In launching their war of independence in November 1954, Algerians emphatically rejected this divisive bait, presenting instead an unshakeably united front against French hegemony, and rejecting numerous attempts to re-cast them into warring tribes fighting one another.

The crisis in Mali highlights the distinctive character and trajectory of Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. A group forged in reactivity and ambiguity, marked by fluid leadership and unarticulated doctrine, finds itself at a crossroads, says Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou.

It was the French colonisers, after all, who were bound to international conventions that govern the practice of harm in a way that a small groups of individuals like the Algerians, were not.

Many evolving disputes in north Africa and the Sahara fuse religious language and political impulse to powerful effect, says Stephen Ellis.

The Shari’a is largely irrelevant to most important issues of policy and administration in the economy and in government. Its historical and symbolic locus is on family and sexuality: patriarchal rights, segregation of the sexes, enforced female modesty.

Cinematic representations of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation frequently invoke The Battle of Algiers as a point of reference. This reflects a long history of Palestinian identification with the Algerian independence movement and more specifically with Pontecorvo’s film.

In light of the crisis currently unfolding in Tunisia - particularly the increasingly strident and incendiary rhetoric of the main political poles - the echoes and parallels with Algeria's own democratic moment two decades ago are stark, and could yield crucial lessons.