🗓️ 5 July 2025 – 63 Years Since Algerian Independence
✍️ By Cian Cooney, for Dis-Act
In 1962, Algeria officially gained independence from French colonial rule. Across the country, celebrations erupted — filled with hope for a new beginning. Historian Malika Rahal described Algeria at that moment as “the country of the future.”
Yet behind these jubilant scenes, a darker reality was unfolding.
As the new Algerian state was born, many of the so-called ‘losers’ of the war — including Harkis (Algerians who had fought for France) and members of the settler population — were subjected to mass killings and disappearances. These acts of post-war violence marked a tragic and often overlooked chapter in the country’s transition to independence.
The practice of enforced disappearance, however, did not begin with the FLN’s victory. From the earliest days of the war in 1954, French colonial authorities systematically disappeared suspected FLN agents and sympathisers. The French Army frequently reported these killings under the euphemism “escapees shot” — a legal fiction designed to avoid trials and public scrutiny.
The most infamous episode came during the Battle of Algiers, a counterinsurgency operation led by the elite French 10th Parachute Division. An estimated 3,000 Algerians disappeared during this campaign. Thousands more were tortured.
These disappearances were not incidental; they were strategic. Aimed at dismantling resistance and spreading fear, they left families without answers, graves, or the possibility of mourning.
Today, many of those families continue to search.
For them, the Algerian War has not ended.
Its last victims remain the disappeared — and those still waiting for truth and justice.