The Arzew Camp

The chapter examines the success of the forms of psychological warfare deployed during Opération Pilote. A key element of Servier’s plan was to recruit peasants to undertake a crash training programme in the COIN centre at Arzew, so that they could be secretly reinserted in the douars to act as future political leaders. The first cohort proved to be of mediocre ability, and their placement in the douars, known to the FLN, proved to be perilous. The army turned to other techniques of mass brainwashing of the rural population, who were either subjected to propaganda teams or, at Warnier in the Chelif, placed in ‘re-education’ camps. Anthropology, promoted by Servier, was marginalized since army officers could not be rapidly trained in the necessary language and ethnology skills, and instead the army relied on behaviourist theories of conditioned reflexes and mechanical forms of mass indoctrination by repetition of slogans. The prefect, and some officers, were deeply scathing of the impacts of such brainwashing techniques. By August 1957 Opération Pilote was wound down but, despite its major failure, was promoted by top commanders as a great success, and was rapidly expanded across Algeria. The claims made for the experiment were supported by dubious forms of psychological mapping that claimed to plot the success of ‘pacification’.