Respectability for Rebels

Nine arch conspirators--five of them sentenced to death in absentia by French military courts--lined up self-consciously in a room in Tunis and let photographers take their pictures. They were the leaders of Algeria's National Liberation Front. With Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba offering them physical sanctuary and diplomatic sponsorship before the world, the FLN was trying to assume the robes of respectability. Last fortnight the FLN leaders invited French journalists in for coffee, showed them round their newly expanded headquarters, and announced that three of their members would leave shortly for New York (traveling on Syrian diplomatic passports) to press Algeria's case personally on U.N. delegates.

The Sahara Front. In the past, FLN members have preserved their anonymity so carefully that several of those photographed had long since been written off by the French as dead or missing.

Chief of the five military leaders is a barrel-chested, 38-year-old former French army sergeant who styles himself "Colonel" Amar Ouamrane. One of the original planners of the 1954 uprising that launched the rebellion, Ouamrane has a reputation for savage ferocity, is currently coordinating military activities on the increasingly important "Sahara front," where last week rebels attacked a party of French oil prospectors and killed 24. "Remember," said one FLN leader, "that even a minor Saharan incident will shake French and foreign-oil interests abroad." Ouamrane's chief of staff is bespectacled Belkacem Krim, 35, a ruthless, fearless former French army NCO who has been sentenced to death four times. Under him are Abdellah ben Tobbal, a 34-year-old ex-miller who is known as "The Chinaman"; Abdelhafid Boussouf, 31, a handsome former teacher who commands some 20,000 men along the Moroccan border; and Mahmoud Cherif, 43, who served brilliantly in the French army, won the Croix de guerre in Indo-China, still has a brother serving as a captain in the French army.

Politicians of the FLN executive committee are led by 58-year-old Ferhat Abbas, "grand old man" of Algerian politics and a onetime moderate, whose failure to wring concessions from France has turned him into an embittered extremist. His close aide is Dr. Mohammed Lamine-Debaghine, 40, bitterly anti-French veteran nationalist who is subject to bouts of depression caused by attacks of neuralgia that partially paralyze his face. Both he and Abbas have served as Deputies in the French Assembly.

Sandbags Down. As the Algerian rebellion went into its fourth year, the French counted 45,000 deaths (including 4,920 French military). The FLN has admitted temporary defeat in its campaign of terrorism in Algeria's larger towns--curfews remain, but sandbags and barbed wire are coming down, and life has been slowly returning to normal. But outside the cities, the FLN boasted an organized strength of 100,000 men, and a French army officer conceded FLN was "better armed and better trained than ever before." The reality, as always, was hard to sort out from the claims. Last week the FLN put out a communique claiming its troops had killed 500 French soldiers, knocked out a dozen tanks and armored cars in ten days. Snorted a French journalist: "This is intolerable. They lie even more than we do."

With respectability, the FLN leaders have not taken on moderation. Even Host Bourguiba was openly distressed at the FLN's manifesto refusing all negotiations unless France first recognized Algeria's independence. Nor was there any sign that they would call off the savage campaign of terror and murder they have loosed on the rival MNA (a more moderate Algerian nationalist group supported, FLN leaders claim, by the French) in France itself. MNA sympathizers have been gunned down in full daylight on Paris avenues and on Metro platforms. Since the first of the year, 570 Algerians have been murdered in France.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.