As the new year began, the O.A.S. were well on the way to succeeding in both its self-immolatory aims of bringing about a state of ungovern-ability in Algiers and Oran, and of creating a gulf of hatred between Muslim and European. After his trip to Algeria the previous autumn, Bernard Tricot had already observed how the O.A.S. violence and the F.L.N. riposte had resulted in “an alienation between the two communities which I had never previously detected”; and it existed “precisely where the European population was strongest, and where a possible partition could have created a French enclave”.

XREF: Connects to broader patterns of decolonization violence where paramilitary groups provoke ethnic polarization to prevent negotiated settlement or partition.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1513