Djamila Bouhired, born in 1937 to middle-upper class parents in Algiers, Algeria, would prove to become the undisputedly most famous woman active in the FLN resistance of the Algerian Revolution (1952-62). She was the only figure that rose to international fame during the Revolution (Djamila Boupacha, another FLN (the Algerian National Liberation Front) member, reached similar fame post-independence). The movie Djamila l’Algerienne was released in 1958, the book Pour Djamila Bouhired released in 1957 (written by her later husband and defense lawyer, Jacques Vèrges and Georges Arnaud), and countless songs across the Maghreb were written in her honor.
This emblematic woman of war - this ‘Arab Joan of Arc’, as she would come to be called - began in a relatively privileged childhood, attending a French school in Algiers. An interview with Bouhired in 1971 shows just how deep the indoctrination of French sovereignty went into young Algerian minds: She remembers them teaching ‘we were French…the French flag was our flag. Algeria? It didn’t exist. It was French Algeria. And we carried around our French identity every day in school. It wasn’t easy to get rid of that identity; we’d had it all of our lives’ (Bouhired, Encyclopedia). Although this was the mentality Bouhired was surrounded by, as a child she remembered standing in defiance to the required oration of ‘France is our mother’ - she would rise and scream ‘Algeria is our mother!’
It is important to note that Bouhired (and many of the notable women in the Algerian revolution) is, across the Arab and MENA (Middle Eastern/North African), the face - the lady liberty, if you will - of strength against colonial oppressor. By no means however did she accurately represent the large majority of the fedaeeya (female guerrilla fighters for the FLN) during the revolution. Her relatively wealthy upbringing in French schools, introduction to intellectual Marxist ideology, and literacy all gave her unique agency that many rural fedaeeya did not and could not have. While this privilege must be addressed, it does not change the profound impact she and others had on the revolution, nor doe it diminish their accomplishments.
At the tender age of 17 (1954, the start of the Algerian Revolution) Bouhired was recruited into the FLN by her brother and almost immediately became radicalized amidst the backdrop of French torture and brutality against Algerian civilians and FLN members alike. Developing a close bond with Saadi Yacef (the Casbah leader of the FLN), she heavily recruited young women into the FLN; notably bringing in Zohra Drif and Samia Lakhdari. It was under Yacef’s direction that Bouhired, Drif, and Lakhdari carried out the now famous Milk Bar bombings in retaliation to severe casualties and torture of poor Algerians in the Casbah (impoverished Algiers neighborhood). Drif was send to the Milk Bar (an ice cream shop), Lakhdari to a prominent pied-noir (Frenchmen born in Algeria) cafe, and Bouhired to the Air France terminal at the airport. Bouhired’s bomb contained a faulty mechanism however, and did not go off. Although this particular mission was unsuccessful, Bouhired was instrumental in sheltering countless FLN members, assisted and carried out many other missions against the French colonizers, and helped organize and sustain the famous and effective 7-day strike of Algerian workers in pied-noir territory.
Bouhired, along with Drif and Lakhdair, were arrested in April of 1957- at the tail end of the Battle for Algiers and shortly after the Milk Bar bombings. Once captured, Bouhired was inhumanely tortured in much the same manner as Djamila Boupacha (see Timeline event for in-depth discussion of sexualized torture during the Algerian War of Independence) but revealed nothing of FLN party members’ whereabouts or operations. Not only did she withstand these horrid acts, but denied a rescue plan organized by Yacef out of concern for him and her FLN brothers and sisters.
Jacques Vèrges - a Frenchman - was an ardent communist, marxist, and supporter of the Algerian state. He also was Bouhired’s ardent defender during her trial in July of 1957, and post-revolution would become her husband and father of their children. The trial was unjust, evidence constructed, and Vèrges - despite impassioned arguments for her release - lost the trial; Bouhired was sentenced to the guillotine (Boupacha’s trial lawyer, Gisele Halimi, would be the first to win a case against the French government, learning from Vèrges’ failure).
Not all was lost, however; Bouhired’s case was taken up in French leftist intellectual circles (sympathetic to Algerian Independence), and international outrage at the torture - post Geneva convention - of a young, brave Algerian girl was abound. Here she gained her moniker as the ‘Arab Joan of Arc’. Impassioned pleas for her freedom came from the Moroccan Princess Laila Ayesha, from 76 Labor Party British Parliament members, and from protestors lining the walls of the French embassy eventually forced French President Coty’s hand: Bouhired’s execution sentence was exchanged in 1958 for life in prison at Reims, in France.
There she remained until new French President Charles de Gaulle signed the Evian Accords in 1962, finally granting the independence that the Algerian people had yearned and fought for since their unlawful colonization in the 1830’s. Upon her return to Algiers she married Vèrges, adopted an orphan of the revolution Nadyah, and had her two other children Maryam and Ilyas. Not all was blissful in the newly independent Algeria, however; Drif (her FLN compatriot) and Bouhired were forcibly removed from the Marxist journal they founded. As Franz Fanon - celebrated theorist and FLN avower - warned in Wretched of the Earth, his final book before death in 1961, the newly formed state strayed from it’s Marxist foundation and shifted to a narrower kind of nationalism; one that largely ignored the women who pounded just as much of their blood into Algerian soil as their male counterparts.
Djamila Bouhired is still alive today, and most recently in 2019 has participated in Algerian protests.
Works Cited:
Amrane Minne, D. D., & Clarke, A. (2007). Women at war. Interventions, 9(3), 340–349. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698010701618562
Encyclopedia.com. (2021, November 11). ." Women in world history: A biographical encyclopedia. . encyclopedia.com. 25 Oct. 2021 . Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved November 11, 2021, from https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-an....
Fanon, F. (2021). The wretched of the Earth. Grove Press.
Flood, M. (2016). Women resisting terror: Imaginaries of violence in Algeria (1966–2002). The Journal of North African Studies, 22(1), 109–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2016.1229184
Mortimer, M. (2012). Tortured bodies, resilient souls: Algeria's women combatants depicted by Danièèle Djamila Amrane-Minne, Louisette Ighilahriz, and Assia Djebar. Research in African Literatures, 43(1), 101. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.43.1.101
