Mohamed Ahmed Ben Bella, born in December 25, 1919, Maghnia, Algeria was the first President of Algeria, and seen by many as the Father of the Nation. Ben Bella was born in a small village in western Algeria during the  French colonial period to a Sufi Muslim family. He attended school in Tlemclen and was annoyed by the discrimination towards Muslims by his European teacher. He failed his brevet exam, and subsequently dropped out of school.

 

 

Service with French Army

 

Ben Bella volunteered for service in the French Army in 1936. The Army was one of the few methoas of advancement for Algerian Muslims under colonial rule and  the voluntary enlistment was common. Posted to Marseilles he played center mid-field for the l'Olympique de Marseille. He was offered a professional spot on the team, but rejected the offer.

 

Ben Bella's eldest brother had also served in the French Army during World War I and died of his wounds. Two other brothers died at young ages.

 

In 1940 Ben Bella enlisted again and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was demobilised after the fall of France but joined a regiment of Moroccan tirailleurs (infantry) with whom he offered service throughout the Italian campaign. Ben Bella was promoted to the rank of warrant officer and received the Medaille Militaire for bravery.

 

He refused to accept an officer's commission after learning of the harsh French repression that followed a Muslim rising in the small Algerian town of Setif in May 1945.

 

Before independence

 

after being elected as a municipal councilor Ben Bella became a founder member of an underground organisation pledged to fight colonial rule, known as the Organisation Speciale. This was the immediate predecessor of the Front de Libération Nationale.

 

Arrested in 1951 and sentenced to eight years imprisonment Ben Bella escaped from Blida Prison, making his way to Tunisia and then Egypt.

 

At the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954 Ben Bella was settled in Cairo where he had become one of the nine members of the Revolutionary Committee of Unity and Action which headed the Front de Liberation Nationale.

 

He was arrested by the French in 1956, after his airplane had been controversially intercepted and brought to France, and spent until 1962 in prison. While in prison he was elected a vice-premier of the Algerian provisional government. Ben Bella's first language was French, not Arabic. He learned Arabic in prison.

 

While in Egypt, Ben Bella met the Egyptian President, Gamel Abdul Nasser. When Nasser brought Ben Bella to speak for the first time to an Egyptian audience, he broke into tears because he could not speak Arabic.

 

It has been said that he refused to teach his own daughter the French language because he wanted her to learn Arabic first . Like many Arab militants of the time, he would come to describe himself as a "Nasserist" and developed close ties will Egypt even before independence.

 

Nasser's material, emotional and political support of the Algerian movement would come to cause him troubles, as it was the main reason behind france's is 1956 aggression on suez

 

Algerian independence

 

After Algeria's independence was recognized, Ben Bella quickly became more popular, and thereby more powerful. In June 1962, he challenged the leadership of Premier Benyoucef Ben Khedda; this led to several disputes among his rivals in the FLN, which were quickly suppressed by Ben Bella's rapidly growing number of supporters, most notably within the armed forces.

 

By September, Bella was in control of Algeria , and was elected as premier in a one-sided election on 20 September, which was recognized by the United States on September 29. Algeria was recognized as the 109th member of the United Nations on 8 October 1962.

 

Afterwards, Ben Bella declared that Algeria would follow a neutral course in world politics; within a week he met with U.S. President John F. Kennedy requesting more aid for Algeria, and with Fidel Castro, expressing approval of Castro's demands for the abandonment of Guantanamo Bay, and returned to Algeria requesting the French withdraw from its bases there.

 

In 1963 he was elected President in an uncontested elections, and also led Algeria's costly but ultimately victorious defense against Moroccan invasion in the Sand war. After stabilizing the country, Ben Bella embarked on a series of popular but somewhat anarchic land reforms to the benefit of landless farmers, and increasingly turned to socialist rhetoric.

 

His policy of Autogestion, or self-management, was adopted after the peasants seized former French lands. 

 

Eccentric and arrogant behaviour towards colleagues is said to have alienated many former supporters, and, while he promoted the development of his own cult of personality, by 1964 he was dedicating more time to foreign affairs than local political developments.

 

In 1965, Ben Bella was deposed by the army strongman and close friend Houari Boumédiènne in 1965, and placed under house arrest until 1980, when he exile in Switzerland. He lived for 10 years in Lausanne, but was allowed to return to his homeland in 1990.

 

Ahmed Ben Bella was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on April 30, 1964

 

Recent activities

 

Ben Bella was elected President of the International Campaign Against Aggression on Iraq at its Cairo Conference. Ben Bella has described himself numerous times in interviews as an Islamist of a mild and peace loving flavor.

 

Despite his former one party state he now vocally advocates democracy in Algeria. He has described the militant voice rising in the Islamic world as having developed from an incorrect and faulty interpretation of Islam. He is a controversial figure, but is widely respected for his role in the anti-colonial struggle, and seen by many Arab intellectuals as one of the last original Arab nationalists.