Algeria: The First Revolt

“The revolution must go on!” cried Strongman Ahmed ben Bella. Countered Colonel Mohand Ou el Hadj: “The time has come to give the right of speech to all revolutionaries.” Thus the first revolt broke out last week against Ben Bella’s year-old regime. To be sure, the motives included provincial pride, poverty and political ambition. But the root cause was Ben Bella’s drive toward absolute power at the expense of his onetime, rebel comrades in Algeria’s struggle for independence. Stronghold of the revolt was fabled Kabylia, a sweep of razor-spined mountains and deep gorges east of Algiers (see map). Populated by 1,000,000 fiercely independent Berbers who call themselves imazighen (free men), Kabylia was overrun by successive invasions of Arabs, Romans, Vandals, Spaniards, Turks, and finally the French —but it has never been totally subdued. No Algerians fought more heroically in the 1954-62 guerrilla war against France; yet the Kabyles charge that Arab Ben Bella has done little for their devastated region. Indeed, grass is growing up around the cornerstones of many a promised textile mill.

Jeweler in the Rough. Kabylia discontent was tailor-made for a disenchanted native son, Hocine Aït Ahmed, who shared a French prison with Ben Bella but is now among the several revolutionary “chiefs” who have been elbowed aside by the strongman. A dreamy Marxist, Aït Ahmed, 37, opposed Ben Bella’s outlawing the Communist Party last year. Then last June, on the floor of the National Assembly, Aït Ahmed denounced the government’s arrest of an independent chief and Ben Bella critic, leftist Mohammed Boudiaf. Repairing to his Kabylia village of Michelet, Aït Ahmed formed a tiny, clandestine party, the Front of Socialist Forces. With hardly any difficulty, the F.S.F. convinced over half the voters in Kabylia to boycott last month’s referendums that rubber-stamped Ben Bella’s one-party constitution and his nomination for President.

Among those won over to Aït Ahmed’s movement was another disgruntled ex-rebel, Colonel Ou el Hadj, 52, the Kabylia army commander. A Berber and onetime jeweler, Ou el Hadj had served as wartime boss of Wilaya III, the Algerian guerrillas’ savagely aggressive Kabylia military zone. Ou el Hadj had become furious with Ben Bella’s army boss and No. 2 man, Colonel Houari Boumedienne, for purging the ex-guerrillas in favor of more obedient officers, many of whom spent the war in exile.

At the Forum. The two dissidents launched last week’s crisis at a Sunday rally in the tile-roofed Kabylia capital, Tizi-Ouzou, which they had ringed round with machine guns. In Algeria’s first popular demonstration against Ben Bella, 2,000 turbaned men and shawled women flocked into the town square, unintimidated by a government helicopter that fluttered past overhead. Sharing the platform, Aït Ahmed and Ou el Hadj proclaimed what began, at least, as a peaceful insurrection. Aït Ahmed called Ben Bella a “potentate,” charged him with “betraying his comrades” and “destroying the revolution,” added: “If the government wants to change its ways, we are ready to discuss things sincerely. If it refuses, we refuse to rally to this dictatorship.”

In Algiers, Ben Bella called an emergency Cabinet meeting, fired Colonel Ou el Hadj, denounced Aït Ahmed and his party as “tools of imperialism.” To unite the country, the Algerian leader suddenly charged that Morocco had massed troops “ten meters from the Algerian frontier”—an accusation for which there was little evidence, despite some recent border incidents.

Then, going before a rally of 100,000 hysterical supporters trucked into the Forum, Algiers’ main square, Ben Bella shouted hotly: “There are those who say I am a dictator, but dictatorship is … personified by Mussolini and Trujillo . . . Ben Bella hates the rich and loves the poor.” To prove it, he announced: “From this minute on, every inch of French-owned land in Algeria belongs to the people”—thus confiscating the last remaining 2,500,000 acres still tilled by the fast-dwindling French colony. Formalizing his dictatorial rule, Ben Bella called Parliament into session, assumed “full powers” under his constitution.

Mist in the Trees. Militarily, things settled into an Alphonse-Gaston opéra bouffe. Coolly refraining from an all-out attack on the insurgents, Ben Bella vowed that “no blood will flow,” and Colonel Ou el Hadj said that he certainly would not be the first to shoot. Only one clash was reported all week; Ou el Hadj claimed that government forces wounded one of his men north of Tizi-Ouzou. When five jeeploads of government troops rolled into Tizi-Ouzou, Ou el Hadj and Aït Ahmed politely decamped to Michelet, where they were just as politely left alone, and opposing troops lighted one another’s cigarettes. Rebel strength numbered no more than 2,000, if that many. To TIME Correspondent James Wilde, the dissident colonel eloquently denied reports that his men were digging in. “Guerrillas do not dig in,” he said. “They move about like clouds over the mountains and disappear, like mist, into the trees.” At his side, co-Rebel Aït Ahmed, clad in jacket and casual pullover, awkwardly cradled a submachine gun.

At week’s end Ben Bella moved shrewdly to end the ridiculous stalemate and even turn it to his advantage. He appointed as chief of staff Commander Takar Zbiri, an old guerrilla buddy of Colonel Ou el Hadj who has also been feuding with Army Chief Boumedienne. The move was designed to pacify Ou el Hadj, in hopes of persuading him to desert Aït Ahmed. But since Boumedienne has been occupying the chief-of-staff post himself, the action also had the effect of downgrading the army boss, long rated as Ben Bella’s last potential rival, who was in Moscow negotiating details of a $100 million Soviet loan. Then, with another mission off to Morocco to ease tension along the border, Ben Bella settled back to see if the rebels could do more than drift over the mountains and disappear, like mist, into the trees.