Where did Ahmed Ben Bella grow up and live?

📍Maghnia, Tlemcen, Algeria

1918 – 2012

“I was born Ahmed Ben Bella on the 25th of December 1918 in Maghnia, a town in western Algeria near the Moroccan border. I served in the French army in the Second World War, returned to Algeria, and became one of the nine historic leaders who launched the War of Independence against France on the 1st of November 1954. I was captured by the French in 1956 when they illegally intercepted my aircraft and spent five years in French prisons. I became independent Algeria's first President in 1962. I was overthrown in a military coup in 1965 by my own Defence Minister, Houari Boumédiène, and spent fifteen years under house arrest. Algeria's independence cost a million lives. I believed that cost was worth paying. Maghnia and the western Algerian landscape were always home.”

👍 LovedThe 1st of November 1954 — the launch of the revolution that would end French Algeria. The independence of 1962 after a war that cost a million lives. The western Algerian landscape of my childhood.

👎 DislikedThe 1965 coup and fifteen years of house arrest. The authoritarian tendencies of my own presidency. The gap between the revolutionary ideals and the postcolonial reality.

Map showing where Ahmed Ben Bella lived — Maghnia, Tlemcen, Algeria

🗺️ Approximate location today

Satellite view of Ahmed Ben Bella's home at Maghnia, Tlemcen, Algeria

Sources: Merle, R. Ben Bella (1965, translated Camilla Sykes), Walker; Horne, A. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (1977), Macmillan