Organization Spéciale
As an organization Spéciale ( Arabic المنظّمة الخاصّة, DMG al-Munaẓẓama al-Ḥāṣṣa ) was the name of a paramilitary organization of Algerian nationalists in French North Africa . It existed from 1947 to 1950.
history
The organization Spéciale was founded as a paramilitary sub-organization of the party of Messali Hadj , the MTLD . Messali Hadj himself created the organization at the insistence of younger party members. A driving force behind the establishment of the OS was Hocine Aït Ahmed , who enforced it against Messali at a secret party congress in Algiers on February 15, 1947.
Another prominent proponent and planner of the OS within the party was the later President of Algeria Ahmed Ben Bella . Messali himself saw mass political actions and elections as a more promising route to independence from France. The organization had about 1,000 to 1,500 members. The OS tried to make money with robberies. In 1949, the organization captured 3 million francs by raiding the main post office in Oran . By arresting 363 members, the French authorities managed to crush the organization by 1950. The organization Spéciale preferred to recruit young, previously unpolitical men so as not to compromise the party's existing official networks.
Many OS members later found themselves in the Front de Liberation Nationale . A large part of the management staff of the FLN previously worked in the OS.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Martin Evans: Algeria: France's undeclared War . Oxford, 2012, pp. 98-99, 118
- ↑ Martin Shipway: Decolonization and its Impact - A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires , Oxford, 2008 p. 152
- ↑ a b John Ruedy: Modern Algeria - The Origins and Development of a Nation . 2nd edition, Bloomington, 2005, pp. 153-55