Okay, so I'm reading Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace" about the Algerian War of Independence 1954-1962. I got caught up in the buzz out of the War Colleges - the search for insights into insurgencies. This book is now getting very expensive with second-hand prices heading into the hundreds. The buzz is justified. There are enough significant parallels with the chaos in Iraq to make it valuable.

One quote leapt off the page at me. In 1894, Paul Cambon, the French Governor-General spoke of the results of breaking up the traditional great families and tribes of Algeria:

"because we saw them to be forces of resistance. We did not realise that in suppressing the forces of resistance in this fashion, we were also suppressing our means of action. The result is that we are today confronted by a sort of human dust on which we have no influence and in which movements take place which are to us unknown."

Prescient - then and now.