The High Cost of Independence

Not long ago, the West was ready to write off Algeria's brash, sloganeering Premier Ahmed ben Bella as a Mediterranean Castro ripe for Red domination. But times do change. After seven months of independence, Ben Bella now relies on a tide of aid from the West, not the East, to keep his struggling country afloat. Only last week, Finance Minister Ahmed Francis returned from Paris with pledges of $280 million in French aid for 1963. At the same time, the U.S. tentatively agreed to launch a food relief program for hard-hit Algerian peasants; Ben Bella hopes this can be broadened into a sweeping program of economic aid before long.

Emptied by War. Ravaged by 7 1/2 years of war with France, the bloody S.A.O. terror and a fratricidal power struggle that soured the first months of independence, Algeria needs every centime it can get. Only one Algerian in ten has a steady job. The illiteracy rate is 90%. Officials figure that the country needs at least $2 billion to rebuild, but the treasury is bare. Said Ben Bella: "We are a country emptied by war."

To fill it up again, Ben Bella needs Western help. At first, embittered by his 5 1/2 years in French prisons, he blinkered himself to that fact. He threatened to turn all remaining French-owned lands into state-run farms. He sauntered off to Havana to embrace Fidel Castro--right after a meeting with President Kennedy. He accepted what little Red aid he got with great fanfare, but deliberately played down far more extensive help from the West--including a flood of food shipments from private U.S. charities that have kept nearly half of his 10 million people from starving.

But beneath the bluster Ben Bella is more pragmatist than dogmatist, and Algeria's sorry state persuaded him to begin tacking with the Western wind. "He is determined to feed, clothe and employ his people," said one Western diplomat, "and he's going to kick over any 'isms' that get in his way."

Over the protests of militant Marxists, he began promoting "healthy cooperation" with France, sought increased aid. "They are duty bound to help us reconstruct," he said in an interview with TIME Correspondent James Wilde. "This would help dissipate all that went before." France is committed to give Algeria a minimum of $200 million a year for the next three years and is sponsoring its association with the Common Market.

Nearly 90% of the 1,200,000 Europeans who once tended Algeria's vineyards and ran its businesses have fled (along with some 200,000 job-seeking Moslems), but officials now are anxious to lure back teachers, technicians and administrators to help straighten out the mess.

Year of Austerity. To strengthen his shaky position, Ben Bella is clearing the field of opposition--by persuasion where possible, force where necessary. He has banned all parties except his National Liberation Front (F.L.N.). Fortnight ago, he ousted extreme leftist leaders of the 300,000-member General Union of Algerian Workers because they were resisting his rapprochement with France, replaced them with trusted pro-government men. Though the problems of regionalism and marauding guerrillas still plague him, he has managed to win over most of the hostile tribal chieftains in the hinterlands to his side.

Ben Bella's biggest problem by far is the economy. This year, he said, will be one "of austerity, of convalescence." To show that he means business, he pushed through a skin-and-bones budget of $564 million, giving some ministries one-tenth of what they had demanded. He also put a $400-a-month ceiling on all government salaries--his own included--and slapped a 100% tax on income above $800 a month. To the ascetic Ben Bella, who lives in a dingy, three-room bachelor flat with a nephew who does all the cooking and cleaning, that seems perfectly reasonable. For those who think otherwise, he has a stern answer. "This," says Ben Bella, "is the price of independence."

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