To: tejek who wrote (246395 ) 8/18/2005 4:28:47 AM From: GUSTAVE JAEGER Respond to Re: And let me add, I find it disgusting that they are torching perfectly good housing when they leave to insure that the Palestinians get nothing. These people are buttholes but... Post-independence Algeria pieds noirs , had been resident in the country for three or even four generations (Stora 1991). The huge majority of pieds noirs left the country in the months surrounding independence. Algerian state bureaucracy and the most profitable companies and agricultural estates were all run by pieds noirs , and their hasty departure left Algeria without anywhere near the necessary personnel to operate the state machinery or support economic development. Algerians who had fought for the French army, known as harkis , were severely persecuted by the rest of the population. As many as 100,000 harkis were killed, and those who could joined the pieds noirs in fleeing the country. More than a million people, mainly pieds noirs , left Algeria during 1962. In 1961, a small faction of pieds noirs and French military personnel formed the extremist right-wing Secret Arm[y] Organisation (OAS). The OAS carried out violent attacks against both French and Algerian targets with the aim of destabilising Algeria, and operated a scorched-earth policy to ensure that the new country was left with as few resources as possible [*] (Kauffer 2002). In addition to the severity of these problems, the newly independent Algeria had also been exhausted by eight years of war, more than 70 per cent of the population were unemployed, and disease and poverty caused widespread suffering.forcedmigration.org A Savage War of Peace , "French Algeria" diehards wanted to turn and leave Algeria as she was back in 1830 when France took it over....
