The Algerian Civil War: Washington's new counterinsurgency model

This paper argues that after the failed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, the United States government has adopted a counterinsurgency model that promotes intra-Muslim civil wars, especially in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. It is obvious that the US is here recycling its experience of fighting wars by proxy in Latin America. In fighting communism, though, the US had the added advantage of dealing with a Western ideology. Islamic political ideology is a product of the global south and is still largely incomprehensible to US political and military leaders. If the US is using Islamist groups to fight other Islamist groups, then we are looking at a type of warfare that is more similar to the Algerian civil war than to Latin American wars. Of course Algeria of the 1990s is not the Middle East of the 21st century. This paper simply argues that the strategy that Algerian generals devised and implemented in the 1990s - namely the creation of Islamist groups to fight Islamist opposition - is now being adopted by the US administration to prosecute its wars in the Middle East. Washington has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism (US Undersecretary of State William Burns, cited in James 2002). This is a prescription for intra-Muslim civil war throughout the Middle East. Those involved would be seen as proxies tearing the Muslim world on behalf of Israel and the US (El Alaoui 2007).