A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York Review Books Classics) [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post

When Americans talk about the raging insurgency in Iraq, they often draw parallels with the Vietnam War, but a better analogy is probably the French war against nationalist rebels in Algeria from 1954 to 1962. That's one reason why the landmark history of that conflict, Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace, has been an underground bestseller among U.S. military officers over the last three years, with used copies selling on Amazon.com for $150. Indeed, "Algeria" has become almost a codeword among U.S. counterinsurgency specialists -- a shorthand for the depth and complexity of the mess we face in Iraq. Earlier this year, I referred to Horne's book while conversing with one such expert in Taji, Iraq, and got a grim nod of agreement.

Now a new paperback edition of Horne's 1977 classic has been issued, cutting the price of wisdom to a more reasonable $19.95. In a new preface, Horne makes the connection to Iraq explicit. First, he notes, the Algerian insurgents fighting to end France's colonial control over the country avoided taking on the French army directly; instead, they attacked the police and other more vulnerable targets, thereby demoralizing local supporters of the French presence. Second, Algeria's porous borders greatly aided the insurgents, who could receive reinforcements, arms and sanctuary from neighboring countries such as Tunisia and Morocco. Third, and most emphatically, he writes that "torture should never, never, never be resorted to by any Western society."

Those three parallels are provocative enough, as far as they go. But many other, perhaps less obvious points in Horne's lucid, well-organized history may do even more to deepen our understanding of the Iraq War.

Again and again, Horne wrote passages about the French in Algeria that could describe the U.S. military in Iraq. As I wrote about the U.S. Army's big "cordon-and-sweep" operations that detained tens of thousands of civilian Iraqi males in the Sunni Triangle in the fall of 2003, I remembered Horne: "This is the way an administration caught with its pants down reacts under such circumstances. . . . First comes the mass indiscriminate round-up of suspects, most of them innocent but converted into ardent militants by the fact of their imprisonment."

Like the Americans in Iraq, the French in Algeria consistently misunderstood the nature of the opposition, focusing too much on supposed foreign support and too little on the local roots of the insurgency. Horne also detected a distinctly familiar pattern of official optimism among French officials, who were quick to declare their war "virtually over" four years before it ended in their defeat.

Moreover, A Savage War of Peace draws an important distinction between torture by the police and torture by the military. The former damages mainly individuals and need not be hugely damaging to the war effort; the latter, Horne quotes a former French officer as saying, involves the honor of the nation -- as it did at Abu Ghraib and other facilities where Iraqis were abused by American soldiers in 2003-04.

Along the way, Horne offers three other comments that are not particularly encouraging. First, when considering the Bush administration's policy of having U.S. forces stand down as newly trained Iraqi forces stand up, it is worth noting that throughout the eight years of the Algerian war, more Algerians were fighting on the French side than on the rebel side -- and the French still lost.

Second, when trying to understand Iraq's current violence, it is good to recall Horne's comment that "such a simultaneous internal 'civil war' " often rages alongside a "revolutionary struggle against an external enemy."

Finally, when we hear U.S. military officers arguing that they achieved their mission in Iraq but that the rest of the U.S. government failed or the will of the American people faltered, remember Horne's quotation from a French general, Jacques de Bollardière, who was critical of his army's performance: "Instead of coldly analysing with courageous lucidity its tactical and strategic errors, it gave itself up to a too human inclination and tried -- not without reason, however -- to excuse its mistakes by the faults of civil authority and public opinion."

To be sure, there are huge differences between the two wars. Most notably, the United States isn't a colonial power in Iraq, seeking to maintain a presence of troops and settlers as long as possible. Rather, in Iraq, victory would consist of getting U.S. personnel out while leaving behind a relatively friendly, open, stable and independent government. And while elements of the French military tried to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle for pulling out from what he termed "a bottomless quagmire," there is little fear that U.S. officers will go down that rebellious road.

But there are numerous suggestive parallels -- mainly relating to conventional Western militaries fighting primarily urban insurgencies in Arab cultures while support for their wars dwindles back home and while the insurgents hope to outlast their better-armed opponents. As such, anyone interested in Iraq should read this book immediately.

Reviewed by Thomas E. Ricks
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review

"Compelling reading, filled with intimate detail about characters and situations that have served as inspiration for a dozen novels, from The Day of the Jackal on." --Los Angeles Times

"[This] universally acclaimed history...should have been mandatory reading for the civilian and military leaders who opted to invade Iraq." --Washington Times --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics; illustrated edition edition (October 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590172183
• ISBN-13: 978-1590172186
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,492 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incomparable Masterpiece, May 27, 2004

By	Timothy J. Graczewski "tgraczewski" (Burlingame, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (Hardcover)

Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace" -- a narrative of the Algerian death struggle with France in the 1950s and early 1960s -- is history at its finest. Clearly written, passionate and authoritative, this book is a shining example that objective and powerful history can be written on "current events" (the book was first published barely a decade after the French pulled out of Algeria).

As the US-led coalition in Iraq struggles to impose order, comparisons with France's ultimately unsuccessful attempt at holding on to Algeria in the face of Islamic insurgents have become fashionable. Such analogies, however, should be used cautiously. There are a number of salient differences in the two cases. None looms larger than the relatively large and vocal pied noir community in Algeria that Paris had to contend with, first politically and then militarily. In some Algerian cities in the 1950s, such as Constantine, a majority of the residents were of European extraction (although not necessarily French). These pied noirs had roots in Algeria for generations and had a powerful lobby in Paris. A simple political withdrawal from Algeria in 1955 was thus (in my opinion) a political impossibility. The ugly war that erupted was, in the end, tragically unavoidable.

Horne would certainly disagree with this assessment. Myopic intransigence by the French and pied noir leaders is a leitmotif of the narrative. Yet, the author just as consistently praises the FLN leadership for laying out their aims at the 1956 Soumman Conferences and never wavering from them. Algerian inflexibility, it seems, was a virtue; for the French/pied noir community it was a sin.

There is so much to praise in Horne's work (the minor disagreement above notwithstanding) that no review, no matter how flattering, will fully do it justice. If you are student of military history or have a keen interest in colonial / counter-insurgency conflict, "A Savage War of Peace" is as good as it gets. Unfortunately, this book is no longer in print, so you may have to scour used bookstores and various online resources to obtain a copy, but it is worth the effort. There is also a decent chance it will be re-issued in the near future. Failing that, there is always the local library. The important thing is to get your hands on a copy. If you love history, you won't be disappointed.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars War and no peace, August 2, 2000

By	Tareq I. J. AlBaho (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Savage War of Peace: Alegeria 1954-1962 (Revised Edition) [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

At the outset Alistair Horne bemoans the complexities and difficulties involved in writing recent history, where many of the main players are still alive and active. Ironically, he is the one who falls into that trap - for the only faults to this otherwise excellent rendition is the occaisonal of-the-cuff cryptic reference by the author to some event that happened at the time. He obviously assumes that everybody would share his joke. But these are few and tiny details. Over all this is an excellent text. Horne admirably makes up for the lack of documentation on the Algerian side of the war and manages, somehow, dispite that massive misbalance in printed references between France and Algeria, to present a text which presents both sides with equal scholarly depth.

More than a million people died in the Algerian war, yet it is poorly remembered today. Books like this are needed.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adeiu, Algerie Francaise, August 3, 2002

By	Matherson (New York) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: A Savage War of Peace: Alegeria 1954-1962 (Revised Edition) [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

Of all Horne's French histories, this is probably the most epic. The bleeding sore that was French Algeria led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic and almost led, on three separate occasions, to a right-wing military takeover of all metropolitan France. On the other side, the ruthlessly bloody tactics of the Algerian nationalist party, FLN, make the Viet Cong look chivalrous by comparison. There are many memorable characters in this story, including the pied noir supporters (Massu, Soustelle), the French Army leaders (Challe, Salan), and the Algerian leaders (Abbas, Ben Bella, Boumedienne). But the giant of the Algerian story is and will remain General Charles De Gaulle. His political comeback in 1958, during which he founded the Fifth Republic and made his historic address ("Je vous ai compris!") to the pied noirs, bisects the whole narrative: this book falls cleanly into two sections (before and after May 1958), and De Gaulle's leadership in extricating France out of this morass was and remains monumental.