"It's with them that we have constituted a liberation front and brought our logistic support to armies to help their countries come out of colonialism and establish a national internal regime"
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Ahmed Ben Bella speaks from the vantage point of a revolutionary who saw independence not as a solitary national project but as a continental and global undertaking. The phrase "we have constituted a liberation front" evokes the FLN in Algeria and the broader practice of building fronts that could channel political will, guerrilla organization, and international sympathy into coordinated force. "Logistic support" is the unromantic core of that effort: arms, training, safe havens, funding, and diplomatic cover. He names the practical infrastructure without which anti-colonial idealism would stall, insisting that emancipation required concrete assistance that crossed borders and defied the colonial map.
The aim is not simply the end of foreign rule but the creation of a "national internal regime", a telling formulation that stresses sovereignty and internal legitimacy. Coming out of colonialism meant more than lowering a flag; it meant constructing institutions controlled from within, immune to the old metropole and to new forms of external tutelage. Ben Bella places himself in the current of Third Worldism and the Non-Aligned Movement, where Algeria, newly independent after a brutal war, cast itself as a workshop and refuge for other struggles from sub-Saharan Africa to Palestine. Algiers in the early 1960s became a hub where movements found training and a voice.
Yet there is a tension folded into the aspiration. A centralized national regime promised unity and development, but often hardened into single-party rule and repression of dissent. Ben Bella himself pursued radical reforms and international solidarity, only to be overthrown in 1965. The line thus carries both ideal and warning: liberation requires solidarity, organization, and material support, but the power reclaimed must serve the people rather than replicate domination under a different flag. By foregrounding logistics and collective fronts, he underlines that freedom is a shared, structured endeavor, not an isolated burst of insurrection.
The aim is not simply the end of foreign rule but the creation of a "national internal regime", a telling formulation that stresses sovereignty and internal legitimacy. Coming out of colonialism meant more than lowering a flag; it meant constructing institutions controlled from within, immune to the old metropole and to new forms of external tutelage. Ben Bella places himself in the current of Third Worldism and the Non-Aligned Movement, where Algeria, newly independent after a brutal war, cast itself as a workshop and refuge for other struggles from sub-Saharan Africa to Palestine. Algiers in the early 1960s became a hub where movements found training and a voice.
Yet there is a tension folded into the aspiration. A centralized national regime promised unity and development, but often hardened into single-party rule and repression of dissent. Ben Bella himself pursued radical reforms and international solidarity, only to be overthrown in 1965. The line thus carries both ideal and warning: liberation requires solidarity, organization, and material support, but the power reclaimed must serve the people rather than replicate domination under a different flag. By foregrounding logistics and collective fronts, he underlines that freedom is a shared, structured endeavor, not an isolated burst of insurrection.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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