Word: kabylia
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Through the Paris censorship trickled news of a bloody insurrection in Algeria. Since May 8, fierce Kabyle tribesmen* had stabbed or beaten to death a hundred French officials and wealthy colons (landowners who exploit native farm labor) in the mountainous district of Little Kabylia. The Europeans had picked up their guns, banded together and held off the Kabyles as best they could until police and regular troops arrived...
...Colonial Government proclaimed martial law in Little Kabylia, sent out punitive columns of Foreign Legionnaires, Senegalese and Moroccan troops. Artillery and aircraft smashed native villages. The new Algerian nationalist party, Amis du Manifeste ("Friends of the Manifesto"), was outlawed, its leaders arrested. The old Parti Populaire Algérien, whose slogan is "Algeria for the Algerians," was carefully watched...
...causes of revolt, chiefly hunger. Algeria's 8,000,000 people are near the famine line. A succession of bad harvests, coupled with a wartime lack of imports, has reduced Algerian rations to 500 calories a day, only a third of what a Frenchman gets. In Little Kabylia whole villages were abandoned by a desperate population Streaming toward the cities. Fields were torn up in a desperate forage for edible roots...