The Losing Game

Fearing rejection by French voters in their homeland this week (see above), the European terrorists of the Secret Army Organization tried to minimize its effect in advance. They had long boasted that, except for a few rebels, their Moslem "brothers" in Algeria really were as determined to stay French as they themselves were. They tried desperately to prove their point by moving out of their two city strongholds of Algiers and Oran and gaining a foothold in the Moslem countryside.

Private Regiment. The area was chosen with special care: the grasslands at the foot of Ouarsenis mountains, 100 miles west of Algiers. It is a region inhabited by some 30,000 Berber tribesmen who are ruled by their French-appointed bachaga (chief), Said Boualem, 55, a tall, gaunt landowner with the commanding face of a Sioux warrior. Boualem is an ex-major of the French army and was repeatedly decorated for gallantry in the Italian campaign of World War II. Best of all, he was a comrade-in-arms and old friend of ex-Colonel Jean Gardes, a top aide of S.A.O. Leader Raoul Salan. During the six years of the F.L.N. rebellion, Boualem showed his solidarity with the Europeans by raising a private regiment of 2,000 Moslems (equipped and paid by the French army) and leading them in a series of bloody engagements that cleared his district of F.L.N. guerrillas.

Confident that Boualem would help him, Gardes slipped into the countryside and headed for the Ouarsenis region with a commando of 140 men. Disguised in French uniforms, they captured three French outposts en route before their startled army defenders could fire a shot.

Then Gardes called on Boualem at his huge greystone house in the village of Lamartine, excitedly told him that now was the time to strike a blow for Algerie franqaise by ordering his 2,000-man force to help the Secret Army hold the outposts against French counterattack.

Abandoned Hope. But Boualem is far more a realist than a romantic. To Gardes's shock, he flatly refused to cooperate, even tipped off the local French commander that the outposts had fallen.

Later he explained that Gardes is a "sensationally good officer, but he walked into this situation like a child. I saw straightaway that he could not win." He added.

"I refused to allow my men to fire on French conscripts." With the defection of a "good friend" like Boualem, the Secret Army must abandon what little hope it had of setting up "insurrectional zones" in the Moslem countryside. Its fury, as before, will be limited to the big coastal cities like Algiers, where last week Secret Army terrorists committed a particularly senseless act of brutality by invading a Moslem hospital for tuberculars, gunning down 17 patients in bed or in flight, and then dynamiting a wing of the building.

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