Algeria: Blushing Strongman

A Western diplomat once described Houari Boumediene as a man you had to stumble over to notice in a crowded room. At such comments, Boumediene will blush to the roots of his reddish hair. Tall, withdrawn, wraithlike, the army colonel is an authentic revolutionary, but he has so little taste for haranguing crowds that he usually gives his speeches in classical Arabic, which most Algerians do not understand. “Believe me,” he is wont to remark, “I don’t like the role of No. 1 man.”

The reticent, reluctant son of a peasant farmer, he rules a nation that won a bloody struggle for independence four years ago, and has since suffered grief from a pell-mell plunge into socialism. It is a land where 3,000,000 out of 12 million people are unemployed and 2,000,000 more are only partially employed. It is a land of piercing poverty, bitter-cold winters and scorching hot summers—all of which have combined to drive 700,000 Algerians to Europe for work and relief. France has 600 Algerian graduate engineers, while Algeria itself has only 100.

“No Need for Lessons.” In the mountain villages of the Kabylia region, once-fierce tribesmen wait like famished eagles for postal checks from sons and nephews working in France. The once-flourishing port of Oran is almost idle, and at the nearby town of Arzew, heralded as one of Algeria’s leading new industrial zones, building sites still lie empty because of the shortage of foreign capital. To add to the misery, farm land in western Algeria has been burned black by the worst drought in a decade, cutting the year’s grain supply in half.

Boumediene insists that Algeria can solve its problems alone. “Algeria has no need for lessons from abroad,” he says, “and her children have no need of foreign counselors to tell them how to construct the new society.” Yet foreign counselors are everywhere. With its own talent draining away to Europe, Algeria counts on 11,000 French technicians to run the country’s railroads, waterworks and powerhouses. Most of the hospitals and clinics are manned by doctors from the U.S., France and the Communist bloc. Some 1,500 Russians are advising the army.

Algeria’s leader clearly wants the help to keep coming. Though Boumediene still rails against “criminal American aggression in Viet Nam,” he is privately imploring the U.S. for 500,000 tons of wheat. To improve relations with France, which has whittled Algerian aid by 50% because of continued friction between the two countries, Boumediene’s government signed a new treaty with Paris last week that clears up at least one major area of dispute—the amount and terms of repayment of Algeria’s pre-independence debt. Under the agreement, Algeria agreed to pay France $80 million on a long-term basis, with its heaviest annual payments amounting to $6 million, or roughly only 1% of the country’s administrative budget.

Boumediene is even trying to patch up relations with Egypt’s Nasser, who was so miffed by Boumediene’s overthrow of President Ahmed ben Bella 18 months ago that he personally quashed a conference of neutral nations sched uled for Algeria. Last month Boumediene made his first state visit to Cairo, and suddenly the two Arab leaders were touring the capital like old friends—all smiles.

A Nervous Leader. Boumediene’s power base is his army, and he is spending almost one-third of the national budget on military hardware, most of it bought from Russia. In the process, Boumediene has built Algeria into the third largest military power in Africa, after Egypt and South Africa. He has also built a menacing opposition. Though he has purged his enemies from the Algerian Labor Federation and sacked rivals on the 24-man Revolutionary Council, many pro-Ben Bella men still surround him in high government posts. Outside the country, powerful exiles like Independence Hero Mohammed Boudiaf are threatening to organize subversion against him. Ben Bella, who could well be the leader of such a revolt, is regularly shifted from prison to prison by special order of his nervous successor.

Under the circumstances, Boumediene still does not feel safe enough to restore the constitution and National Assembly, which were suspended after the coup that raised him to power; instead, Boumediene rules by decree through his Revolutionary Council. His one grudging concession to democracy has been a promise of municipal elections in February. “A country such as ours,” Boumediene says, “which has everything to do, which has need for order, organization and discipline after the terrible crises it has undergone, cannot allow itself the luxury of a formal democracy.”