The new Socialist government of Guy Mollet granted independence in March 1956 to the neighboring French colonies of Tunisia and Morocco—the first surrender of colonial power on the African continent. But when Mollet visited Algiers, a crowd of European settlers pelted him with rotten fruit. Paris was caught between the implacable demands of the clandestine FLN and the refusal of Algeria’s European residents, now led by a Committee for the Defense of French Algeria (l’Algérie française), to accept any compromise with their Arab neighbors. The French strategy, if it merits the name, was now to
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