It has been quite a long time since i had written a blog. Maybe it was the heartbreak or distance from technology or sheer disinterest. Or is it a myriad combination of all? Maybe. So during the sleepless nights i spent in the last six months, it was hard to read a book or watch a good movie. These activities were my idea of living a quality life. But in the sheer madness of a frustrated man, the ideals got lost. So finally i decided to do something better and last night, I watched Gillo pentecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers".
I heard of the movie recently after i got hooked to the music of ennio morricone. (Morricone has composed a bit for this movie too) It is a 1965 french film covering the fight between the nationalist FLN guerrilas of Algeria and the French government. It is in black and white which gives a shade of reality to the movie.
The whole film is built on acute analyses of the moral complexities and contradictions that a guerilla requires. There are scenes where kids shoot policemen, women acting as couriers to carry weapons and bombs being planted in public places. One of the most famous scenes follows three Algerian women as they leave the Arab quarters carrying bombs to plant in three different crowded locales of the city. Each looks around at the men, women and children they are about to kill. The camera tells us that each is aware of the implications of their actions. Pontecorvo then shows each explosion and its hideous aftermath. The movie clearly brings out the phases of Insurgency as taught in Counter Insurgency training schools. A member of the FLN's executive bureau Ben M'Hidi says "Acts of violence never win wars. Neither wars nor revolutions. Terrorism is useful as a start. But then, the people themselves must act. It's hard enough to start a revolution, even harder to sustain it, and hardest of all to win it. But it's only afterwards, once we've won that the real difficulties begin." (This is what the insurgent groups in Manipur fail to understand. There is no more a cause except for money making.)
When the attacks and bombings in the streets of Algiers increase, the french government responds by declaring martial law and sends in para troopers. When i watch the movie as a soldier, my favourite scenes are the ones which describe their operational efficiency. The most remarkable of them is when Lt Colonel Phillipe Mathieu, played by jean martin is introduced. He walks tall at the head of a coloumn. It is a show of strength. "Mathieu Phillipe, born August 5th, 1907 in Bordeaux. Rank. Lt Col. Campaigns. Normandy and Italy. Member of an Anti Nazi resistance movement. Expeditions. Madagascar and Suez. Wars. Indochina and Algieria." He says that information is the key to success. Yes, for the military part of dealing with an insurgency, it is. But the most troubling scenes are that of torture to extract information and sadly, the techniques are followed to this day by most armies. But if i watch the movie as a civilian, i would loathe the character of Mathieu. I would fail to understand the complexity in his role. I would see him only as a brutal commander. But fail to see him as cultured, articulate, politically astute and realistic about the limitations of violence.
In my view, what the french failed to do was when they cut the head of the tapeworm by arresting/eliminating the executive bureau, they should have followed it up with "winning hearts and minds". My training as a counter insurgency operative would clearly ring a solution in my head. The french goofed up the end game. After the military objective is achieved, it the task of the bureaucrat and the politician to bring in development. But this faded in the Algerian question as it was not a part of france but a colony. So even after military successes, the Arabs wanted freedom and they got it.
It is a study on how not to fight an insurgency if you are to have strategic rather than tactical success. The classic political-thriller gets more important with each passing year, providing as it does fascinating insight into terrorism, guerrilla warfare and state control. It is a must watch for anybody who is a cog in a machinery that is fighting to maintain control over a state.
