For a time the French cherished hopes that Si Chérif might bring over with him the whole of the south, but eventually the F.L.N. skilfully managed to seal off the damage. Nevertheless, in that hard-pressed summer of 1957 the Si Chérif affair opened up to the F.L.N. one of its greatest latent nightmares: the prospect of a sectarian split between Arabs and Kabyles. It was an opportunity for which French intelligence was constantly, and obviously, on the look out.

XREF: Connects to broader colonial divide-and-rule tactics and ethnic fault line exploitation in anti-colonial struggles.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 697