Algeria: Unrest in the Kabylia

After a seven-day visit with his neutralist pal, Marshal Tito, Algeria's President Ahmed ben Bella last week set off for home. By rights, Ben Bella should have flown 1,060 miles southwest to Algiers. Instead, his Russian-piloted Ilyushin-18 plane headed north and touched down at France's Melun air port, 26 miles from Paris. There, a helicopter was waiting to hustle Ben Bella to the Chateau de Champs for a conference with Charles de Gaulle.

What was the purpose of this dramatic but curiously clandestine meeting, just 48 hours before De Gaulle took off on his long-heralded visit to Mexico? The men are not close friends. In fact, the meeting at Melun was the first time De Gaulle had laid eyes on Ben Bella since World War II in Italy, when le grand Charles had pinned a military medal on Ben Bella, then an obscure master sergeant in the Free French forces.

Both heads of state remained publicly noncommittal but, after a 100-min. conference, they emerged smiling, and

Ben Bella told newsmen, "For me this was an historic event. What a great man, what a great mind!" Informed observers thought the talk dealt with 1) a better share in Saharan oil for Algeria, 2) an increase in French aid, now running at $200 million annually, and 3) Algerian membership in a proposed Mediterranean pact that would include France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Spain, Tunisia and Morocco.

Village Kings. The conference with De Gaulle would probably strengthen Ben Bella against his own opposition at home. He could use some strengthening, for Algeria has been plagued with growing'unrest in recent weeks. Despairing of ever finding local jobs, thousands of Algerians leave each week to work in France. Armed rebel bands roam the Great Kabylia mountains, where trouble usually starts in Algeria, and attacks on police posts and government offices are mounting.

The chief rebel is Hocine Aft Ahmed, 38, who took to the hills in 1963 and is still holed up with his guerrillas near Michelet. Ait Ahmed patriotically called off his war last October, when border fighting broke out between Algeria and Morocco. But now that there is peace, Ait Ahmed has returned to the attack, with guns, bombs and pamphlets urging Ben Bella's soldiers to desert.

Rebel hopes for a widespread general revolt rest on the peasant masses and the thousands of unemployed workers in the cities. So far, peasant anger has been directed more at the "little village kings" and the overprivileged army than at Ben Bella himself. In the oasis village of Tolga last month, a furious crowd pummeled the mayor and the local F.L.N. political bosses, grabbed three buses and drove to Biskra to protest that the bosses had pocketed government relief funds. From Ouled Djellal and Ourellal come reports that hungry peasants have set fire to party headquarters and even liquidated some party bosses.

Loyal Commander. But Ben Bella's hold on the government and the nation really depends on the support of the 50,000-man Algerian army and its ascetic commander, Colonel Houari Boumedienne, who is also Defense Minister and Vice President of Algeria. With a monthly salary of about $50, the average soldier is far better off than the average Algerian citizen, and in every crisis so far, Boumedienne has proved loyal to Ben Bella.