Ferhat Abbas

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Ferhat Abbas

Ferhat Mekki Abbas ( Arabic فرحات عباس Central Atlas Tamazight ⴼⵔⵃⴰⵜ ⵄⴱⴱⴰⵙ Ferḥat Ɛebbas ; * August 24, 1899 in Taher , Algeria ; † December 24, 1985 in Algiers ) was an Algerian freedom fighter and politician . Initially, as a moderate politician, he advocated equality between the Algerians and the French within the French state association. But since he could not realize his ideas, he joinedthe National Liberation Front ( Front de Liberation Nationale , FLN)during the Algerian War in 1956, which fought militarily for the country's independence. He served as the first President of the Provisional Government from 1958 to 1961 with a short interruptionand as President of the Algerian National Assembly from 1962 to 1963.

Life

Lineage and Early Career

Ferhat Abbas was born in the village of Bouafroune ( Chahna district), 12 km south of Taher (in today's Ouadjana commune , in the Jijel province) on August 24, 1899, into a wealthy Kabyle peasant family of 12 children as the son of a local tribal notable ( Qaid ) born. His father was awarded the Legion of Honor for his services . In Philippeville (now Skikda), where he graduated from the Lycée since 1909 , and in Constantine Abbas received a French-language school education and then worked for three years in the medical service of the French army . He then attended the university in Algiers and trained as a pharmacist at this university . His other subjects included literature and history. He then worked as a pharmacist in Sétif , where he built a strong political base. He was elected to the city council of Sétif and later in Constantine to the general council .

Moderate nationalist

At the beginning of his political career, Ferhat Abbas agitated, among other things, in book form for an assimilation of the Algerian population into the French nation and European culture. He wanted to achieve equality for Algerian Muslims, for which purpose the French should give up their colonial aspirations. He took this view in his book Le Jeune Algérien (1931). Together with the moderate-nationalist politician Mohammed Saleh Bendjelloul , he headed the Fédération des élus indigènes, which was founded in 1927 and advocates moderate reforms . In 1936 Abbas endorsed the Blum-Viollette Plan named after Léon Blum and Maurice Viollette , according to which a relatively small number of around 20,000 to 30,000 assimilated Algerian Muslims should have received full French citizenship; but this proposal failed due to resistance from French settlers living in Algeria. Disappointed that his ideas could not be realized, Abbas founded the Union Populaire Algérienne (UPA) in 1938 , which campaigned for full equality between French and Algerians and the preservation of Algerian culture and language.

At the beginning of World War II , Abbas volunteered for medical service in the French army in 1939. However, he was dissatisfied with the Vichy regime and also with the attitude of the French general Henri Giraud , who called on Algerian Muslims to military engagement in times of war, but had no ear for their reform wishes. In February 1943 Abbas criticized French colonialism in his Manifesto of the Algerian People and demanded the right of self-determination for Algerians. In May 1943 he wrote a detailed supplement to his manifesto. In it he advocated an autonomous Algeria within the French state association. However, his reform proposals did not meet with France's approval.

Together with the Algerian workers' leader Messali Hadj , Abbas formed a popular united front of Muslim nationalists ( Amis du manifeste et de la liberté , AML) in March 1944 , which advocated a looser connection between an autonomous Algeria and France. Charles de Gaulle's reforms did not go far enough for the nationalists. In May 1945 bloody unrest against the colonial power broke out in Sétif and its neighboring region, which led to the ban on the AML. Abbas was placed under house arrest; his newspaper Égalité was also no longer allowed to appear. After his amnesty in 1946 he was a co-founder of the Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA) party, which continued to advocate the goals of his manifesto. He also became a member of the second national constituent assembly of France.

Role in the struggle for independence

Ferhat Abbas has been a member of the Algerian parliament since 1948 and was the leader of the moderate Algerian nationalists. When the National Liberation Front ( Front de Liberation Nationale , FLN), founded in Cairo , began the armed struggle to achieve independence from France in November 1954 with the opening of the Algerian War, Abbas initially called for calm. But he finally fled to Cairo in April 1956 and joined the FLN. He was convinced that only the FLN was able to liberate Algeria. In August 1956 he became a member of the Comité National de la Révolution Algérienne (CNRA), traveled from Cairo to Switzerland , then stayed for a long time in Tunis and from 1956 to 1958 also headed the public relations work of the FLN.

On September 18, 1958, the FLN installed Abbas as Prime Minister of the provisional Algerian government-in-exile, which had its headquarters first in Cairo and since May 1959 in Tunis. Abbas advocated new negotiations with de Gaulle. The talks in Melun (June 1960) were just as unsuccessful as those in Évian-les-Bains (May 1961) and Lugrin , with sovereignty over the Sahara being the main point of contention. Abbas' skills as a diplomat brought international recognition for the Algerian independence efforts. In January 1961 Abbas took part in a conference of seven African states held in Casablanca to discuss the formulation of an African charter . In July 1961 he signed an agreement with King Hassan II of Morocco to settle border conflicts after the end of the Algerian war. However, in August 1961 he had to resign from his post as President of the Algerian government in exile. With this, the National Council gave the FLN to understand that it no longer agreed with Abbas' negotiating line. The new president was the more radical Benyoucef Benkhedda .

Provisional Head of State; Imprisonment; next life

After the end of the Algerian War with the signing of the Treaties of Évian and the declaration of Algerian independence, Abbas was elected President of the Algerian National Constituent Assembly and provisional head of state on September 25, 1962. He represented an Islamic modernism that was based on Western democratic ideas with political pluralism. Abbas was very hostile to the authoritarian one-party system advocated by Prime Minister Ahmed Ben Bella . In protest against the constitution drawn up by the FLN, which the constituent national assembly had no say in drawing up, he resigned as president of this assembly on August 14, 1963. He was expelled from the FLN, arrested on August 18, 1964 as an opponent of Ben Bellas and placed under house arrest in Adrar . After Houari Boumedienne had overthrown Ben Bella in a military coup in June 1965, Abbas was released and returned to Algiers , but remained away from politics from then on.

In March 1976 Abbas signed a “New Appeal to the Algerian People” with Ben Khedda and others, in which he criticized the policies of the Boumedienne government and the lack of democratic institutions and advocated an end to the conflicts between the Maghreb states. Abbas was again put under house arrest, which President Chadli Bendjedid had not lifted until 1979. Abbas then lived in Kouba and criticized the politics of Ben Bella and Boumedienne in his work L'indépendance confisquée , published in 1984 . It was published in France but not distributed in Algeria. Despite his disapproval of the politics of his home country at the time, Chadli Bendjedid awarded him the Médaille de Résistance in November 1984 . This was equivalent to an official rehabilitation. Abbas died in Algiers on December 24, 1985 at the age of 86 and was buried in the presence of a FLN delegation in the Cimetière d'El Alia cemetery, not far from Boumedienne and other important figures in Algeria.

Fonts

  • Le Jeune Algérien: de la colonie vers la province ("The Young Algerian: From Colony to Province"), 1931
  • Guerre de Révolution d'Algérie: La Nuit coloniale ("Algerian War of Independence: The Colonial Night"), Memoirs, 1962
  • Autopsy d'une guerre ("Autopsy of a War"), 1980
  • L'indépendance confisquée , 1984

literature

  • Abbas, Ferhat , in: Makers of Modern Africa , 1991, p. 7 f.
  • Philipp C. Naylor: Abbas, Ferhat , in: Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa , 2004, Vol. 1, pp. 2-4.

Web links

Commons : Ferhat Abbas  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stora (B.) & Zaoud (Z.): Ferhat Abbas, une utopie algérienne , Paris, Denoël, 1995, pp. 18-19
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Ferhat Abbas in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
  3. ↑ a b c d e Ferhat Abbas . In: Encyclopædia Britannica .
  4. ↑ Martin Evans: Algeria - France's undeclared war , Oxford, 2012, p. 55 f.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Philipp C. Naylor: Ferhat Abbas , in: Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa , 2004, vol. 1, p. 3.
  6. ↑ Abbas, Ferhat , in: Makers of Modern Africa , 1991, p. 7.
  7. ↑ a b c d Philipp C. Naylor: Ferhat Abbas , in: Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa , 2004, vol. 1, p. 4.
  8. ↑ a b c Abbas, Ferhat , in: Makers of Modern Africa , 1991, p. 8.
personal data
SURNAME Abbas, Ferhat
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abbas, Ferhat Mekki (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Algerian politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Taher (Algeria)
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 1985
Place of death Algiers