Zervoudakis, Alexander. "A case of successful pacification: The 584th Bataillon du Train at Bordj de l'Agha (1956–57)". Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.25, No.2 (2002): 54-64.

Zervoudakis, Alexander. "A case of successful pacification: The 584th Bataillon du Train at Bordj de l'Agha (1956–57)". Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.25, No.2 (2002): 54-64.

• During the Algerian war, the 228th Infantry Batallion, which was to change its name to the 584th Bataillon du Train, was created in May 1956 out of recalled conscripts from the Paris region. The unit was unruly and vandalized the Dreux train station and at least one train on its way to Marseilles, at which point they had to be watched by riot police (54).
• After departing from Marsailles on 20 May 1956, they were orignally stationed in Tizi-Ouzou, but moved around because no commander wanted the unruly batallion in their area. Eventually, in September 1956, they were stationed at the fort Bordj de l'Agha, in the M'Sila Province, in the semiarid southern Atlas mountains, which was the furthest south that a bataillon du train could be sent (54).
• The 228th Batallion was untrained, poorly equipped, and in a terrible base. Of the unit, 28% of the personnel had no military training whatsoever and the remainder at only received transport training, with no general infantry training provided. At any given time, half of the unit's vehicles and the same ratio of communications equipment was not operational. Moreover, it was unstaffed: it had only 444 men, when it should have had 689 (55).
• The unit's camp was sent up between two ancient towers, but no accomodation was provided and the men lived in tents in freezing high altitude conditions. The unit was disorganized and segregated itself based on the arrondissement of recruitment in Paris (55).
• The unit conducted almost no operations outside of its camp, despite there being known activity by bandits and by Algerian revolutionaries in the surrounding area. They did not interact with the civilian population (55).
• The unit remained troublesome in Bordj de l'Agha, damaging a helicopter and vandalizing a shop in Bou Saada when a group went there for supplies. In response to this incident, the Operational Commander of Southern Algeria placed Bou Saada out of bounds for the unit and instead parachuted supplies to the fort every 10 days (54-55).
• The unit again gained notoriety when technical issues with his plane forced Inspector-General of Infantry, General Michel Malagutti, to land at the airfield at Ain Rich, at which point he was heckled by the soldiers of the 228th Infantry. He was so furious at this state of affairs that he sacked the unit's commanding officer and replaced him with Major Jean Pouget (55).
• Major Pouget immediately began to restore discipline to the unit, reminding them of their duties as Frenchmen and the strictures of military law. He cleaned up the kitchens, dismantled makeshift bistros, emptied the sickbay of fakers, and forced everyone to salute superior officers. All time no spent on operations, which were resumed, was spent constructing housing and an airstrip, tasks that both improved the soldier's welfare (55-56).
• The 584th Battalion again demonstrated their poor discipline during their first operations in November 1956 in the vecinity of Djelfa. The soldiers used a 15 minute break to loot several shops in the city. Major Pouget punished this behavior by making the unit sleep in a cold and arid plain outside of the city and walk without transport for the next two days. This ended the looting by the 584th Battalion (56).
• The battalion also performed poorly in its first firefight on 7 November 1956, as a first lieutenant refused to charge a FLN position. In response to this, Major Pouget belittled the unit in fron the rest of the battalion sent back to the base on foot with only five bullets and insufficient water (56).
• The conscripts of the batallion also abused and beat the prisoners they captured on 7 November. When Major Pouget found out which conscript had beat the prisoner, he punched the conscript in the face and ordered that the prisoner be untied and transfer to the medic. Under his watch, POWs were not to be mistreated. This paid off, as the POW captured proved to be a valuable source of information and later joined the French Army as an Arab harka auxillery (56-57).
• This attitude toward POWs came from both Major Pouget's personal experiences, he had been a POW of the Germans in 1944 and had been captured and tortured by the Viet Mihn in 1954, and from a pragmatic notion that POWs were potential allies in a counterinsurgency war and valuable sources of information (57).
• By November 1957, so after one year of operations under Major Pouget, the 584th Battalion had conducted 50 operations, initiated 12 battles, killed 126 rebels, captured 35 POWs, and captured over 200 guns, taking casualties of only 8 killed and 20 wounded (57).
• The unit had also expanded to incorporate three constructed bases: one at Bordj de l'Agha, one at Ain Rich, and one at Ain Melah (57).
• Major Pouget understood the primary mission of the 584th Battalion to be one of pacification, which meant two separate tasks: to maintain law and order by military or police action, and to be at the disposal of the operational commander for military missions. This was essentially a counterinsurgency mission where the goal was to simultaneously support the population and defeat armed elements of the population hostile to your presence (58).
• Major Pouget identified the first goal of counterinsurgency in the region as being the destruction of the fellagha bands of highwaymen. To accomplish this task, he needed regular patrols supplied with good intelligence as to the location of the highwaymen (58).
• Pacification in the French context required cooperation between the military and the Section Administrative Specialisée [SAS], a civilian agency subordinated to the district chief but integrated with the army. This required effective unity of command, which Major Pouget achieved by expelling an SAS officer who refused to cooperate with him and installing himself as the effective commander of the SAS officers in the region (59).
• The tactics used by the SAS in this region was respect for personal privacy, i.e., not entering houses without invitation; and waiting for the local population to discuss problems and supply intelligence voluntarily (59). This was started by providing services, such as bribe-free identity documents, free disinfection of sheep without any identity checking, free education, mobile medical clinic, and a mobile movie theater (59-60).
• Major Pouget enforced this culture of respect seriously, at one point imprisoning and disarming SAS officer Dubois who flirted with and put his hand around the waist of the daughter of a local dignitary at Oued Chair. This respect for local cultural norms earned Major Pouget and his mission greater trust among the population (59).
• The provision of services was often dilberately disconnected from any directly military intelligence mission and meant solely to improve relations with the population, as was the case for a free primary school established by Private Jean-Claude Veber. His presence, disconnected from the military, greated boosted the population's opinion of the French and his murder in April 1957 by rebels , who expected a violent French retaliation against the village where it had occured, instead alienated the rebels from the population and drove them fully into support of the French (62).
• An example of effective pacification was at the village of Ain Melah, which was used as a base by the rebels in October 1956 and whose mayor cooperated with the rebels, but was not loyal to them. Major Pouget began outreach by saying he did not blame the mayor for hosting the rebels, but that he would like to send a doctor to the village once a week and to restart an irrigation project, but that it was up to the village to make arrangements for the projection of both projects. The doctor began visiting in January 1957, providing medical aid to all, including rebels, and no retribution occured when a Private Veber was killed in the village. By May 1957, the mayor of Ain Melah had been won over and aksed the French to establish a base in the village to provide protection from the rebels (60-61).
• A friendly population was an essential part of the pacification campaign because only a friendly population would provide the intelligence needed to fight the rebels. By mid 1957, the population was provided reliable intelligence to the French through the SAS and harka auxilleraries. Even when incidents, like the murder of a French officer in Oued Chair in September 1957, did occur, the perpetrators were caught thanks to the cooperation of the local population (61).
• The effectiveness of French intelligence in the area was even admitted by the FLN commander in the region in mid 1957, Si Haoues, who had difficulty conducting operations (61).