Larbi Ben M'hidi - Rebellion

Rebellion

On March 15, 1946, Ben M'Hidi was released from prison due to an amnesty being granted to the majority of nationalists imprisoned for the 1945 riots. He became a follower of Messali Hadj and later joined the PPA movement during World War II. Whilst being a member, he rapidly obtained significant responsibilities within the movement, before deciding to join the paramilitary organisation, the Organisation Spéciale (OS), which was affiliated with the MTLD. Ben M'hidi, just like his comrades grew impatient with the nationalist Messali Hadj and decided to form a new movement. On 30 March 1954, Larbi Ben M'hidi was among nine men that formed the Comité Révolutionnaire d’Unité et d’Action (CRUA), nine years after the massacre of Setif. All nine had previously been members of the Organisation Spéciale (OS), which was part of the armed wing of PPA-MTLD, a nationalist movement led by Messali Hadj which was dismantled by French police in 1951, with many members imprisoned. During May and June 1954, they decided that French Algeria would be split into five areas, Ben M'hidi was assigned Zone 5, Oran. On 10 October 1954, Larbi Ben M'hidi and five other members of the CRUA approved the transformation, thus giving birth to the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) and the establishment of the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN). A decision was made to launch an insurrection on November 1 during a meeting at the Climat de France, a house overlooking Bab el Oued.

On 1 November 1954, an unknown organisation to the French had claimed responsibility for all of the attacks that were made on French targets. These attacks were referred to as military operations by the then unknown organisation, the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN). Larbi Ben M'hidi was one of the six men that were conducting the rebellion internally. The other five being Didouche Mourad, Rabah Bitat, Krim Belkacem, Mohammed Boudiaf, and Mostefa Ben Boulaïd. The members of the organisation that were operating externally in Cairo were Hocine Ait Ahmed, Ahmed Ben Bella, and Mohammed Khider. They later became known as The Men of November.

On November 2, 1955, Ben M'hidi took command of the Zone Autonome d'Alger (ZAA) and appointed Yacef Saadi as his aide. On June 25, 1956, a FLN tract authored by Ben M'Hidi and Abane Ramdane declared that, “All executions of combatants will be followed by reprisals. For each FLN soldier guillotined, a hundred Frenchmen will be cut down.”