He was a member of the central committee of the PPA-MTLD in 1947 and served as the general secretary between 1951 and 1954. In November 1954 he was arrested again and released in May 1955, due to the intervention of French liberals (who included the pied noir mayor of Algiers, Jacques Chevallier), when he joined the new National Liberation Front. He became an adviser to Abane Ramdane in Algiers. In August 1956 the Congress of Soummam appointed him a member of the Algerian National Revolutionary Council and the Committee of Action and Co-ordination of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) along with Abane, Dahlab Larbi Ben M'hidi, and Krim Belkacem. He, Abane and Ben M'hidi comprised the political and military triumvirate which directed the revolutionary Autonomous Zone. Algiers had become the capital of the resistance.