Saadi Yacef interviews

[Al-khiyal]

Saadi Yacef’s battle for Algerian independence from France was immortalised in a film that became a classic. Barry Didcock speaks to the man who made the transition from terrorist to statesman:

May 20, 2007 -- Saadi Yacef is a small, genial man with a firm handshake and sparkling eyes. The 79-year-old Algerian has five children and many grandchildren and over the course of our hour together he will turn more than once to the subject of ecology. "We need to focus our attention on the planet now," he says before joking, in broken English, about the number of questions I have before me on my notepad.

Those questions, however, tell another story. Fifty years ago, Saadi Yacef was not a cuddly grandfather but a terrorist. He ran a murderous guerrilla campaign in Algiers, first against the pieds-noirs - the Algerians of French descent - and later against the French army; and he killed and maimed scores of civilians in bomb attacks on cafés and bars. He was captured, sentenced first to death - by guillotine - and then to life imprisonment. Eventually he was pardoned by Charles de Gaulle and returned to Algeria to take up a career in politics.

All of this would have been folded into the pages of history had Yacef not written about his time in the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) and his part in the eight-year Algerian War of Independence - and if those memoirs had not been turned into a film which even today tops some critics' lists as the best ever made: The Battle of Algiers.

Shot by Italian film-maker Gillo Pontecorvo in Algiers in 1965 and released to worldwide acclaim a year later, The Battle of Algiers has been scrutinised by everybody from film students to other terrorist organisations, among them the Black Panthers and the IRA.

In 2003, struck by the obvious parallels between Algeria and Iraq, a directorate within the Pentagon organised a screening. Yacef thinks George W Bush has seen the film but he can't say for certain; he does know that Bush has read Alistair Horne's history of the conflict, A Savage War of Peace. And savage it was: Horne estimates that around 700,000 Algerians lost their lives, while FLN figures put it nearer 1.5 million.

The film itself is a forensic reconstruction of a period in the war between 1955 and 1957 and uses non-professional actors, among them Yacef himself. Pontecorvo shot in black and white and deliberately tried to make his film look like a documentary, to the extent that some scenes are almost too unsettling to watch.

This, and the film's even-handed approach to what was a brutal and complex war, are the reasons it is now hailed as a classic.

Watching it today, the similarities with Iraq and with the conflict in Israel and the Gaza Strip are uncanny. Women are used to place bombs in cafés and bars; like Sadr City in Baghdad, the Casbah of Algiers becomes a no-go area for the French soldiers; torture is commonplace but ultimately self-defeating. It's no surprise, then, that the film is getting a timely re-release, which is why Yacef is here in the UK. As well as appearing in The Battle of Algiers he also produced it and, since the death of Pontecorvo last October, he is now its de facto owner.

He speaks very little English so we talk through Izzy, a French-speaking student who has been drafted in to help. Also present is Kevin, his American son-in-law, who handles what is described as the business side of the film - DVD releases, that kind of thing - from his home in Los Angeles.

Yacef's answers to my questions are long and discursive but I know enough French to pick up a few phrases and untangle them before Izzy does. I understand, for instance, when he talks about being so scared during one operation that "I pissed my pants". I know what he means when he says that, although he was often terrified, his time with the rifle and the bomb were "les plus belles années de ma vie".

And I pick up on the mention of the "faux Islam" that sends suicide bombers to certain death. In Islam, he says, such an action is "interdit, interdit" - forbidden, absolutely forbidden.

This last comment may seem like moral relativism from a man who killed indiscrimately but Yacef makes a distinction between a war of liberation such as he fought and a religiously-inspired conflict such as that being waged by al-Qaeda.

"It was a very specific type of war I was fighting," he says. "It wasn't an army against an army and, though I was a soldier, I didn't have a uniform. It was a specific kind of struggle. Despite the grief it caused there was compensation in the end. I don't regret it."

How did he feel when he carried out these bombings? "As the head of the resistance I was the person who organised the setting up of the bombs and their placing," he replies. "It was a very difficult and painful thing to do. Once, after I had set off a bomb, I cried because so many people had died and - what especially upset me - many had lost limbs. After that I swore I would never do it again. But later on I did, because I had to."

When he talks of tears, he traces a line from his eye to his mouth. Watching the film again,he says,"is like digging up the dead."

[Al-khiyal]

Saadi Yacef was born in the Algiers Casbah to illiterate Berber parents in January 1928. He joined the nascent independence struggle as a very young man and rose through the ranks. This was an unconventional war, often fought in tight, urban spaces, and Yacef was good at it. When the FLN's then-head Rabah Bitat was arrested in spring 1955, he took over. He was 27 at the time. What followed makes up the bulk of the film.

One of his ablest assassins - and the central character in Pontecorvo's film - was one Ali La Pointe, a criminal turned activist. It was La Pointe who shot dead the mayor of Algiers in December 1955, a killing which resulted in the execution of two FLN members in June 1956. As a result of that, Yacef declared that 100 French colonists would die for every FLN member guillotined, and ordered a bombing campaign.

In January 1957, a division of French paratroopers arrived in Algiers to restore order. They were under the command of Major General Jacques Massu (played in the film by professional actor Jean Martin, a fierce critic of the French campaign in Algeria). The FLN called for a general strike on January 28 and on January 26 Yacef ordered three bomb attacks which killed 60 people. These were followed by two more in February which killed 10.

With the arrival of the paratroopers and the ramping up of the dirty war against the FLN, the organisation was infiltrated by French intelligence. Yacef was finally arrested on September 24, 1957 at 3 Rue Canton in the Casbah. Ali La Pointe had been in hiding in the house next door but had escaped. On October 8, he was traced to a house in nearby Rue des Abderames. The house was surrounded by French paratroopers and, when La Pointe refused to surrender,they placed explosive charges against the wall behind which he was hiding. He died in the explosion.

Yacef, meanwhile, was sentenced to death. "When I was arrested I thought I would be killed there and then because I was so high up in the FLN," he tells me. "In fact, having been arrested I was already politically dead. While I was in prison the executions were always done at dawn, so when I saw the sun coming through the prison bars I knew I was going to live through another day. But I was very certain that I would be executed."

So how did he feel about dying on the guillotine? "I wasn't frightened of dying. What frightened me was that when I was led to the guillotine I wouldn't be lucid enough to say the words, 'Long live Algeria'. I prayed to God that, whatever happened, I would be able to say that as I was led to my death."

But, he adds, "life throws up miracles - de Gaulle came to Algeria and commuted the sentences of those who had been condemned to death to life in prison. I was one of those."

De Gaulle had returned to power in 1958 and, in the teeth of growing public disquiet about the conflict, he realised that although France had won the battle for Algiers it was losing the war. Jean-Paul Sartre, who had an Algerian mistress, was the most prominent supporter of the Algerian cause but there were many other left-leaning intellectuals who backed him, among them the author Jean Genet, who would go on to become a vocal supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Meanwhile, public opposition began to build. It came to a head after the events of October 17, 1961, when the Paris police killed up to 200 protestors following a pro-independence rally. The true figure still isn't known: many bodies were simply dumped in the Seine.

In early 1962, de Gaulle's government began secret peace negotiations with the FLN. In March a ceasefire was announced, followed three months later by a truce. On July 5, Algeria, once considered a part of metropolitan France, became fully independent.

The Battle of Algiers was banned in France on its release but won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1966 and was later nominated for three Oscars. Rare among films, it has a political as well as a cinematic legacy, having been used as a tool by both agitators and by the regimes that sought to quell them. The Argentine juntas of the 1960s and 1970s are known to have studied the film and put into practice some of the unsavoury techniques used by the French in Algeria, such as throwing suspects into the sea from helicopters or passing off a death-in-custody as a suicide. Such was the fate of the FLN's political leader, Larbi M'hidi.

Today, of course, you can see The Battle of Algiers in France but the war it portrays still haunts the country and the wounds have taken decades to heal. It was 1998 before the French government officially acknowledged the October 17 massacres and 2001 before a plaque was placed on the St Michel bridge, from where many of the bodies were thrown.

But it is the question of torture that really troubles the nation's conscience. Yacef tells me about a night shortly after he was arrested when he witnessed a man being tortured. The ordeal lasted from 9pm until 6am and utilised simple household implements to (almost) deadly effect. Yacef could see everything through a door that wasn't properly closed.

The use of torture was widespread in the Algerian conflict and nobody in France doubts it. Nor do they doubt that the country lost the moral war because of it. Fast forward to Iraq and we see the same thing happening all over again: Abu Ghraib and the prisoner abuse scandal prove it, only this time there are pictures to accompany the stories.

After the years of colonial rule, Algeria prospers, in its fashion, though Yacef admits the country "doesn't always conform to what I hoped it would become". Indeed: just days after we meet my eye catches a story in the newspaper about an Algerian man fighting deportation to his homeland - because he says he could face torture. Plus ça change, as they probably don't say in the Casbah any more.

Still, says Yacef, "I still work for my country, in the senate. I put down the gun and picked up the camera, and now I have picked up the pen to help my country. I am happy. I am enjoying seeing my children grow up."

Many people - comrades and enemies alike - have not been so lucky.

'The Battle of Algiers' is at the Edinburgh Filmhouse now, then tours Scotland

One man’s freedom fight

[Al-khiyal]

June 19 (Bloomberg) -- Fifty years ago, when Saadi Yacef was blowing up French men, women and children in the name of Algerian independence, he never imagined Algerians would do the same to each other some day.

Yacef's ultimately successful fight against colonial France was immortalized in the 1965 film "The Battle of Algiers.'' He played a character based on himself in the movie, which has become a celluloid primer for revolutionaries.

The mystique attached to terrorism across the Middle East and the difficulty of combating its broader appeal have their roots in Algeria, whose war for independence is a model for other Arabs, from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

Since 1992, Algerian Islamist insurgents have killed tens of thousands of their fellow citizens. Yacef, 79, says he's unrepentant about his role in popularizing the tactic of deliberately targeting civilians, even though the insurgents are using it in his own country for aims he doesn't endorse.

"Our methods and theirs are both cruel, but you must distinguish between an objective - ours - which was liberation, and theirs, which is just destruction,'' Yacef said in an interview at his home outside Algiers.

National mythology

Western countries have come to condemn terrorism, no matter what the objectives. In Algeria, terror tactics are, by contrast, part of the national mythology. Their use by Islamist rebels does little to diminish the luster of the resistance triumph.

"It's a shame that the same methods used for liberation are used against ourselves, but this is simply not talked about,'' said Arslan Chikhaoui, chairman of Nord-Sud Ventures, a security consultant in Algiers. "People rarely relate the two eras.''

The Algerian war, Yacef and "The Battle of Algiers'' are all bundled into the myth. The late Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo shot the movie in grainy black-and-white and used mostly amateur actors.

The award-winning film has been praised for its powerful realism. On the eve of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, Pentagon officials screened it for military personnel. The written invitation called it a tale about "how to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas.''

Autobiographical

Yacef played the role of El-Hadi Jaffar, a resistance leader captured by the French. The character was autobiographical; Yacef commanded rebel forces in the Casbah, a warren of whitewashed tenements overlooking Algiers. He was imprisoned in 1958, though Charles de Gaulle, the French leader who ceded Algeria to the rebels in 1962, spared him execution.

Yacef provided details of real-life scenes for the film. One authentic recreation involved three Algerian women who hand-carried bombs into public places, including an ice-cream parlor where children were killed.

Estimates of the death toll in the war vary wildly. Originally, the rebels said 350,000 Algerian civilians and fighters died. The number later escalated to 1 million or more.

French military officials have said 18,000 soldiers were killed. British historian Alistair Horne estimated in his 1977 book "A Savage War of Peace'' that 2,788 French civilians died in terrorist attacks and another 500 disappeared.

Yacef is now a senator for the National Liberation Front, Algeria's dominant political party and the direct successor to the independence movement. He lives in a big house in the airy hills above Algiers, far from the labyrinthine Casbah.

Missing the point

Yacef's education was cut short by World War II, when American troops used his high school as a barracks. He thinks that just about everybody who has tried to replicate the experience of the Algerian resistance era has missed the point.

"This was not just a tactic. It was part of a whole strategy that included mass participation. It was specifically targeted at occupiers, not just anybody,'' he said, his small, almost boyish body devoured by a large armchair.

"We killed women, yes, and took fetuses out of their wombs. But ours was for liberation. This was our only means against a cruel enemy.''

He also noted, much like a rebel character in "Battle'' predicted, that the National Liberation Front botched its rule of Algeria after it took power. The government triggered the post- 1992 round of violence when it canceled elections that an Islamic party was favored to win. "Through mismanagement we created the monster,'' Yacef said.

Massacres

More than 100,000 people died between 1992 and 1998, many of them civilians killed in massacres. Eventually, the government reduced the Islamic-rebel ranks through a combination of military force and an amnesty. Nonetheless, insurgent remnants, in a group estimated to contain no more than 500 members, continue the fight.

In January, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat formally allied itself with the global al-Qaeda terrorist network. On April 11, three of the group's suicide bombers blew themselves up in Algiers, killing 30 bystanders.

"These people want to establish some kind of religious order on the world,'' Yacef said. "The people I killed when I was in the resistance, the people whose bodies I left to rot on the streets, would rise up to haunt me if we let it happen. So we must take the necessary steps.''

Yacef expressed disdain for suicide bombers, exponents of a tactic his generation of Algerians never practiced.

"The fight gave meaning to our lives,'' he said. "We weren't in it to die.''

Algerian is unrepentant on role in popularizing terror tactic

[Al-khiyal]

Jeudi 16 aout 2007 -- En parlant de sa passion pour le 7e art et de son soucis de rendre compte d’une certaine vérité historique, M. Saâdi a déclaré avoir un projet de grande envergure : produire un long métrage basé sur une histoire véridique. «Je compte faire un film autour de la personne de Malka. Une Juive qui a combattu dans les rangs du Front de libération nationale (FLN) durant la guerre de libération nationale. Le film, je le ferai avec le grand réalisateur américain Spielberg que j’ai rencontré aux Etats-Unis, sans demander un sous à l’Etat», a-t-il affirmé lors de la conférence de presse.

En présence d’anciens moudjahidine tels que Youssef Zaheni, Mustapha Guemati et Zeouache Neoui, M. Saâdi a annoncé, par ailleurs, qu’«avec mes amis de la zone autonome, nous allons organier à partir du mois de septembre une tournée à travers les lycées et les universités du pays, au cours de laquelle nous prévoyons de projeter mon film la Bataille d’Alger».

Après chaque projection, un débat sera organisé avec les jeunes présents, a-t-il ajouté. «Nous leur montrerons l’importance de la révolution que nous avons menée contre le joug colonial. Mais notre message à travers cette tournée est aussi de dire à nos enfants que nous avons fait la révolution par les armes, mais leur travail est plus difficile, c’est la révolution du savoir. C’est ça le combat qu’il faut mener aujourd’hui pour avoir une place dans ce monde».

Cette initiative de M. Saâdi et des anciens moudjahidine est venue après la projection du film le 25 juillet dernier au palais de la Culture d’Alger Moufdi-Zakaria au profit des moudjahidate et moudjahidine.

M. Saâdi déclare aussi qu’«à travers cette initiative, nous voulions faire en sorte que les rescapés de la guerre de libération nationale se rencontrent, car la plupart d’entre eux ne se sont pas vus depuis plusieurs années». Il convient de noter qu’après chaque projection, un exemplaire du film a été remis aux anciens moudjahidine «car ce long métrage n’a pu être réalisé sans leur sacrifice et leur combat», a expliqué le conférencier.

Un exemplaire sera également remis à chacun des présents lors de ma tournée dans les lycées et universités. Enfin, M. Saâdi a déclaré avoir eu un grand regret de voir son film censuré par l’ENTV. «Mon film passe à travers plusieurs chaînes de télévision dans le monde. Il est malheureux de le voir censuré par l’ENTV. La scène qui a été enlevée montre une séquence où le personnage d’Ali La Pointe entre dans une maison close pour chercher Hassan et le tuer. Cette scène a été enlevée sous prétexte qu’elle montre des femmes. Apparemment, le responsable de la télévision algérienne veut être plus musulman que les musulmans. C’est pour cela que les copies que je remettrai aux étudiants durant la tournée seront des copies originales.»

Yacef Saâdi l’a affirmé lors d’une conférence de presse : J’ai un projet de film avec Spielberg