"The revolution must go on!" cried Strongman Ahmed ben Bella. Countered Colonel Mohand Ou el Hadj: "The time has come to give the right of speech to all revolutionaries." Thus the first revolt broke out last week against Ben Bella's year-old regime. To be sure, the motives included provincial pride, poverty and political ambition. But the root cause was Ben Bella's drive toward absolute power at the expense of his onetime, rebel comrades in Algeria's struggle for independence. Stronghold of the revolt was fabled Kabylia, a sweep of razor-spined mountains and deep gorges east of Algiers (see map). Populated by 1,000,000 fiercely independent Berbers who call themselves imazighen (free men), Kabylia was overrun by successive invasions of Arabs, Romans, Vandals, Spaniards, Turks, and finally the French —but it has never been totally subdued. No Algerians fought more heroically in the 1954-62 guerrilla war against France; yet the Kabyles charge that Arab Ben Bella has done little for their devastated region. Indeed, grass is growing up around the cornerstones of many a promised textile mill.
Jeweler in the Rough. Kabylia discontent was tailor-made for a disenchanted native son, Hocine Aït Ahmed, who shared a French prison with Ben Bella but is now among the several revolutionary "chiefs" who have been elbowed aside by the strongman. A dreamy Marxist, Aït Ahmed, 37, opposed Ben Bella's outlawing the Communist Party last year. Then last June, on the floor of the National Assembly, Aït Ahmed denounced the government's arrest of an independent chief and Ben Bella critic, leftist Mohammed Boudiaf. Repairing to his Kabylia village of Michelet, Aït Ahmed formed a tiny, clandestine party, the Front of Socialist Forces. With hardly any difficulty, the F.S.F. convinced over half the voters in Kabylia to boycott last month's referendums that rubber-stamped Ben Bella's one-party constitution and his nomination for President.
Among those won over to Aït Ahmed's movement was another disgruntled ex-rebel, Colonel Ou el Hadj, 52, the Kabylia army commander. A Berber and onetime jeweler, Ou el Hadj had served as wartime boss of Wilaya III, the Algerian guerrillas' savagely aggressive Kabylia military zone. Ou el Hadj had become furious with Ben Bella's army boss and No. 2 man, Colonel Houari Boumedienne, for purging the ex-guerrillas in favor of more obedient officers, many of whom spent the war in exile.
At the Forum. The two dissidents launched last week's crisis at a Sunday rally in the tile-roofed Kabylia capital, Tizi-Ouzou, which they had ringed round with machine guns. In Algeria's first popular demonstration against Ben Bella, 2,000 turbaned men and shawled women flocked into the town square, unintimidated by a government helicopter that fluttered past overhead. Sharing the platform, Aït Ahmed and Ou el Hadj proclaimed what began, at least, as a peaceful insurrection. Aït Ahmed called Ben Bella a "potentate," charged him with "betraying his comrades" and "destroying the revolution," added: "If the government wants to change its ways, we are ready to discuss things sincerely. If it refuses, we refuse to rally to this dictatorship."