There Is No Peace

A month after France's cease-fire agreement with Algeria's rebels, the firing had not ceased, and the peace agreement itself was under attack by extremists on both sides. The latest threat came from Algeria's Army of Liberation, which has grown increasingly intolerant both of its own moderate government leaders and of what it considers France's tardiness in quelling the Secret Army Organization. In Tunis last week, Algerian army leaders defiantly opened their own information office, started issuing communiques charging that France has violated the peace agreement. In a challenge aimed as much at their own government as that of Charles de Gaulle, the restive army leaders declared ominously: "We warn the French authorities one last time of the dangers of testing the patience of our fighters and our people so cruelly."

S.A.O. terrorists continued to take Moslem lives in Oran and Algiers. Though badly demoralized by the arrest of its commander in chief, Raoul Salan, the organization stepped up its campaign to keep Europeans from fleeing the country. blew up two airliners at Algiers' Maison Blanche airport; systematically sabotaging buildings and records needed by a future Algerian government, they wrecked a maternity clinic, government offices, three banks and a newspaper plant.

But, Moslem impatience notwithstanding, the tide had turned. Last week, for the first time, the S.A.O. was finally outgunned and outmaneuvered by tough, determined French troops.

"Most Urgent Duty." In Oran, terrorists' Jeeps and commandos with S.A.O. emblazoned on their helmets have been forced off the streets, which they call their "last bastion" and virtually controlled until last week. Commandeering Oran's five tallest buildings, French army machine-gunners gained the upper hand in the city's rooftop war. In Algiers. French patrols backed by armored cars and helicopters tirelessly stalked the downtown area with orders to shoot terrorists on sight. The army has been heavily reinforced: in Oran alone there are now 12,000 French troops, and last week the first units of the local military force, a 40,000-man legion of French-trained Moslem conscripts, started patrolling Oran and Algiers. In his maiden speech before France's National Assembly, De Gaulle's new Premier Georges Pompidou vowed that the government's "most urgent duty" was to destroy the S.A.O. "finally and beyond repair."

The man picked by Charles de Gaulle to break the S.A.O. is General Michel Fourquet, 47, a slight, dark-haired air force officer who was famed under the nom de guerre of Colonel Gori in World War II, when he led the Free French Lorraine bomber group. He has been a staunch Gaullist ever since. Fourquet was an air force brigadier in Algeria a year ago at the time of the Generals Revolt. To make clear his loyalty, he painted a huge cross of Lorraine on his personal aircraft. Shuttling busily between Oran and Algiers in the fortnight since he was appointed commander in chief in Algeria, Fourquet has devised a flexible strategy aimed at breaking up S.A.O. units and driving them into hiding in the countryside. He is also counting on the fact that the S.A.O. is gradually but surely losing the confidence of Algeria's Europeans.

When S.A.O. commandos attacked and killed Moslems in Algiers, European women cried shrilly: "Assez! Assez!" (Enough), and they expressed what many other Europeans feel. For the first time in a year, two passenger ships sailed from Oran with hundreds of European pieds-noirs, who had braved S.A.O. threats to leave for France.

"We Are All Brothers." By contrast with the smell of defeat in the cities' European quarters, the mood in the cas-bahs was one of quiet, disciplined determination. For all the S.A.O.'s attempts to bait Moslem mobs into massive counterattacks, and despite the angry impotence of some army leaders, the people have been consistently restrained by a cadre of F.L.N. responsables, the Moslem organizers who wear blue denim jackets as the badge of authority. More than 90% of Moslems in the cities are jobless, since they dare not venture into European sectors to work, but there is little serious hardship. Says one F.L.N. leader: "We are all brothers, and we share."

Perhaps the most dangerous threat to the F.L.N.'s collective leadership is posed by Mohammed ben Bella, 45, the Marxist-minded Vice Premier of Algeria's provisional government, who sat out the war in French prisons and became convinced that his country needs a Nasser-style strongman backed by the military; pointedly, after his release Ben Bella visited Nasser and Iraq's Abdul Karim Kassem before even returning to Tunis.

Scornful of the F.L.N.'s able Prime Minister Benyoussef Benkhedda's "collegial" leadership, Ben Bella infuriated his colleagues with his demagogic avowals that Algeria's government 1) must follow Communist examples to complete the nation's "radical transformation," 2) will lend 100,000 soldiers to "liberate" Israel, 3) has made needless concessions to France, notably in allowing retention of French military bases. Last week, under pressure from Benkhedda, Ben Bella retracted his remarks. But he remains a hero to the restive army leaders. If they break with Benkhedda's government, Ben Bella may well turn out to be the strongman of independent Algeria.

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