The Past Is Present

Algiers, 1960                                                                     Nicolas Tikhomiroff

When I was young, I lived for a year in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. One of the things I remember quite vividly from that time was the many dark-haired, dark-eyed, serious-looking men working construction jobs, repairing the streets. They were, as I came to know them, "les Algériens." They were in that particular part of Switzerland, I guessed, because it was French-speaking, and they were French-speaking, I learned, because Algeria had been a French colony from 1830 until the people won their independence in a bloody eight-year war that ended in 1962. Is it a coincidence, then, that the Charlie Hebdo attackers were "of Algerian origin"? This Beirut-based journalist thinks not (story, slideshow, video): http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/charlie-hebdo-paris-attack-brothers-campaign-of-terror-can-be-traced-back-to-algeria-in-1954-9969184.html