Bizerte crisis
| date | July 19th bis 22. July 1961 |
|---|---|
| place | Tunisia |
| Casus Belli | Extension of the runway of the Sidi-Ahmed air force base |
| output | Defeat of the Tunisians |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| losses | |
|
24 |
800 |
The Bizerte Crisis is a brief armed conflict between France and Tunisia in the summer of 1961. While it is largely forgotten in the public consciousness of Europe, in the Tunisian consciousness it is regarded as one of the most important events in modern history.
The military conflict was conducted with the greatest severity by France and resulted in several hundred dead and over a thousand injured on the Tunisian side; on the French side there were 24 deaths.
prehistory
The city of Bizerte, with its location at the narrowest point of the Strait of Sicily , had been in existence since the time of the Phoenicians in 700 BC. Of particular strategic importance. After Tunisia became a French protectorate in 1881, a naval base was established here in 1882 , which played an important role in both world wars. In 1956 Tunisia gained independence. However, France held the in the northeast, about 150 kilometers from the Algerian border nearby military base continues to occupy in order from there to the Algerian war to lead (1958-1962). The base included the Sidi-Abdellah naval base and the Sidi-Ahmed air force base . From French air bases on mainland Europe and on Corsica, Algeria was much more difficult to reach, given a distance of around 700 kilometers.
The Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba demanded at a meeting with the French President Charles de Gaulle on 27 February 1961, the return of the breakpoint, but France delayed the negotiations.
The confrontation
When the French side extended the runway of the military base without prior notice, using around 1.5 meters of Tunisian soil to deploy larger aircraft against the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN), the Tunisian side saw the casus belli as a given. Paramilitary forces blocked the base. France then sent 800 paratroopers ; the road blockades were destroyed with missiles from military jets, tanks left the base and advanced around 25 kilometers. The port was stormed by three cruisers off the coast; street fighting broke out in the city, which ended in a French victory after four days.
The solution to the conflict
The conflict was settled with the help of the UN and the then Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld , who went to Bizerte on July 24, 1961; the term Bizerte crisis refers more to the situation in the UN Security Council (crisis between the permanent members) than to the events in Bizerte itself. The result of the UN efforts was the French withdrawal after the end of the Algerian War in 1963.
literature
- Sébastien Abis: L'affaire de Bizerte (1956–1963) . Ed. Sud Éditions, Tunis 2004
- Philippe Boisseau: Les loups sont entrés dans Bizerte . Ed. France-Empire, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-7048-0842-2 .
- Noureddine Boujellabia: La bataille de Bizerte: telle que je l'ai vécue . Ed. Sud Éditions, Tunis 2004, ISBN 9973-844-41-6 .
- Omar Khlifi: Bizerte. La guerre de Bourguiba . Ed. MC-Editions, Tunis-Karthago 2001, ISBN 9973-807-19-7 .
- Bahi Ladgham: Two entretiens avec le général de Gaulle . Espoir, No. 83, June 1992, ISSN 0223-5994 .
- Abdellatif Menaja: La bataille de Bizerte . Ed. Imprimerie Artypo, Tunis 1984.
- Patrick-Charles Renaud: La bataille de Bizerte (Tunisie). 19 au 23 july 1961 . Ed. l'Harmattan, Montréal / Paris 2000, ISBN 2-7384-4286-2 .
Web links
- Video documents on the website of the Institut national de l'audiovisuel
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ulrike Borchardt, Tim Felder: Tunisia (Bizerte crisis) . ( Memento from September 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Working group for research into the causes of war at the Institute for Political Science at the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg , July 14, 2004, accessed on February 27, 2016.
- ↑ Boujellabia: La bataille de Bizerte ; P. 185
- ↑ Renaud: La bataille de Bizerte ; P. 14f.
- ↑ Renaud: La bataille de Bizerte ; P. 15
- ^ Tahar Belkhodja: Les trois décennies Bourguiba . Témoignage, éd. Publisud, Paris, 1998, p. 35
- ↑ Bizerte: des deux côtés des barbelés . Cinq colonnes à la Une, broadcast by ORTF on September 8, 1961