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Sat 03 Mar 2003Misunderstanding Algeria
Politics: At the beginning of the 21st century, the Algerian catastrophe is on a scale comparable to the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia and Chechnya. Unfortunately, Hugh Roberts's book does little to advance our understanding of the country's history or the current state of affairs there, writes Lara Marlowe.
When Algeria won independence from France in 1962, this proud North African country enjoyed immense sympathy worldwide. Endowed with natural gas and oil reserves, fertile plains that had provided grain and citrus for all of France, snow-capped mountains and Mediterranean beaches, Roman ruins and desert oases, Algeria was a country of wealth and beauty which promised to be a model post-colonial state.
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