Robert Merle did fifteen audio taped interviews with Ahmed Ben Bella in 1963, lasting from two to three hours. These interviews were formulated into the book Ahmed Ben Bella which is told in the subject's own words. Ben Bella's story of his life is simple, moving, and sometimes almost poetic. As a young person he saw all the male members of his family, his father and brothers, die long before himself. His father was a fellah which is a peasant farmer. He also owned a business. When Ben Bella was growing up Algeria had been ruled by the French for many decades, and the Algerians were treated by the colons or French settler population in ways similar to how blacks were treated in the US during Jim Crow. Most Americans raised on hearing all the time about the Arab-Israeli conflict would find interesting that Ben Bella said the Jewish and Muslim populations in Algeria were actually quite close. Algerians found themselves not only oppressed, but they were also culturally and linguistically colonized because many could speak very little of their own native language which is Arabic. Ben Bella himself remained throughout his life more fluent in French than in Arabic, a fact which very much pained him.
The turning point in Ben Bella's remarkable life was when he was a school boy. A French teacher of his insulted Islam one day in class, and he was so outraged that he spoke out. His bravery nearly got him suspended from school, but in the end he remained, however, his outlook about his country's situation had changed forever. From that time on he grew determined to stand up for his people and perhaps someday witness their freedom.
Near the end of the book I came across some points that were real eye openers to me and got me to really ponder things that are now happening in Africa and the Middle East, especially with the revolutionary (more like counter) cataclysm that started last year called the Arab Spring, the fierce wave that I believe will eventually destroy most of the Muslim and Arab world because outside forces led by the US are using young and naive Muslims, and those who don't really know their Quran to cause internecine fighting that will ultimately smash their societies and cultures. I believe it is the same thing that was done to the Native American, the African and others who have been victims of aggressive Western European culture for the last 600 years. The division and conquest of the Muslim and Arab world has begun, and I take it very seriously when people like Tony Blair say that Islam must be eliminated. I'm not Muslim, but I believe the plan to eradicate Islam is very real.
When Ben Bella and his people were in the midst of their struggle, the situation was very different among Muslims and Arabs than now. Today Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa seem to be fractured, more and more disunited, sheep that are easily picked off by wolves, happily cooperating with people pretending to be altruistic, but who really want their destruction. It seems to me that they lack confidence and vision. Their youngsters seem confused and overly eager to be embraced by people who only look down on them or want to manipulate them. They seem to lack the spirit, steadfastness, moral backbone, and confidence of an Ahmed Ben Bella. Ben Bella said this about the Arab countries during Algeria's war for independence:
Egypt had given us immense assistance from the start, and all the Arab countries helped us to a lesser degree. And I mean all the Arab countries, including even the least progressive ones such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The charming Queen Dina of Jordan even lent us her yacht to transport arms to the Moroccan coast... (pg.95)
The counter-revolution in Libya happened last year, and it turned out to be horrifically violent with US/NATO and other countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar supporting and aiding rebels who not only slaughtered and killed the average Libyan but who also targeted the minority black Libyan population. Months ago I read about signs being placed around Libya saying the slaves (meaning the blacks) must be driven out. I heard a young Libyan in London in an interview tell that he had noticed how some Libyan people had changed on a visit home. They had become more selfish. Other sources said that the biggest problem was with Libyan expatriates who hadn't lived in Libya for years and some of Libyan descent who were not even born there. The Libyans of Ben Bella's generation were very different. Ben Bella had nothing except praise for them.
Of all the Arab countries, I like Libya the best. Apart from my own countrymen, there are no people so attractive as the Libyans. They are simple, intelligent, and affectionate; it is as though the beauty of the climate had entered into their souls. Whenever I think about them, I always wonder at their inexhaustible kindness, their capacity for friendship, and their purity of spirit. They have lived far from the turbulence of great cities and they have not been corrupted. In Libya, even the most reactionary bourgeois behaves in a way which is somehow attractive. (pg. 101)
After the long struggle to help free his country and imprisonment in France even during the fight for independence, Ben Bella came to the US to speak at the UN after he became president. He also was very happy to meet President Kennedy.
I liked Kennedy even before I had met him because I knew that, as long as 1957, he had made a speech calling for Algerian independence....He gave me the impression of a courageous and honest man, but he seemed to be subjected to endless pressure and to be, to an extraordinary degree, the prisoner of a system. (pg. 136)
When socializing with Americans on a diplomatic level, Ben Bella refused to drink alcohol while some of his fellow Algerians who were less devout and too willing to please and fit in with their hosts did so. Throughout the book and with this example, Ahmed Ben Bella showed himself to be a man who knew who he was, determined to be faithful to his religion and culture, and not one who could be blown and tossed around by any wind. His impression of America sounds very much like now even though the description was made over forty years ago.
In the United States, I missed the warmth of human relations more than anything else. America is like a wall: right from the start, those vertical cities with their enormous buildings gave me this impression. What is missing is communication from man to man. Although those great American cities are like ant-heaps full of men, they are also like deserts. I had never seen so many people as I saw in America, but I had never felt so much alone. In those crowds of human beings, there was an inhuman emptiness; there was a complete absence of human emotions, which to us Algerians are an essential part of life, without which we are unable to breathe. (pg. 138)
What he said is magnified even more so to me than perhaps the average person in this country because I have lived in two societies where human interaction and relationships are important. If I had only lived in the US I couldn't sense the way he did what a dead zone the society and culture is on many levels. I would think like many here that this is as good as it gets, or I would be like some who aren't aware of their own loneliness and emptiness.
Like other leaders than and now the US government wanted Ben Bella on their side for their own interests in the end. They didn't want him to make his own decisions or do what was best for the Algerian people in general. When they learned he was to visit Cuba after he left DC, the media immediately began to demonize him. But Ben Bella went on to visit Fidel Castro and Cuba anyway, and the Cubans were massively exuberant after the dead zone he'd recently flow away from.
When Robert Merle's book was published in 1965 Ahmed Ben Bella had already been overthrown in a coup. His whereabouts were unknown, and Merle who was so impressed by him was very alarmed about the possibility that Ben Bella had been killed. However, Ben Bella was still alive. He would marry while in prison and would be there many years with his family. His wife would become pregnant and lose their first and only biological child, but after coming back from the hospital she would bring another infant that had been abandoned to replace their own. Later they would adopt another child. Eventually Ben Bella would be freed, live in exile in Switzerland, and then he would go back to Algeria.
Ahmed Ben Bella is one of the giants from the glory days of Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism. More young people running fast to be enslaved need to read about him and others who fought hard to grant people in their countries and beyond with genuine human dignity not the manufactured, mediocre, degraded,destructive nonsense they now called freedom that corrupts and cripples a person's soul and identity in the end.
Interviews and more about Ahmed Ben Bella:
For Ahmed Ben Bella, The Liberation of the People of the South is Still Unachieved
Egyptian Newspaper Al-Ahram's interview with Ahmed Ben Bella
Ahmed Ben Bella Inspired Millions Around the World
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