Algeria

"Every veil that fell, every body that became liberated from traditional embrace of the haik, every face that offered itself to the bold and impatient glance of the occupier, was a negative expression of the fact that Algeria was beginning to deny herself and was accepting the rape of the colonizer."

"A palsy stroke of Nature shook Oran, Turning her city to a sepulchre."

"Around us knowledge has been extinguished, and recruitment of men of religion and men of law has ceased; that is to say, we have made Muslim society much more miserable, more disordered, more ignorant, and more barbarous than it had been before knowing us."

"The Barbary states of North Africa (or, if you prefer, the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, plus Morocco) were using the ports of todays Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia to wage a war of piracy and enslavement against all shipping that passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. Thousands of vessels were taken, and more than a million Europeans and Americans sold into slavery."

"Immediately after independence, I was associated with all those who, in the world, themselves undertook the struggle to liberate their own country. It was thus this phase in the fight for national liberty that I participated completely. In Tunisia, in Morocco, in Vietnam, Algeria has become somewhat like the "mother of freedom struggles"; to support them was thus for us a sacred mark. When someone came to ask us for help, it was sacred. We did not even think twice. We helped them, even if we had only meagre means; we offered them arms, a little bit of money, and in occasion, men."

"At last upon the twelfth day of our leaving Tunneis, having arrived at Algier, and abandoning my Conduct with a good respect, I stayed in a Spaniards house, turned Runagate, who kept a roguish Taverne, and a ground planked Hospitality. In all this way of twelve score miles, I payed no Tribute, neyther had I any eminent perrill, the Country being peaceable, though the people uncivill. [...] I found here abundance of slaves, most of them Spaniards, whom they dayly constraine within Towne to beare all manner of burdens here and there, and without Towne to drudge in the fields, amongst their Vines and Cornes, and other toyling labours, abusing them still with buffets and bastinadoes as their perverstnesse listeth: Neither durst I leave my lodging, unlesse I had three or foure Christian slaves to guide me, and guard me too from scelerate vulgars: who beare no respect to any stranger nor free Franck."

"Imezwura iban asen Ineggura iban asen Ahlil ay ilemmasen."

"Algeria became independent in 1962 after eight years of bitter civil war which cost the lives of a million Muslims and led to the expulsion of about the same number of French settlers (les pieds noirs). Ahmed Ben Bella, its leader, became the spokesman for the Third World. China recognised the FLN in 1958 and the Soviet Union in 1960. The pro-Soviet Algerian Communist Party thought that another revolution was necessary to correct the errors of the first. An attempt by the KGB to conclude an intelligence agreement with the new government failed. Many national liberation movements had offices in Algiers, and Algeria provided weapons and military training for the struggle to liberate Africa. Among those who were inspired were Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress along with Yasir Arafat, and al Fatah received considerable support from the FLN."