In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Journal of Military History 68.1 (2004) 309-311



[Access article in PDF]
The Battlefield Algeria, 1988-2002: Studies in a Broken Polity. By Hugh Roberts. New York: Verso, 2003. ISBN 1-85984-684-X. Maps. Tables. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxiv, 402. $25.00.
France and Algeria: A History of Decolonization and Transformation. By Philip C. Naylor. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. ISBN 0-8130-1801-3. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xviii, 458. $49.95.

What happened to Algeria? Or, to paraphrase Bernard Lewis's powerful and disturbing question about Islam, one might ask as well: What went wrong with Algeria? What has happened to this former French colony since 1962, when it gained its independence after a bloody and brutal war that put an end to 132 years of occupation? Why in February 2003, during the first State visit by a French President since independence, was Jacques Chirac greeted by so many Algerians clamoring for visas to France?

The books under review, each with its own and original approach, help us to understand why Algeria, which seemed to be a prosperous country, with vast agricultural and mineral resources, is apparently in an economic impasse, why it has been under military rule since 1962, and why the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale), an instrument of the ruling military, failed to create democratic institutions.

In different ways both of these books are enlightening about the protracted decolonization of Algeria, showing how even when the War of Independence was over and Algeria was finally no longer French, the country was actually not truly independent from France, whose influence has for the last four decades continued to weigh heavily on Algeria.

Informed by a deep knowledge of Algeria, a country he has been studying for more than thirty years, Hugh Roberts responds to several of the questions one must ask about the trajectory of this former French colony, immersed in a profound political and social crisis, with its economy in a state of acute paralysis since the end of the 1980s. Unemployment runs over 30 percent, housing conditions are atrocious, and a demographic explosion has led to unmanageable population growth—from approximately ten million Algerians in 1962 to more than thirty million in 2002, with 80 percent under the age of thirty.

The author analyses the failure of the late president Houari Boumedienne's project to industrialize the country in the 1960s, and demonstrates how Algeria's heavily centralized economy created a crippling dependency on oil and gas revenues, which account for over 90 percent of the country's export earnings. [End Page 309]

In this valuable compilation of twenty-one articles, all but two originally published elsewhere between 1988 and 2002, Roberts analyzes how Algeria became a tightly run dictatorship whose roots actually preceded the Algerian revolution. Indeed, the army, which has been the principal locus of power in Algerian politics since the onset of the War of Independence in November 1954, has been ruling the country—first directly after Colonel Boumedienne's coup in 1965 and indirectly following the latter's death in 1979. Since that date the army has carefully managed elections and periodic dismissals of Algerian presidents, and according to the author even orchestrated the recent uprisings in Kabylia (p. 302).

The author's deeply compelling analysis of the Algerian Army, the central focus of this collection, shows that its role and position remain unshaken, despite the serious challenge posed by the development of a radical Islamic movement, which became a major feature of Algerian society beginning in the 1980s. As Roberts puts it, "The military's sphere has continued to overlap the political sphere and to dominate it" (p. 236). The military's enduring hold on effective power in Algeria has been once again clearly demonstrated in the recent conflict that led to the split between the FLN and President Bouteflika.

Hugh Roberts assesses the influence of the former metropole and demonstrates convincingly that President Bouteflika's 2000 reshuffling of...

pdf

Share