The Harkis were Algerians who served the French cause in what British historian Alistair Horne called the "Savage War of Peace," Algeria's war for independence from 1954 to 1962. Several films have touched on the torn allegiances of Algerians during that dark period, including L'ennemi intime and La trahison. They only hint at the violence meted out to Harkis upon independence, meriting Horne's use of "savage" in every sense of the term.
Those who escaped, and there were over 100,000 with their families, were interned in camps as isolated and forlorn as that of Camp Joffre in Rivesaltes, pictured here. The camp, which was used originally to house Republican refugees from the Spanish Civil War, is on a dusty coastal plain at the foot of the Pyrenees. Some Harki children were born and grew up in camps like this, finally protesting their plight in the mid-Seventies. Check this excellent French government site for more photos and historical notes on Camp Joffre.
Whatever your political stance on Algeria's war for independence, you'd have to be pretty hardcore and hard hearted not to admit that the Harkis got a bad deal. Scorned (when they weren't massacred) by fellow Algerians, they got little of the honor they deserved by the country they served. President Chirac started their rehabilitation, calling them "brothers in arms," when he established the day of commemoration in 2001. Two years ago, just after returning from a trip to Algeria, President Sarkozy acknowledged the "debt" owed those who had given up everything for the lost cause of "Algérie française."
But it's an uphill battle, and the political debates of a half century ago still echo. In 2006, Socialist politician Georges Frêche of Montpelier referred to Harkis as "sous-hommes" ("sub-humans") when some rallied to the UMP successors of de Gaulle.
A half century after their war, France's Harkis still have to struggle to get recognition for their role. Let's see how historians, fifty years hence, will judge the West's contemporary allies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Will they get to write the official history, or will it be someone whose eduction was in a madrassa?