James D. Le Sueur’s Algeria since 1989: Between Terror and Democracy (Zed: 2010) provides for the most up-to-date reading on the Algerian Civil War since Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed by John Philips and Martin Evans (Yale University Press: 2007). The book offers a comprehensive introduction to the country’s history since 1989, using English and French sources and interviews with Algerian and foreign experts and exiles (notable examples include Hugh Roberts and Anouar Benmalek; Roberts’s comments are especially insightful and add much to the book’s themes and perspective). Le Sueur gives the “national reconciliation” process a hard and studied look. He attempts to place the 1988-1992 “transition” into a global context, emphasizing its importance for political Islamists and the end of the Cold War, comparing its abrupt end to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1988. In this, Algeria since 1989 represents a noble effort to contextualize Algeria’s recent history for English-speakers. The book spends thankfully little time rehashing the colonial history or struggling to make Camus relevant to the Civil War; it tells the Algerian story from 1989 straight. The author may assign too much importance to ideology, particularly where Chadhli Bendjedid’s initiation of liberal market and political reforms are concerned. The 1989 moment came from rather cynical political calculations (as shown in the design of the electoral law, which was meant to favor large parties and thus re-enforce the FLN’s hold on power, but ended up aiding the FIS because of the unpopularity of and elite divisions within the FLN) which are not emphasized here. Le Sueur begins (and finishes) the book by referencing identity conflicts (Arab vs. Berber, arabisant vs. francisant, etc.), especially when referring to the tensions that produced the Civil War; this is common in writing on Algeria, but Le Sueur does well in disallowing identity-centric analysis to dominate his history. It is also relatively free of Cold War baggage. This is a praiseworthy tome. Continue reading
