Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed

Abstract

Although there is a limited literature in English on Algeria, it does contain some gems. This is one of them. It is a balanced and sympathetic approach which will enhance our understanding of that country. Martin Evans and John Phillips tackle a difficult subject: our view of Algeria has tended to focus on the traumatic war of independence from France in the 1950s, framed for many by Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers (1966). Following Independence in 1962 a state socialist Algeria played a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement, until the turbulent years of the 1980s and 1990s during which the majority of the population was trapped between the military-backed government and radical Islamists in a civil conflict of which there remain echoes today. Faced with the complexities of a society where almost anything one can say about it as well as its opposite may be true, many writers fall into the trap of focusing on the extremes in Algerian society, taking refuge in easy generalisations. Rejecting such an approach, Evans and Phillips write: The aim of this book is to scrape away at the layers of confusion and obfuscation in order to reveal the causes of this violence. We want to go beyond stereotypes which interpret the conflict as the consequence of a pathological Oriental mindset, the simple battle between secularists and Islamists or the inevitable failure of the post-independence regime. There is nothing inevitable or predetermined about Algeria (p. xv).