Secret Army Organization
The so-called Organisation of the Secret Army (OAS) (Organisation de l'Armée Secrète in French) was a French terrorist organization extreme right led by General Raoul Salan, born in 1961 after the attempted coup carried out by Maurice Challe, André Zeller and Edmond Jouhaud.
History
After Charles de Gaulle's change of policy, showing himself in favor of Algerian self-determination, opposition to his policy increased among citizens of European origin and a minority sector of Muslims who favored remaining French. This attitude was reflected in a massive, although very minority (25%) negative vote in the referendum of January 8, 1961, which opened the door to a negotiated solution. Groups that were already acting in reprisal actions against the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) had a big boost and increased their militancy. They will come together in the OAS and thanks to the collusion of the military, police officers and broad sectors of the population, they gained considerable strength from that moment on. They were known as the Barbouzes because originally there were members of irregular groups who used false beards.
According to one of its founders, Jean Jacques Susini, it had more than a thousand armed men and 3,000 militants. Their initially selective actions led to increasingly indiscriminate acts of terror. In the end, as a singularly violent terrorist group, it ended up attacking French and Algerian institutions, murdering both European and Arab citizens not only in Africa, but also in Europe. The fight against the French Police became singularly violent, while the Army was inhibited from entering the conflict. Its main points of support were Oran, Constantine and Algiers, forming three foci that did not always agree on the line of action. According to Guy Pervillé, the final balance was around 2,200 people killed, 85% of whom professed Islam.
The group has been presented as a simple conglomerate of conservative, right-wing and fascist militants. The reality was more complex, since together with sectors that were clearly fascist and nostalgic for Vichy France, in Algeria the leadership was in the hands of soldiers and politicians who had been in the Resistance[citation required] and they presented themselves as continuing the fight against Nazism.[citation needed] The militancy was made up of deserters from the Army, especially veterans of the colonial wars, merchants, artisans, small employees, etc.[citation needed] Its main stronghold, the Bab-el-Oued neighborhood of Algiers, had had a majority vote communist and socialist.[citation required]
After the Evian accords, the OAS intensified its violent campaign attacking Muslims, European supporters of General De Gaulle and members of the special police groups deployed to dismantle it. During this period, their main objective was to prevent the self-determination referendum, something in which they completely failed, since public opinion in France was overwhelmingly against continuing the war and supported the independence of Algeria. The virulence of their attacks made them unpopular both nationally and internationally[citation needed] and, on the other hand, prompted brutal acts of retaliation by the FLN that resulted in a kidnapping campaign. Between March 19 and December 31, 1962, more than 3,000 civilians were kidnapped and most were tortured, killed, and made to disappear. While the OAS murders had great media coverage, the disappearances went unnoticed. In this work of concealment, the French authorities were the first interested in looking the other way, given the French government's fear that the agreements with the Algerian independentistas would derail.
After independence was granted on July 5, 1962, the OAS ceased to operate in Algeria and most of its members settled in the south of France, while its leaders fled abroad where they remained until the 1968 amnesty. Many of them, such as Pierre Lagaillarde, Jacques Soustelle, Jean Gardés, Alin Sarrien or Raoul Salan, took refuge in Franco's Spain, along with some 700 militants along with their families. After Algerian independence, small groups tried to maintain the fight, focusing it on assassination attempts on Charles de Gaulle.