What "collective responsibility" often actually entailed for the Auresian villagers at its lowest and least pernicious level is well depicted by Pierre Leulliette: "Cutting down tough tree-trunks at night, digging wide holes in the stony track, menaced by rebel guns. And, in the morning, the exhausting work would hardly be finished when they would have to replant the poles and fill up the potholes, once again menaced by guns, this time ours." Somewhat defensively, Soustelle claims that "collective responsibility" was effective, at least when applied to repairs of roads and telegraph poles; it accorded with the Arab mentality of respecting strength, despising weakness. At the same time, however, as Germaine Tillion pointed out, it gravely offended the Chaouias' deep-rooted sense of justice, and, in the eyes of Yves Courrière, based on his interviews of F.L.N. leaders, it provided the F.L.N. with one of its "principal psychological trump cards".

XREF: Parallels later counterinsurgency history: punishing whole communities for individual acts typically backfires by driving people to the insurgency. SEED: Could shape an article on how punitive collective measures in counterinsurgency consistently supply insurgents with propaganda advantages — from Algeria to Iraq/Afghanistan.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 358