Of all the rebel combat commanders thrown up by Algeria's 4½-year-old civil war, none was more dreaded by French and Moslems alike than Amirouche Aït Hamouda, a peddler's son from the mountainous Berber stronghold of Kabylia. Barely into his 20s when he joined the underground, sinewy, long-legged Amirouche rose swiftly to the F.L.N.'s highest field rank, full "colonel," commanded a battle-hardened force of 5,000 men that made Kabylia the country's strongest bastion of rebel power.
Amirouche lived in the field with his guerrillas, seldom slept in one place for more than a few hours, eluded French patrols time and again with...
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