A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 Read Online Free Page B

suicidally into the Eiffel Tower. The problem of immigration became an ever hotter issue for any French government to handle, as carnage in Algeria—on top of overpopulation—persuaded increasing numbers of Algerians to seek refuge, and employment, in France. In the winter of 2005–6, outbursts of rage in the overcrowded banlieues , with their substandard housing, gave the lie to the Gaullist notion that, with the end of the war in 1962, France could wash its hands of the “Algerian Problem.” Now there are over five million of Algerian extraction living in France. On top of this there is the residual bitterness and strife between the “new” immigrants and the Harkis , the Algerians loyal to the French Army who took root in France in 1962 and have assiduously resisted integration. The Algerian War has effectively crossed the Mediterranean to France, bringing with it raw sensitivities that almost rival the legacy of collaboration in World War II. France has still not come to terms with it. Just a tip of the iceberg of Algerian émigré sensitivities in France could be detected in the extraordinary head-butting episode (as of writing still cloaked in mystery) of the Algerian-French football champion Zinedine Zidane, which may have caused France to lose the 2006 World Cup. In lieu of the decisive post-colonial divorce that was envisaged in 1962, a messy relationship continues with each country deeply, and unpredictably, involved in each other’s histories. All of this is grist to the mill of Le Pen—and to al-Qaeda.
    After 9/11 and Parallels with Iraq
    Following September 2001, whether in Paris or London, intelligence evolving about the terror networks of al-Qaeda indicated numerous links with Algeria. In turn there were roots of jihad laid back in the Savage War —though it was not of itself a conflict rooted in Islam. It was, in effect, first and foremost, an anti-colonial war of national liberation. One cannot stress this fact too often. Nevertheless, in many ways the horrors suffered in Algeria’s own civil war do read like a paradigm, a microcosm of present-day Islam’s frustrated inadequacy to meet the challenges of the modern world, the anger generated thereby finding itself directed into lashing out against the rich, successful West.
    Generally, the old saw about history never repeating itself holds true. Nevertheless, its bad elements may well do so if national leaders pay no attention to its lessons. A few years back the Israeli press reported that Ariel Sharon’s favourite bedside reading was the Hebrew translation of A Savage War of Peace . Writing in The New York Review of Books , Amos Elon commented that “[Sharon] must have tragically misunderstood it. That book could not tell him what to do, but it could have told him what not to do.” The lessons surely apply today. At the time of writing, one feels that Bush’s Washington (and Blair’s London) also went blindly into Iraq —and into collision with the Islamic world—without the kind of necessary preparation, where study of Algeria in 1954–62 might have helped. At the very least its lessons might have imposed caution before getting involved in Iraq in the first place. There are at least three areas where the echoes are particularly painful, if not deafening.
    ONE: In the early days of the Algerian War, once the FLN realised it was not strong enough to take on the powerful French Army, it concentrated its attacks on the native police loyal to France. Result: a deadly loss of morale among the police, with defections to the FLN, and the French Army defensively reduced to protecting the police, instead of concentrating on active “search-and-destroy” missions. The “insurgents” in Iraq have learned from this strategy with deadly effect.
    TWO: The benefit of porous frontiers. In 1954–62, the winning French Army was paralysed by its inability to pursue its FLN enemy across into its friendly bases in neighbouring Tunisia and Morocco. This is