An analysis of the background to the current crisis in Algeria, placing in perspective the threats to the state posed by Islamic fundamentalism and economic mismanagement. It looks at the role of the National Liberation Front (FLN), international relations, the economy, and more.

Stone provides a brief historical overview of Algeria since 1830 before focusing on three crucial phases of the postcolonial era: that of Ben Bella and Boumedienne; the reform era of Chadli Benjedid; and the political and economic crisis under the Higher States Committee (HCE). He examines the dominant state institutions--the army and the FLN--and outlines the increasingly bitter divisions, social and political, which account for the current crisis. Since the Algerian military annulled an election in January 1992 that would have brought to power the world's first democratically elected Islamist government, a civil war has raged in which more than 100,000 Algerians have died. The military takeover polarized the country between the political and military elite and the mass of the population. The elite were perceived as interested only in personal gain and holding on to power, while most Algerians faced intense hardship. But the brutality of the Islamists' insurgency--including car bombings, the murder of 'immodestly' dressed women, the assassination of intellectuals, and the wiping out of whole villages--has lost them support. Most Algerians no longer want the Islamic republicanism of the FIS or the millenarianism of the GIA. Martin Stone provides a brief overview of Algeria since 1830 before focusing on three crucial phases of the postcolonial era--those of Ben Bella, Boumedienne and the reformist Chadli Bendjedid; and the political and economic crisis under the Haut Comité d'État (HCE). He examines the donimant state institutions--the army and the FLN--and the increasingly bitter divisions behind the current conflict, especially the factionalism that has hampered ALgeria's attempts to realize its great potential. The book also deals with the large Berber minority, relations with France, the economic background, forgien policy, the 1997 elections, and the administration of President Lamine Zeroual. In conclusion it examines whether the state can reconcile the moderate, convservative Islam of the majority with the minorities on either pole--both Islamic radicals and secularists--and create a political landscape where genuine political pluralism can flourish and extremism be suppressed.

Departing from widely held interpretations of the Algerian war, Wall approaches the conflict as an international diplomatic crisis whose outcome was primarily dependent on French relations with Washington, the NATO alliance, and the United Nations, rather than on military engagement."--BOOK JACKET.

A particularly vicious and bloody civil war has racked Algeria for a decade. Amnesty International notes that since 1992, in a population of 28 million, 80,000 people have been reported killed, and the actual total is almost certainly higher. This terrible war overshadows Algeria's long and complex history and its prominence on the world economic stage--second in size among African nations, Algeria has the longest Mediterranean coastline and contains the world's fifth-largest natural gas reserves. Algeria, 1830-2000 is a comprehensive narrative history of the country. Benjamin Stora, widely recognized as the leading expert on Algeria, presents the story of this turbulent area from the start of formal French colonialism in the early nineteenth century, through the prolonged war for independence in the latter 1950s, to the internal strife of the present day. This book adapts and updates three short volumes published originally in French by La Découverte. For this English edition, Stora has written a new introductory chapter on Algeria's colonial period (1830-1954) and has revised the final section to bring the volume up to date.

Henri Alleg’s candid account of how the French Army brutally tortured him in Algeria first appeared in 1958. Although quickly banned by the French government, it was widely read and remains a classic and powerful indictment of torture. “The lesson of this book... is that we are all on the edge of savagery and if we begin to slip over that edge, we fall fast and far.” — D. W. Brogan, The New York Times “Written with spare and simple candor, the book is much more than a scalding footnote to fever-hot headlines. The Question does not stop with the Algerian question but goes on to ask: What does it mean to be a human being? It tells of the shame and glory of man.” — Time “In his modest, unassuming and precise fashion, Alleg is describing a triumph of the human spirit... The importance of Alleg’s book extends far beyond Algeria and France. For this is what can happen anywhere; what does happen in many parts of the world and what could happen here. There is nothing ‘inhuman’ about it. It is too, too human. To hush it up, to deny it for any reason whatever is to be an accomplice of the torturers...” — Scotsman “[A] noble and in a sense ennobling book, the dominant impression it leaves is one of a progressive and finally an almost total degradation, a degradation both of persons — except for the tortured, the outlawed — and of social institutions. The Question is far more than an account of atrocities, however spectacular.” — The Nation

Frantz Fanon's seminal work on anticolonialism and the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution. Psychiatrist, humanist, revolutionary, Frantz Fanon was one of the great political analysts of our time, the author of such seminal works of modern revolutionary theory as The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks. He has had a profound impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world. A Dying Colonialism is Fanon's incisive and illuminating account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as "primitive," in order to destroy those oppressors. Fanon uses the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution as a point of departure for an explication of the inevitable dynamics of colonial oppression. This is a strong, lucid, and militant book; to read it is to understand why Fanon says that for the colonized, "having a gun is the only chance you still have of giving a meaning to your death."

In 1959 the Dalai Lama emerged in India, where he set up his government in exile. Soon after he left Lhasa the Chinese People's Liberation Army pummeled the city in the "Battle of Lhasa." The Tibetans were forced to capitulate, putting Mao in a position to impose Communist rule over Tibet