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Jamie Rinaldi

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The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future

by Vali Nasr

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in July 2007

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Jamie Rinaldi said: " Over the last three years, I think we've all become painful aware of the sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. Although the political and armed struggle in Iraq probably represents the most intense manifestation of the Shia/Sunni ...more "

Jul 12, 2007 08:12AM · see review

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A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

by Alistair Horne

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Jamie Rinaldi said: " After recently been accused in the local press as having sympathies towards "Marxists and third world revolutionaries" (not me specifically, but my department), I thought it might be wise to begin bolstering my romantic ideas of guerilla struggle and After recently been accused in the local press as having sympathies towards "Marxists and third world revolutionaries" (not me specifically, but my department), I thought it might be wise to begin bolstering my romantic ideas of guerilla struggle and popular insurrection with some cold hard facts.

In all seriousness, Savage War of Peace, Alasdair Horne's exhaustive history of the Algerian war for independence (1954-1962) lays waste to the simplistic and yet not uncommon tendency of scholars and students alike to romanticize revolutionary struggle. The title references Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden' in which the British poet rallied Americans to colonize the Phillipines in 1898 - he warned the struggle to civilize (westernize) the inhabitants would be treacherous, but the results noble - hence "the savage war of peace." Horne nicely illustrates that 110 years of the French's "burden" had both radically segregated society between French and Arab but also created relatively complex infrastructure suitable to sustain a modern state. Horne's lays bear his sympathies in the struggle - by 1954 it was time for the French to leave Algeria - but Horne stops short of adoration of the Algerians - specifically the leadership of the independence movement - the National Liberation Front of Algeria (FLN). If French imperialism rooted itself in the paternalistic and infantilizing imperialism of Kipling's "White Man's Burden," then the FLN's strategy of independence was nothing short of patricide. Although one senses some of these stories were inflated by the French for propaganda purposes, Horne details the carnage FLN operatives left behind in pied-noir (the French term for Algerian settlers) quarters - slit throats, disemboweled cadavers, and carefully arranged mutilations. I'm only at page 200 - only 3 years into the war of independence - so I cannot comment on Horne's analysis on the resolution of the war.

Fifty years later, its easy to slip into the sort of romanticism that celebrates the revolutionary struggles of the mid-20th century - struggles that were necessary to end the disgusting monster of imperialism - but Horne reminds us that these struggles were hardly cakewalks - but wars that left dead on both sides and often resulted in the promise of an uncertain future. ...more "

Jul 12, 2007 07:51AM · see review