David Galula, Frantz Fanon, and the Imperfect
Lessons of the Algerian War
By T.S. Allen
Journal Article | Jun 8 2014 - 7:09pm
David Galula, Frantz Fanon, and the Imperfect Lessons of the Algerian War
T.S. Allen
Memory and Theory
Few historical comparisons have proven to be as useful for military officers today as that of the war that
the French government fought against the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) from 1954 to 1962 to
determine the fate of Algeria. The memory of that war has shaped the way warriors and scholars have
viewed insurgency and counterinsurgency ever since. The war was the first measure of the long coda to
the French empire, coming after the Viet Minh had delivered the coup de grâce to the myth of French
power at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and France had hastily divested herself of most of her Asian and African
colonies, but before France completely abandoned the imperial mindset. (Indeed, it would take until 1995
for France to abolish the neocolonialist Communauté française.) Memories of the war have been cloudy
for all those involved. Algerian memory of the conflict was politicized during the trials and tribulations of
the immediate post-colonial period. Gallic pride prevented France from even admitting the Algerian
conflict was a “war” until 1999—before then, it was officially called a military response to civil
disturbances.[i]
Hazy memories did not prevent, and may even have helped, the “lessons” of the war in Algeria having a
major impact on the thinking of those who had never been there. The war’s events provided the inspiration
for two of the most popular military theorists of the twentieth century. From 1956 to 1958, then-Captain
David Galula of the French Colonial Infantry learned lessons in Kabylia that he would later record in two
influential works, Pacification in Algeria (1963) and Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice
(1964), both how-to guides for the soldier seeking to pacify a restive populace. While Galula worked to
put down the revolt, a young Martiniquan psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon, was fomenting it, in part through his
popular book A Dying Colonialism (1959). In his final days, Fanon also recorded his beliefs on
colonialism and decolonization in The Wretched of the Earth (1963).
Both Fanon and Galula are widely read in the English-speaking world today. Fanon’s The Wretched of the
Earth and A Dying Colonialism remain in print; a new English translation of the former was released in
2004.[ii] Galula’s Pacification came out in a new edition, published by the RAND Corporation, in 2006
and has remained in print since.[iii] Both authors have also been the focus of continuing scholarship:
Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth has a citation count of over 10,600; Galula’s Counterinsurgency has a
citation count of over 1,100.[iv] Galula’s work has proven immensely popular among American defense
thinkers, and his ideas permeate the much-vaunted counterinsurgency field manual that helped guide
American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.[v] Fanon’s work has found a radically different readership.
Many Africanists treat Fanon as a near-prescient predictor of what has happened in Africa since
decolonization. Few academic works on modern African history do not quote his forceful prose, and many
popular authors on Africa quote him in their work.[vi]
These two authors and their works, then, have come to be important parts of history their own right.
Tragically, they are all-too-often analyzed in isolation. Fanon is primarily read by Francophone and
Anglophone Africanists while Galula’s work has, until recently, been of interest only to Anglophone
academics and soldiers. While A Dying Colonialism and Pacification in Algeria address the same events
and issues, they are almost never cited together. In what follows, I will identify the major points of
agreement and disagreement between Fanon and Galula’s accounts of the Algerian war. Military history,
whenever possible, should involve seeing both sides of the front, and it is only good military history that
can provide the empirical foundation for good military theory.[vii] If we wish to draw any “lessons” from
the Algerian conflict, we should start by reading and understanding both David Galula and Frantz Fanon.
Motivation of the Algerian People
The most important difference between Galula and Fanon is how they perceive the motivation of the
Algerian population. Galula holds that “in any circumstances, whatever the cause,” a population that
harbors insurgents contains three groups: an “active minority for the cause,” a “neutral majority” and
another “active minority against the cause.”[viii] The neutral majority still acts in support of one side or
the other (or both) because insurgency is a “vicious form of warfare” that must involve the whole
population: in Algeria, “no one is allowed to remain neutral and watch the events in a detached way.”[ix]
To Galula, however, actions are an imperfect indicator of loyalty, as very few Algerians are actually
dedicated to any cause and most will switch their allegiance whenever it is convenient, thus leaving the
door open for the military to win over even an apparently restive population. The Algerians are shifty, and
happy to abandon political obligations for personal gain. This is precisely why were ensnared in anticolonial communist conspiracies in the first place.
Fanon rejects the idea of the neutral majority. In 1959 he wrote, “the form and content of national
consciousness already exist in Algeria and there can be no turning back.” As a result, “Algeria is virtually
independent. The Algerians already consider themselves sovereign. It remains for France to recognize
her.”[x] He thinks that, fundamentally, the entire population desires independence. He argues that
individualism is impossible in Algeria during the revolt because during wars against foreign occupation,
nationalism unifies and animates all people. Personal interests become inseparable from collective
interests in the world the Algerians perceive because “in reality everyone will be discovered by the French
legionnaires and consequently massacred or everyone will be saved.”[xi] This is hyperbole, but it is
hyperbole as the Algerians saw it, and the reality it was based on was enough to galvanize action,
especially the specters of mass killings by French settler militias and torture by the French military.
Whereas Galula is sure there is a neutral majority and many of those who actively oppose the French can
still be won over to the French side, Fanon replies that the actions of the many Algerians are clear
demonstrations of their beliefs, and they are truly dedicated to the fight against occupation and for
independence.[xii]
Islam and Resistance
Fanon makes his case against the idea of mass indifference exceptionally clear in his discussion of Islam
in Algeria. Galula is dismissive of the faith, writing that it is “not exactly a progressive religion” and
arguing that “the first thing we would do if we wanted to shift Algeria out of its morass was to shatter the
backward Islamic way of life.”[xiii] Fanon replies that Islam in the colonial context is above all a tool of
resistance:
[French officers proclaim that] ‘Islam holds its prey.’ … The method of presenting the
Algerian as prey fought over with equal ferocity by Islam and France with its Western
culture reveals the whole approach of the occupier, his philosophy and his policy. This
expression indicates that the occupier, smarting from his failures, presents in a simplified
and pejorative way the system of values by means of which the colonized person resists
his innumerable offensives. What is in fact the assertion of a distinct identity, concern
with keeping intact a few shreds of national existence, is attributed to religious, magical,
fanatical behavior.[xiv]
That the mass of the population is steadfastly Muslim, then, should not be taken as a sign of their
ignorance or blindness to political issues. Their dedication to their faith is a political tactic. Given Galula’s
frustration with Islam’s political role, it is clearly a very powerful one.
Women and Resistance
Galula is particularly interested in using Algerian women to further the French cause, and here another
point of contention between him and Fanon emerges. While serving as a military attaché in Hong Kong in
the 1940s, Galula had seen the Chinese communists effectively mobilize women as political agents during
their civil war.[xv] In a 1957 memo to the French military leadership in Algeria he discussed “lines of
cleavage” that the French might be able to use to tear the Algerian population away from the anti-French
insurgency. Galula argued that one of the most effective ways could be to “lean… on women against men
(and this seems promising given the state of slavery in which Moslem women are kept in Algeria).”[xvi]
He was sure that the “rebels had done nothing for [the women]” and that they “would naturally be on our
side if we emancipated them.”[xvii] Fanon, however, thinks that women are more dedicated to the cause
than Galula does, and were unlikely to be swayed by whatever the French offered. He argues that
throughout the period of decolonization, “women had a tendency to flee from the occupier.” French
efforts to “unveil” the women of Algeria are counterproductive, as the Algerian women had no desire to
see their culture and family lives destroyed and thus the efforts “had the effect of strengthening the
traditional patterns of behavior.” Although the actions were “essentially positive in the strategy of
resistance,” there were still “negative effects” for women, the sad and inevitable result of the “corrosive
action of the colonizer.”[xviii] This is a particularly interesting distinction. Whereas Galula sees a
population of women whose status is unchanging but could be transformed, both politically and socially,
by the French, to both of their benefit, Fanon sees a population of women whose status is declining
because the French are trying to change it, to the detriment of French efforts at “pacification” and the
status of the women themselves. In short, Fanon is sure that Galula’s plans for Algeria’s women will
backfire. He writes, “To speak of counter-acculturation in a colonial situation is an absurdity.”[xix]
Ideologies and Methods of Resistance
Whether the Algerian people were mostly neutral in the struggle or not, what mattered in the Algerian war
was the relative ability of the French military and the FLN to influence them. Galula holds that there are
three ways a counterinsurgency might influence the people: passion, reason, and self-interest.[xx] Passion,
he readily admits, will militate against the French cause, as the rebels have “an ideology, simple and
effective because it appeals to passion: independence.” The French answer to this must be one of
“humanism, co-operation, social progress, economic development, etc.,” in Galula’s words.[xxi] When
Galula gets down to brass tacks, however, it becomes clear that his “war of ideas” is still, first and
foremost, a war of weapons. The appeal to Algerians’ “reason,” Galula argues, should be based on three
points: “that we are stronger, that the rebels’ cause is lost, and that the example of having given
independence to Tunisia and Morocco, far from inciting us to grant it to Algeria too, has opened our eyes
and persuaded us to stay in Algeria.”[xxii] In short, Galula hopes to use colonialist and imperialist means
to pursue humanist ends.
Fanon provides a clear explanation of why these appeals will fall on deaf ears. He holds that the anticolonial struggle is essentially a passionate one and only a passionate one, because challenging
colonialism for an Algerian “is not a rational confrontation of viewpoints. It is not a discourse on the
universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.” The
problem is not simply in France’s patently colonialist means, but also in her high-minded, foreign ends.
[xxiii] The “passion factor,” which Galula admits France cannot manipulate, will be the decisive factor in
this conflict. Galula, however, is sure that despite their passions, Algerians will make rational calculations
of self-interest that will win them over to the French side. As he notes, the French have advantages in
“might, administration, and money” and thus can reward Algerians with much more wealth than the FLN.
[xxiv] Independence is not rational, and is thus impossible.
Because of his misguided belief that the Algerian population is basically unsure about independence and
will respond to the incentives only France can offer, Galula is sure that the question of whether or not
France can hold Algeria is a question of policy. So long as France is firm and continuous in the military,
economic and psychological fields of warfare, he is sure that Algeria can be forced to remain French.[xxv]
Fanon finds this confidence laughable. Noting that the French were just as confident of the potential for
victory in Vietnam, Morocco, and Tunisia, which by 1959 had all gained their independence, Fanon asks:
“How can they fail to understand that no rebellion is ever vanquished? What can it possibly mean, to
vanquish a rebellion?” To this question, Galula has no answer. Nowhere in his body of work does he
define the term “pacification.” Galula carefully avoids being associated with the “colonialists” that Fanon
attacks, and tries to imply throughout the work that a post-war French regime in Algeria would be very
different from the one that had failed to prevent the war from beginning in the first place. However, he has
no vision for what a de-colonized Algeria that is still part of France would look like. His humanist vision
fails in the colonial context.
Galula and Fanon draw different conclusions about the military situation in Algeria in part because they
have fundamentally different theories about human relations in wartime. Galula the anti-communist
ironically believes that material factors determine the course of wars. To him, the Algerian war is a
question of arms: a “pacified” population is simply a disarmed one. When he explains the objective of
isolating the rebels from the population, he writes that “weapons were what counted,” and France’s armies
were not seizing enough of them from the population to disarm them quickly.[xxvi] He is very clear that
“shortage of weapons was obviously the only obstacle to the expansion of [FLN] forces.”[xxvii]
Fanon the Marxist, also ironically, does not believe that a materialist dialectic determines the course of
military affairs. He holds that French colonialism “shuts its eyes to the real facts of the problem” when it
tries to measure the power of the FLN by “the number of our heavy machine guns.”[xxviii] In The
Wretched of the Earth he quotes Friedrich Engels’ argument in Anti-Dühring (1878) that “the producer of
more perfect instruments of force, vulgo arms, vanquishes the producer of the less perfect instrument” in
all cases, and rejects it, calling it “puerile.” What matters, Fanon contends, is not the means to produce
weapons but the allocation of weapons—and the Algerians have stolen more than enough to defeat the
French by the late 1950s.[xxix] The Algerian struggle was only a part of a global anti-colonial struggle,
and so France’s relatively greater arms production capacity is only a minor advantage. The French,
indeed, relied heavily on purchased American arms throughout the conflict, while the Algerians had an
ample supply of weapons supplied by the communist Second World. Additionally, desperate passion
motivated the efforts of the Algerians and amplified the impact of those weapons they stole and smuggled
in. Fanon writes that having a gun and fighting and dying as a member of the FLN became “the only
chance the Algerian still has of giving meaning to his death. Life under domination has long been devoid
of meaning…”[xxx] Violence becomes, as Fanon famously and controversially argued, a “cleansing
force” which “rids the colonized of their inferiority complex” and “emboldens them, and restores their
self-confidence… Enlightened by violence, the people’s consciousness rebels against any pacification”
(emphasis added).[xxxi]
Visions of Victory
Both Fanon and Galula make arguments about the “tipping point” of the conflict. Galula argues that his
“method has a certain irreversibility” once it destroys the organization of the FLN’s political leadership
cells in a given district, and Fanon holds that the “point of no return” comes when the level of
indiscriminate violence used by the colonial regime to repress the population becomes high enough to
threaten its very existence, sparking a universal counter-reaction.[xxxii] These two conditions are nonexclusive, and one need not precede the other. Fanon and Galula both agree, then, that Algeria will remain
a colony of France if and only if France possesses the ability and resolve to defeat the rebellion and keep
her. The Algerian rebellion is basically a symbolic show of will, whose actual organization and
effectiveness is of secondary importance. The initiative can only lie with the French, and France lacked
the will to hold Algeria. Fanon was confident that “no colonialist country today is capable of mounting the
only form of repression which would have a chance of succeeding, i.e., a prolonged and large scale
military occupation.”[xxxiii] Galula knew why: “The theory that the colonies were more a liability than an
asset was gaining ground [in France].”[xxxiv] Colonialism was dying.
The End as the Beginning
With the signing of the Evian Accords in 1962, Algeria achieved independence from France. Many
Frenchmen were heartbroken to lose the territory that they had dominated for more than a century; others
were happy to see an end to the violence that had led to a civil war, a small genocide, and a failed coup in
France during the previous five years. They moved on. Algerians, in many ways, have not. A military
coup led by former FLN guerillas overthrew the government of Ahmed Ben Bella in 1965, and the
country has seen little democratization or development since, trapped (as Fanon predicted it would be) by
seemingly endless conflict surrounding the formation of a national consciousness.[xxxv]
The French washed their hands of guerilla warfare after leaving Algeria and had little interest in David
Galula’s retrospectives. His great works on counterinsurgency were written in English while he was a
fellow at Harvard University, for an American audience increasingly focused on the war in Vietnam.
Nevertheless, Galula’s popularity was modest during the Vietnam era. Although Counterinsurgency
Warfare was one of the more notable contributions to the voluminous counterinsurgency literature of the
period, it was not considered seminal. Pacification in Algeria remained classified “confidential” by the
RAND Corporation and read only by a few specialists until 2005.[xxxvi]
Fanon’s star has continued to rise despite attempts to censor him. He died on December 9, 1961, the very
same day that The Wretched of the Earth was published and promptly seized from Paris bookshops by
French police.[xxxvii] The abstract thought and prophetic language and ideas of The Wretched of the Earth
gave him a timeless, placeless quality, and his work was eagerly and often surreptitiously read by
insurgents around the world. He remains popular among both Africans and Africanists. He has long been
noted in the United States as well. Martin Luther King considered The Wretched of the Earth “a wellwritten book… with many penetrating insights” about colonial struggle (he added that violence was
counterproductive for the American civil rights movement, which was engaged in a very different type of
“insurgency”).[xxxviii] Even the United States’ adversaries in the Middle East continue be influenced by
Fanon’s ideas, both directly and indirectly. Ali Shariati, the eminent scholar of struggle in the modern
Middle East, translated Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth into Persian in the 1960s and later used
Fanon’s ideas as the basis of his theory of struggle between oppressors and oppressed. Fanon’s language
as interpreted by Shariati has been used to justify Shiite jihad against the “Great Satan” ever since. Iranian
politicians continue to echo his rhetoric.[xxxix]
While Fanon’s ideas shook Tehran during the Iranian Revolution, Galula’s work was out of print and
largely forgotten. As the US military began to reconsider counterinsurgency after the invasion of Iraq,
Galula became more popular than he had ever been before. Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency (2006)
co-author John Nagl implied that Galula was a prophet, and wrote that the US manual’s
reliance on the thinking of David Galula is clear—in its focus on protecting the population
as the key objective of any counterinsurgency campaign, its insistence on holding terrain
that has been cleared of enemy forces, and its exhortations that counterinsurgents must
continually learn and adapt to defeat their enemies by building secure areas in which
secure governance can flourish.[xl]
The manual did not account for Fanon’s fundamental and important critique of Galula’s ideas: that a
“population” is not neutral, cannot be rendered inert through “pacification,” and not necessarily an object
that can be “secured” in the way that soldiers might secure terrain. It will always remain reactive and often
be problematic. Although the manual makes nods to the dynamism of populations, it suggests that, contra
Fanon, they are fundamentally neutral. It quotes Galula in claiming that that “in any situation, whatever
the cause” there will be “a neutral or passive majority.”[xli] Curiously, the manual’s authors failed to cite
Galula for this direct quotation from his work.[xlii] This hides the idea’s origins to anyone not already
familiar with Galula. Those origins, however, are clear, and they belie the flaws in the theory itself. As
Fanon clearly showed, there was little room for neutrality in Algeria.
The increasing popularity of Galula’s writing in the era of American counterinsurgency since 2001 has
sparked increased analysis of his efforts in Algeria, which unfortunately lagged behind the employment of
his ideas in support of military doctrine. A growing body of work casts doubt on Galula’s theories. He was
sure that his pacification methods could win over the neutral population. In fact, historians have found he
won over few Algerians, despite his clever methods. This, in turn, lends credence to Fanon’s claims that
the population was not neutral and could not been won over in the first place. In 2011, Grégor Mathias
published Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory, the first major work in French
on Galula (Pacification in Algeria was first translated into French in 2008). Mathias, a military historian,
does not mention Fanon in the work. He does provide a detailed explanation of why Galula’s campaign of
pacification was not very successful despite its ingenious theoretical underpinnings, writing that “Galula
was dead wrong in thinking that he had decisively defeated [the FLN in his district], which instead
adapted and took advantage of [Galula’s unit’s] re-deployment to show its power to cause harm and regain
its influence.”[xliii] No theory is perfect for every situation, but it is clear from Mathias’ analysis that
Galula’s theory of counterinsurgency warfare did not even adequately explain Algeria. Even in fights for
more limited aims, such as his earnest attempt to liberate women, Galula’s ideas fared poorly in practice.
As a recent work on women in the Algerian conflict noted (one which cited Fanon, but not Galula), “The
emancipation programme of the French army, like the overall strategy of counter-insurgency, had a dual
reformist and repressive purpose that generated constant and ultimately irresolvable tensions.”[xliv]
Given Galula’s many failings, it is tragic that his work has so often been taken at face value and used to
justify doctrine. On the other side of the bookstore, Frantz Fanon’s work has always been available to help
clarify his work and make clear its limitations. For a variety of reasons, Galula and Fanon have usually
been read in isolation. This is disappointing carelessness on the part of both academics and soldiers.
Alone, neither provides a complete explanation of the Algerian conflict. Together, they provide a rich and
useful account. The May 2014 edition of FM 3-24 eliminates all references to and quotations from Galula,
but most of the ideas within the new manual are hold-overs from the 2006 edition. As we continue to
revise our counterinsurgency doctrine, we must consider the ramifications of Galula’s legacy and his
flaws, even as his work again fades from view.
Acknowledgements
I would like to sincerely thank the other members of the West Point Critical Theory Reading Group who
joined me in reading The Wretched of the Earth in the Fall of 2013: Major Robert Chamberlain of the
Department of Social Sciences and Cadets Rob “Turtle” Hurd, Theo Lipsky, Jay Saker, Aaron Spikol, and
Caleb Stevens. I would also like to thank several professors who have shaped my thinking about irregular
warfare: Colonel Gregory Daddis and Major David Musick of the Department of History, and also Major
John Kendall of the Department of Social Sciences. I owe a particularly great intellectual debt to Colonel
(retired) Gian Gentile, now at the RAND Corporation, who inspired me to think critically about our
doctrinal assumptions concerning the attitudes of populations in counterinsurgency campaigns. Finally, I
thank Professor Charles Thomas and Professor Eugenia Kiesling of the History Department, and Professor
Hugh Liebert of the Department of Social Sciences, who reviewed drafts of this paper and provided
helpful commentary. Despite the assistance of the individuals above, any mistakes in this paper, factual or
otherwise, are my own.
End Notes
[i] Stephen W. Smith, “Nodding and Winking: Françafrique,” London Review of Books 32:3 (February
2010), 10-12.
[ii] Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Grove Press, 1959/ 1965);
Ibid., The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 1963/ 2004).
[iii] David Galula, Pacification in Algeria 1956-1958 (Santa Monica: RAND, 1963/ 2006).
[iv] These figures are as of April, 2014, via Google Scholar. Galula’s Pacification in Algeria has a citation
count of around 100.
[v] FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency cites Galula more than any other single theorist. See the appended
“Source Notes.” The only work which had a comparable amount of influence on the manual is Sir Robert
Thompson’s Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Hailer,
1966).
[vi] David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography (New York: Verso, 2000), 494-6.
[vii] Seeing the “whole” of any war—what Carl von Clausewitz called gestalt—has been something of a
rarity in discussion of counterinsurgency. The bifurcated study of the Algerian War is only one of the
most stunning examples. See Brett Friedman, “No COIN for you? The most stagnant debate in strategic
studies,” War on the Rocks, 30 January 2014, and Ibid., “Creeping Death: Clausewitz and Comprehensive
Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, January-February 2014.
[viii] Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 70. Throughout this essay, I will use the present tense to describe the
arguments made by Fanon and Galula, although they are both dead, in order to make it easier to integrate
their own voices into the argument and emphasize the points of disagreement between the two.
[ix] Ibid., 119.
[x] Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 28.
[xi] Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 12.
[xii] Galula has no way to account for a situation in which the majority is turned against him. His goal is
to “rally” the neutral masses, and only to “eliminate” those who are genuinely opposed to French
intervention. Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 69.
[xiii] Ibid., 123.
[xiv] Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 41.
[xv] Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 167.
[xvi] Ibid., 281.
[xvii] Ibid., 105.
[xviii] Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 49.
[xix] Ibid., 42.
[xx] Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 295.
[xxi] Ibid., 66.
[xxii] Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 295.
[xxiii] Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 6.
[xxiv] Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 295-6.
[xxv] Ibid., 262
[xxvi] Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 64.
[xxvii] Ibid., 19.
[xxviii] Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 32.
[xxix] Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 25.
[xxx] Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 27. Engels made room for contingency in his other military writing.
Cf. Sigmund Neumann and Mark von Hagen, “Engels and Marx on Revolution, War and the Army in
Society” in Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age ed. Peter Paret (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1986): 262-280.
[xxxi] This point is important to Fanon’s work, but it is not one of the foundations of his argument, hence
my limited focus on it here. The role of violence in the formation of national identity has often been
exaggerated by Fanon’s interpreters. As Homi K. Bhabha notes: “it was really [Jean-Paul] Sartre’s preface
that glorified violence beyond Fanon’s words or wishes” (Bhabha, “Foreword,” in The Wretched of the
Earth, xxi). Fanon saw service in the military as just as important as actual violent acts in ridding the
colonized of their “inferiority complexes” and building national identity. | Citation: Fanon, The Wretched
of the Earth, 51. Fanon’s logic of limited materialism has proven more popular than Galula’s ideas since
the end of the Algerian war. Cf. Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in
Modern Battles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
[xxxii] Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 274; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 47.
[xxxiii] Ibid., 34.
[xxxiv] Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 10.
[xxxv] Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 97-144.
[xxxvi] Ann Marlowe, “David Galula: His Life and Intellectual Context,” Strategic Studies Institute,
August 2010, 1.
[xxxvii] Joseph Aslop, “Passing of a New Left’s Hero an Odd Facet of U.S. History,” in Washington Post,
February 21, 1969, A21, cited in Bhabha, “Foreword,” in The Wretched of the Earth, viii.
[xxxviii] Martin Luther King, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” (orig. 1967), in
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. ed. James Melvin
Washington (New York: Harper, 1986), 589.
[xxxix] Homi K. Bhabha, “Foreword,” in The Wretched of the Earth, xxix-xxx.
[xl] John Nagl, “Foreword,” to A.A. Cohen, Galula: The Life and Writings of the French Officer Who
Defined the Art of Counterinsurgency (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2012), x.
[xli] FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency, 1-108.
[xlii] For the original wording see Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 70.
[xliii] Grégor Matthias, Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory, trans. Neil
Durando (Oxford: Praeger Security, 2011), 94.
[xliv] Neil MacMaster, Burning the Veil: The Algerian war and the ‘emancipation’ of Muslim women,
1954-62 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 3. The author here cites Michael D. Schafer’s
Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of US Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1988), a book which presages many of the arguments more recently made by Gian Gentile and Douglas
Porch.
About the Author
T.S. Allen
T.S. Allen is an officer in the United States Army. He graduated in 2014 from the
United States Military Academy at West Point, New York where he studied
military history and political science. He is currently studying corruption in the
Vietnam War. The views expressed in his work are his own and do not reflect the
position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the
Department of Defense.
Available online at : http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/david-galula-frantz-fanon-and-theimperfect-lessons-of-the-algerian-war
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