War & Peace Quote by Ahmed Ben Bella

Ben Bella doesn’t describe colonialism as an abstract evil; he itemizes it like a bill of materials. “Permanent settling,” “army,” “services,” “policies” - the blunt inventory is the point. Colonialism isn’t just conquest, it’s administration with a gun: a foreign power that doesn’t merely arrive, but installs itself, builds routines, and makes repression feel like governance. The phrase “primitive form” is strategically loaded. It casts classic settler-occupation colonialism as the crude, obvious version of domination, implying there are “advanced” forms too - economic dependency, client regimes, technocratic “aid” - that can be harder to name and easier to excuse.

The Indonesia reference is doing political work beyond historical comparison. By citing “300 years,” Ben Bella pulls the lens wide: Algeria’s French occupation (and the war that brought him to prominence) becomes part of a global pattern rather than a local grievance. He’s not asking for sympathy; he’s building a prosecutorial timeline. Longevity becomes evidence of intent: this wasn’t a temporary “mission” or a misunderstood civilizing project. It was a durable system designed to outlast generations.

As a post-independence politician, Ben Bella is also staking out a moral vocabulary for the new state and for Third World solidarity. The subtext is a warning to his audience at home and abroad: if colonialism is a structure, not an episode, then liberation can’t stop at flags and speeches. You have to dismantle the machinery - or it will quietly keep running under a new name.