Ahmed Ben Bella

Ben Bella was a soldier and revolutionary who commanded the National Liberation Front during Algeria's war against France, coordinating weapons and strategy from Cairo while dodging multiple French assassination attempts. When independence came in 1962, his Oujda Group muscled aside the provisional government; he took the prime minister's office, then elbowed out acting president Ferhat Abbas within a year to claim the presidency himself. He steered the new state toward Arab socialism and pan-Arabism, aligning with Nasser's Egypt and Castro's Cuba, nationalizing industries, and calling himself…