My battle of Algiers2005

Historian and biographer Morgan recalls a war that we would do well not to forget, recounting his own experiences as a French soldier in the savage Algerian War in 1956-1957. A Yale graduate who had grown up in both France and America, he relives the harrowing conflict in which every Arab was considered a terrorist--and increasingly, many were. He spends months in the back country, where everyone, including himself, becomes involved in unimaginable barbarities. "You cannot fight a guerrilla war with humanitarian principles," an officer tells him. Later, in Algiers, his brief journalistic experience gets him a job writing for a newspaper. He lives through the day-to-day struggle to put down the first Arab urban insurgency in modern history, with its unrelenting menu of bombings,...