How Iraq Resembles Algeria

[Hogeye]

HOW IRAQ RESEMBLES ALGERIA
(from "The Lighthouse" newsletter by David J. Theroux)

Like U.S.-occupied Iraq, French-occupied Algeria witnessed a brutal
insurgency from 1954 to 1962. Aware of the potential similarities, in 2003
the Pentagon reportedly held a special screening of Gillo Pontecovo's
classic 1965 film, "The Battle of Algiers." As the film depicts, not
only did Algerian guerrilla groups attack French forces, they also
attacked each other, explains Independent Institute Senior Fellow Alvaro
Vargas Llosa in his latest column for the Washington Post Writers Group.

"The struggle between the NLF [National Liberation Front] and the
Algerian National Movement was savage," writes Vargas Llosa. "The NLF
targeted fellow Algerians from its inception in 1954 and used indiscriminate
terrorism throughout the conflict. Outside influence was considerable:
Countries like Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt aided the insurgents."

(Here's another interesting historical fact that Vargas Llosa reports:
a young Francois Mitterand laid the legal groundwork at the Ministry of
the Justice for the use of torture during the Algerian uprising.)

"Algeria's insurgents were tyrants, and once they liberated their
nation they established a dictatorship," Vargas Llosa writes. "But the fact
that they were perceived as legitimate by the civilian population --
precisely because their notion of space and time attached them to that
population and the country's history -- meant that the occupiers ended up
losing the war whose every battle they had won."

"The Battle of Algiers," by Alvaro Vargas Llosa (1/24/07)