US: The hottest movie in New York is Gillo Pontecorvo's classic 1965 cinema-verité study of urban guerrilla warfare, The Battle of Algiers, which opened this week at the independent Film Forum in Greenwich Village, writes Conor O'Clery
The semi-documentary re-creates the terror and repression that accompanied the 1954-1962 struggle for independence by Muslim rebels against the French army in Algiers.
It pits rebel FLN leader Ali la Pointe, a petty criminal radicalised by witnessing the execution of a rebel leader, against Col Mathieu, a ruthless chain-smoking French officer who succeeds in understanding and ultimately crushing the insurgency, only to see it erupt again - and succeed - two years later.
Last summer the movie, restored and with new sub-titles, was screened at the Pentagon by the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. Staff were invited by e-mail which read: "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film."
In the movie, la Pointe sends women past army checkpoints to plant bombs in baskets inside cafes crowded with French Algerian teenagers, to which the French respond by blowing up houses in the Casbah.
La Pointe's network of cells is unravelled by informers tortured under the supervision of Mathieu, who uses the information to compile wall charts of the guerrilla structure, just as US commanders are doing today in Iraq.
The film takes the side of the oppressed bomb-planters and shows how the harsh counterinsurgency measures alienated the Muslim population. It highlights the dilemma for an army which is trying to win over a hostile population.
The Americans have been through this before - in Vietnam. In the 1960s US counterinsurgency agent Edward Landsdale, the model for Graham Greene's "Quiet American", spent months living in a district near Saigon trying to win the hearts and minds of the local Vietnamese, only to see his efforts destroyed when an American officer shelled their houses during the Tet offensive; leading the survivors, in Lansdale's words, to "hate all Americans".
What, one wonders, did the Defence Department experts take from The Battle of Algiers? Shortly after the Pentagon screening, the US military resorted to Operation Iron Hammer in Iraq, kicking in doors, blowing up houses and using air strikes.
A US commander ordered the encircling of a troublesome Sunni village with razor wire, just as the French put barbed wire at the entrances to the Casbah to isolate the bombers, while infuriating the residents. Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has advised all US officials to see the film if they want to understand what is happening in Iraq.
The first time I saw The Battle of Algiers was at Queen's University in Belfast in 1969 where it served as a chilling primer on the horrors to come. According to Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist with the Rand Corporation, it was studied by both the British army and the IRA as the conflict unfolded in Northern Ireland.
Martin Sieff, a Belfast-born managing editor for UPI, reflected recently on how the US now has a "Battle of Algiers or Belfast" on its hands in Baghdad. In many respects it is worse, he wrote.
The IRA drew support from only a minority within the Catholic minority, and in Algeria the French army could rely on settlers and large elements of the Muslim majority.
In Baghdad, Sieff pointed out, the US has no prior history, experience or associations whatsoever, and proportionately far fewer troops on the ground.
Prof Christopher Hewitt of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, an authority on terrorism, has also compared Baghdad to Belfast.
"The dilemma of the American military is that the more vigorously they pursue the guerrillas the more hostile the Iraqis are likely to become," he wrote.
"The latest plans which rely upon Iraqis to replace American troops face the same dilemma that confronted the British in Northern Ireland. Protestants could be recruited to serve in the Royal Ulster Constabulary or the Ulster Defence Regiment, but Catholics who served were seen as traitors and murdered by the IRA.
"Hence the RUC and UDR became de-facto sectarian forces. In Iraq, using Shias or Kurds to control the Sunni areas would have similar effects."
Retired general Wesley Clark, who is running for president as a Democrat, has been telling voters he opposed the Iraq war "from the beginning".
However, his opponents have dug up evidence he gave to a congressionaql committee in September 2002 which challenges this.
There was no question that Saddam Hussein was a threat, Clark said. "Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time . . . He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet . . . As Richard Perle [Defence Department adviser] so eloquently pointed out, this is a problem that's longstanding.
"It's been a decade in the making. It needs to be dealt with, and the clock is ticking on this."