Alistair Horne on Two Savage Wars

I’m deep into Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace (1977; NYRB reprint 2006) (link), about the French-Algerian war of the 50s-60s. It’s worth the effort but it’s not easy going: the story is well told, but it’s grim and Horne does nothing to smooth its rough edges—let’s just say they won’t likely be turning it into a musical real soon. For its part, the New York Review of Books must feel they won the lottery on this one. Did they know when they signed on for the reprint that the original would be the must-read book among junior officers in the Middle East, with yellowed originals reputedly commanding upwards of $200?

The differences between French Algeria and the 21^st-Century are Iraq are obvious and should not be elided. America is not a traditional occupying power in Iraq like the French were in Algeria. There is no class of permanent resident Europeans, like the pied noir in Algeria. And so forth. For the similarities, it is perhaps convenient to let Horne speak for himself: his new 2006 preface is posted at the NYRB website (link). Here’s the money shot:

The lessons surely apply today. At the time of writing, one feels that Bush’s Washington (and Blair’s London) also went blindly into Iraq —and into collision with the Islamic world—without the kind of necessary preparation, where study of Algeria in 1954-62 might have helped. At the very least its lessons might have imposed caution before getting involved in Iraq in the first place.

There are at least three areas where the echoes are particularly painful, if not deafening.

ONE: In the early days of the Algerian War, once the FLN realised it was not strong enough to take on the powerful French Army, it concentrated its attacks on the native police loyal to France. Result: a deadly loss of morale among the police, with defections to the FLN, and the French Army defensively reduced to protecting the police, instead of concentrating on active “search-and-destroy” missions. The “insurgents” in Iraq have learned from this strategy with deadly effect.

TWO: The benefit of porous frontiers. In 1954-62, the winning French Army was paralysed by its inability to pursue its FLN enemy across into its friendly bases in neighbouring Tunisia and Morocco. This is what, in effect, led to the collapse of the French government and the advent of de Gaulle in 1958. In their turn, the Iraq insurgents have been able to use Syria—and now, much more dangerously, Iran—to similar advantage.

THREE: The vile hand of torture; of abuse, and counter-abuse. In the Algerian War what led—probably more than any other single factor—to the ultimate defeat of France was the realisation, in France and the world at large, that methods of interrogation were being used that had been condemned under the Nazi Occupation. …

Thomas E. Ricks reviews the book here. Another good review is here. Horne himself weighs in on Israel here.

OTOH, if Andrew Sullivan is right, maybe you should skip Algeria and cut straight to (another NYRB favorite) the Thirty Years War.