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ABSTRACT
Based on the published interviews of a sample of 33 former student leaders and members of the Union Générale des Etudiants Musulmans Algériens (UGEMA, 1955–1963), along with private interviews or other data collected about an additional 30, this article traces the brief history of the Algerian Revolution’s only autonomous NGO and the consequent patterns of cooperation and competition over subsequent years. The sample represents a broad political spectrum of Algeria’s recently retired civilian elite. It is biased towards students who eventually achieved high office. Elected leadership positions in UGEMA seem to have anticipated subsequent promotions and co-optation by Boumedienne’s regime (1965–1978) more than by Ben Bella’s (1962–1965). But unwilling or unable in the course of their careers to act in concert, this French-educated elite never acquired real authority. Its representative organ, UGEMA, was effectively ‘suicided’ in 1961, the summer before external military forces outgunned those of Algeria’s Provisional Government and seized power. For better or worse, UGEMA’s potential civilian leadership remained hostage to competing military factions. It was also seriously divided, its captains of industry opposed to Arabizing educators. Shutting down its only autonomous intermediary left independent Algeria with a weak, politically impoverished state.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The writer wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the University of Texas at Austin and the United States Institute of Peace [grant number 029-07F] for support of the project.
2. Khemisti was assassinated in April 1963 ostensibly for personal rather than political reasons, under circumstances that remain unclear (“Algérie” Citation2013). As for Benyahia, an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile destroyed his airplane and all aboard in 1982 during his efforts to mediate between Baghdad and Tehran (Cheurfi Citation2006, 110). Notables appearing in Cheurfi's invaluable reference book who were also known to have been active UGEMA members were included in my analysis of career trajectories.
3. Also see below, concerning Ahmed Taleb-Ibrahimi. Ben Bella offered him the ambassadorship to Brazil, but he preferred to practise medicine and was arrested instead.
4. Pervillé notes that the student strike of 1956 reduced the number of ‘Algerians’, the large majority being non-Muslim, from 2080 to 1811. A few Algerian Muslims, notably the late Mohammed Arkoun, did not join the strike. Pervillé cites an estimate of 600 Algerian Muslims studying in France from a suspect official French source, Malan (Citation1957).
5. Zahir Ihaddaden recalls that Benyahia had invited him to accompany him to Moscow as embassy counsellor, but that he preferred to remain a high school teacher, because he was worried about the political developments at that time, early 1963. He subsequently joined him at the Ministry of Information in 1977. See his chapter in Henry (Citation2012, 365).
6. Abdellatif Bouteflika comes from a Nedroma, Tlemcen family that had migrated to Oujda, Morocco, where he completed high school.
7. Dr Ould-Abbes came from Tlemcen and did his medical studies in East Germany. Other UGEMA colleagues recall his strong Marxist orientation, subsequently toned down. The ministry's official website, more feminised than in Dr Ould-Abbes’ time, is http://www.msnfcf.gov.dz/fr/
8. In his written testimony, Ait Chaalal explains in Henry, Union Générale, 405: ‘UGEMA was the only organization to have been created by a congress, to have functioned on democratic bases, the congresses of which represented the entire body of Algerian students in the world, which elected its respective executives’.
9. Salih Benkobbi, interviewed Algiers, July 8, 2008.
10. Copy of ‘Le FLN et la création de l’UGEMA’, in Henry (Citation2012, 739), courtesy of Ahmed Taleb-Ibrahimi.
11. Benkobbi argues that the FLN leadership had planned the strike, just deciding to let the students decide on the timing as long as it happened before final exams in late May. His account of the two meetings of the students deliberating about the strike differs, however, from those of other participants.
12. Interview November 23, 2007. Taleb-Ibrahimi (Citation2008, 43), recollects that in his years as minister, he only Arabised the second year of primary education and insisted that the teachers be properly prepared.
13. Werenfels discusses a somewhat younger generation of ‘neo-dinosaurs’.