Algeria commemorates, this Monday, December 27, the 43rd anniversary of the death, in 1978, of its former president, Houari Boumediene, whose real name is Mohamed Boukharouba.
Almost forgotten during the last three decades, the deceased will be entitled, this year, to a special official program, according to the Algerian minister of the Mojahedin (former guerrillas), Laid Rebiga.
“By order of the high authorities, a special program is being drawn up to commemorate the anniversary of the death of President Houari Boumediene. He is one of the symbols of the Algerian state, ”he declared on the sidelines of a conference of Algerian peasants held in Algiers.
This program, he added, “will revive its image among Algerians”. Why is the Algerian government so interested in Houari Boumediene? Who is this man who still arouses debate in the country, 43 years after his death? What makes Algerians more interested in him than in his predecessor, Ahmed Ben Bella, and his many successors?
This interest proves, in any case, that the one who managed Algeria with an iron fist, for thirteen years, made a real impression. Positively and negatively. It is according to the witnesses and the political and ideological orientations of the actors who evoke it. His time at the head of the Algerian state was not without impact. It’s a reality.
Born on August 23, 1932 in Aïn Hassainia, in the wilaya (department) of Guelma in eastern Algeria, Houari Boumediene was not one of the leaders of the liberation war. Coming from a small family of peasants, as there were hundreds of thousands at that time in the country, the man was marked, when he was very young, by the massacres of May 8, 1945, committed by the army and the French colonists against the Algerians in the localities of Sétif, Kherrata, and Guelma (east of Algiers).
It was the start of his awareness. “That day, I aged prematurely. The teenager that I was has become a man. That day the world turned upside down. Even the ancestors moved underground. And the children understood that it was necessary to fight with weapons in hand to become free men. No one can forget that day, ”he himself testified during a speech when he was still at the head of state.
The border army
But the young Boumediène had not participated in the interior of the country in the war of liberation that began on November 1, 1954. A student at Zitouna in Tunis in 1950, he then joined Al-Azhar in Egypt. He subsequently joined the border army, established in Tunisia, where he rose through the ranks to become, in 1959, chief of the general staff of the national liberation army.
At independence, he actively participated in the enthronement of Ahmed Ben Bella at the head of the country, as the first president of independent Algeria, against the advice of many leaders of the revolution and a large part guerrillas. He even becomes his Minister of Defense. But the honeymoon won’t last long.
Less than four years after independence, Colonel Houari Boumediène overthrows President Ahmed Ben Bella, in the name of “revolutionary recovery”. It was June 19, 1965. This coup d’etat, according to the Algerian historian, Rabah Lounici, “was badly perceived, both in Algeria and internationally”.
“He came to power following a coup. He had overthrown Ahmed Ben Bella who was, in his eyes, too closely linked to the Egypt of Djamel Abdennasser. He also considered his socialist policy to be anarchic. At the time, many thought that he was anti-socialist and that his act was counter-revolutionary, making the link with what happened in Zaire (current DRC) against Patrice Lumumba and in Indonesia against Sukarno ”, specifies the historian in a statement to the Anadolu Agency.
But, he adds, Boumediene has proved, over time, “a convinced socialist”. “Internally, he was not popular. It was not until 1967, and thanks to the sending of Algerian soldiers to Egypt to fight, alongside Arab forces against the Israeli occupier of Palestine, to see President Boumediene gain a certain popular legitimacy, ”he explains. he.
Movement of the non-aligned
According to the historian, it is still within the framework of the non-aligned movement, of which he was general secretary from 1973 to 1976, that the man affirmed himself as “a fine strategist and a bearer of a philosophy” .
“He adopted a very interesting philosophy, which consists in giving the countries of the third world their autonomy vis-à-vis the imperialist West which saw them as a simple market for its goods. Moreover, Boumediene never spoke of the criminalization of French colonialism. For him, it was obvious. He was interested in the economic aspect. And he launched the industrial revolution which was very frowned upon by the French side, especially at the time of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, ”explains our interlocutor.
But the Boumedian philosophy, he emphasizes, dissipated with his death. “And this because of its political strategy which had not allowed any democratic opening. It was a fatal mistake. There were no strong and autonomous organizations to defend his project after his death, ”he says.
Despite the criticisms, recalls for his part, Nacer Djabi, a specialist in Algerian political sociology, Houari Boumediene “remains, in the collective imagination of Algerians, the symbol of a strong Algeria at regional and international level”.
“He is the only Algerian president to benefit, 43 years after his death, from the same aura and the same positive opinion”, he analyzes in a statement to the Anadolu Agency.
The one who himself almost fell victim to a coup d’état in 1966, continues Nacer Djabi, “succeeded, thanks to his personality and his simplicity that we know to peasants and inhabitants of rural areas in Algeria to gain the eternal esteem of a large part of Algerians”.
