Remembering the Algerian War for Independence and Solidarity with Vietnam

Happy Algerian Independence day!

On July 5th, we celebrate Algeria’s independence from France after eight years of fighting. We remember the revolutionary struggle and spirit of the Algerian people.

The Vietnamese and Algerian anti-colonial movements worked in tandem, as they were both resisting French domination.

Algeria’s War for Independence started in 1954, shortly after Vietnam had emerged victorious in its own revolution earlier that same year.

Vietnam and Algerian under the French empire

While both experienced subjugation under French rule, Vietnam and Algeria served very different roles as colonies.

Vietnam came under French rule in the late 1800s as a part of French Indochina, which also included Laos and Cambodia. Under colonial rule, Southeast Asia was exploited for its natural resources and turned into export-based economies. Western-style tule was imposed at all levels of government in colonial Vietnam.

Algeria was annexed to France as a settler-colony in 1848. The colonists, called pied-noirs, sought to establish complete control over and replace the native Muslim Algerian population. Unquestionably, more French settlers occupied North Africa compared to Southeast Asia.

Algerians in the first Indochina war

France had not wanted to send its own countrymen to fight a war in Southeast Asia and relied heavily on the French Far East Expeditionary Corps to fight in the First Indochina War.

However, the contact between Vietnamese revolutionaries and Algerians forced to fight their colonizer’s war would catalyze Algerian anticolonial thought.

The French Cat East Expeditionary Corps were mainly comprised of Algerian men and other colonial subjects in the French empire, since colonized people were seen as expendable and worth less by the French.

After two weeks of contact with the Vietnamese population and Army after having been treated by the Vietnamese as friends, our right compatriots clearly say there was no reason for North African and Vietnamese youths to kill each other.

A statement released by eight North African soldiers capitules by the Viet Minh and held as prisoners of war, addressed to other North Africans in the Expeditionary Corps.

Ho Chi Minh and the National Liberation Front understood that the Algerians were also colonized subjects, existing under the same terror that the Vietnamese people were rising up against.

North Africans who were captured by the Viet Minh described having revived compassionate treatment and re-education. Many would return to North Africa in support of the Vietnamese Liberation Movement and inspired to fight for their own peoples’ right to self determination.

Kwame Ture praised the Vietnamese people for this reeducation effort and solidarity with the Algerian people, saying that the Viet Minh did “a service to humanity.”

Vietnam in the war for Algerian independence

Building solidarity with other nations was a key tactic in the Viet Minh’s struggle for liberation and national reunification. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North

Vietnam) constantly reaffirmed their support for the Algerian people’s struggle through advocacy, cultural diplomacy, and even material support.

North Vietnam was one of the first governments to recognize the provisional government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) led by Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN), in 1958. North Vietnam even sent shipments of weapons, seized by

Vietnam’s NLF from the French during the First Indochina War, to support the Algerian people’s revolution.

“We were treated as real friends, and we will never forget it. When we return to our country, we will unite with the people of our country to struggle against the French colonialists who are the enemies of the Algerian and Vietnamese peoples.”

OMANU RADA, AN ALGERIAN SOLDIER WHO FOUGHT IN THE FIRST INDOCHINA WAR, EXPRESSING HIS GRATITUDE TO VIETNAM’S

NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY AND ITS PEOPLE.

Relationship between Algeria And Vietnam

The relationship and history between Vietnam and Algeria is a great one of international solidarity that also shows the importance of education. Like how the United States has never acknowledged its war crimes in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, France still has not taken responsibility for its war crimes in Algeria. Western historical revisionism is part of a continued process to villianize anti-colonial revolutions and colonized people. Therefore, it is our duty to continuously educate ourselves and our compatriots. We have to unlearn our conditioning under Western hegemony and capitalism. We remember the sacrifices of the Algerian people and honor their contributions to a shared global revolutionary cause.

Happy Independence Day to the Algerian people!