The National Liberation Front (Arabic: Jabhet Al-Taḥrīr Al-Waṭanī, French: Front de Libération Nationale), better known as the FLN, is a socialist political party in the country of Algeria. Formed on 1 November 1954, the FLN was the group that fought against France in the Algerian War of 1954-1962 that gained Algeria its independence.
History[]
The National Liberation Front (FLN) was founded on 1 November 1954 by Ahmed Ben Bella, who united several other Algerian nationalist groups to fight for Algeria's independence from France. The FLN mainly operated in the mountains of inner Algeria while the French Army occupied the coastline, and the FLN fought against the French in a long guerrilla war. The most famous actions of the war were not battles, but terrorist attacks and ambushes. In 1956, there was an average of 4.2 attacks each day in the capital of Algiers alone; 23 attacks in January, 31 in February, 47 in March and April, 51 in May, 86 in June and July, 39 in August, 63 in September and October, 58 in November, and 104 in December. The FLN originally targeted only military targets, but the 10 August 1956 Rue de Thebes bombing by French vigilantes killed 70 Arab civilians; the FLN decided to launch attacks on both the French Army and civilian pied noirs.
In 1957, the Battle of Algiers occurred when French paratroopers put down the FLN in Algiers and the coastal cities, with several FLN leaders being killed or captured after their members were interrogated and tortured. However, the FLN recovered and were victorious due to the turning of international opinion against the war, with the issue of Algerian independence being presente before the United Nations. The OAS French extremists failed in their Algiers putsch of 1958, and they were committed to fighting the submissive French government more than the FLN. In 1962, France officially gave independence to the Algerians after a referendum, and the FLN became the ruling party of Algeria. Ben Bella was the first President of Algeria, but his autocratic rule led to his former comrades betraying him and deposing him. Houari Boumediene led the country from 1965 to 1978, and the FLN remained the ruling party until 1989, when other parties were allowed to vote. The Islamic Salvation Front's popularity in the elections led to an Algerian Army coup in 1992 that started the Algerian Civil War as Islamists rebelled against the military, who put the rebellion down ten years later. In 2015, the FLN had 208/462 seats in the People's National Assembly and served as the ruling party of Algeria under president Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
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