Battle of the Bens

Everyone was reaching for comparisons. The wife of a foreign diplomat described Algeria as a sort of "sophisticated Congo." Paris-Match suggested that dissident Mohammed ben Bella may well become another Castro.

The two opposing Moslem F.L.N. factions opened up on each other with everything but bullets. While moderate Premier Benyoussef Benkhedda tried to spread his influence from Algiers to the southeast, his bitter rival, radical Vice Premier ben Bella, entered western Algeria for a triumphal march to Oran. After a brief stop at Marnia, his birthplace near the Moroccan border, Ben Bella and his ever-lengthening motorcade drove on to the city of Tlemcen (pop. 80,000). Thousands of veiled women and turbaned men lined the streets, while hundreds of pigtailed little girls in the national colors--white dresses, red sashes, green kerchiefs--sang Kassaman, the national anthem.

Delayed March. In his speech, Ben Bella again publicly affirmed his acceptance of the Evian agreements between France and the F.L.N. Provisional Government, but denounced Premier Benkhedda and his Cabinet as trying "to delay the forward march of our revolution."

In turn, he denied Benkhedda's charge that he and his friends hoped "to establish a fascist military dictatorship." All he wanted, protested Ben Bella, was a "socialist regime that takes into account the economic needs and fundamental aspirations of the people."

In a later talk with newsmen, Ben Bella was more explicit. He said flatly that his meeting with two envoys from Premier Benkhedda had come to nothing, and hinted that many of Benkhedda's backers were at the point of switching sides. Ben Bella stated that he is willing to call off the quarrel if Benkhedda will 1) reinstate the three members of the F.L.N. army general staff he fired last month; 2) convoke the 75-man National Council of the Algerian Revolution, in which Ben Bella claims a majority; and 3) free "my friends from jail."

Growing Toughness. Benkhedda carried his case to the people, traveling from Algiers into the mountains of Kazylia, where 100,000 cheering Berbers welcomed him at Tizi-Ouzou. He told his audience that national unity was essential "if the goals of our revolution are to be achieved." At the same time, in Oran, Ben Bella spoke with growing confidence and toughness.

Yet he should have been sobered by news of closed factories, abandoned farms and shuttered stores that reveal the extent of the economic paralysis caused by the flight of Europeans. Once prosperous Orleansville looks like a ghost town with only a few tattered Moslems on its wide boulevards. At Perregaux, where 20,000 Europeans lived, there are now 150.

In Oran itself, Europeans were in a panic over the mysterious disappearance of several hundred friends and relatives, reportedly kidnaped by the Moslems as suspected members of the Secret Army. Questioned about the missing Europeans, an F.L.N. army officer said curtly, "Consider them all dead. Forget about the dead, as we Moslems have our 2,000,000 victims, and think of the future."

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