Adoption of the Tripoli Program notwithstanding, deep personal and ideological divisions surfaced within the FLN as the war drew to a close and the date for independence approached.
Ferhat Abbas, a moderate unconnected with the Political Bureau, who had previously headed the GPRA, was elected president of the assembly by the delegates, and Ben Bella was named prime minister.
On the following day, Ben Bella formed a cabinet that was representative of the Political Bureau but that also included Boumédiènne as defense minister as well as other members of the so-called Oujda Group, who had served under him with the external forces in Morocco.
In addition to the physical destruction, the exodus of the colons deprived the country of most of its managers, civil servants, engineers, teachers, physicians, and skilled workers — all occupations which colonial policy had prevented or discouraged the Muslim population from pursuing.
[1] Along with the help of Algerian university graduates, the solutions to these problems were often found through international assistance from actors like France, the Soviet Union, Cuba, Yugoslavia, and the Arab world.
)[4] While before the end of the war, the FLN struggled to exercise sovereignty within Algerian borders, it found diplomatic strength in interacting with international organizations dealing with refugees, most notably the UNHCR.
The months immediately following independence witnessed a pell-mell rush of Algerians, their government, and its officials to claim the lands, houses, businesses, automobiles, bank accounts, and jobs left behind by the departed Pieds-Noirs.
By the 1963 March Decrees, Ben Bella declared that all agricultural, industrial, and commercial properties previously operated and occupied by Pieds-Noirs were vacant, thereby legalizing their confiscation by the state.
The departure of European owners and managers from factories and agricultural estates gave rise to a spontaneous, grass-roots phenomenon, later termed autogestion, which saw workers take control of the enterprises to keep them operating.
As the process evolved, workers in state-owned farms and enterprises and in agricultural cooperatives elected boards of managers that directed production activities, financing, and marketing in conjunction with state-appointed directors.
Contrary to the intent of the Tripoli Program, Ben Bella saw the FLN as an elite vanguard party that would mobilize popular support for government policies and reinforce his increasingly personal leadership of the country.
Because Khider envisioned the FLN as playing a more encompassing, advisory role, Ben Bella forced him from office in April 1963 and replaced him as party secretary general.
A new constitution drawn up under close FLN supervision was approved by nationwide referendum in September, and Ben Bella was confirmed as the party's choice to lead the country for a five-year term.
Ait Ahmed quit the National Assembly to protest the increasingly dictatorial tendencies of the regime, which had reduced the functions of the legislature to rubber-stamping presidential directives.
The Kabyle leaders also condemned the government for its failure to carry through on reconstruction projects in war-ravaged Kabylie, but Ait Ahmed's aims went beyond rectifying regional complaints.
Ait Ahmed and Colonel Mohamed Chabaani, a wilaya commander leading insurgents in the Sahara, were captured and sentenced to death in 1965, after a trial in which Khider and Boudiaf were similarly condemned in absentia.
Boumédiènne dissolved the National Assembly, suspended the 1963 constitution, disbanded the militia, and abolished the Political Bureau, which he considered an instrument of Ben Bella's personal rule.
Until a new constitution was adopted, political power resided in the Council of the Revolution, a predominantly military body intended to foster cooperation among various factions in the army and the party.
The cabinet, which shared some functions with the Council of the Revolution, was also inclusive; it contained an Islamic leader, technical experts, FLN regulars, as well as others representing a broad range of Algerian political and institutional life.
Nonetheless, FLN radicals criticized Boumédiènne for neglecting the policy of autogestion and betraying "rigorous socialism"; in addition, some military officers were unsettled by what they saw as a drift away from collegiality.
The so-called agricultural revolution that Boumédiènne launched in 1971 called for the seizure of additional property and the redistribution of the newly acquired public lands to cooperative farms.
The reasons for this were twofold: the strong anticolonial sentiment left behind by the liberation war, as well as the need to find an effective proxy force to counter Moroccan ambitions.
Although Bendjedid reaffirmed the government's long-term commitment to Arabization, he upgraded Berber studies at the university level and granted media access to Berber-language programs.
In the late 1970s, Muslim activists engaged in isolated and relatively small-scale assertions of their will: harassing women who they felt were inappropriately dressed, smashing establishments that served alcoholic beverages, and evicting official imams from their mosques.
Nonetheless, in light of the massive support the Islamists could muster, the authorities henceforth viewed them as a potentially grave threat to the state and alternately treated them with harshness and respect.
Women waited in long lines for scarce and expensive food; young men milled in frustration on street corners unable to find work.
The waves of discontent crested in October 1988 when a series of strikes and walkouts by students and workers in Algiers degenerated into rioting by thousands of young men, who destroyed government and FLN property.
Bendjedid declared martial law on June 5, 1991, but he also asked his minister of foreign affairs, Sid Ahmed Ghozali, to form a new government of national reconciliation.
Although the FIS seemed satisfied with Ghozali's appointment and his attempts to clean up the electoral law, it continued to protest, leading the army to arrest Belhadj, Madani, and hundreds of others.
When it took to massacring civilians not involved in politics, a faction based in the east-central region broke away in protest, establishing the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which continued fighting for some time after the effective demise of the GIA.