Abstract

Editorials

This article presents information related to political conditions of several nations. U.S. President George W. Bush's gastrointestinal eruption in Japan on January 7, prompts the usual hard-nosed speculation. Perhaps the President's stomach was reminding him that it was time to come home and face reality. Echoes of 1962 were plainly audible last month in the celebratory event, following the landslide victory of Islamic militants in Algeria's parliamentary elections. Thirty years ago this summer, thousands of exultant residents of Algiers draped themselves in the national colors and surged through the capital city's historic Casbah to mark the demise of French colonial rule. The task of guiding Algeria into the postcolonial era felt in 1962 to a 43-year-old guerrilla chief named Ahmed Ben Rella, who modeled his leadership style after that of another soldier-statesman of peasant extraction, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.