A historical simulation

Por: André Geraque Kiffer

The Battle of Algiers was an urban guerrilla campaign fought by the FLN (Front for the National Liberation of Algeria) against French colonial authorities in Algeria from late 1956 to late 1957, including police, regular soldiers, and veterans of the Indochina War. Failures of the rural insurgency forced the malcontents to find new avenues of action designed to create maximum publicity, provoking targeted regimes into excessive repression, and thus inciting the general population to join a broader revolutionary struggle. Trying to simulate the possibility of a strategic military victory for Algeria would be unrealistic, considering the military situation at the time. Let us imagine, then, other possibilities for the inexorable Algerian defeat in the years 1956 and 1957, anticipating the use of 1960s techniques and tactics.