Algeria: Fight Now, Fly Later

At the rate that troubles keep piling up for Algerian President Ahmed ben Bella, he may never satisfy that longing to address the current session of the United Nations General Assembly. Fortnight ago, Ben Bella’s bags were all packed when the Berber revolt in the Kabylia forced him to change plans. Then, after proclaiming with some exaggeration that the rebellion was crushed, Ben Bella confidently put the U.N. trip back on his schedule. Last week it was off again as the strongman faced a new crisis: a nasty border war with neighboring Morocco. Far from avoiding the clash, Ben Bella had reason to welcome it, since it camouflaged his internal problems.

Not Negotiable. Trouble had been brewing for years. As long as the French ruled North Africa, they saw little point in fixing the boundaries between their colonies. Thus, when they pulled out of Morocco in 1956 and gave up Algeria six years later, there was no clearly defined line for 600 miles along the north-south border between the two countries. It might not have mattered much, except that beneath the desert sands of the region was discovered one of the world’s richest deposits of iron ore (65% pure iron), coal and other minerals. Morocco’s King Hassan II claimed the area as part of his ancient kingdom, declared that the Algerian rebels had promised to turn it over in exchange for Morocco’s crucial help during the guerrilla war against the French. No such thing, said Ben Bella; the land is Algerian and not subject to negotiation.

Political enmity heated up the feud over territory. Hassan, a reform-minded but high-living monarch, preserved his ties to the West, kept on thousands of French teachers and technicians to help independent Morocco get started. This policy of moderation was abhorrent to austere, leftist Strongman Ben Bella and his vindictive brand of socialism. The Algerian regime launched a virulent propaganda war against Morocco.

Meal Ticket. Finally, after a border skirmish earlier this month in which Algerian troops killed ten Moroccan soldiers, Hassan mobilized his crack, 35,000-man royal army. The immediate military targets were two tiny, desolate outposts: Hassi Beida, little more than a water hole and a few palm trees perched on a stony hill, and Tin-joub, a mud-walled fort seven miles to the east. One day last week a battalion of 1,000 Moroccan infantry armed with bazookas, recoilless cannon and heavy machine guns stormed both outposts, seized them after a four-hour battle in which at least ten Algerians were slain. By sunset the outnumbered Algerians rushed up reinforcements. Soon 4,000 men were involved in the fighting, 750 miles southwest of Algiers. It was a sporadic struggle, and after four days it subsided. Except for an Algerian plane that bombed and strafed a Moroccan town some 200 miles away, the war consisted mostly of sniping and artillery salvos, exchanged over a no man’s land of rocky ridges, steep ravines and huge boulders jutting out of the desert sand.

Meanwhile, war fever gripped Algeria. At his demagogic best, Ben Bella proclaimed total mobilization to fight the imaginary “collusion” between the Kabylia rebels and the “feudal monarchy” of Morocco. “Hassan to the gallows,” yelled the crowd of 100,000. Thousands of jobless, hungry Algerians happily joined the army, partly to get a free meal ticket. Ben Bella showed up in the National Assembly in a brand-new battle jacket, urged the Deputies to “give up your neckties and cuff links” and sign up too. Most did, and the Assembly was dissolved until further notice.

Truce Talks. For the moment, Ben Bella’s performance succeeded in distracting attention from the deeper problems of economic chaos, political dissension, and simmering rebellion in Kabylia, where guerrillas last week reportedly kidnaped government officials and whisked them into the hills. At the same time, the regime stepped up its anti-American campaign with the charge that U.S. pilots had airlifted Moroccan troops to the border. Despite U.S. official denials, the accusation seemed at least partially accurate. Four days before the fighting broke put, pilots of the U.S. Air Force training mission in Morocco ferried troops in six C-119s and C-47s to Marrakech, 300 miles from the frontier. Belatedly realizing that a border war was in the making, the U.S. hastily ended the operation.

Dutifully, the rival North African brothers went through the motions of truce talks, but the Moroccans refused Algerian demands to withdraw from the outposts, and after six meetings in Marrakech the negotiations collapsed in anger. As the Algerians stormed home, a new battle reportedly erupted at Ich, 300 miles northeast of the original fighting, and Hassan charged that Ben Bella sought to convert the border struggle into a general war. Back in Algiers, Information Minister M’hammed Yazid blandly declared that a “dialogue is still possible.” With that, he boarded a plane for New York, where he will be Ben Bella’s stand-in at the U.N.