Algeria: No Elections

The Algerian F.L.N. always boasted that its members were a disciplined and dedicated “band of brothers.” But last week, after only two months of freedom, the brothers were engaged in a bitter power struggle that mocked the solidarity shown in seven years of war.

Roared Affirmative. In Algiers, Ahmed ben Bella, the man who precipitated the split and leaped into power last month, is now fighting desperately to stay on top. One night last week he stepped out on a balcony overlooking the Forum, crowded with an unruly mob of some 30,000 Moslems who had both booed and cheered previous speakers. On the fringes of the throng stood helmeted troops who are loyal to a local commander named Colonel Si Hassan.

Passionately, Ben Bella told the crowd that Hassan’s troops had seized Algiers Radio from his Political Bureau, were censoring Algiers’ newspapers and interfering with the free movement of bureau members. Ben Bella cried: “Are you for order? Are you for the Political Bureau? Do you favor all troops being enrolled in a national army?” To each question, the crowd roared “Yes!” But Colonel Hassan, apparently, was not listening. He allowed no word of Ben Bella’s speech to be printed in the Algiers newspapers, and his troops continued to plaster the city with posters denouncing Ben Bella and his friends as “colonial stooges” and “tools of the imperialists.”

Ben Bella’s difficulty was that he had lost one of the props of his authority. When he took over the government early in August, Ben Bella was backed by most of the chiefs of Algeria’s six wilayas (military districts) and by 45,000 army regulars under Colonel Houari Boumedienne. But the wilaya chiefs, and their estimated 60,000 guerrilla troops, reacted suspiciously when instructed to assemble in the barracks vacated by the French and await further orders. Next, the guerrillas were curtly forbidden to collect local taxes, distribute food stocks or requisition public buildings or private cars.

The six wilaya chiefs descended on Algiers and. in a series of conferences running as long as 18 hours, flatly told Ben Bella they would not surrender their power until the election of a national government. The military men demanded, and got, one-third of the 196 candidates to Algeria’s first Constituent Assembly, scheduled to be elected on Sept. 2.

The wilaya chiefs argue that they suffered most in the war against the French, and that others are now trying to reap the benefits—e.g., Boumedienne’s regular army, which sat out the war in training camps in Tunisia and Morocco, and Ben Bella himself, who was for five years a French prisoner. The wilaya chiefs are mostly young and tough, and sudden death caused a rapid turnover. Colonel Si Hassan, who rules Wilaya 4, which includes Algiers and the surrounding region, is a 28-year-old former medical student who quit school in 1956 to join the guerrillas. He was soon treating up to 20 wounded a day, with one eye fixed on his medical books. During the heavy fighting of 1959, so many Wilaya 4 officers were killed that Si Hassan automatically became commander.

Tight Control. At week’s end. Colonel Hassan’s 20,000 troops held Algiers in a grip of steel. Even Ben Bella’s spellbinding speech in the Forum did not seem to strengthen the Political Bureau’s position. Declaring that the wilaya revolt made it impossible for the Political Bureau “to fully exercise its responsibilities,” Ben Bella announced postponement of the Sept. 2 national election. Rumors swept through Algiers that he would even flee the city. The way seemed open for the emergence of another strongman. Most likely candidate: Colonel Houari Boumedienne, commander of the regular army, who has remained on the sidelines while members of the Political Bureau and the wilaya chiefs exhausted themselves in their power struggle.