QUANTICO -- School of Advanced Warfighting, Marine Corps University, Quantico. Basement seminar room; April 11-14; two hours:

Until the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military wasn't much interested in a French colonial war in North Africa that occurred half a century ago.

Now, as the United States enters the fourth year of fighting in Iraq, the French struggle against Algerian rebels in the 1950s has become a hot topic.

In both cases, a Western power with great technological advantages confronted an Arab insurgency that relied heavily on urban terrorism but also maintained camps in the remote desert. And in both cases, the wars grew in unpopularity back home. The differences can also be instructive: While the French were fighting to stay in Algeria, for the Americans, success would be leaving Iraq as soon as possible, as long as they left behind a stable, independent government.

But the strong parallels are the reason used copies of Alistair Horne's classic history of the Algerian War, "A Savage War of Peace," have been fetching more than $100 on Amazon.com, with some officers deployed to Iraq poring over it and pressing it on colleagues.

They are also why 11 officers were gathered on a recent Friday morning in a basement classroom at the Marine Corps' School of Advanced Warfighting, in a red-brick building a few steps from the banks of the Potomac. There were eight Marines, one Army major, one officer from Australia and one from Italy. They were talking about Algeria, but Iraq was in the back of their minds.....

SAW 7202-06: 'The French Army at War In Algeria, 1954-1962'