One could easily argue that Al Qaeda and the worldwide jihad pansurgency have their roots in the Algerian War. Alistair Hornes’s magnificent book Savage War of Peace, Algeria 1954-1962 is a must read for a thorough understanding of what’s going on in Iraq and the Muslim world today. The Algerian insurgents were, at the beginning, a mix of westernized intellectuals and Muslim fundamentalists, but soon enough the jihadists took over. Simply put, they were more brutal, willing to commit the kind of atrocities that would put them in the vanguard. It is vital to understand that what’s going on in...
