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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Algeria: an intellectual fashion revisited |
Author: | Sherman, Alfred |
Year: | 1989 |
Periodical: | The World Today: Chatham House Review |
Volume: | 45 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 8-10 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Algeria |
Subjects: | political conditions rebellions 1988 |
Abstract: | By the 1950s, Marshal Bugeaud's (1784-1849) great mission to restore Roman Africa to its former prosperity, civilization and unity with Europe across the Mediterranean had manifestly failed beyond hope of recovery. Bugeaud's enterprise was defeated by the same forces which are now defeating Algeria's President Chadli Benjedid: Islam and demography. The recent riots in Algeria call into question the intellectual fashions of the 1960s and 1970s whereby the National Liberation Front (FLN) saw the world through a Marxist-Moslem prism and imposed socialism, from above, with subsequent disastrous effects. When masses of people feel that neither a hundred years of French rule nor 25 of Arab Socialism have brought them material or spiritual benefits, they inevitably turn to fundamentalist Islam. However, one sees no evidence of re-thinking on the part of the Chadli regime. And if, in 1951, the benevolent observer could advise France to prepare to decolonize as painlessly as possible, in 1989 he would be at his wits' end to work out a strategy for the victors and beneficiaries of the applauded war of Algerian independence after 26 wasted years. Ref. |