Mokhtar Mokhtefi (Arabic: مختار مختفي; 1935–2015) was a member of the National Liberation Front (FLN) during the Algerian War of Independence.
[2] Mokhtefi was the only one of his family's six children to attend secondary school, after one of his teachers encouraged his father to let him take an entrance exam.
[2][6] In his memoirs, Mokhtefi recounted how his education at a French school caused a feeling of alienation from his family and his village: "I see that the habits, the beliefs, the way of thinking and acting acquired in my original environment are eroding.
[2][4] In particular, Mokhtefi was frustrated with the French labor movement's lack of support for Algerians, later writing: "Where is past proletarian solidarity, what has become of the values of the Enlightenment?
"[2] However, he did meet several French people who were sympathetic towards or assisted in the fight for Algerian independence, including Pierre Chaulet, Annette Roger, and several priests.
Mokhtefi was involved with student and union organizing to support the Algerian War of Independence, including raising money for the FLN.
[3][2] Three years into the war,[1] Mokhtefi discovered that his political activity had caught the attention of the French colonial authorities and that other activists had been arrested.
As a result, Mokhtefi took the train to Oujda, Morocco and joined the Armée de libération nationale (ALN), the armed wing of the FLN.
"[5][10][4] After the war ended in 1962, Mokhtefi obtained work in government planning,[7] but his colleagues did not support his "Marxist ideas" about land redistribution.
[2][8] In 1965, the first president Ahmed Ben Bella was overthrown in a coup by Houari Boumédiène, a move of which Mokhtefi disapproved.
[10][9] In 2024, she set up the Elaine and Mokhtar Mokhtefi Endowment to support students at the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.
[10] Soon after his death in 2015, Barzakh Editions published his memoirs in Algeria as J’étais Français-musulman: itinéraire d’un soldat de l’ALN.