Abane Ramdane

Biography

Abane Ramdane was born on June 10, 1920, in Azouza, a Berber village in the Kabyle region of Algeria. He was one of the most brilliant organizational minds of the Algerian revolution — a man who built the FLN into a mass movement capable of sustaining eight years of war against a major European military power. He received a French education and initially worked as a local administrator for the colonial government before joining the nationalist MTLD party and eventually the FLN. Released from French prison in January 1955 after serving time for nationalist activities, Abane immediately threw himself into building the FLN's political structures. In Algiers, he created the clandestine networks that would form the basis for the urban resistance. His most lasting achievement was organizing the Soummam Congress in August 1956 — a secret conference held in the mountains of Kabylie that gave the FLN its ideological platform and organizational structure. The Soummam Platform established the principle that the political should control the military (a principle soon abandoned) and that leaders inside Algeria should take precedence over those in exile. Abane became the dominant figure in the FLN's Coordination and Execution Committee (CCE), the de facto governing body of the revolution. He organized the general strike and bombing campaign that launched the Battle of Algiers. But his dominance and his insistence on civilian political supremacy over the military made him powerful enemies, particularly in the external military leadership. In December 1957, Abane was lured to Morocco on the pretext of a meeting and strangled by FLN colleagues — an internal assassination that would be concealed for years. The FLN announced he had been killed fighting the French. He was 37 years old.

Key Battles