In France, historians call on the authorities to open military archives on the use of chemical weapons by the French army during the Algerian war (which took place between 1954 and 1962). A call launched a few days after the commemoration, in Paris, of the signing of the Evian agreements, and while Emmanuel Macron pleads for a ” calming of memories “.
According to these historians, a “war of the caves” took place during this conflict, in the underground networks of mountainous areas of Algeria, from 1956. Known facts, they believe, but which have not been worked because they refer to taboo questions and the archives are ” padlocked “.
Joined by RFI, Gilles Manceron, historian, specialist in colonization and the Algerian war, specifies: “ Specialized units are formed to practice what has been called “ cave war », that is to say the suffocation of people taking refuge in caves which were numerous in several mountainous regions of Algeria where the guerrillas were developing. And this “ cave war revived the memory of what had been called, in the 1840s, “ the fumades “. General Bugeaud had given orders to smoke like foxes the populations loyal to [l’émir] Abd El Kader. Thus, these units of the “ cave war revived this tradition, if I may say so, and with much superior techniques. And often, at the end, after their operations, they dynamited the exit, so that it wouldn’t come out again, and it was not possible – or extremely dangerous – to enter to extricate corpses. This is how many people died. How much ? We do not know “.
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