World: The Brothers

The Brothers (See Cover) About 1,300 years ago, when in the words of the chroniclers, "blood flowed across the earth like the waves of the sea," a Joan of Arc named Daia the Prophetess rallied the Berbers of Algeria against an Arab invasion and briefly formed the scattered tribes into a nation. At the reputed age of 127, while still beautiful and still amorous, Daia died sword in hand on the field of battle.

Today, for the first time since Daia, Algeria again stands on the brink of nationhood—and again the event was preceded by waves of blood.

The drive for independence began Nov. 1, 1954, All Saints' Day, when scattered bands of Algerian Moslems struck at 30 different points across the land, killing four French soldiers and two policemen.

Paris casually dismissed the revolt as an outbreak of "banditry." But as farmhouses of European settlers went up in flames, troop convoys were ambushed in the deep valleys of the Aurès range, and guerrillas were trained and organized in the inaccessible crags of Kabylia, the French struck back. They blew up Moslem villages, made wholesale arrests, created empty regions known as zones interdites, where anything that moved was shot.

Before long, the "bandits" and the French were engaged in a full-scale war that, in 7½ years of desperate fighting, cost the lives of 20,000 French soldiers and more than 350,000 Moslems. It sparked two mutinies in the French army, destroyed the French Fourth Republic, brought to power the Fifth Republic of President Charles de Gaulle, and gravely threatened his regime, too. Last week the war was virtually over. At his headquarters in Tunis, Premier Benyoussef Benkhedda of the Algerian F.L.N. (Front de Libération Nationale) declared: "It is now possible to say that the Algerian revolution has triumphed and has attained the aims for which it fought." Despite these words, there was little sense of triumph beneath the outward forms of jubilation. The big fact about the Algerian cease-fire is moderation—a moderation resulting from exhaustion.

The Sad Peace. Both sides had withdrawn from previously "final" positions —partly in fear of General Raoul Salan's fanatical Secret Army Organization and its indiscriminate terror. Specifically, the French agreed to recognize the F.L.N. as 1) speaking for Algeria's 9,000,000 Moslems; 2) having sovereign power over all Algeria, even the oil-rich Sahara; 3) an honorable foe whose 5,000 captured troops will be treated as prisoners of war, not criminals.

For its part, the F.L.N. agreed to: 1) a three-year transition period during which the French army will gradually withdraw from Algeria; 2) lease special bases to France, e.g., the naval port of Mers-el-Kebir, the Reggan nuclear test site in the Sahara; 3) accept as Algerian citizens those Europeans who make that choice.