As 1957 gave way to the new year, running weapons across the Tunisian frontier became the main effort of the A.L.N.; at one moment they totalled an average of a thousand a month. In September 1957, however, the French completed an imposing cordon sanitaire the length of the Tunisian border, the Morice Line, named—like its rather less successful predecessor, the Maginot Line—after the current Minister of Defence. Most of the heavy fighting now took place on the frontier rather than in the interior as A.L.N. katibas attempted to force their way through the barrages of electrified wire, minefields and radar alarm systems, frequently at appalling cost. By the spring of 1958 the balance of the war was, on the whole, a negative one for the F.L.N.—certainly as far as the interior was concerned. In the cities terrorism had been defeated; in the bled operational military successes were few and far between, and morale was down; on the frontiers there was costly stagnation. It continued to be a time of setback and failure within Algeria, but of greater success abroad—and, with historic consequences, the former was the fact most tantalisingly visible to the French army commanders on the spot. Here was the basic contrast: France was strong, militarily, in Algeria, but weak, politically, at home; the F.L.N. was weak, militarily, at home, but strong politically, abroad.

XREF: Parallels civil-military tension; ironic symmetry between FLN colonels and French paratroop colonels seizing influence simultaneously.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 719