National Liberation Front (Algeria)

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National Liberation Front
جبهة التحرير الوطني
Variant flag of the GPRA (1958-1962) .svg
Party leader Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika
founding November 1, 1954
Headquarters Algiers
Alignment Socialism , social democracy , Algerian nationalism
Colours) green, red and white
Parliament seats 164/462
International connections Socialist International (associated)

The National Liberation Front ( Arabic جبهة التحرير الوطني, DMG ǧabhat at-taḥrīr al-waṭanī , often also in French, FLN Front de Liberation Nationale ) is an Algerian party that emerged from an earlier liberation movement .

history

Algerian war

The FLN was founded in March 1954 by Ahmed Ben Bella in Cairo to achieve Algeria's independence from France . In November 1954 the war in Algeria began with the armed struggle of the FLN and its National Liberation Army (ALN) . In 1962 the FLN was not only able to achieve independence in Algeria, but also to eliminate competing independence movements.

During the war, the FLN was able to muster a maximum of around 2% of the male population capable of weapons as combatants. The combatants were divided into well-armed and only rudimentarily armed units. These were supported by a numerically larger network of non-fighting organized members who were assigned supply and intelligence duties. Participation in the armed struggle was voluntary. In the then largely illiterate local population, around 35% of FLN fighters were literate. Around 40% of the combatants were over 30 years old at the start of their entry. Around two thirds of the fighters were fathers with an average of 3.3 children.

The FLN organized itself politically as a cadre party analogous to the communist parties of the Eastern Bloc . The highest instance was the Central Executive Committee in Algiers , which, as a shadow cabinet, was to provide the core of the future government. Political officers were assigned to the military units . The FLN divided Algeria into six districts ( Wilayat ), over each of which a political leadership cell had suzerainty. Algiers itself was directly under the command of the Central Executive Committee . The largest military unit was the battalion with 350 men. The FLN required a high level of discipline from its members. The death penalty was imposed for numerous disciplinary violations, including dissent against the political leadership. In the summer of 1956, the FLN declared itself in a 22-day conference in Soummamtal in the middle of occupied Algeria as the representative of a sovereign Algerian counter-state. The districts themselves were divided into zones and sectors in order to limit the autonomy of the sector commanders. The aim was to strengthen the political leadership against the military leadership. A 34-member National Council for the Algerian Revolution within Algeria was set up as the highest governing body . The conference took place largely under the leadership of Abane Ramdanes .

The central journalistic organ of the FLN during the Algerian war was the magazine El-Mujahid, printed in Tunisia . It reached an illegal circulation of around 3,000 copies in Algeria, and outside Algeria the medium had a circulation of around 10,000 copies. In 1957, with the help of the French communist René Vauthier , the FLN produced its first propaganda film L'Algérie en flammes , which was shown in the Eastern Bloc and the Arab world. The main means of communication between the FLN and the Algerian population were radio broadcasts from other Arab countries.

The FLN maintained a secret foreign organization among the Algerian emigrants in France, which, in addition to political and terrorist activities, primarily served to raise funds for the organization. In 1956 it had around 4,000 members. In 1961 the organization had around 150,000 members, which corresponded to more than a third of the Algerian emigrants settled in France. The international organization made a substantial contribution to the financing of the FLN. The headquarters of the foreign organization was in West Germany beyond the reach of the French authorities. The organization was headed from 1958 by Omar Boudaoud . In West Germany, the FLN was also able to rely on a broad support scene.

On September 19, 1958, the FLN proclaimed its own Provisional Government in Cairo and declared Algeria independent on September 19, 1958 . All other Arab states and numerous other nations in the Non-Aligned Movement recognized the government as the sovereign representative of the Algerian people. The FLN had its own offices in twenty capital cities, particularly at the United Nations headquarters in New York . From 1957 to 1961, the Liberation Front received financial aid from Arab states which made up more than 95% of the foreign financial aid to the FLN. The equivalent of this aid is estimated at around 16 billion anciens francs . More than half of the funds came from Iraq . Other well-represented donors were the United Arab Republic , Kuwait and Saudi Arabia .

During the war, the political leadership of the FLN, mostly residing outside Algeria, gradually lost the confidence of the guerrillas in Algeria, who were bearing the burden of the fighting. Opposition to the leadership arose in three out of six military districts. In 1959, several FLN leadership cadres from District Four deserted. In the course of the political disavowal of the Provisional Government, the regularly trained external ALN, established in Morocco and Tunisia, assumed more and more political weight. In 1959 there was a coup attempt by officers, which was put down under the leadership of Colonel Houari Boumedienne . However, Boumedienne reached such a weight within the FLN that in 1960 he was able to dictate the dismissal of politicians he did not like from the Provisional Government.

Republic of Algeria

After independence, the FLN developed under Ahmed Ben Bella into an authoritarian, socialist unity party. But even under Houari Boumedienne (1965–1978), attempts were made to take socialism and Islam into account in politics. After protests broke out in the 1980s due to the poor economic situation, Chadli Bendjedid (1978–1992) had to approve a new constitution and introduce a multi-party system. In the first free elections in 1991, the FLN suffered a heavy defeat in the first round. The victory of the Islamists ( FIS ) was prevented by a military coup that sparked the Algerian civil war. In 1997 the FLN was only the third strongest force in the National People's Assembly . On April 27, 1999, however, Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika was elected as the FLN candidate for President of Algeria. In the last presidential election on April 9, 2009, Bouteflika was re-elected with 90.24 percent. The penultimate parliamentary elections took place on May 10, 2012. The National Liberation Front FLN became the strongest ruling party.

The FLN has been an associated member of the Socialist International since 2013 . The last parliamentary elections took place in 2017. Here, too, the National Liberation Front (FLN) once again became the strongest ruling party.

See also

literature

  • Bernhard Schmid : Algeria. Frontline State in Global War? Neoliberalism, Social Movements and Islamic Ideology in a North African Country. Unrast, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-019-6 .
  • Bernhard Schmid: Colonial Algeria. Unrast, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-89771-027-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ There is a longer article on the ALN in the French WIKIPEDIA: fr: Armée de libération nationale (Algérie)
  2. ^ Gilbert Meynier: Histoire intérieure du FLN 1954 - 1962. Paris, 2004, pp. 153–157
  3. ^ Martin Evans: Algeria. France's Undeclared War. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-966903-5 , pp. 177-180.
  4. ↑ Martin Shipway: Decolonization and its Impact. A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires. Blackwell, Malden MA et al. 2008, ISBN 978-0-631-19967-0 , p. 154.
  5. ^ Matthew Connelly: A Diplomatic Revolution - Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era. Oxford, 2002, pp. 135, pp. 137f
  6. ^ Benjamin Stora: Histoire de la guerre de l'Algérie 1954 - 1962. 4th edition, Paris, 2004, pp. 40f
  7. ^ Martin Evans: Algeria: France's undeclared War , Oxford, 2012, p. 277
  8. ↑ Martin Shipway: Decolonization and its Impact. A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires. Blackwell, Malden MA et al. 2008, p. 211 f.
  9. ^ Gilbert Meynier: Histoire intérieure du FLN 1954 - 1962. Paris, 2004, pp. 731f
  10. ↑ John Ruedy: Modern Algeria. The Origins and Development of a Nation. 2nd ed., Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN et al. 2005, ISBN 0-253-21782-2 , pp. 180-183.