Picking sides in Syria, the Algerian experience

Some thirty-five years ago, in 1977 to be exact, I first published A Savage War of Peace, a definitive history of France’s war in Algeria. The war dragged on from 1954 to 1962, torpedoed six French governments, and the Fourth Republic itself, bringing de Gaulle to power. It also introduced a new meaning to the word ‘insurgence.’ Thanks to the indolence of my publishers, the book was allowed to go out of print. When the Iraq War began, to my fury I learned that it was changing hands on the free market in Washington at over $200 a copy, with quantities being bought by the Pentagon.

Then, out of the blue, in 2006, the New York Review of Books offered to reprint it in their ‘Classics’ series; I was invited to write a new foreword, bringing the lessons of Algeria into focus on what was going wrong in Iraq. It became an instant best-seller.