One of the largest French wartime initiatives in Algeria during the war for independence was the Sections Administratives Specialis?es (SAS). When the newly appointed Governor General of Algeria, Jacques Soustelle, first traveled to Algeria in February 1955, he made three key observations: one, the country was under-governed; two, both French military successes as well as failures exacerbated tensions between the French and Algerians; and three, the French suffered from an intelligence deficiency. He created the SAS to help combat these problems. Conceived as a program that would address social, political, and economic deficiencies in Algeria, the SAS sent teams of French officers, physicians, nurses, and teachers to rural areas to implement political rapprochement initiatives and give out material goods. The French intended to integrate Algerians into the colonial state and began to build infrastructure and provide social services in previously neglected areas of the colony. The SAS were to be peaceful pacifiers deployed at a time when France still could not imagine an independent Algeria. Unfortunately for the French, by the 1950s, their massive efforts to compensate for the underdevelopment of Algeria were too little too late. This paper will focus on one particular aspect of the SAS: the medical initiatives. It will explore the more subversive aims of using medicine as both a tool of conquest and development. I argue that the SAS were not only a means of trying to control the Algerians; they were also part of a campaign to retake and resettle the country as prescribed by revolutionary war theory. Yet, the SAS were an inadequate solution to a systemic long-term colonial problem of mismanagement and underdevelopment and ultimately, they did not lead to their intended outcome of quelling the Algerian war effort.