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Krim Belkacem

 
Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Belkacem Krim
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1922 - 1970

Algerian revolutionary leader.

A Kabyle (a Berber group), Belkacem Krim was born near Dra-el-Mizan and was an employee of the Mirabeau mixed commune. In 1945 he joined Messali al-Hadj's Parti du Peuple Algérien and then the Organisation Spéciale. Following the assassination of a forest ranger in 1947, Krim was always on the run from French authorities. In 1954 he assisted in the organization of the Comité Révolutionnaire d'Unité et d'Action, which led to the formation of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) and became one of the nine "historic chiefs" of the revolution (the Algerian War of Independence, 1954 - 1962). During the Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne years, he served as war minister (1958), vice president of the Council of Ministers (1958), foreign minister (1960), and minister of the interior (1961). He was the chief FLN negotiator with the French, resulting in the Evian agreement (March 1962). He opposed Ahmed Ben Bella and was eventually forced to leave Algeria, given his opposition to Houari Boumédienne, who took over the government in June 1965. In 1969 he organized in opposition the Mouvement Démocratique de Renouveau Algérien. He was assassinated, probably by Boumédiennist agents, in Frankfurt in 1970. Krim was officially rehabilitated in 1984.

Bibliography

Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954 - 1962, revised edition. New York: Penguin, 1987.

— PHILLIP C. NAYLOR

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Wikipedia: Krim Belkacem
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Krim Belkacem in about 1945

Krim Belkacem (kabyle: Krim Belqasem ) (December 14, 1922 - October 18, 1970) was an Algerian revolutionary fighter and politician.

Krim was born in the village of Aït Yahia Ou Moussa, near Draa el-Mizan in the Berber-speaking Kabylia region of Algeria.

During the Second World War, he joined the French Army, and was promoted corporal in the First Algerian Sharpshooter Regiment, reputedly becoming an excellent shot.[1] Demobilized on October 4, 1945, he returned to his home village, where he took up a bureaucratic post. Krim joined the underground Algerian People's Party at the beginning of 1946, setting up clandestine cells in 12 villages around Draa el-Mizan.[1] Accused of the murder of a forest warden in 1947, he was hunted and he joined the maquis under the nom de guerre of Si Rabah with Moh Nachid, Mohand Talah, Messaoud Ben Arab.

Twice sentenced to death by French tribunals in 1947 and 1950, he became the Kabylie responsible of the PPA-MTLD paramilitary organization founded in February 1947 by Messali Hadj, the Organisation Spéciale, at the head of 22 members of the resistance (maquisards).

During the Algerian War of Independence, Krim was chief of the FLN's 3rd Wilaya, Kabylia and its surrounding area. After his important role at the Soummam Congress--in which the FLN formalized its revolutionary program--Krim became one of the most important and powerful of all the FLN chiefs.[2]

Belkacem, who left Algeria after the Battle of Algiers, formed an alliance with Lakhdar Ben Tobbal and Abdelhafid Boussouf against Abane Ramdane. He was the first to be Minister of Defense, then Foreign Minister, in the provisional Government of the Algerian republic (GPRA) in 1958, and later the principal Algerian negotiator of the agreements of Évian in March 1962. Belkacem was in opposition to the creation of the Political Bureau of the FLN in July 1962 by Ahmed Ben Bella, Colonel Houari Boumedienne, and Muhammad Khidr.

After the June 19, 1965 takeover by the Political Bureau, he returned to opposition, favouring more federalist views than Boumedienne's centralist policies. Accused of having organized an assassination attempt against Boumedienne, he was sentenced to death in absentia. He was found assassinated in 1970 in a hotel room in Frankfurt, West Germany.

Belkacem was posthumously rehabilitated by the Algerian state by being buried in the Carré des Martyrs on October 24, 1984.

References

  1. ^ a b Cheurfi, Achour, La Classe Politique Algerienne, Casbah Editions, Alger, 2006 - p 230
  2. ^ Cheurfi, Achour, La Classe Politique Algerienne, Casbah Editions, Alger, 2006 - p 231

Additional Sources, in French:


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