ALGERIA: Helping Hands

Like giant locusts, the helicopters settled on the peaks of the Aurès Mountains, unloaded their cargo of French paratroopers. In the narrow valleys below, French infantry sweated and scrambled their way up the rocky slopes. Trapped between land and air, units of the rebel F.L.N. fought to the death or fled into the surrounding oak and pine forests. A French communiqué tersely announced that 300 rebels were slain.

Triumphant Return. Thus last week the war that has lasted six years in Algeria raged on. The French, as they have all along, claimed they were winning. They say that there are only 7,600 F.L.N. regulars in Algeria today, compared with 16,000 two years ago. But they admit that some 18,000 rebels are in battle readiness across the Tunisian border, and another 8,000 encamped in Morocco.

If the military news was encouragement of a sort to the French last week, the political news could only depress them. Rebel F.L.N. leaders gathered in Tunis for a meeting that had ominous overtones for the West. Ferhat Abbas, Premier of the provisional Algerian government, was just back from a month-long visit to Red China and Russia. “Moscow gave a new impetus to our march!” he cried jubilantly. “We are now receiving the full support of Red China.” Belkacem Krim, the unofficial F.L.N. observer at the United Nations, reported excitedly on his conferences in Manhattan with Nikita Khru shchev, who had finally given the rebel government “de facto recognition.”

Fear or Favor. Khrushchev’s act seemed motivated more by fear of Red China’s getting ahead of him in revolutionary militancy than by any devotion to the rebel F.L.N. (until recently, he valued his French connections more). Last summer Khrushchev had urged a negotiated end to the war, encouraging the F.L.N. leaders to attend the abortive talks at Melun. The meeting broke down. Red China’s Premier Chou En-lai gleefully told Ferhat Abbas: “The only victory at Melun was its failure. If you had accepted, or even if the French had made conces sions you could have accepted, the Algerian revolution would be dead. Your reaction at Melun proved your maturity. We were afraid you would disappoint us.” In Manhattan Khrushchev hurried to get back on the revolutionary bandwagon, told the Algerians that only power counts, and proposed a two-stage assistance program. The first would be shipment of non-military supplies—which, to avoid provoking a general conflict, would be landed at allegedly neutral ports in Tunisia and Morocco. Last week the Soviet freighter Fatezh arrived at Tunis with a cargo of machine tools, tractors, cars, clothes and food for the rebels. The second phase is scheduled to begin when the F.L.N. can take, and hold, a sliver of Algerian territory from the French. Then the Soviet Union will undertake to supply the F.L.N. openly. Khrushchev reportedly said: “Once you fully occupy a little bit of Algeria, however tiny it may be, victory is assured. The rest will be just fooling around.” So far. Red China has only supplied cash, which enables the F.L.N. to buy weapons in the illegal arms markets of Naples, Hamburg and Antwerp.

Troubled Friends. Tunisia’s President Habib Bourguiba and Morocco’s King Mohammed V are men steeped in French culture, and longtime friends of the West. Both have tried to serve as peacemakers between the F.L.N. and France, and this month Bourguiba desperately sent his son to Paris to make a personal appeal to De Gaulle. Young Bourguiba’s message was that France must make concessions or the F.L.N. would turn to the Communists, dragging Tunisia with it. Young Bourguiba was not even allowed to talk to De Gaulle, and his father angrily recalled him to Tunis. Last week, out of patience with De Gaulle and under pressure from the pro-Algerian sympathies of his people, President Bourguiba exploded. “Nothing will stop me from doing or accepting anything which may hasten the liberation of Algeria, even if this liberation is due to Russian initiative.”

King Mohammed, who claims the rocky Mauritania desert south of Morocco as his own, was annoyed last week because France agreed to give Mauritania its independence. Mohammed promptly ordered the closing of two French consulates near the Algerian border. The announced reason was the recent French bombardment of two Moroccan villages. A more compelling, if unstated, reason was that these consular districts enabled the French to keep tabs on the movement of F.L.N. men and arms across the border.

To the south, the F.L.N. was negotiating with the left-leaning government of newly independent Mali to give them a base for hit-and-run raids against French communication lines in the Sahara.

Practically Nothing. De Gaulle himself was still speechifying across France and sounding organ notes about grandeur, strength and determination. He referred with lofty obliqueness to the F.L.N. and their new Communist ties. “Peace is at our door.” De Gaulle announced. “Practically nothing stands in our way. But that ‘practically nothing’ is perhaps, the ambition of a certain group, aided by the totalitarians, who may frustrate the possibilities of peace offered by France.”

But the Paris newspaper Le Monde reflected the troubled conscience of Frenchmen faced once more by crisis at home and war abroad that could neither be won nor ended. “Certainly these Soviet approaches furnish arguments for those politicians and military men who insist that our army fights for the defense of the West in Algeria,” said Le Monde. “But does not experience prove, on the contrary, that it is the continuation of the war which draws Communist influence to Algeria?”