Étoile North Africaine
North African Star ( French : Étoile Nord-Africaine ; Arabic : نجم شمال إفريقيا / Nadschjm Shimal Ifriqiya ) was the first political party in Algeria .
history
The North African Star was an association founded in France in 1926 by a core group of migrant workers, mostly of Kabyle descent , which developed into a political party. The most famous members who played the main roles in the association were: Salah Bouchafa, Amar Imache, Hadj Ali Abdelkader, Mohammed Djefel, Si Jilani Mohammed, Belkacem Radjef, Messali Hadj , Ahmed Belghoul.
Its members were mainly recruited from Algerian migrant workers in France. Politically, the party pursued the course of communist anti-imperialism . The founding contacts to the Parti communiste français (PCF) helped establish the party . Messali took over their organization as a cadre party and took a dominant position as general secretary. The party had around 4,000 members within the Algerian community in France. Her newspaper El Ouma reached a significant part of the Algerian community in 1934 with a circulation of 43,500 copies. The party did not gain a foothold in Algeria until 1930.
In 1927 Messali gave a speech at the Communist Congress for Threatened Peoples in Berlin, with which he attracted international attention. The party had 2,000 members in 1928. It was banned by the French government in 1929, but continued to exist underground. In 1930 Messali brought the party closer to the idea of an Islamic state with the publication "Al-Umma" . In the following there was a break with the PCF. The party was banned again in 1937 by the Popular Front government under Léon Blum . Most of the supporters found themselves in the Parti du peuple algérien, which was also dominated by Messalie, and later the Mouvement pour le triomphe des libértes démocratiques .