This chapter examines how the rural population responded to the presence of FLN forces in their midst. Internal FLN documents captured by the French in September 1957 for kasma 4311, a grouping of four douars in the eastern Chelif, reveal the sophisticated counter-state that was created at the local level. The aim of the ALN in the mountains was, as far as possible, to isolate the population from the colonial administration and to prevent informing, but to do so the guerrillas needed to offer a degree of rebel governance. The detailed kasma reports and accounts reveal how the ALN assumed key state functions, including food supply, civil registration, taxation, education, health care, social welfare, and justice. Through a progressive redistributive taxation policy, funds were transferred from the more wealthy in the towns to the famished peasantry. Peasant support for the FLN was not only moral or ideological, but was also grounded in the significant material rewards of wages, pensions, and family allowances. A key problem facing the ALN was the inability to protect the population from military repression and violence, but to a degree the guerrillas found a solution by reorganizing into small, mobile groups that were less dependent on the rural population.