse, and included a group of Algerian Jews, led by Jean Guenassia, who began armed resistance after a series of FLN attacks on the Jewish quarter in Oran.^[6] Some Algerian OAS members conceived of the conflict in terms of the French Resistance,^[6] and in contrast to later Gaullist depictions of the movement, it included a number of former Resistance members in addition to Vichy collaborators.

Resistance against Algerian independence commenced in January 1960, with further violence breaking out in 1961 during the General's Uprising. Daniele Ganser of the ETH Parallel History Project claims that Gladio stay-behind networks, directed by NATO, were involved, but no definitive proof has been found.^[7]^[8] Both of these insurrections were swiftly suppressed and many of the leaders who had created the OAS were imprisoned.

By acts of sabotage and assassination in both metropolitan France and French Algerian territories, the OAS attempted to prevent Algerian independence. The first victim was Pierre Popie, attorney and president of the People's Republican Movement (Mouvement Républicain Populaire, MRP), who stated on TV, "French Algeria is dead" (L’Algérie française est morte). Roger Gavoury, head of the French police in Algiers, was assassinated at the direction of Roger Degueldre, leader of the OAS Commando Delta, with the actual killing done by Claude Piegts and Albert Dovecar on 31 May 1961 (Piegts and Dovecar were executed by a firing-squad on 7 June 1962; Degueldre on 6 July). The OAS became notorious for stroungas, attacks using plastic explosives.

In October 1961 Pierre Lagaillarde, who had escaped to Francoist Spain following the 1960 barricades week, was arrested in Madrid, along with the Italian activist Guido Giannettini.^[9] Franco then exiled him to the Canary Islands.

The Delta commandos engaged in indiscriminate killing sprees, on 17 March 1962; against cleaning-ladies on 5 May; on 15 March 1962 against six inspectors of the National Education Ministry, who directed the "Educative Social Centres" (Centres sociaux éducatifs), including Mouloud Feraoun, an Algerian writer, etc.^[10] It is estimated that the assassinations carried out by the OAS between April 1961 and April 1962 left 2,000 people dead and twice as many wounded.^[11]

The OAS attempted several times to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle. The most prominent attempt was a 22 August 1962 ambush at Petit-Clamart, a Paris suburb, planned by a military engineer who was not an OAS member, Jean Bastien-Thiry.^[12] Bastien-Thiry was executed in March 1963 after de Gaulle refused to grant him amnesty. A fictionalised version of this attack was recreated in the 1971 book by Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal, and in the 1973 film of the same name.

The OAS use of extreme violence created strong opposition from some pieds-noirs and in mainland France. As a result, the OAS eventually found itself in violent clandestine conflict with not only the FLN but also French secret services and with a Gaullist paramilitary, the Mouvement pour la Communauté (the MPC). Originally a political movement in Algiers, the MPC eventually became a paramilitary force in response to OAS violence. The group obtained valuable information which was routinely passed on to the French secret services, but was eventually destroyed by OAS assassinations.^{[citation needed]}

March 1962 Evian agreements and the struggle of the OAS edit

The main hope of the OAS was to prove that the FLN was secretly restarting military action after a ceasefire was agreed in the Evian agreements of 19 March 1962 and the referendum of June 1962, so during these three months, the OAS unleashed a new terrorist campaign to force the FLN to abandon the ceasefire. Over 100 bombs a day were detonated by the OAS in March in pursuit of this goal. OAS operatives set off an average of 120 bombs per day in March, with targets including hospitals and schools. Dozens of Arab residents were killed at Place du Gouvernement when 24 mortar rounds were fired from the European stronghold of Bab el-Oued.^[13] On 21 March, the OAS issued a flyer where they proclaimed that the French military had become an "occupation force."^[10] It organized car bombings: 25 killed in Oran on 28 February 1962 and 62 killed in Algiers on 2 May, among others.^[10] On 22 March, they took control of Bab el-Oued and attacked French soldiers, killing six of them. The French military then surrounded them and stormed the neighbourhood. The battle killed 15 French soldiers and 20 OAS members, and injured 150 more.^[10] On 26 March, the leaders of the OAS proclaimed a general strike in Algiers and called for the European settlers to come to Bab el-Oued in order to break the blockade by military forces loyal to de Gaulle and the Republic. A detachment of tirailleurs (Muslim troops in the French Army) fired on the demonstrators, killing 54, injuring 140, and traumatising the settlers' population in what is known as the "gunfight of the Rue d'Isly".^[10] In coincidence with the uprising of Bab-el Oued, 200 OAS maquis marched from Algiers to Ouarsenis, a mountainous region between Oran and Algiers. They tried to overrun two French military outposts and gain support for local Muslim tribes loyal to France, but instead they were harassed and eventually defeated by Legion units led by Colonel Albert Brothier after several days of fighting.^[14] Some clashes between the French army and the OAS involving grenades and mortar fire took place at Oran as late as 10 April.^[15] At least one Lieutenant and one Second-Lieutenant were killed by the OAS during the fighting.^[16]

In April 1962, the OAS leader, Raoul Salan was captured. Despite the OAS bombing campaign, the FLN remained resolute in its agreement to the ceasefire; further, on 17 June 1962, the OAS also began a ceasefire. The Algerian authority officially guaranteed the security of the remaining Europeans, but in early July 1962 the Oran Massacre occurred; hundreds of armed people came down to European areas of the city, attacking European civilians. The violence lasted several hours, including lynching and acts of torture in public places in all areas of Oran by civilians supported by the ALN—the armed wing of the FLN, at the time evolving into the Algerian Army—resulting in 3,000 missing people:^[17]

By 1963, the main OAS operatives were either killed or in jail. Claude Piegts and Albert Dovecar were executed by firing squad on 7 June 1962, and Roger Degueldre on 6 July 1962. Jean Bastien-Thiry, who had attempted the Petit-Clamart assassination on de Gaulle, but was not formally a member of the OAS, was also executed, on 11 March 1963. With the arrest of Gilles Buscia in 1965, the organisation effectively ceased to exist.^[18] The jailed OAS members were amnestied by De Gaulle under a July 1968 act. Putschist generals still alive in November 1982 were reintegrated into the Army by another amnesty law: Raoul Salan, Edmond Jouhaud, and six other generals benefited from this law.

Legacy edit

Many OAS members later took part in various anti-communist struggles around the world. Following the disbandment of the organisation, and the execution of several of its members, the OAS chaplain, Georges Grasset, organised the flight of OAS members, from a route going from Paris to Francoist Spain and finally to Argentina.^[19]^[20] Grasset arrived in 1962 in Buenos Aires to take charge of the Argentine branch of the Cité Catholique, an integral Catholic group formed by Jean Ousset, the personal secretary of Charles Maurras, as an offshoot of the monarchist Action Française. This anti-communist religious organisation was formed of many Algerian war veterans and close to the OAS. Charles Lacheroy and Colonel Trinquier, who theorised the systemic use of torture in counter-insurgency doctrine in Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961), were members, along with Colonel Jean Gardes, who had first theorised counter-insurgency tactics during the Indochina War (1947–1954), Jean Ousset developed the concept of "subversion" referring to an essential enemy threatening the existence of Occident itself. Gardes arrived in Argentina in 1963, a year after the end of the Algerian War. There, he delivered counter-insurgency courses at the ESMA, which became infamous during the "Dirty War" in the 1970s for being used as an internment and torture center. Soon after Gardes met Federico Lucas Roussillon, an Argentine naval lieutenant commander, the cadets at the ESMA were shown the film The Battle of Algiers (1966) by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, during which the fictional Lieutenant-Colonel Mathieu and his paratroops make systematic use of torture, block warden system, and death flights.^[19]^[20]

The Argentine admiral Luis María Mendía testified in January 2007 that a French intelligence agent, Bertrand de Perseval, had participated in the "disappearance" of the two French nuns, Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon. Perseval, who lives today in Thailand, denied any links with the abduction, but did admit being a former OAS member who escaped to Argentina after the Evian agreements.^[21]^[22]

The financial crime expert Veit Buetterlin named the OAS as an example of a terror group which committed bank robberies to finance its operations. In a CNN interview, Buetterlin mentioned the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle as a historic example and related it to cases of the recent past where sanctioned parties are conducting cyber attacks on banks to acquire funds illegally.^[23]

Organisation edit

Chain of command edit

The secret army was a three-part organisation, each segment having its own action commando squads.^[24]

Section (Divisions)	Role	Director	Squads
ODM Organisation-Des-Masses Mass Organisation	OAS recruitment	Colonel Jean Gardes Michel Leroy	none
APP Action-Psychologique-Propagande Psychological Warfare & Propaganda	OAS propaganda	Jean-Jacques Susini	-Commandos Z (Z for Jean-Marcel Zagamé, founder)
ORO Organisation-Renseignement-Opération Organisation, Intelligence & Planning -BCR Intelligence Central Bureau -BAO Operational Action Bureau	OAS field ops planning	Jean-Claude Perez Jean Lalanne (BCR) Roger Degueldre (BAO) Albert Dovecar (Delta 1)	-Commandos Delta (D for Roger Degueldre, founder) Delta 1 Delta 2 Delta 3

French Algerian branch edit

Oranie district edit

General Edmond Jouhaud

Commander Pierre Guillaume

aide

Charles Micheletti

civilian

Colonel Dufour

replacing Gen. Jouhaud

General Gardy

Capitaine Pierre Sergent [fr]