In Tunis the G.P.R.A. were manifestly staggered by the snowball spontaneity and success of the demonstrations. A jubilant Ferhat Abbas broadcast telling the Algerians that they had achieved their object. Indeed, as far as scoring points at the United Nations was concerned, they had more than achieved it. To Ben Khedda, speaking many years afterwards, the Muslim demonstration of December 1960 represented the “decisive turning-point of the war”, and it is a view with which many French historians concur. To Albert-Paul Lentin it represented a “Dien Bien Phu of official propaganda”.

XREF: Connects to December 1960 protests and how civilian action turned the FLN war — parallels other colonial wars where popular demonstrations changed international opinion. QUESTION: What specifically did the December 1960 demonstration accomplish that military operations had not? Worth chasing the mechanism of this turning point.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1319