If one could draw up a balance-sheet for that first winter of the war in terms of rebel manpower alone, on the debit side the “old guard” had been largely mopped-up; on the credit side there was a plentiful substitution of new recruits resulting from the indiscriminate mass arrests in the cities and overzealous ratissages in the bled. But this remained to some extent a potential, rather than actual, asset.

XREF: Connects to the broader pattern of brutal colonial repression backfiring by radicalizing and swelling rebel ranks.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 331