More defections from the F.L.N.…
At about this same time, and in the same vast marginal area which the F.L.N. had recently designated Wilaya 6, a still more menacing potential threat presented itself with the defection of Si Chérif and a whole rebel katiba. Aged thirty-two and an Arab, Si Chérif had spent eleven years in the French army, including two tours in Indo-China, and had been captured in an F.L.N. ambush when serving with the Spahis. After being employed for some time as a mere “coolie” by his captors, Si Chérif had risen to become military chief of the newly-formed Wilaya 6. This had been created out of a nucleus of Kabyles despatched southwards by Krim. Its political commissar was a wild and brutal figure operating under the pseudonym of “Rouget”, whose apparently insatiable sexual appetites drove him to claim a kind of droit de seigneur whereby the prettiest girls in the villages he passed through were earmarked for his personal pleasure. As most of the villages were Arab, this fanned a violent hatred between the two races, always latently smouldering. One day, in an angry argument, Si Chérif pulled out his revolver and shot Rouget through the head in front of his men. Then, over the next six days, Si Chérif and his Arab followers killed all the Kabyles they could lay their hands on. In July 1957 he “rallied” to the French at the head of an entire katiba 330 strong. Turned into a harki—or Muslim private army fighting with the French—Si Chérif’s men operated with even greater effectiveness than Bellounis, inflicting in a pitched battle the following March some seventy-two casualties on the A.L.N., as well as recovering a considerable amount of arms.
For a time the French cherished hopes that Si Chérif might bring over with him the whole of the south, but eventually the F.L.N. skilfully managed to seal off the damage. Nevertheless, in that hard-pressed summer of 1957 the Si Chérif affair opened up to the F.L.N. one of its greatest latent nightmares: the prospect of a sectarian split between Arabs and Kabyles. It was an opportunity for which French intelligence was constantly, and obviously, on the look out. At the same time, after the notable successes of Captain Léger and his bleus during the latter stages of the Battle of Algiers, the 11th Shock had got busy burrowing into the demoralised Wilayas outside, sowing insidious suspicions of treason at every hand.
…and rifts at the top
Although it was always less visible to the French (and in fact remained almost entirely invisible until years later), the continuing dissension in the F.L.N. leadership still posed an even greater menace to the coherence of the whole movement than any number of defections, single or collective, at lower levels. Greatly exacerbated by the defeat in Algiers and the forced withdrawal of the C.C.E. from the city, internal rifts had brought the F.L.N. leadership to the brink of disaster by the spring of 1957. Once again the basic issue lay in the contention between the “interior” and the “exterior”; and, once again, the figure of Ramdane Abane was at the storm centre. With the four surviving members of the C.C.E. themselves become, through force of circumstances, “exterior”, the sniping now spilled over into Habib Bourguiba’s newly independent capital of Tunis. The first shots were actually being fired while Ramdane Abane and his colleagues were on their “long march” from beleaguered Algiers. In a remarkable fashion Ben Bella, who had been under lock and key in the Santé prison since his hijacking the previous October, had managed to keep up a running correspondence with his faithful deputy, Ali Mahsas, in Tunis. Acting in harmony with Ben Bella’s directives, Ali Mahsas launched a violent attack on the C.C.E. at a meeting of the like-minded held in March. He refused to recognise the motions passed at the Soummam Conference the previous September because “No representative of the ‘exterior’ was present. Therefore, for us the C.C.E. is nothing.” The Soummam Conference, he charged, had broken the “moral contract” between the neuf historiques, and he accused Abane of “playing personal politics”. The C.C.E.’s decision to launch the eight-day general strike in Algiers was, he said:
the greatest folly ever committed by the Revolution. We ought to conduct a guerrilla war in the djebel with the support of the people. We always believed that the city ought not to intervene until the last moment…. Those of the C.C.E. have decided otherwise and now the repression is terrible. It could cut us off from the people. We have risked the dismantling of the revolutionary organisation to make a noise at the United Nations. It’s stupid and ridiculous!
When it appeared that Ali Mahsas was gaining support, Ouamrane, the tough ex-sergeant with the lantern jaw and, as Krim’s ever-loyal lieutenant, the most senior F.L.N. representative then in Tunis, decided to act promptly and forcefully. Sending fifty armed men into the centre of Tunis, he had Mahsas arrested at F.L.N. headquarters and placed in a guarded villa. For a moment it looked as if Mahsas was facing imminent liquidation. Then Bourguiba himself, apparently, intervened. A short time previously he had flown into a fierce rage on hearing of a series of killings between groups of rival Auresian tribesmen who had taken refuge on Tunisian soil. There were some 150,000 Algerians in Tunisia, many of them heavily armed and outnumbering the infant Tunisian army itself. Thus Bourguiba saw the whole basis of his authority undermined and reacted by arresting and disarming over a thousand of the squabbling F.L.N. He now criticised Ouamrane sharply for this new “settling of accounts”; the dissident Ali Mahsas was released and put on a plane for Rome and exile.
Abane versus the rest
Once again a breach within the top echelons of the F.L.N. seemed to have been healed over, with the C.C.E. emerging ascendant. Then, in June, Abane and Saad Dahlab arrived via Tétouan in Morocco, having been preceded shortly by Krim and Ben Khedda. Meanwhile, at various intervals, the “colonels”—as the military leaders of the Wilayas were now titled—were also congregating in Tunis. There was Mahmoud Chérif, the new chief of the troubled Wilaya 1 in the Aurès, where the revolt had first established itself; Mohamedi Said, the former S.S. man from Wilaya 3 in Kabylia; Ouamrane standing in for the absent and hard-pressed leaders of the Algérois Wilaya 4; but most noteworthy were Ben Tobbal, who had taken over the Constantine Wilaya 2 on the death of his chief, Zighout, and Boussouf, a powerful new figure who had assumed command of Wilaya 5 (Oranie) upon the elevation of Ben M’hidi.
Boussouf
Abdelhafid Boussouf was born at Milia near Constantine—like Ben Tobbal, with whom he retained a close and enduring friendship—and at thirty-one was the youngest of the Wilaya commanders. He was also the most educated, having qualified before 1954 as a teacher and taken a correspondence course in psychology. A large man with a full face, close-cropped black hair and eyes concealed behind tinted glasses, Boussouf gave an unassuming impression. Yet he was held by his subordinates in considerable awe, had imposed a strong stamp of his own personality on Wilaya 5 and would henceforth assume a central role in the F.L.N. leadership. The Wilaya had been in a state of considerable disorder when he took over, and gradually he had introduced a scrupulously co-ordinated infrastructure, intelligence and signals system that more closely resembled that of the French army itself than of the other Wilayas. Operations, though few enough to give the impression that the Wilaya was relatively inactive, were meticulously planned, and there were none of the hazard encounters that had often proved so disastrous elsewhere. Instead, Boussouf was concentrating on building up an impressive military machine. Seldom far from his side was another young man as reticent, efficient and ambitious as himself, whom Boussouf had been bringing on as his deputy: Houari Boumedienne.
On arriving in Tunis, Abane immediately singled out Boussouf for attack. He had passed through Wilaya 5 (where he had nearly been captured) on his journey from Algiers, and had not liked at all what he had seen. By his reckoning, Boussouf reigned there by sheer terror; he and Boumedienne comported themselves like “real dictators”, and they controlled not only the Wilaya but also everything that went on over the border in Morocco, too. He also criticised them for their affinity with Ben Bella, his arch-enemy. From attacking Boussouf in person Abane then spread his fire to blanket the military in general. R
eminding his colleagues of the Soummam decision that the political should have primacy over the military, Abane declared that it was intolerable that the latter should presume to feudal rights, and heatedly described them as “robots”. Krim, the veteran maquisard, began to bridle under these attacks and, although he had staunchly supported his fellow Kabyle in the battle against Ben Bella the previous year, now warned him to have a care in what he was saying. But for all his subtlety as a political tactician, Abane was becoming more and more intractable. It appears that his ulcers may have been at least partly to blame; and in turn his rages inflamed the ulcers. Forgetting all such good tactical principles as divide and conquer, and not fighting a war on more than one front, Abane hit out at Ouamrane, accusing him of being militarily incapable. Such an assault on his faithful lieutenant was intolerable to Krim, and he now definitively withdrew his allegiance from Abane.
In his criticism of “Wilayism” Abane was not without reason. As a consequence of the Battle of Algiers the Wilayas had become extensively isolated from the C.C.E. besieged in the capital. Thus they had had increasingly to rely upon their own day-to-day decisions, and had equally achieved freedom to develop their own distinctive styles. For instance, whereas Boussouf’s Wilaya 5 was evolving into a closely-knit, disciplined military machine, with all the hierarchical formality that that implies, Wilaya 4 was evolving in quite the opposite direction—largely under the influence of the numbers of students and intellectuals that had joined it, seeking refuge from the Battle of Algiers. Equality had become the catchword, insignias of rank had been abolished, political commissars and “self-criticism” instituted, and operations initiated by communal decisions. Inevitably, the Wilayas found themselves with greater autonomy, and thus power, thrust upon them in the absence of regular directives from the C.C.E. United as never before by Abane’s barbs, the Wilaya colonels now counter-attacked vigorously against the C.C.E. as a whole for its mismanagement of the war. It was criticised for its failure to maintain arms supplies, but above all for its essential strategic error in getting committed to the Battle of Algiers. Clearly the principal target was Abane, who was finding himself increasingly isolated, with only his faithful allies, Ben Khedda and Saad Dahlab, still supporting him.
On 27 July it was decided to hold, in Cairo, a second full reunion of the C.N.R.A. Abane’s isolation was now final. A new, nine-man C.C.E. was elected from which Ben Khedda and Saad Dahlab were pointedly eliminated. Instead there were five colonels: Krim, Boussouf, Ben Tobbal, Ouamrane and Mahmoud Chérif, to four “politicals”: Ferhat Abbas, Dr Lamine Debaghine, Abdelhamid Mehri, and Ramdane Abane. More significant still was the nomination of a permanent “inner” council within the C.C.E. consisting of the five colonels and one solitary political: Ramdane Abane. Defeated, Abane raged at the colonels: “You are creating a power based on the army. The maquis is one thing, politics is another, and it is not conducted either by illiterates or ignoramuses!” The words must have stung savagely, and Ferhat Abbas reportedly attempted to intervene and calm Abane, telling him soothingly: “We know you’re very nervous, and ill. You must look after your ulcers, go and take time off to rest in Switzerland.…” Abane’s response was apparently to tap the butt of his pistol, declare that everybody was out to “eliminate” him, but that he was on his guard. He then threatened to return to the maquis and inform it of what was happening, a threat that the colonels could not possibly ignore because, after the death of Ben M’hidi, Abane remained incontestably still the most influential political figure in the ranks of the F.L.N. On 1 November, in the declaration commemorating the third anniversary of the war, a meaningful sentence was inserted which stated, “The cult of the personality is strictly condemned.” Meanwhile, there were disturbing rumours that Abane was planning to march on Tunis at the head of an Auresian battalion and “arrest” the C.C.E. The colonels decided that Abane had to go; but how?
The liquidation of Abane
On 29 May of the following year, the front page of El Moudjahid printed a heavily black-rimmed statement bearing the block caption:
ABBANE RAMDANE[4]
EST MORT AU CHAMP D’HONNEUR
It announced that, in December, “brother” Abane had been charged with “an important and urgent mission of control” inside the country. After crossing the frontier defences with great difficulty, he had found himself
surrounded by affection and admiration of all his brothers. A company of djounoud were specially charged with his protection and nothing could foresee the brutal accident that was to tear him away from the fervour of fighting Algeria.
Unfortunately, in the first fortnight of April a violent encounter between our troops and those of the enemy forced the protecting company of our brother Abbane to take part in the engagement. In the course of the fighting which lasted several hours, Abbane was wounded…hélas! A grave haemorrhage became fatal.
This is the sad news which has just reached us.
The fine and noble figure of Abbane Ramdane, his courage and his will, have marked essential phases of the struggle of the Algerian people.…
We mourn a brother in arms whose memory will help guide us.
The lack of mention of any specific place, and vagueness about the date of the news “which has just reached us”, is noteworthy; and as it is now the generally accepted view that Abane’s “brutal accident” took place at the hands of his “brothers”, the fulsome language of the communiqué makes cynical reading. Because of the exceptional, but habitual, secretiveness of the Algerians, it was not till several years later that rumours began to circulate that Abane might have been “liquidated”. In October 1963, little more than eighteen months before he was himself deposed and hustled out of sight, President Ben Bella was quoted as declaring publicly: “Abane died, strangled by the hands of criminals of the G.P.R.A.”
President Bourguiba declared to the author: “I didn’t know Abane, I never saw him, and I don’t know how he died.” But comparing the internal dissensions of the F.L.N. leadership to the French Revolution, he added pointedly: “Robespierre himself wasn’t even spared.”
To this day the actual details of the death of the man who some thought might have become the Tito, or even Mao, of Algeria remain wrapped in mystery. None of those who could have thrown light on it ever talked. Various versions have appeared; those of Mohamed Lebjaoui and Yves Courrière (who, of any foreign chronicler, received probably the most complete testimony of the war from Krim before his death, and who cites a secret document of the C.C.E. dated 15 August 1958) tally most closely with each other.[5] According to these accounts, between 17 and 20 December Krim, Ben Tobbal and Mahmoud Chérif met lengthily in Tunis to decide the fate of Abane. Boussouf was absent, in Morocco, but his views were represented by his close ally, Ben Tobbal, who stated that there was only one choice—“death or prison”. Ben Tobbal added that he was not against death “in principle”, but that he would not accept the responsibility of killing Abane without trial. Krim remarked that, if prison were decided upon, it would not be possible in Bourguiba’s Tunisia; whereas, in Morocco, in the charge of Boussouf, “he would not worry us again”. Mahmoud Chérif protested that Boussouf favoured killing Abane; however, it was finally agreed that Abane should be imprisoned in Morocco, the ultimate responsibility for his fate in the hands of Boussouf, the hard-liner.
On the 24th Abane was lured to Morocco, ostensibly for a summit conference with King Mohammed V, accompanied from Tunis by Krim and Mahmoud Chérif. Ben Tobbal had refused to be present. Highly mistrustful, Abane said to Krim on the plane: “I sense there’s a dirty trick ahead, but you’ll regret it….”
Landing at Tétouan on the 26th, the three were picked up in a car by Boussouf and two unknown men. The car started off in the direction of Tangier. After a few kilometres, however, it turned off the main road, up a dirt track, and halted outside a farm. Pointing their sub-machine-guns at Abane, the two men ordered him to get out and accompany them. Krim and Mahmoud Chérif protested, with Krim decl
aring that Boussouf would be held responsible for anything that might happen to Abane. After driving off to a farmhouse a short distance away, Krim cautioned Boussouf at dinner that the C.C.E. had decided Abane was to be imprisoned and not executed. Angrily, Boussouf allegedly retorted: “I haven’t got a prison here. And…here, in Morocco, I do what I want. Abane will ‘pass on’, and plenty of others will pass on too.” He added that Boumedienne was also “in agreement”.[6] After dinner the two men reappeared and the F.L.N. leaders were informed that Abane was dead. In a neighbouring room Krim saw Abane lying on a bed, strangled by a cord round his neck; a form of death that, ironically, was to be suffered by Krim himself many years later.
According to Lebjaoui, the death of Abane—“one of the most atrocious of all the tragedies marking the Algerian revolution”—could never have been accomplished without the tacit support of Krim, and it was because of Boussouf’s involvement that he was given no job in the post-war Boumedienne government. After some vehement soul-searching within the C.C.E., it was agreed that the five reigning colonels—Krim, Ouamrane, Mahmoud Chérif, Ben Tobbal and Boussouf—would henceforth jointly accept responsibility for Abane’s death. It was a decision of considerable significance for the future leadership of the F.L.N., being a triumph of the philosophy of collective leadership. As far as its unity was concerned, it represented, in effect, little more than another papering over of personal differences. Because of the equivocal position taken by Krim, so Ben Tobbal remarked to Courrière after the war, “From that moment onwards until 1962, discord between us was permanent.” But that such discord should continue to exist at the top without the whole fabric of the F.L.N. being riven is a testimony to the basic solidity that the movement had achieved. As Ben Khedda told the author, “The base of the pyramid always held firm.”
A Savage War of Peace Page 33