By Gamal Nkrumah Contemporary Algeria's founding father and first president was known, and admired for his brusque, undiplomatic mannerisms. However, he was never gruff, discourteous or contemptuous. He kept his outbursts to meaningful political discourses such as the anti-colonial struggle. During World War II he fought for the French and received the Croix guerre and the Medialle militare, two of France's most distinguished military awards by Charles de Gaulle. Soon after, however, he thrust himself into colonial controversy becoming the thunderous voice of the voiceless, the Algerian resistance to French colonial rule. Ben Bella's vehemence caused alarm across colonial circles in Algeria that feared that his acceptance as part of the colonial body politic would embolden the undercurrent of independence on their turf. Ben Bella was the bedrock on which Algeria was built. The Algerian government accorded him a state funeral presided over by luminaries of Algeria's War of Independence (1954-62) and he was buried in the capital's Al-Alia cemetery. He was a hero of the anti-colonial struggle, yet his socialist policies and intermittent internecine inciting among Algeria's former freedom fighters led eventually to his ouster from office. Presiding over the formalities of Ben Bella's state funeral was Algerian President Abdel-Azizi Bouteflika and his Tunisian counterpart and lifelong political associate Moncef Al-Marzouqi. "Algeria is not the only country to suffer this loss," the Tunisian president eulogised his mentor. "The Greater Maghreb has also suffered a loss and so has the Arab world and Africa. Ben Bella was a symbol of the Third World," he said. Tunisia's Islamist Al-Nahda movement leader Rachid Ghannouchi was also in attendance and paid tribute to Algeria's founding father. Algeria's former president Al-Chadhli Ben Djadid, Morocco's Prime Minister Abdallah Ben Kirkirone and his Mauritanian counterpart Moulay Ould Mohamed Al-Aghdas were also present. And, so was the Secretary-General of the Western Saharan POLISARIO Front Mohamed Abdel-Aziz. It is for his political acumen and long experience that the African Union in 2007 elected Ben Bella as the chairman of the Addis Ababa-based organisation's "Panel of the Wise". He was a political asset and a symbol of the anti-colonial struggle. Algeria's ruling National Liberation Front, too recognised and acknowledged the symbolism of Ben Bella. Yet he was never truly re- established as a political figure within Algeria's ruling elite. Ben Bella was widely respected but never thoroughly rehabilitated and reintegrated into the country's political establishment after the military coup in 1965 by Algeria's then army chief Colonel Houari Boumedienne. The latter was promptly declared president of Algeria -- a position he retained until his death. Boumedienne put Ben Bella under house arrest until 1980. However, Boumedienne was never fully accepted in African circles. As an aside, I recall at an Organisation of African Unity summit in Accra, Ghana, soon after Ben Bella's ousting that my father Kwame Nkrumah, then president of Ghana, had a hard time persuading my mother, then the first lady, to accept to welcome Boumedienne. My mother, like many other Africans at the time, was especially fond of the charismatic Ben Bella. This did not seem to matter when Ben Bella was Algeria's leader. It matters a great deal now. He will go down in history as a political giant. The Pentagon's screening of Gillo Pontecorro's 1966 film The Battle of Algiers to American troops in Iraq to learn about guerrilla warfare is testimony to Ben Bella's legacy as a redoubtable freedom fighter. "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas," the Pentagon queried. "Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafés". The moral of the story was that the "French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically". And so it was with the Americans. The eight-year War of Independence in Algeria was replayed in Iraq four decades later. The trap the French and Americans later found themselves in was that their superior weaponry was a tactical advantage but it was a political failure, totally unsuitable in the Muslim milieu. There were fears of an Islamic power grab in Algeria and Ben Bella kept himself aloof. The Front for Justice and Development, the most influential Algerian Islamist political group, and Algeria's opposition leftist Front for Socialist Forces all paid tribute to Ben Bella. The late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi supported Ben Bella in old age, but it remains a stain on Algeria's national political heritage that Ben Bella did not receive a hero's welcome when he returned to his homeland after years in exile in Switzerland in 1990. Still, he died in his country at the ripe old age of 96. Ben Bella is survived by his wife Zohra and two daughters.
