For all his eminence in the post-war decade, Boumedienne remains one of the least known of all the war leaders of either side, and in his secretiveness and retiring modesty he is most characteristically Algerian. In 1973 one leading Western ambassador was unable to tell the author where the then President of Algeria lived, or whether he was married or not; in three years he had met him once. There exists no official—or even unofficial—biography of Boumedienne, only the scantiest of entries in International Who's Who, and pen-portraits differ widely as to the date he was born, and whether it was in Oranie or Constantinois, at opposite ends of the country. There are contradictions as to where and when he received his military training; some say at a guerrilla school in Egypt, one of his closer collaborators thought it was in General Kassem's Iraq, while there were extravagant French rumours that Boumedienne had somehow found time for training in both Moscow and Peking. Yet there is, apparently, no truth in any of these speculations. Even after years of being not only President of Algeria but also one of the most influential leaders of the Third World, he has never shaken off his intense dislike of any form of publicity, and in his rare interviews with writers and journalists he steadfastly declines to discuss the war, or his role in it.

QUESTION: Why was Boumedienne so secretive? The passage hints it is 'most characteristically Algerian,' which could be worth exploring as a cultural pattern. XREF: Connects to broader literature on leaders who cultivate obscurity or mystique as a political strategy, and to the difficulty of historical biography for secretive figures.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 990