Battle of Algiers (or Iraq... or Afghanistan...)

this week i (finally) saw The Battle of Algiers:

an Italian movie about Algeria's FLN

the film is amazing on many levels, from its persistent de-centering of the protagonist Ali La Pointe, to the extended sequence that shows three Algerian women remaking themselves into French mademoiselles so they can carry out attacks in the Casbah:

the intersection of gender, culture, and revolution

most compelling, however, was the film's ambivalent treatment of Ali's nemesis Colonel Mathieu. i can only describe it as a kind of respectful condemnation, which forces the viewer to confront the underlying contradictions of colonial violence. Mathieu's dialogue with a group of reporters following the capture of a rebel leader epitomizes this conflict, laying the naked aggression and lop-sided violence of the occupying army side-by-side with the French homeland's willful ignorance regarding the circumstances upon which its comfort it based:

"The word 'torture' doesn't appear in our orders. We've always spoken of interrogation as the only valid method in a police operation directed against unknown enemies. As for the NLF, they request that their members, in the event of capture, should maintain silence for twenty-four hours, and then they may talk. So, the organization has already had the time it needs to render any information useless. What type of interrogation should we choose, the one the courts use for a murder case, that drags on for months?"

- Colonel Mathieu

this scene, and others, put me in a perspective to examine broader issues, and i began to consider the film's narrative arc, which opens with the torture or an FLN commander and closes with Algeria's independence. i began to consider the ramifications of state violence and occupying powers. i began to consider this nation, and the past nine years of warfare, torture, and violence.

i began to wonder about how a roll of duct tape in Cuba can detonate an IED in Baghdad, and how a nighttime raid in the Paktia province can lead to the fall of a government. i began to wonder about the Pentagon, who screened the film in 2003 as part of its counter-terrorism training...

i began to wonder how closely they watched.