"Algeria Unveiled" - Frantz Fanon

A homogenous group of people is often defined by their shared costumes, their traditional clothing. And of course, within the Algerian society was the veil an essential part of the street scene. it became the symbol of the colonised women. For the french, it felt like a sign of protest and it became their mission to conquer these women. Their excuse was that that they actually played the heroes in this story. They saw the Algerian behaviour towards their women as controlling and medieval. By unveiling these women, they take that burden away and free them. But in reality, the French government tried to gain total power by destroying the Algerian culture. Only this pressure on the Algerian culture to modify resulted in a counter-assimilation with the maintenance of the cultural model.

The power that these Algerian women have was deeply underestimated by the French colonisers. During the revolution, the FLN exploited this underestimation by using their women as soldiers. As a sacrifice to blend in, they created an alter ego: the unveiled-woman-outside. When the French discovered this trick they started to control the free-spirited looking Algerian women. As a counter-reaction, the FLN put a veil on them, again, as a camouflage. This way the veil became part of their war strategies. 

In the end, every time colonialism tried to hold on to their domination, the colonised reacted intensely with a counter-proposal. This is a dynamic that characterized colonialism.