Think Iraq is bad? Algeria was worse, says historian
Sir Alistair Horne, the great historian of modern war, believes that the war in Iraq most resembles the Algerian war against the French of 1954-62, of which he wrote a celebrated history.
The Algerian war, launched by ferocious nationalists, many of whom had served as soldiers in the French Algerian regiments against Germany in the concluding years of the second world war, was as bitter and cruel as Iraq has become.
As the Algerian war did, the Iraq war has spilt over into the homelands of the Western armies fighting it, leading to terrorism and atrocities on Western soil. It has also affected the politics of those homelands. It has also baffled, just as Algeria did, governments as to how to bring the war to a conclusion.
And it has drawn into the conflict external forces, based on neighbouring Muslim countries that support the anti-Westerners and complicate efforts at solutions by favouring one party or another among the Muslim combatants.
In addition, there is vast oil wealth, to intensify Western desire to achieve victory.
As a war, Iraq depressingly resembles Algeria. There are the same massacres of Muslims who support the Western troops, the same failure to inflict disabling setbacks on the enemy, the same inability to identify the source of hostile supplies and recruits, the same sense of frustration in the Western leadership at its failure to get on top of the situation. [...]
[tags]France,Algerian war,Iraq[/tags]
