From Library Journal
Ciment (history, CCNY) provides a highly readable account of factors that have led to Algeria's present civil war. He details the emergence of political Islam and explains the various groups vying for power in the country and the causes of the regime's eroding legitimacy. In the recent past, Algeria was a significant developing country whose revolutionary credentials and epic war of independence from France catapulted it into the forefront of Third World politics. The country has now fallen on hard times. Political decay, corruption, statist economic mismanagement, and one-party dictatorship have contributed to the emergence of a powerful Islamic opposition movement battling the regime for the hearts and minds of the population. This lucidly written and cogently argued book is highly recommended for informed readers and specialists.?Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, Ala.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Enduring its second civil war in this century, Algeria is presently polarized between a militarily backed government and an armed Islamic opposition. The most egregious violence involved reaches U.S. newspapers, but this short book constitutes an in-depth resource on the entire Algerian situation. Ciment records the factors involved in the war's immediate cause--the cancellation of 1992 elections that the Islamacists seemed poised to win--and usefully sets the historic context as well. That elections were even scheduled reflected an accommodation that the one-party socialist regime, which had ruled since independence in 1962, felt it had to make with worldwide pluralist trends. Its failure reflects Algerian society, split between secularists who look to France and fundamentalists who look to the Koran; meanwhile, the Berber minority just tries to avoid the crossfire. In descriptive political-science fashion, Ciment evenhandedly summarizes the beliefs and positions of the parties to the conflict and the individual histories of their leaders. Gilbert Taylor
