Killers in the Casbah

Available for over a year

For Nelson Mandela's ANC and Yassar Arafat's PLO the Algerian war of independence was a shining example of how a powerful government could be defeated by a highly motivated group of activists. In 1954 Algeria was an integral part of France, with a million long-established settlers dominating the local Arab majority. The decision of a new revolutionary group, the FLN, to use violence in the struggle for Algerian independence began a period of savagery which would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and a decade of chaos in the politics of France. Fergal Keane and historian Martin Evans explore the roots of the conflict and its legacy of terrorist violence around the world. Producer: Alasdair Cross.