Mostefa Ben Boulaïd was the principal organiser of the Algerian War of Independence in the Aurès massif and the founding commander of Wilaya I of the Front de Libération Nationale. Born in 1917 in Arris in the heart of the Aurès, he was a Chaoui Berber from a settled village family of moderate means, with primary education in French and Arabic and an early career running grain mills and a transport business between Batna and Khenchela.
He served in the French army during the Tunisian campaign of 1942–1943 and the Italian campaign of 1943–1944, returning to Arris with combat experience and a gradually politicising orientation. He joined the Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques in the late 1940s and became one of the nine "historic chiefs" who founded the Comité Révolutionnaire d'Unité et d'Action in 1954 and then the FLN.
In the early hours of 1 November 1954 — All Saints' Day, "la Toussaint rouge" — Ben Boulaïd led the Aurès attacks that opened the Algerian War of Independence, including the celebrated assault on the Batna garrison and the ambush in the Tighanimine gorges. He was arrested in Tunisia in February 1955, escaped from the Constantine prison in November of the same year, and resumed command of Wilaya I until his death.
He was killed on 22 March 1956 by an explosive device disguised as a French radio set, dropped by parachute and recovered by an Aurès patrol; the device detonated when activated. He is conventionally treated alongside Larbi Ben M'hidi and Abane Ramdane as one of the foundational martyrs of the Algerian Revolution, and is the principal Chaoui figure of the war.