Mohamed Boudiaf

• Name — Mohamed Boudiaf • Order — Chairman of the High Council of State • Term Start — 16 January 1992 • Term End — 29 June 1992 • Prime Minister — Sid Ahmed Ghozali • Predecessor — Abdelmalek Benhabyles (Acting) • Successor — Ali Kafi • Born — 23 June 1919 • Birthplace — Ouled Madhi, M'Sila Province, French Algeria • Died — 29 June 1992 • Place of death — Annaba, Algeria • Death Cause — Assassination • Spouse — Fatiha Boudiaf • Party — FLN (1954–1962) PRS (1962–1979) Mohamed Boudiaf (23 June 1919 – 29 June 1992; ALA-LC: Muḥammad Bū-Ḍiyāf), also called Si Tayeb el Watani, was an Algerian politician and statesman, and one of the founders of the revolutionary National Liberation Front (FLN) that led the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962). Boudiaf was exiled soon after Algeria's independence and did not go back to Algeria for 27 years. He returned in 1992 to accept his appointed position of Chairman of the High Council of State, but he was assassinated four months later.

Mohamed Boudiaf was born in Ouled Madhi (now in M'Sila Province), French Algeria, to a family of erstwhile nobility which had lost its standing and influence during colonial times. His education was cut short after primary school by poor health (tuberculosis) and his increasing activism in the nascent nationalist movement. During the Second World War, he was drafted into the French Army and fought in the Battle of Monte Cassino. A member of the nationalist Parti du Peuple Algérien (PPA) of Messali Hadj, he later joined the successor organization MTLD and its secret paramilitary wing, the Organisation Spéciale (OS). Boudiaf was responsible for organizing the OS network in the Sétif region, storing arms, collecting funds and preparing guerrilla forces. He was sentenced in absentia to 10 years of prison by the French authorities, but avoided arrest. When Messali decided to dissolve the OS, his rivals combined with stalwarts of the guerrilla strategy to form the CRUA, a breakout committee designed to lay the groundwork for revolutionary war. Boudiaf was among them, after falling out with Messali, whom he accused of authoritarian tendencies. The CRUA - PPA/MTLD rivalry quickly spiralled towards violence and would continue during the Algerian War until the PPA/MTLD (then reorganized as the Mouvement National Algérien, MNA) was largely destroyed. In July 1954, the CRUA-aligned Boudiaf survived an assassination attempt by his former comrades-in-arms, wounded and left for dead on an Algiers sidewalk.

• Illustration — Boudiaf in the 1960s. The CRUA re-emerged as the Front de Libération Nationale, or FLN, which began a nationwide armed insurrection against France on November 1, 1954. Boudiaf was by this time a main leader of the movement, and emerged as an important member of the exiled leadership working from Cairo and Algeria's neighbouring countries. In 1956, he was captured along with Ahmed Ben Bella and several other FLN leaders in a controversial aircraft hijacking by French forces, and imprisoned in France. While prisoner, he was symbolically elected minister in the FLN's government-in-exile, the GPRA, at its creation in 1958, and re-elected in 1960 and 1961. Additionally, he was named one of the Vice Presidents. He was not released until immediately before the independence of Algeria in 1962, after a brutal eight-year war that had cost between 350,000 and 1.5 million lives.

On independence, internal conflict racked the FLN, which split into rival factions as French forces withdrew. A military-political alliance between colonel Houari Boumédiène of the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN) and Ahmed Ben Bella, of the exiled leadership, brought down their rivals and set up a single-party state under Ben Bella's presidency. The increasingly marginalized Boudiaf protested these developments, and founded a clandestine opposition party, the PRS, which briefly revolted against the FLN's single-party government. Boudiaf was forced into exile, and settled in neighbouring Morocco. After Colonel Boumédiène's coup d'état in 1965, Boudiaf remained in opposition, as he did under his successor, Colonel Chadli Bendjedid (in power 1979–92). His PRS group remained intermittently active in its opposition towards the government, but for all intents and purposes, Boudiaf had ceased to be a force of any stature in Algerian politics early on after his exile.

In February 1992, after a 27-year exile in Kenitra, 15 miles north of Morocco's capital Rabat, the military invited him back to become chairman of the High Council of State (HCE) of Algeria, a figurehead body for the military junta, following the annulment of the election results (see Algerian Civil War). He quickly accepted, and was instantly signed into the post. Publicly, he was presented as a leader exiled for too long to be tainted by the violence and corruption of Algeria's internal post-revolutionary politics, but the downside was that he was little known to most of the Algerian public. However, his calls for comprehensive reform and an end to military domination of politics instilled hope, and he quickly gained some popularity, even if many still associated him with the military clique that effectively ruled Algeria in his name. Even as head of state, Boudiaf was completely dependent on the forces that had brought him to power, and his powers were circumscribed by the military and security establishment. In addition, the country continued to drift towards civil war, with increasing Islamist violence in the regions surrounding Algiers and brutal military countermeasures both escalating the situation. The political scene remained chaotic, the economy was fraying, and Boudiaf seemed unable to effectively carry out the reforms he had promised.

Mohamed Boudiaf is recorded as having received Croix de guerre 1939–1945, Médaille militaire and National Order of Merit.

• Grand Master of the National Order of Merit

• France: • Croix de Guerre • Médaille militaire