- Café Wars
The Café Wars took place during the
Algerian War , as a part of the internal fighting inFrance between two rivalAlgeria nnationalist movements, the MNA and the FLN (which later became the rulingpolitical party in independentAlgeria ).The Café Wars are so called because part of the fighting took the form of
bomb attacks andassassination s incafé s, directed at supporters of the other party, as they struggled for control and influence over the large Algerianexpatriate community and its organizations. Since both organizations operated underground, and were wanted by the French government, the line between amilitary and acivilian target was hard to draw, and often wilfully disregarded by thecombatant s. Groups from both the MNA and the FLN resorted to gangland-style killings, intimidation and the murder of civilians to pursue their political goals and secure finances and influence. This led to the Café Wars being portrayed in France as acts of randomterrorism , and conflated with attacks on French settlers in Algeria, while in reality this internal fighting possessed a military and political logic of its ownFact|date=February 2007.The Café Wars cost an estimated 5,000 lives, [http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-341.html] and did not end before Algeria was granted independence in 1962, by the government of
Charles de Gaulle . The FLN had by then routed the MNA's guerrilla units in Algeria, and for all practical purposes destroyed its organization in France.See also
*
Zohra Drif External links
* [http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=10378 War in the 18th Arrondissement] - article by Francis Fytton in the
London Magazine , December 1961.
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