The humane French.

From a revierw by David Pryce-Jones of the book THE BATTLEFIELD: ALGERIA by Hugh Roberts. The book looks at the civil war in Algeria that has claimed at least 100,000 lives.

The FLN rulers and army generals have had to decide whether to make concessions to the FIS or eliminate them by whatever means are available. Rulers of almost all Arab countries have faced this choice in dealing with their assorted challengers; and in the manner of Hafiz Assad in Syria or Saddam Hussein in Iraq they have had no trouble resorting to mass murder. Left to themselves, the FLN have shown a preference to opt for conciliation, Algerian tribal-style. But whenever this course is tried, France weighs in to obstruct it and ensure more blood-letting. Roberts is most instructive on the subject. The collapse of the Soviet Union, he points out, drained meaning out of socialism, and further allowed France to reclaim Algeria as a client state. Two motives are impelling the French, a fear of Islamism and the long-term programme of enlisting Arabs and Africans in their struggle against the United States. The European Union, Roberts shows in a pioneering chapter, is the arena in which the French exploit and extend the Algerian crisis for their own imperial purposes.