(Corrects day in second paragraph)
* Ben Bella helped lead of fight against French rule
* He shaped the country in first years after independence
* Was ousted in a putsch and jailed
* Lived years in exile before returning to Algeria
By Christian Lowe and Lamine Chikhi
ALGIERS, April 11 (Reuters) – Ahmed Ben Bella helped lead
Algeria’s fight for independence from France and after victory
became its first president, a figure who symbolised the romance
of the national liberation struggle before the harsh reality of
running a country intruded.
He died on Wednesday morning in the Algerian capital, aged
96, after an illness, the state-run news agency reported.
The son of peasant farmers who grew up near Algeria’s border
with Morocco, Ben Bella was a decorated soldier in the French
army during World War Two, and then joined Algeria’s outlawed
national independence movement, spending several years in French
prisons.
When France relinquished control of Algeria in 1962, Ben
Bella became president. In orders issued in the heady days after
independence, he helped shape the young country by nationalising
industry and becoming a champion of Third World
anti-colonialism.
But he lacked the political weight to build the young
country and fend off challenges to his power. After three years
he was pushed out by Houari Boumediene, from the independence
movement’s military wing, who took over as head of state.
That event established a pattern, still in place half a
century later, of the military exerting strong influence over
Algeria’s political life.
Ben Bella subsequently spent years in jail and exile, only
finally settling back in Algeria after Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the
serving president, was elected in 1999.
INDEPENDENCE FIGHT
Called up into the French military after school, Ben Bella
played for the top-flight Olympique de Marseille soccer club.
During World War Two he fought with French forces against the
Germans and Italians.
He distinguished himself in the battle of Monte Cassino, in
Italy, in 1944, and was decorated personally by General Charles
de Gaulle, the man who later, as his country’s president, would
give up French rule over Algeria.
When he returned home after the war, Ben Bella was swept up
in a wave of anti-French feeling following a massacre, by French
forces, of protesters on May 8, 1945.
He joined the underground independence movement which at the
time was building its ranks and taking part in activities such
as post office robberies to gain funds.
He was arrested in 1950 but escaped and fled to Cairo, where
he established ties with Gamal Abdel Nasser, who would later
become Egyptian president and one of independent Algeria’s
closest allies.
Ben Bella was arrested again in 1956 when the Moroccan
aircraft carrying him and fellow leaders of the independence
movement was intercepted by the French military.
He was freed soon after France declared a ceasefire, ending
a war for independence that killed hundreds of thousands of
people.
Twenty years later, recalling the moment Algeria became an
independent state, Ben Bella said: “It was a big moment for
which a high price was paid, too high.”
POPULIST
As president, Ben Bella was a master of the eye-catching,
populist gesture. He banned shoe-shine boys, arguing the
practice was a demeaning relic of colonial rule.
One of his first acts was to travel to Washington for a
meeting with U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Ben Bella was feted
in the White House as a hero of the anti-colonial struggle.
Straight afterwards – in an assertion of his country’s
independent spirit – he flew on to Washington’s arch-enemy
Cuba. He embraced Fidel Castro and, according to a press report
at the time, praised the “extraordinary progress” of the Cuban
revolution.
But at home, Ben Bella was struggling to build a state
almost from scratch. Algeria was left with almost no teachers or
doctors after the French departed. The former colonial rulers,
according to one Algerian archaeologist, even took the maps of
the sewage system away with them.
Ben Bella tarnished his democratic credentials, some of his
contemporaries said, by making sure his opponents were excluded
from an assembly that was drawing up the country’s new
constitution.
The military, hugely powerful after winning the war with
France, took over. Writing later about how he was ousted by
Boumediene, Ben Bella said: “I knew what his intentions were and
I could have had him stopped 20 times.”
Ben Bella returned briefly from exile in the late 1980s when
mass protests led to a short-lived relaxation of political
controls. He set up a party called the Movement for Democracy in
Algeria and made an abortive run for the presidency.
He went back into exile in Switzerland for most of the
1990s, when Algeria was convulsed by a conflict between
government forces and Islamist militants which killed an
estimated 200,000 people.
Ben Bella’s death coincides with the 50th anniversary of
Algerian independence. For many Algerians the date is
bitter-sweet because they feel the hopes and aspirations that
accompanied the country’s birth have not been matched by events
since then.
(Reporting by Christian Lowe; Editing by Andrew Roche)
