Persons [ ] Colonialism and Liberation | Ahmed Ben Bella, 1916 – 2012
The members of the Provisional Government of Republic of Algeria at the château d’Aunoy, Hocine Ait Ahmed, Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohamed Khider, Mohamed Boudiaf and Rabah Bitat, January 2, 1962 in France.
”I am the son of poor peasants who came at a very young age to live in Algeria. I only recently saw the place where they were born, near the city of Marrakech.”
”I’m optimistic because I’m pragmatic: Neither of the two sides, the military government nor the Islamic front, is capable of winning. If they continue to fight, they will both bleed to death.”
”In the past, we spoke of poverty, misery only in the south. Now there is a lot of misery, a lot of bad that creates victims in the north as well. This has become manifest: the global system was not made to serve the good of all, but to serve multinational companies.”
”Colonialism is an idea born in the West that drives Western countries – like France, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain – to occupy countries outside of Europe.”
”The French colonisation of Algeria lasted a long time: 132 years.”
”It’s with them that we have constituted a liberation front and brought our logistic support to armies to help their countries come out of colonialism and establish a national internal regime.”
”The liberation movement which I led in Algeria, the organization that I created to fight the French army, was at first a small movement of nothing at all. We were but some tens of people throughout Algeria, a territory that is five times the size of France.”
”In two years, there were 22 military coups d’etat, essentially in Africa and the third world. The coup d’etat of Algiers, in 1965, is what opened the path.”
”Algeria was therefore only the beginning of something that was in development: this is why I say that it’s the global capitalist system that finally reacted against us.”
”The multinationals, like General Motors and Nestle; these are the big industrial groups that weigh, on the monetary scale, much more than big countries like Egypt.”
Ahmed Ben Bella, 1916 – 2012
*An Algerian socialist soldier and revolutionary who was the first President of Algeria from 1963 to 1965.
