A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (47 page)

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 declaring 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.”

The colonels ascendant

With the deaths first of Ben M’hidi, then of Abane, real power in the F.L.N. devolved, for the time being, upon Krim, Ben Tobbal and Boussouf. The passing of Abane also brought with it ascendancy for the colonels over the “politicals”—a curious irony of history that this should have occurred at almost the same moment when, on the other side of the lines, the para colonels were about to impose their powerful weight on the affairs of France. The colonels now set to to reorganise the structure of the A.L.N., attacking its problems of morale and discipline, and reassessing its roles. As 1957 gave way to the new year, running weapons across the Tunisian frontier became the main effort of the A.L.N.; at one moment they totalled an average of a thousand a month. In September 1957, however, the French completed an imposing
cordon sanitaire
the length of the Tunisian border, the Morice Line, named—like its rather less successful predecessor, the Maginot Line—after the current Minister of Defence. Most of the heavy fighting now took place on the frontier rather than in the interior as A.L.N.
katibas
attempted to force their way through the barrages of electrified wire, minefields and radar alarm systems, frequently at appalling cost. By the spring of 1958 the balance of the war was, on the whole, a negative one for the F.L.N.—certainly as far as the interior was concerned. In the cities terrorism had been defeated; in the
bled
operational military successes were few and far between, and morale was down; on the frontiers there was costly stagnation. It continued to be a time of setback and failure within Algeria, but of greater success abroad—and, with historic consequences, the former was the fact most tantalisingly visible to the French army commanders on the spot. Here was the basic contrast: France was strong, militarily, in Algeria, but weak, politically, at home; the F.L.N. was weak, militarily, at home, but strong politically, abroad.

[
1
] Yacef made no reference to this in his original, very sparse, reminiscences published immediately after the war. The story is told by Courrière.

[
2
] Curiously enough, Yacef also makes no mention in his book of any of his meetings with Germaine Tillion, though she had first revealed them herself several years previously.

[
3
] A Muslim custom when a man feels he is about to die.

[
4
] This is the form of the name used here, and occasionally elsewhere, but Ramdane Abane seems to be more generally used.

[
5
] Insofar as Krim was Courrière’s source concerning the death of Abane, it should be remembered that Krim was an interested party and possibly had an axe to grind against his former colleagues. He was in fact murdered, in sinister circumstances, while in exile years after the war. On the other hand, neither his nor Lebjaoui’s account—nor a similar version which appeared in the widely circulated
Historia
magazine series, “La Guerre d’Algérie”, has been refuted by any Algerian source. In Algiers in 1984 a senior Algerian official told the author simply: Abane “was helped to suicide”.

[
6
] Lebjaoui, however, who held no love for Boumedienne, denied to the author that he was in any way implicated; nor, he insists, was Abane’s arch-enemy, Ben Bella. Ait Ahmed, however, claimed to the author in 1986 that, following Abane’s death, Ben Bella and the other four F.L.N. leaders then in the Santé Prison signed documents supporting his “execution”; only Ait Ahmed himself had refused, on the grounds that he was fundamentally opposed to all “liquidations”. To Ait Ahmed, also, “Without Abane there would have been no F.L.N.—he was
the
political head.” Speaking, again, to the author in 1986, Ben Bella himself insisted that he had denounced “the style of execution; Abane should have been judged by his peers. The G.P.R.A. was not consulted; I would have refused.” He had, however, always been “against Abane; because of his arrogance—his humiliation of his allies—his choice of leaders, or reformists rather than revolutionaries. He was too authoritarian; he wouldn’t take criticism. Algeria is still paying the price of Abane…”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
The World Takes Notice:
1956–1958

In war opinion is nine parts in ten.

Jonathan Swift

France discovers the war

IT was between 1957 and 1958 that the Algerian war became well and truly “internationalised”; though not entirely through the means envisaged by the authors of the Soummam Declaration when they stated this longterm objective in the autumn of 1955. The events of May 1958 were to fix it finally and ineradicably in the forefront of world attention. In France herself Janet Flanner had recorded in her
Paris Journal
the drabness of the eleventh V.E. Day parade of May 1956: “There were no colonial troops in the parade…. There were no regiments in red fezzes from Tunisia…. There were no white-capped, bearded Foreign Legionnaires, now fighting in Algeria, where all forms of horrible death are part of the war….” Hither-to the war had received only relatively minor mention in her journals, and it was virtually the first time that its impact in metropolitan France seems to have made any kind of an impression on her. Then, only ten days later, had come the shocking headline news of the massacre of the twenty-one conscripts at Palestro. The Press had spared none of the details of the dreadful mutilations and tortures that had killed the boys, most of whom came from the Paris region. The meaning of the war had been brought home to French families in the most brutal possible way and, with the return of Mollet’s
rappelés
after they had served their time in Algeria, the whole country found itself increasingly involved. There were those who were against the war because they detested its horrors, or because, as next-of-kin, they lived in dread lest their young men share the same fate as those at Palestro. But there were also many who had been seduced by Algeria, who had enjoyed the adventure of their time there—or who had discovered sympathy at the predicament of the
pieds noirs
, coupled with repugnance at the F.L.N. atrocities. The
rappelés
had now made the war a topic of constant debate; one of the first of them, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, had published a controversial book about it, and was to be prosecuted for his pains as a “demoraliser” of the war effort. Various journalists, like Robert Barrat, had popped up with “scoops” of interviews from the rebel camp; Barrat had been arrested for consorting with convicted criminals, such as Ouamrane, then released; his newspaper, the Leftish intellectual
France-Observateur
, was suppressed repeatedly. All of it was good publicity, both for the paper and the war. Then there was the awareness imposed by the shattering, ever-soaring costs of the war: one billion francs (£1m.) a day in May 1958.