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The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002, Studies in a Broken Polity

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The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002 by Hugh Roberts (Senior Research Fellow of the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science) is a close and meticulous study of the recent violence that has wracked Algeria. This impressive history eschews oversimplifications reducing the conflict to simply Islamists vs. a secular state, or the generals vs. the common people. Carefully examining the makeup and motivating forces for the Islamists, the Berberists, various factions in the army and in the general regime, The Battlefield is a compelling dissection of the heart of bloodshed. A work of considerable scholarship but one which is easily accessible by the non-specialist general reader, The Battlefield is highly recommended for students of 20th Century Algerian history.

Hugh Roberts is the leading anglophone expert on Algeria and this book will cause you to question all of your pre-conceived and half-baked notions of what has been going on in Algeria during the last decade and a half. Roberts is a passionately committed scholar who questions everything and comes up with original and serious critiques of what passes for scholarship and with fascinating reflections that will reward your curiousity and cause you to think deeply about why we understood so little about Algeria.

The book is written in Shakespearian English, but the analysis is rather simplistic. The author is really an outsider to the conflict, he makes his own hypothesis from afar away. The analysis is too descriptive, and very repetitive. The author seeks to show that he is the 'the Western leading expert' making the analysis with no policy implications. You may read the book as it has some historical background, but for a successful analysis of Algeria you'd need to look elsewhere. The book really doesnt do it.

The book does relate to Algeria. It is, however, a collection of numerous articles that practically say the same thing. The biggest problem with the book is that by the end of the last chapter the reader is likely to say: so what?. What should we do?. How are we going to solve the problems Algeria has?. No practical solutions are really given. This is probably because the book does not follow a scientific framework, merely putting together a large number of paragraphs with twists here and there. Another problem, the author speaks at the macro level, no real substance when it comes to issues at the micro level. The book was expected to break down the issues (political, economic, social) into small components and provides solutions to such problems at a highly disaggregated level. The book does not do this. It does not even consider economic issues that strike at the heart of the problem, along with political issues. The author seems to know little, if at all, about the Algerian economy leading him to declare, at least implicitly, that such issues are not important. The author takes it on himself to disagree with every Western analyst (more recently he is chasing Noam Chomsky) to try to prove he knows best. The author does not appear to be fluent in Arabic so he ignores much of the Arabic literature on Algeria. He seems to have consulted few sources in French, but given the material in the book, the author does not seem to have gone through a sufficient amount of literature on the country he attempts to analyze. Having read the book, I found it hard to guess where the author comes from: politics, economics, psychology...?. He does not appear to come from Economics nor from political science; more likely from philosophy. This probably explains the inability of the author to successfully conduct a thorough analysis of the economic, political and social problems Algeria faces. The author clearly lacks the scientific tools of analysis, so his analysis is based on his personal opinions crafted in Queen's English. While it might be impressive from a literary point of view, its impact on studies about Algeria is unlikely to be significant. Having said this, the book might be helpful for diplomats and those who know little about Algeria as it does have some useful background about the country.

I was hopeful that The Battlefield would provide some insight into the problems of Algeria and provide a basis for study in other Islamic revolutions. It did neither. What it did do was bore me to sleep on several occasions.

The Battlefield is a collection of essays where the author assumes that the reader has a basis of knowledge in Algerian history. Without this basis, the readier will be researching the names of key Algerian players while trying to understand the intricacies of the Algerian political and economic reforms. The author also assumes some understanding of French, as French terms, with and without translation, are liberally spread throughout the essays.

Given these problems, the writing is difficult to read through, and I often found myself less interested in the events in Algeria then in trying to keep my eyes open. While the author might be an expert in Algerian political movements, he is not able to present his theories and explanations in a method which will keep a casual reader engaged.