The Man on the Mountain

Into the Saharan oasis town of Biskra rolled a cautious column of halftracks loaded with olive-uniformed Algerian troops. Spears of sunlight flashed from the lenses of binoculars as nervous officers searched the streets for signs of the enemy. But the town was empty of armed opposition, and all eyes lifted to the sere, sawback massif that reared beyond. Up there, among the blue defiles of the Aures Mountains, waited the latest defector from Premier Ahmed ben Bella's socialist paradise, and with him were 9,000 well-armed veterans ready for resistance, rebellion or death.

"Historic Chief." The man on the mountain was Colonel Mohammed Chaabani, 32, onetime member of Ben Bella's ruling Politburo and the Algerian army's general staff. A tough, capable guerrilla leader during Algeria's 71-year war with France, Chaabani had turned the Aures and part of the Sahara south of the range into his personal fief. His men--historically mutinous Chaouia tribesmen whose ancestors had rebelled against Romans, Byzantines and Arabs alike--are equipped with armored cars, tanks and artillery, thus representing a more serious military threat to Ben Bella than the 2,000 Berber rebels under Hocine Ait Ahmed's command in the Great Kabylia range to the northwest.

Chaabani's rebellion grew from his resentment of Ben Bella's Defense Minister Houari Boumedienne, who after independence was won two years ago removed combat-hardened but unschooled officers from the army and replaced them with French-trained officers, many of whom had spent the war in exile. Chaabani was also opposed to the Marxist extremes of Ben Bella's regime, a sentiment he shared with former Party Bigwig Mohammed Khider.

Khider, one of the nine "historic chiefs" of the National Liberation Front, had shared a prison cell with Ben Bella during the dark days of the Algerian revolution, and lent his considerable political skills to Ben Bella in his rise to power in the F.L.N. Breaking with Ben Bella at the cataclysmic party congress of April 1963, Khider went into intermittent exile, but until this week was reluctant to endorse armed rebellion against the regime. At a Paris press conference held in an abandoned class room on the Rue de Babylone, Khider broke once and for all with Ben Bella.

"Criminal Adventure." "The regime is now moving irresistibly down the dangerous path toward fascism and totalitarian rule," he said. "Such a regime must be abolished." Khider sided openly with the armed rebellions of Ait Ahmed and Chaabani.

Ben Bella himself was quick to react. Going on television, he damned Chaabani for undertaking a "criminal adventure" and drummed him in absentia out of the army, the Politburo and the Central Committee. At the same time, a police roundup of other critics of the regime seemed imminent. Missing from their homes last week were Ferhat Abbas, onetime F.L.N. chief and former president of the National Assembly, and Mohammed Boudiaf, a former Politburo member. Another former Ben Bella prison mate, ex-Vice Premier Rabah Bitat, was reported under house arrest.

But tough as he was in the cities, Ben Bella faced a much more difficult prospect in the mountains. At week's end, as government troops sat nervously in Biskra, and occupied the isolated towns of Bou-Saada and Djelfa as well, it was clear that Chaabani is as safe in the Aures heights as Ait Ahmed is in the Kabylia. Both know their high redoubts inside out. And a punitive expedition mounted by Ben Bella could lead to a long guerrilla war like the very one that gained Algeria its independence.

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