Short of War

In its efforts to convince the world that Tunisia has been giving aid and comfort to the Algerian rebels, France got an assist from an unexpected source. "We give the insurgents what help we can, short of going to war," admitted Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba last week. "Our position is like that of the U.S. with respect to the Allies during the first years of World War II. We are not belligerents, but we are not neutral either."

Even if Bourguiba wanted to, it would be physically impossible for Tunisia to seal off its 600-mile border with Algeria. The southern 300 miles of the frontier run through forbidding desert; its northern reaches run through impenetrable woods broken by scrubby hills and low, rocky mountains. So rough is this terrain that even the French have made no serious effort to fortify the frontier itself. Instead, the French army has built the "Morice line," a 150-mile electrified barbed-wire fence along the Bone-Tebessa Railway (see map), which at some points lies as much as 50 miles west of the frontier. Any break in the wire is instantly registered on control panels in military posts and brings a detachment of French troops hustling to the threatened area.

Breaching the Morice line is the specialty of a 1,600-man F.L.N. commando led by a onetime laborer called "Colonel" Laskri Amara, who prowls the strip between the fence and the Tunisian border. Amara's men operate with insulated wire cutters, drive cattle in to set off the land mines sown along the line and frequently draw French troops away from a genuine breakthrough by first feinting an attack on the fence in a totally different location. By these means--and the simple expedient of sending many convoys south of Tebessa where the Morice line ends--the F.L.N., the French estimate, smuggles 2,000 weapons a month into Algeria from Tunisia.

Lethal Gifts. The F.L.N. insists that the bulk of its arms do not come from Tunisia at all but are picked up in raids on French military posts in Algeria. But among the rifles found on dead or captured rebels, a high percentage are LeeEnfield .303s, which presumably come from the Suez Canal arms depots that Egypt seized from the British after the Suez invasion. Increasingly common, too, are old French small arms, apparently supplied by the Syrians, whose army has been recently re-equipped with up-to-date Czech weapons. Both Egypt and Syria, say French intelligence officers, ship their lethal gifts to the Libyan port of Tripoli, where they are picked up by a fleet of Mercedes trucks maintained by the F.L.N. From Tripoli the guns are trucked along the main coastal highway to Tunis.

Rest & Recuperation. According to the French, Bourguiba not only permits the F.L.N. to raid Algeria from Tunisian bases, but also lets the rebels maintain five hospitals, five arms depots and a network of training camps in such towns as Beja, Gafsa and Souk-el-Arba. All F.L.N. recruits, declare the French, are sent to Tunisia for two months' basic training; currently French intelligence estimates the number of F.L.N. troops in Tunisia at from 6,000 to 8,000.

The Tunisians readily admit that they let Algerian guerrillas into Tunisia to rest or get medical treatment. ("Why shouldn't we? We are not at war with Algeria.") And several Western correspondents have visited camps in Tunisia occupied by unwounded, closely disciplined F.L.N. men. But these troops do not appear in public in uniform, do not carry weapons and appear to be far less numerous than the French charge.

Mutual Assistance. Last week the French Cabinet decided on a drastic measure to end Tunisian aid to Algeria. They propose to establish an artificial no man's land 6 to 30 miles wide along the Algerian side of the frontier. All civilians--an estimated 70,000--will be evacuated from this area, and French patrols and aircraft will have orders to shoot anything that moves within the forbidden zone. To deny the rebels cover, the French plan to burn off a huge area of scrub forest with napalm over a period of three months. "If so much as a bird flies, it will be shot down," boasted one French official. Pointing out that the elimination of one forest still left several thousand square miles of terrain rich in cover, an F.L.N. spokesman retorted confidently: "If French troops and civilian inhabitants are pulled out to turn the area into a forbidden zone, we will move in."

To complement the forbidden-zone scheme, France would like to see the establishment of a joint Franco-Tunisian commission to supervise the border area. Tunisia is unlikely to accept any such proposal. With 70,000 men, the F.L.N.'s army is one of the biggest in the Arab world, far overshadows the 6,200 lightly armed soldiers of the Tunisian army. If Bourguiba now agrees to help France end the traffic across the Tunisian-Algerian frontier, the F.L.N. and its Tunisian sympathizers could, and perhaps would, run him and his government out of office.

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