A Few Words From Ahmed Ben Bella ...

"[T]he credo of Algeria's political and diplomatic action will be the liquidation of colonialism in both its classic and disguised forms."

Ahmed Ben Bella at his inaugural speech at the UN in 1962. As quoted in Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood's Pan-African History, Routledge, 2003.

"This wonderful county had been at war for seven years and had lost a million dead; it was still scarred and bleeding, and its people were poverty-stricken. It has got to be rebuilt, on new foundations, from top to bottom. Would fate allow me the time in which to do it?"

Ahmed Ben Bella, on 19 June 1965 just before he was ousted by Colonel Houari Boumédiène, as quoted in Robert Merle's Ahmed Ben Bella, New York, Walker and Co., 1967.