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 a Nasserist. Border clashes with Morocco in the Sand War and a failed socialist uprising at home shadowed his rule. On 19 June 1965, his defense minister Houari Boumédiéne overthrew him in a coup. He remained under house arrest until 17 January 1980, living another three decades in the shadow of the state he had built.