4 ideas
Abane Ramdane organised the 1956 Soummam Congress and was the FLN's leading political strategist. In December 1957 fellow leaders lured him to Morocco, where men tied to Colonel Abdelhafid Boussouf's apparatus strangled him.
The Soummam platform set out two rules: the political leadership should control the armed struggle, and fighters inside the country should outrank leaders abroad. After 1957 the colonels who commanded armed units and intelligence services overturned both rules and made armed force the real source of legitimacy. Independent Algeria inherited a state in which the army chose the politicians, not the reverse.
A nationalist ideology that presents 'the people' as one undivided will leaves no legitimate channel for internal dissent. Rival strategies, class interests and regional networks then have to be settled covertly through purges, exclusion and violence. Anyone who openly disagrees can be recast as a traitor to the nation.
An underground movement survives through secrecy, compartmentalisation and intelligence services built to guard against infiltration. These methods do not disappear once the organisation grows powerful. The security apparatus becomes the arbiter of loyalty among comrades, and its suspicion-driven methods pass into the post-independence state.