Word: kabylia
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...year-old regime. To be sure, the motives included provincial pride, poverty and political ambition. But the root cause was Ben Bella's drive toward absolute power at the expense of his onetime, rebel comrades in Algeria's struggle for independence. Stronghold of the revolt was fabled Kabylia, a sweep of razor-spined mountains and deep gorges east of Algiers (see map). Populated by 1,000,000 fiercely independent Berbers who call themselves imazighen (free men), Kabylia was overrun by successive invasions of Arabs, Romans, Vandals, Spaniards, Turks, and finally the French -but it has never been totally...
Jeweler in the Rough. Kabylia discontent was tailor-made for a disenchanted native son, Hocine Aït Ahmed, who shared a French prison with Ben Bella but is now among the several revolutionary "chiefs" who have been elbowed aside by the strongman. A dreamy Marxist, Aït Ahmed, 37, opposed Ben Bella's outlawing the Communist Party last year. Then last June, on the floor of the National Assembly, Aït Ahmed denounced the government's arrest of an independent chief and Ben Bella critic, leftist Mohammed Boudiaf. Repairing to his Kabylia village of Michelet...
Among those won over to Aït Ahmed's movement was another disgruntled ex-rebel, Colonel Ou el Hadj, 52, the Kabylia army commander. A Berber and onetime jeweler, Ou el Hadj had served as wartime boss of Wilaya III, the Algerian guerrillas' savagely aggressive Kabylia military zone. Ou el Hadj had become furious with Ben Bella's army boss and No. 2 man, Colonel Houari Boumedienne, for purging the ex-guerrillas in favor of more obedient officers, many of whom spent the war in exile...
...Forum. The two dissidents launched last week's crisis at a Sunday rally in the tile-roofed Kabylia capital, Tizi-Ouzou, which they had ringed round with machine guns. In Algeria's first popular demonstration against Ben Bella, 2,000 turbaned men and shawled women flocked into the town square, unintimidated by a government helicopter that fluttered past overhead. Sharing the platform, Aït Ahmed and Ou el Hadj proclaimed what began, at least, as a peaceful insurrection. Aït Ahmed called Ben Bella a "potentate," charged him with "betraying his comrades" and "destroying the revolution...
Fortnight ago, the government submitted the constitution to a national referendum, announced a landslide (98%) majority for approval. But in the Kabylia mountains east of Algiers, fiercely independent Berbers staged a surprisingly effective boycott. Disappointed because Ben Bella has done little for their war-shattered region, and egged on by Marxist sympathizing Deputy Hussein Ait-Ahmed, who recently broke with Ben Bella, more than 50% of the half-million Kabylia voters stayed away from the polls. Said one Berber ex-guerrilla: "Independence? All we have got from it is the national flag...