On the balance sheet, Challe's own forces had suffered losses rarely exceeding a ratio of one to ten, a few hundred killed; while on his departure he reckoned that over half the regular katibas of the interior had been destroyed in the course of the past year's offensives. The proportion of prisoners to killed had, significantly, risen to forty-two per cent from twenty-seven for the previous year, and a number of those who gave themselves up switched allegiances to join the harkis. In arms, the French claimed to have collected five for every one lost to the rebels (also a significant change from the early months of the war; the A.L.N. were losing 300 weapons net per month, and it was estimated that by September 1959 their logistic potential had sunk more than twenty per cent over the past year). Thus, statistically, the A.L.N. looked defeated by the time of Challe's departure in 1960. … "We have pacified the country so well", Edward Behr quotes one captain as reporting to his commanding officer at about this time, "that the fellagha have almost disappeared. Nowadays, almost no one joins the guerrillas. It is more practical to stay put and campaign for independence in a thousand legal ways." The whole chain of command between the katibas and the O.P.A., and the Wilayas and the G.P.R.A., so laboriously constructed since the Soummam Conference of 1956, had been disrupted.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1019