''WE ARE ARABS, we are Arabs, we are Arabs!'' proclaimed Ahmed Ben Bella, soon to be the first president of independent Algeria, just after being released from a French colonial prison in 1962. A colleague of his reportedly muttered that if Ben Bella repeated those words enough times, ''they just might come true.'' There was, indeed, an anxiety lurking beneath Ben Bella's mantra. For he knew as well as anyone that nearly a quarter of his Muslim compatriots were not Arab but Berber.

For several decades, the Algerian government has dealt with the Berbers, the descendants of Algeria's original inhabitants, the way most postcolonial governments in the Middle East and North Africa have dealt with ethnic and religious minorities-by attempting to buy them off, and when that has failed, by the blunt force of repression, in the hope that over time they would assimilate into the majority.[...]