Algeria: The Cuba of Africa

For a while, at least, Algeria was back at war last week. In the rugged mountains and deep canyons of the Kabylia region, where guerrillas had fought for independence for 71 years, new guerrilla fighting erupted that was almost as bitter as the war against the French.

This time it was a struggle between Algerians. On one side stood President Ahmed ben Bella, whose Socialist dictatorship has so far brought his country little beyond unemployment and hunger. On the other side were 1,000,000 dissident Berbers, led by two of Ben Bella’s wartime comrades whose ide ology is vague, but who oppose his ruthless power drive and his economically disastrous rule.

Sniping at Comrades. At first, Ben Bella pretended to ignore the rebellion. Casually he dropped in to visit an Algiers training school, where he sipped tea and played games with orphaned shoeshine boys learning a new trade. He tried to dispose of the dissidents with ridicule. One of the rebel leaders, Hocine Aït Ahmed, had spent much of the war in French prisons (with Ben Bella himself). Told that Aït Ahmed was now wearing an Algerian army uniform, Ben Bella laughed: “He never got a chance to wear it during the war. I hope he enjoys it.” As for the other rebel chieftain, Colonel Mohand Ou el Hadj, who has a brilliant wartime record against the French, Ben Bella contemptuously blamed his defection on the fact that “we were going to nationalize his restaurant in Algiers.”

While sniping at his former comrades, Ben Bella launched a campaign to boost his own popularity. For the first time in seven months, war widows received their pensions. Large shipments of food, much of it donated by the U.S., were hastily trucked to the hungry countryside. Ben Bella seemed to think that he could rally the country against the rebels with promises of further nationalization. But the seizure of medium-sized French land holdings, whose owners had paid better wages than does the government, was far from popular, and no one seemed to think that Algeria’s economic misery would be solved by last week’s nationalization of 43 butcher shops, 30 bakeries, and several ice-cream and soda-pop factories. The crowds that turned out to hear his speeches were notably unenthusiastic.

Reluctantly, Ben Bella postponed his scheduled trip to the U.N. General Assembly and openly threatened the rebels. “There will be no discussion with the criminals, no bargaining,” he shouted. “They only understand the language of machine guns.”

Sheepish Smile. Even as Ben Bella spoke, his army moved. A convoy of seven Soviet-made 85-mm. cannon, a batch of 37-mm. antiaircraft guns and two fresh battalions rolled along twisting roads into the mountain town of Tizi-Ouzou, on the edge of rebel-held territory. Encamped along the high ridges were the guerrillas. They were equipped with heavy machine guns and recoil less cannon, which they cleaned constantly when they were not listening to their transistor radios or posing for Western news photographers.* Indian-style signal fires on the mountain spread news of the government troops’ approach. But each side was unwilling to be the one to touch off a civil war.

Near rebel headquarters in Michelet (pop. 4,000), a government advance was blocked by two cattle trucks jammed with rebels. The opposing commanders were polite. “How can I shoot this man?” asked the rebel colonel, waving a submachine gun in one hand and a Luger pistol in the other. “He served under me during the war against the French.” The regular army major smiled sheepishly. Both men retired to a rock pile near a garage on the outskirts of town, where they smoked cigarettes, chewed grass and argued excitedly while the whole town—plus Western television crews—observed the confrontation. Finally, after 30 minutes, both men stood up, shook hands, and the army major drove off in his Jeep, a crowd of children chasing him down the road.

This stalemate could not long continue. At 3 o’clock one morning, government forces supported by light tanks opened a two-pronged assault on Michelet. In Algiers, the Defense Ministry said its troops fired only when fired upon, claimed that only three government soldiers fell. But some shooting went on all night, and ambulances were spotted racing along the winding roads. Before noon, the army had occupied Michelet without resistance from the townspeople; TIME Correspondent

James Wilde, with the government forces, reported that the tanks moved into town with their radios blaring rock-‘n’-roll music. The guerrillas faded into the wild hills they know so well, vowing to keep up their resistance.

At week’s end Ben Bella called a press conference and proclaimed that the rebellion was finished. He also announced that his border dispute with Morocco (whose King Hassan II has no use for Marxist Ben Bella) will be negotiated. Then he moved to seize the political offensive. The rebels have long demanded an F.L.N. party conference at which veterans of the war against the French could challenge Ben Bella’s policies. Last week Ben Bella finally agreed to hold an F.L.N. meeting—some time in 1964.

What still worries Ben Bella’s critics, as well as the West, was well expressed by Algeria’s Communist newspaper, Alger Republicain. Asked the paper rhetorically: “Why shouldn’t we be the Cuba of Africa?”

-* Incensed by truthful reports of the rebellion against his regime, and the headline treatment it got in the U.S., Ben Bella summarily expelled bureau chiefs of the Associated Press and United Press International, the correspondents for the Paris newspapers Le Monde and L’Aurore, and a French freelancer.