On the Swiss Model

On the military quicksands of Algeria, the French army struggled a few steps forward. Five thousand troops last week swung a long dragnet out from the Moroccan border, began inching northward toward the sea, where ten warships waited for the advance to flush out fleeing rebels. In the Kabylie area, some 210 villages once controlled by the rebels offered their submission. But in Paris, Socialist Finance Minister Paul Ramadier announced gloomily that the North African war was costing a billion francs ($2,850,000) a day—as much as the Indo-China war took at its peak, and without any U.S. help. To pay for it, he asked for another $285 million in revenue, to be raised by added taxes on army suppliers and a "civic" tax on visible signs of wealth—yachts, race horses, pianos, servants, etc.

But Premier Guy Mollet, like most of his Socialists, was acutely uncomfortable with his program of repression. Without publicity, the government has been trying to establish unofficial contact with rebel leaders. Last March, French Union Councilor Georges Gorse, a former Socialist deputy married to an Egyptian, traveled to Cairo, ostensibly to discuss trade but actually to meet the members of the National Liberation Front in their Cairo headquarters. More recently, French representatives unofficially got in touch with the rebels' military leader, Mohammed Ben Bella, on one of his trips to Madrid. So far there has been no progress, since the National Liberation leaders insist the French must first recognize the "fact of Algerian nationality."

Mollet is anxious for a new try and has a plan up his sleeve, which he hinted at in the debate when he talked of a new Algeria that would be "neither Moslem state nor an Arab state nor a French province." His idea is to create a highly decentralized Algerian state divided into 25 or so "cantons" on the model of Switzerland. Each would have its own local assembly and local administration. This would allow some, like those around Oran and Algiers, to have European majorities. Over the cantons would be a single legislative assembly of elected representatives from each canton. The Premier of the assembly would automatically become Vice Premier of the French government, assuring Algeria of a tie with France at the top. This future Algeria would be part of a new "French Federation," and Frenchmen in Algeria would hold dual nationality in both France and Algeria. The new Algerian state would have internal autonomy, but France would continue in control of its army and foreign relations and keep a veto on its finances.

Mollet does not expect to launch his plan until 1) France's army establishes a position of strength in Algeria, 2) he gets some assurance of a favorable reaction from Algerian nationalists.