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

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.


Adeiu, Algerie Francaise   August 4, 2002
Matherson (Rhinebeck)
30 out of 34 found this review helpful

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.


A savagely racist work   February 15, 2007
Johnny Domino (Needles, California)
18 out of 42 found this review helpful

This epic work is currently being referenced repeatedly as a cautionary tale of what the U.S. should be careful of in Iraq. Superlatives like "history at its best", "an all-time classic" and "superbly accurate" are being tossed around carelessly to describe Alistair Horne's history.

In fact, it remains a remarkably racist work loved by State Department officials and neocons alike - similar, but not quite on par with, the racial hatred on display in that other State Department favourite, The Arab Mind, by Raphael Patai.

In this work, Alistair Horne describes in gory detail atrocities committed by the FLN, or Algerian nationalist rebels, while skimming over far worse atrocities committed by the nice white-guy French.

Atrocities are not to be ranked, measured, and compared, but Horne's bias becomes transparent when he describes in detail and over several pages the killing of 100 French - a tragic and ugly incident, no doubt - but then blithely mentions in passing, without flesh-and-blood detail, that the French killed 6,000 Algerians in response. Six thousand! Most of these were summary executions of unarmed prisoners, a common French tactic, and many thousands of the civilians murdered were toddlers and elderly women.

This is but a glimpse into the sick mind of Alistair Horne, who manages somehow to see the French as victims. He deplores the damage to the French psyche caused by their torture of thousands of Algerian civilians, without once considering the damage the torture had on Algerians, the actual people being tortured.

Horne makes cursory mentions of barbaric acts committed by the French but never draws the conclusion that French society itself may have been perverse, twisted, or morally sick. Yet, he has no hesitation in expressing that Algerians' behaviour proves that they are somehow subhuman, or less human, than Europeans.

In short, this is a good book to read to understand how once upon a time the French, like the Americans today, felt themselves infallible, civilised, and racially superior to Arab and other "primitive" peoples. It is an illusion that must be fought.

Another reviewer on this site mentions that Horne's book covers "Islamic terrorism", but no such phrase is to be found in his book. Contrary to what most Americans believe today, so-called "Islamic terror" is not an eternal and everlasting feature of the modern world; in 1977, when Horne wrote this work, there had yet been no Iranian revolution, no Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (and hence no al-Qaida), no Israeli occupation of south Lebanon (and hence no Hizbullah), and no Israeli-supported creation of Hamas as a counterweight to the secular PLO. Therefore, no such concept of "Islamic terrorism" existed in Horne's mind or in any other person's mind in 1977. It is a failing of the human mind to write current events into history; American journalists employ it as their favourite agitprop tactic.






Lecons sadly not learned   December 18, 2006
Teemacs (Switzerland)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

I am somewhat of a fan of Alastair Horne's, having come to him via his trilogy of books on Franco-German conflicts, and I went looking in Amazon to see if there was anything new from him. And I came across this book, whose purchase many years ago was prompted by the desire to know more about the world of Freddie Forsyth's outstanding thriller "The day of the Jackal". Seeing it again on the Amazon website reminded me as to how relevant it is to the modern story of the US and Iraq. Of course, there are substantial differences; the US is not Iraq's colonial power and the US most certainly does not regard the place as part of the USA, the way the French did Algeria. And because of the lack of a US equivalent of "pieds noirs" (French settlers in Algeria), no matter how badly George Bush messes up, no US paratroop regiment is going to mutiny, try to assassinate him and bring the US to the brink of civil war.

However, the similarities are scary - the reliance on pure military power to win, the use of tactics (particularly in the battle of Algiers) that alienated the locals and effectively made them into allies of the FLN rebels or at least tolerant of them, and the widespread use of torture (a subject that touches raw nerves in France to this day). As with Iraq, the FLN didn't confront the French military head-on, but relied on ambush and, more particularly, on intimidating and murdering local allies of the French, policemen, local officials and the like. There were also French near-equivalents of "Mission Accomplished", even as the war was being lost where it desperately needed to be won - in the hearts and minds of Algerians themselves.

As I write this, former French soccer captain Zinedine Zidane is in Algeria, being feted as a hero. He is the son of harkis, the Algerians who fought on the French side and who had to leave Algeria or face severely curtailed life expectancies. Time has finally healed the wounds. One hopes it will be so with Iraq. One wishes that the Bush Administration had read this highly perceptive book before launching its ill-considered venture - and that it had had the honesty and wisdom to see the lessons therein.



Ever wonder why the French army wanted to kill de Gaulle in "The Day of the Jackal" ? This books explains it, and much more.   June 21, 2006
Demosthenes
13 out of 16 found this review helpful

(1) This is a superb history book, by any standard.
(2) It is not about the last colonial war, but about (arguably) the first post-colonial war:
First suicide bombings? Algeria, in a dance hall full of teenagers, and at a soda fountain.
First big wall to keep out insurgents? Not Palestine, but between Algeria and Tunisia.
First war decided by domestic anti-war public opinion in a distant democracy? Algeria.
First war thrown away by a civilian government in which the military and intelligence services had probably turned the tide? Algeria.
This is a crazy confusing, searing, savagely brutal conflict that shook France to its roots, even more than the Boer war changed England, or the Vietnam war changed America; in which the rebels are riven by divisions amongst themselves, and the governing authority has to deal simultaneously with counter-revolutionary zealots running a private war, a military high command on the verge of rebellion, and an intelligence community in which it is at times difficult to know who is loyal to whom.

In the end, De Gaulle overruled his military and intelligence chiefs and threw away victory when the insurgents had lost by every meaningful measure, and were engaged in a bloody internal purge; when the top intelligence officer of the rebels was a french double agent; where the provincial reconstruction teams were actually making headway in providing widespread schooling and health care, and in improving standards of living. The French military and intelligence services were, at times, brilliant in identifying, and adopting a winning strategy. This is the blueprint of how a technologically advanced democracy can win an irregular civil war.
And then have it thrown away.
De Gaulle rewarded the suicide bombers with a victory they had not won, and gave enduring encouragement to religious fanatics and men of violence everywhere. He unintentionally threw away France's hydrocarbon reserves in North Africa. He condemned thousands of North Africans who had been faithful to France to reprisals of stomach turning barbarity. Towering arrogance matched with incomparable naivete, and staggering irresponsibility. What a legacy.

It was a stroke of idiocy that nonetheless unchained the French economy. France prospered as never before. Algeria was left to wallow in a bloody tyranny of extra-judicial killings that continues, on and off, even to the present day.
Pertinent to current events? Indeed. Extremists who adopt suicide bombings of civilian targets as (in their view) a legitimate tactic of war, are not fighting for anything worth fighting for, and, in being able to rationalise such tactics, also adopt the mentality that prevents them from lifting the resultant society out of violence and poverty. This book is suberb.

(3) If only there were a comparable book about the insurgency in Malaysia - the one insurgency that was defeated by very clever winning of public opinion along with use of the police and army.
(4) "Pied noir", although a term inextricably linked with the Algerian civil war, is not a term that is presently acceptable in polite discourse in France.
(5) There is a great deal to be learned from this excellent analysis.