Women in the Algerian War
Urban women, who constituted about twenty percent of the overall force, had received some kind of education and usually chose to enter on the side of the FLN of their own accord.
Largely illiterate rural women, on the other hand (the remaining eighty percent), became involved due to geographical proximity to FLN operations paired with force, although some of them did join out of compassion.
[2] The rural women combatants in the Algerian War were referred to as the mujahidat and "left their homes and families to join the FLN armed guerrilla bands, the Armée Libération Nationale (ALN)".
[3] The mujahidat also were "social assistants to the rural population in the zones in which they were posted and would give local female peasants advice on topics such as hygiene and education".
Most women participated in the tasks listed above and had to come home to take care of their families while many men left to fight and did not return for days on end.
Their jobs “included paramilitary activities such as throwing bombs at civilian targets or attacking policemen and individuals considered collaborators/traitors.”[11] When out of uniform, women were arguably more dangerous.
As a result of mujahidat and fidayat not having many written accounts about them, oral testimonies have been the main source in understanding the significance of women's roles in the FLN-ALN and their contributions to the Algerian War.
[3] Another example of why testimonies of rape and torture of the women combatants in Algeria do not come to light can be seen in the story of a mujahida named Louisette Ighilahriz.
Further, by revealing accounts of sexual violence and subjugation during the war, mujahidat would be seen as victimized women rather than courageous fighters who were absolute members of the ALN.
On the other hand, The Book, Les Enfants du nouveau monde, (Children of the New World: A Novel of the Algerian War) by Assia Djebar discusses the significant gender gap between men and women during the time.
This book shows that despite the notable female involvement at the time of the Liberation War, “women face an indigenous patriarchal structure so deeply rooted it may not change with independence.” In addition to general support tasks, women possessed gender-specific abilities that allowed them to carry out clandestine tasks that would have proved difficult for men.
In this battle male FLN operatives, driven underground by the French, stayed out of the public realm, avoiding detention and interrogation, while the women who helped to keep them hidden were able to move about freely and smuggle weapons and other sensitive materials as a result of their manipulation of personal appearance.
[15] Women like Djamila Bouhired, due to the incapacitation of men, were also charged with carrying out terrorist attacks ordered by FLN leadership and did so by again using changes in dress to their advantage.
[16][17][18][19] To not arouse suspicion, Algerian women used Western-style implements like strollers and handbags to conceal explosives while sporting western attire without any veils.
[25] Algerian Communist Party-member Raymonde Peschard was initially accused of being an accomplice to the bombing and was forced to flee from the colonial authorities.
[26] In September 1957, Drif was arrested and sentenced to twenty years in the Barbarossa prison[27] but was ultimately pardoned by Charles de Gaulle on the anniversary of Algerian independence in 1962.
El Moudjahid, a publication of the FLN, sought to create the ‘myth’ of the female warrior and to idolize her as a martyr and linchpin in the war.
The writings of Frantz Fanon also lent themselves to FLN propaganda because he championed the idea that by simply participating in the war women were engaging in an act of liberation.
[35] As a result of this and other factors the FLN enacted a deportation to surrounding countries of these progressive female elements, a large percentage of which were removed from Algeria by 1958.
[3] By 1957, largely through torture of captured women, the French came to acknowledge the different roles played by female FLN members including their terrorist actions.
For example, Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry claim that women in Algeria, regardless of their involvement and contributions to the conflict, nevertheless remained in their pre-war subservient position afterward as a result of the prevailing societal, religious, and cultural conditions.
[43] On the other hand, Natalia Vince writes that, "to argue that the war years were a period of relative freedom for rural women…in which they had more opportunities to enter into the public sphere and mix with men, which in turn led to either a permanent change in attitudes or a return to male dominance and separate spheres once the war ended, is to adopt an analysis that rural interviewees would not use themselves.
When French armies settled in Algeria, along with them came photographers and artists eager to explore the Orient, this “Other” mystical and exotic place that used to be the dreamland for the West.
In this sense, Alloula draws the powerful conclusion that colonial postcards distort the Algerian society's structure, traditions and customs.
Alloula elegantly says that the veil stands as the symbol as a brutal rejection for the photographer, as it completely shatters his hopes for voyeurism: “the exoticism that he thought he could handle without any problems suddenly discloses to him a truth unbearable for the further exercise of his craft”.
It is distorting in the sense that it abruptly changes the Algerian women's reality, by projecting and imposing on her western imported orientalist dreams and scenarios.
Alloula argues that the idea of the couple is imported because Algerian society's foundation is the family that extends to the clan or the tribe, and that goes beyond a mere association between two individuals.
He instead projects western imported stereotypes and principles upon it, without any consideration to the “social equilibrium” that is intended to be preserved by not mixing the sexes in Algerian society.
“Constrained Militants: Algerian Women ‘in-Between’ in Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers and Bourlem Guerdjou's Living in Paradise.” The Journal of North African Studies, vol.
“Algerian Women in the Liberation Struggle and the Civil War: From Active Participants to Passive Victims?” Social Research, vol.
