Two reasons confirmed the decision to go ahead with the coup: Ben Bella’s style of governing and his preparations for a showdown with Boumedienne.
Like every autocrat, Ben Bella gradually dispensed with people who thought independently and were prepared to defend their views, but, equally, could not respect and would not listen to those who remained. He dominated them; they were inferior. He paid less and less attention to those around him. He grew intolerant. He shouted at them. He no longer summoned them to help him make decisions. He summoned them to inform them of the decisions he had made. ‘Today I’ve decided that so-and-so,’ was how he would open politburo meetings. The principles of the court were at work, pushing the leader into a state of isolation. He held centre stage but held it alone. The Villa Joly gradually became empty. Ben Bella even lost touch with his old friends. He had no time for them, or they got on his nerves. If someone called on him to offer advice, Ben Bella would explode, ring for his bodyguards, and order them to arrest the caller. People began to stay out of his way, for fear of crossing him. He was a man of moods: he would easily fly into a rage and then he would sulk. He would get all wound up and stop thinking about what he was saying. Shortly before the coup he screamed at a cabinet meeting, ‘I’m finished with all of you!’
He was indeed finished with them.
He no longer trusted anyone. People were either plotting or carrying out sabotage. One day he introduced Boumedienne to an Egyptian journalist with the words, ‘This is the man who is preparing the conspiracy against me.’ And he asked: ‘How are the intrigues coming along?’ ‘Quite well, thank you,’ Boumedienne replied.
He concentrated more and more power in his own hands. He was president of the republic and general secretary of the party. He also began taking over ministries. He decided who would be a member of the politburo, who would be a member of the central committee, who would join the government and sit in parliament. ‘He decided everything,’ Buteflika later assured the journalists.
His was a complicated, many-layered personality, for, at the same time, he was trying to assure everyone that he liked them. He talked with each faction and made promises to each. In the morning he met with the leftists and made promises he could not keep; in the afternoon he met with the right wing and made more promises that he could not keep. People stopped believing him. The mutual suspicion grew, increasing the tension.
He played, he improvised. He was a great improviser, a tactician. But no clear strategic thinking guided his tactics. In these tactics there were no plans, there was only juggling.
Nobody could tell him anything. He was uncritical towards himself. He believed in his own strength, in his own star, in his own popularity. He had a good press — until the last minute he had a very good press. Writing anything bad about Ben Bella counted as a lapse of taste. Journalists liked him. He received them enthusiastically. He was so sure of himself that he felt the moment had come to deal with his main opponent, the very force that had carried him into power, that for three years had stood not so much behind him as beside him — the army. He did not know, he did not sense, the hopelessness of the struggle on which he was about to embark. The army was more than those in uniform: it was also those who had been in uniform, launching their careers. Half of the government, the central committee, the parliament, was army — present or past, émigré or guerrilla. The majority of Ben Bella’s people belonged not to Ben Bella; they belonged to Boumedienne.
Ben Bella began by creating units of a people’s militia, a counter-balance, he believed, to the influence of the army. It would not work. Next, while Boumedienne was in Moscow, Ben Bella named Tahar Zbiri chief of the general staff, a move to which Boumedienne would never have agreed: Zbiri was not army; Zbiri had been a guerrilla.
They say that by the beginning of June the atmosphere had become unbearable, that Ben Bella was obviously preparing a purge. And then he himself declared his intentions.
A week before the coup, on Saturday 12 June, Ben Bella called for a politburo meeting the following Saturday, 19 June. Its agenda would be the following:
1. Changes in the cabinet.
2. Changes in the army command.
3. The liquidation of the military opposition.
Boumedienne was not present — he had already split irrevocably with Ben Bella — but half of the members of the politburo were Boumedienne’s people anyway.
After this meeting, Ben Bella boarded an airplane and left for a week in Oran, leaving behind in Algiers everyone he had threatened.
Nobody knew who was to be dismissed. Everyone discreetly examined his conscience. Everyone felt uncertain, and the uncertainty united them. In Ben Bella’s absence, discussions continued about whether to carry out the coup. Might it not be enough to just threaten a coup?
On Friday 18 June, a few hours before the coup, Ben Bella addressed a rally in Oran. He told the rally that ‘Algeria is united as never before,’ that all rumours of divisions in the government are nonsense, hostile propaganda. Afterwards he went to a soccer match — he never missed a match — and then he returned to Algeria in the late evening. Someone apparently telephoned him, requesting an emergency cabinet meeting. He answered that he was tired and was going to bed. At two in the morning he was awakened by his friend, Colonel Tahar Zbiri, who was wearing a helmet and holding an automatic.
Ben Bella disappeared without a trace.
The organizer of the coup was the first vice-premier, the minister of national defence, a member of the politburo of the FLN, a member of the Algerian National Assembly, the commander of the national people’s army, and a former teacher of Arabic literature, Houari Boumedienne (born Bukharuba Mohammed). He was a colonel because the Algerian army, like all people’s or revolutionary armies, has no rank of general or marshal. Officers’ insignia are very modest, and the uniforms of privates and officers do not differ in the cut or the quality of the material.
Boumedienne is not photogenic (and, what’s worse, the newspapers that dislike him retouch his face to give him a predatory cast), but in the flesh, he makes a likeable impression. He is of medium height, very slim, with a long, almost ascetic face, sunken cheeks and prominent jaws. His eyes, in deep sockets, are brown, mobile and uncommonly penetrating. Boumedienne does not look like an Arab. He has long, dark wavy hair and a close-cropped moustache rusty with the nicotine from his chain-smoking.
His manner astonished me. I met him a few days after the coup and was prepared for someone characterized by the mannerisms of a despot. In fact, Boumedienne was shy, embarrassed. I was attending a reception at the People’s Palace. He bowed as low as a schoolboy to everyone. He did not know what to do with his hands, and his lack of social experience was obvious. After receiving the guests he sat in a chair against the wall and stared silently at an empty corner of the room. I do not know if he exchanged a single sentence with anyone in the course of the reception.
I asked one of the correspondents accredited in Algiers: ‘Have any of you ever talked with Boumedienne?’ Nobody had. ‘He does not talk to anyone,’ he said. ‘He does not talk at all.’ Indeed, Boumedienne is tightly sealed, a hermetic character: if Boumedienne has to say a word, he does so with great effort, as if he were laying bricks. He prefers to answer in monosyllables or with a nod of his head. He seldom delivers a speech. In the past year, he had given one speech. He reads his speeches from a text. They are always short, made up of dry theses. They say that Boumedienne treats civilians warily, that he cannot stand diplomatic chit-chat or round-table talks.