Education
University of Algiers.
University of Algiers.
Mohamed Lamine Debaghine, holding a doctorate of medicine from Algiers University, opened a medical practice in the eastern Constantine region in 1944. At the time, Algeria was a governorate of France, but with the exception of European settlers, Algerians were not accorded civil rights. He quickly became active in politics, and joined Messali Hadj"s Parti du peuple algérien (PPA) leftist nationalist movement in 1939.
In 1946, Lamine Debaghine was elected to the French parliament as a deputy of Constantine on a list backed by the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties, a successor movement to the banned PPA. In parliament, he called for Algeria"s independence and described France"s annexation of the country in 1830 an "aggression", but otherwise stayed out of most parliamentary debates and votes (an exception being to vote against French membership in North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949).
In 1951, his parliamentary mandate ended, and three years later, an armed rebellion for Algeria"s independence erupted led by the Front de libération nationale (FLN), a PPA/MTLD splinter group. Lamine Debaghine was elected minister of foreign affairs in the first lineup of the FLN"s government-in-exile, GPRA, under Ferhat Abbas"s presidency, holding the post for the period 1958-1960.
In this role, he served as a primary spokesman of the FLN to the outside world, and worked to build alliances with the newly independent countries of the Arab world and other regions. However, being outside the country, he had limited authority over the actual armed rebellion of the FLN"s armed wing, the Armée de libération nationale (ALN).
Following the war, he reopened a medical practice in Sétif.
He died in Algiers, the Algerian capital, in 2003, at the age of 86.
During the Second World War, he was arrested by colonial authorities for nationalist agitation and for inciting Algerian conscripts to refuse military service in the French army (while also condemning Nazism).
In 1956, Lamine Debaghine was made a member of the FLN"s exterior delegation (ie outside the country) and its shadow parliament, the CNRA, later CCE.