Word: bellas
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...doomed in advance to be a colossal anticlimax. As one Arab diplomat observed: "You can't have a coup and a conference." Yet that was exactly what Colonel Houari Boumedienne hoped to achieve. Since every invitation to the conference had been personally issued by President Ahmed ben Bella, the man whom Boumedienne had deposed a week earlier, many heads of state doubted the propriety of attending it as guests of the new regime; others were frankly worried about their safety. Even before the coup, the nine former French African states had refused to come be cause of their antipathy...
...under way last week, only 31 of 64 invited countries were present. The dilemma for all the delegates was just what attitude to take toward Boumedienne's regime. Where was it headed? Would it last? It was a particularly ticklish quandary for Arab states that called Ben Bella khoya (brother), as well as for African nations who remember him as a supporter of every liberation movement on the continent...
...Arabic patriotic songs. Abruptly at noon it broke off the music to announce that the government had been taken over by a new Council of Revolution, led by the Defense Minister and army commander, Colonel Houari Boumedienne. The regime of "personal power" was over, said the announcer, and "Ben Bella would meet the fate reserved by history to all despots." A communique signed by Boumedienne charged Ben Bella with an arm-long list of faults: "bad management, waste of public funds, instability, demagogy, anarchy, lying, improvisation, mystification, threats, blackmail and uncertainty about tomorrow." In an aside to the Afro-Asian...
Stray Clemency. As coups go, Boumedienne's was impressively efficient and bloodless. Only at Hydra, in the suburban heights above Algiers, did the police put up a good fight. What baffled most observers was why Boumedienne acted when he did. Ben Bella ran a one-man show for nearly three years and ran it badly, but always with the strong support of Boumedienne and his 60,000-man army. It was Boumedienne who routed the guerrillas who seized Algiers to protest Ben Bella's overthrow of Premier Benyoussef Benkhedda. It was Boumedienne who crushed Colonel Mohammed Chaabani...
...Algerian people, they received the news of Ben Bella's fall with apathy. Men gathered in cafés to sip thick coffee and mint tea; stores and shops opened for business as usual. By afternoon, soldiers with submachine guns had turned back to the city's police the job of directing traffic, and Algiers dozed beneath a cloudless sky and enervating heat...