The National Liberation Front of Corsica - Canal Habituel (French for "Habitual Channel", Corsican: Fronte di Liberazione Naziunale di a Corsica - Canale Abituale; abbreviated FLNC-CA) was an armed paramilitary and guerrilla organisation on the island of Corsica.
The FLNC-CA originated during the breakup of the National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC), a process which began in 1988 following a ceasefire and the start of negotiations with the government to secure Corsican autonomy. This saw the Corsican nationalist movement break into two camps: the "Habituels", who wanted to end the ongoing Corsican conflict by securing a compromise with the French government for further autonomy and perhaps eventual independence, and the "Historiques", who wanted to continue armed struggle and secure Corsican independence through insurgency and armed insurrection. The Habituels, gathered around Alain Orsoni, took control of the FLNC's central command following during a Historique-led dissident campaign, creating the FLNC-CA.
During the entirety of the group's existence, the FLNC-CA was engaged in a violent war with the FLNC-Canal Historique, a radical militant armed group formed from the Historique dissidents. During this period, the group had an on-and-off relationship with the French government, starting and ending numerous truces and ceasefires to spur fruitless negotiations. The group lost a significant amount of influence to the Canal Historique, and the war between the two resulted in the death of numerous Habituel leaders. In 1996, the FLNC-CA announced its intent to disarm and dissolve, and Orsoni, then a high-profile criminal in France, fled to Miami, Florida. Many within the group refused to lay down arms, resulting in the creation of the FLNC-5 May. The FLNC-CA dissolved officially on 29 January 1997.
History
Background The National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC) formed on 5 May 1976. From then on, the group engaged in a prolonged guerrilla war against French authorities on the island of Corsica. The FLNC was quite popular amongst the people of Corsica, and for the most part internal divisions were rare in the first few years of the conflict.
The first divisions began to appear within the FLNC following 1979. A surge of popular support resulting from local influence and the militaristic and oppressive response of French authorities to the conflict, such as their response to the Bastelica-Fesch affair, caused many Corsicans to rally around the FLNC and join the organization in droves.Loughlin, John. Regionalism and Ethnic Nationalism in France: a Case Study of Corsica. This, coupled with arrests of high-ranking officials, caused the FLNC to adopt a new system of leadership in which two governing bodies, the political cunsigliu (council) and the military ghjunta (junta) governed in tandem.
This system was initially successful, but its problems became evident during the 1981-1982 Defferre accords. The cunsigliu wanted to pursue peace and work alongside the French government for Corsican autonomy, whereas the ghjunta wanted to continue using armed struggle as the primary tool for Corsican independence, avoiding any negotiation with the French state or any political participation in general. Borgo-Lucciana brigade leader and ghjunta member Charles Pieri gained a following within the FLNC for his statements against the Defferre accords, and in 1982 Pieri carried out an assault on a Foreign Legion outpost in Sorbo-Ocagnano, breaking the ceasefire the FLNC set for the duration of the Defferre accords.
In 1983, the FLNC's central command (made up of the cunsigliu and ghjunta) narrowly passed a motion creating a so-called "revolutionary tax" system. Businesses in areas occupied by the FLNC were made to pay a given amount of money to the organisation, and business elsewhere, especially owned by Frenchmen, were at risk of being extorted by the group for money in exchange for keeping their business. This was controversial, and many members of the FLNC, especially those affiliated with the cunsigliu, viewed this as immoral. A major point of debate regarding the revolutionary tax was how much of it was going back to the FLNC.Members of the ghjunta, who led the FLNC's brigades, were accused of extorting businesses and not diverting the money to the FLNC's command. This accusation was common amongst the urban brigades of the FLNC, mainly François Santoni's Gravona brigade, centred around the suburbs of northeastern Ajaccio, and Charles Pieri's Borgo-Lucciana brigade, operating in Bastia's southern suburbs. These accusations gained a large amount of attention following the 1983 Schock affair, in which Gravona brigade members assassinated a barber who refused to pay a tax imposed on him by the brigade. An internal FLNC investigation revealed this money was going to Santoni rather than the FLNC itself. Many moved to punish Santoni, but Pieri and other radical members came to his defense, and due to the two-branch system, nothing could be done to punish him.https://www.liberation.fr/evenement/1996/12/19/de-l-impot-revolutionnaire-au-racket-mafieux_190543/
After the Schock affair, the distance between the consigliu and the ghjunta gradually worsened, and by 1987 they had begun to refuse cooperation. The cunsigliu, headed at this time by cunsigliu president Pierre Poggioli, began organizing a joint congress to hash out issues between the brigade leaders in the ghjunta and deputies in the cunsigliu. Instrumental in this process was Alain Orsoni, who was a cunsigliu member representing the Ajaccio region. The first congress was held in the Gravona area of Ajaccio region and dealt with the controversial issue of centralization and autonomy. Gravona was likely chosen due to the Gravona brigade leader, François Santoni, being an ardent autonomist who had disobeyed central committee orders many times, most notably when he ordered his brigade to carry out the attempted assassination of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1981.
FLNC split and foundation On 8 May 1988, François Mitterrand was re-elected to his position as president of France. One of Mitterrand's goals in his first term was peace in Corsica, and despite temporarily abandoning this policy following the FLNC's withdrawal from the Defferre process and the escalation of violence following it, Mitterrand was open to further discussions on Corsican autonomy. On the night of Mitterrand's re-election, the FLNC called a ceasefire to attempt to facilitate negotiations with the newly re-elected government. This was a highly controversial decision within the FLNC, and by mid-1989 several high-ranking officials, mostly from the ghjunta, including Jean-Michel Rossi, François Santoni, Charles Pieri, and Pierre Alessandri, withdrew their brigades from the FLNC. Further dissident splits followed, including an insurrectionary movement in Ajaccio led by Roger Polverelli. The followers of the anti-ceasefire movement earned the name “Historiques” (Storichi in Corsican) due to their strong attachment to the hardline militant ideals of the original FLNC, and a dissident campaign was carried out by these brigades against the remaining FLNC structure from 1988 to 1990.
Pierre Poggioli, leader of the FLNC's joint congress, resigned from the organisation on 16 September 1989 due to the harsh divisions and the so-called "internal war" causing the groups collapse. On paper, this left the FLNC with no proper leader, but many in the cunsigliu began to rally around Alain Orsoni, who had become the group's political leader and ran A Cuncolta Naziunalista, the FLNC's political wing created following the dissolution of the Corsican Movement for Self-Determination. Poggioli would create his own party, the Corsican National Alliance, and armed group, Resistenza, in 1990.
In August 1990, A Cuncolta Naziunalista suffered from numerous controversial splits, as the leadership centred around Orsoni struggled to keep the Historiques remaining in the party from going against their word. This resulted in Orsoni's ousting by Pieri and Santoni, who became joint leaders of the organisation, with Pieri acting as secretary-general in Haute-Corse and Santoni acting as secretary-general of Corse-du-Sud. On 17 October of that same year, Orsoni took control of the FLNC central command, dissolved it, and re-organised it into the FLNC-Canal Habituel (Canale Abituale, FLNC-CA). This was coupled with the creation of the Movement for Self-Determination (Muvimentu per l'Autodeterminazione, MPA), Orsoni's new political party and the FLNC-CA's political wing.
Early years on ceasefire The FLNC-CA spent the first months of its existence officially in a ceasefire, attempting to negotiate with the French state and continuing the principles of the original FLNC. However, in practice, the group frequently used armed attacks as a form of political pressure to attempt to steer negotiations in their favour, a strategy which in practice yielded few results. The first example of this occurred just days after the organisation was created, on 26 October 1990. A "spectacular" bomb attack damaged the Aubagne headquarters of Société nationale maritime Corse Méditerranée, a ferry company.
At the same time, Orsoni had become a major enemy of François Santoni, now the leader of the FLNC-Canal Historique (Canale Storicu, FLNC-CS), an armed group formed from a union of the Historique dissidents. The FLNC-CA and FLNC-CS had both denounced each other in press conferences, and Santoni had begun to spread false claims that Orsoni had embezzled money during his time as leader of A Cuncolta Naziunalista. These hostilities turned into a proper feud on 29 November 1990, when a commando of Habituels broke into the press headuarters of U Ribombu, the press organ of the FLNC-Canal Historique, and stole the technical equipment from the printing room. A large calibre bullet was left on the table as a threat by the Habituels. This triggered a long string of assassinations of Habituels by Historiques and vice versa, beginning the so-called Years of Lead.
Fighting between the two FLNC organisations continued into 1991. On 12 February, the FLNC-CA released a press statement condemning the "militaristic drift" of the FLNC-CS. This was followed by a conference of the FLNC-CA in March 1991, in which the group reaffirmed a ceasefire with the French government and shifted focus to primarily combating the influence of the Historiques. The MPA, the group's political wing, cut ties with A Cuncolta, the FLNC-CS's political wing, following this conference.
On 30 May 1991, to protest what they perceived as government inaction, the FLNC-CA launched a large car bomb attack against the General Council of Haute-Corse, resulting in the collapse of part of the building. The main target of this attack was François Giacobbi, president of Haute-Corse's general council and a staunch opponent of the Joxe process and political dialogue with nationalists of any kind. Giacobbi denounced the "Lebanese-style" attack and referred to the guerrillas as "dishonourable bandits". This attack caused a large amount of backlash against the Habituels, with even other nationalists denouncing the action, and was a contributing factor to the departure of Léo Battesti from the FLNC-CA and MPA a year later.
The feud with the FLNC-CS was also accompanied by a feud with Resistenza, another FLNC splinter group in a shaky and often broken alliance with the Historiques. On 15 July 1991, Habituel member Jean-Pierre Leca fired several shots at Resistenza members. He was arrested just days later by French police.
Internal divisions