Rebels in the Rif Rebels Stanford University Press in the Rif ABD EL KRIM AND THE RIF REBELLION David S. Woolman Stanford, California 1968 Stanford University Press Stanford, California London: Oxford University Press © 1968 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America L.C. 68-12333 For JOHN HARLAN WOOLMAN and MARIE BOLLES MOHLER PREFACE "T T whereas European imperialism in Morocco has been well doc- V V umented, the history of the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco, and the Rif Rebellion in particular, have received little attention in works written in English. The Englishmen Walter Harris, in 1927, C. V. Usbome, in 1936, and Rupert Fumeaux, in 1967, have written interesting but incomplete accounts of this era, and the American correspondents Vincent Sheean, in 1925, and Webb Mil­ ler, in 1936, published their impressions after brief interviews with some of the rebellion's leading personalities and quick visits to some of the battle sites. The best concise account of the Spanish Moroccan Protectorate and the Rif Rebellion is given by Stanley Payne in his Politics and the Military in Modern Spain, 1967. However, to the best of my knowledge, no writer before me has considered in as much detail the problems Spain encountered in the attempt to establish her Moroccan Protectorate. In Lawrence of Arabia, Richard Aldington writes that “the dif­ ficulties of a biographer's trying to discover the facts are baffling, discouraging, and at times insuperable." I will vouch for the truth of this statement. In assembling the materials for this book, I found that the best sources of detailed information about Spanish Morocco are the books written by Spanish and French army offi­ cers and civilian administrators who fought against or worked with the tribesmen, and who knew them as well as anybody did. How­ ever, many of these books are hard to come by, and they vary con­ siderably in quality and importance. v Rebels in the Rif is written largely from a European point of view, if only because European documentation outweighs Moroc­ can sources. Nevertheless, I have a very real sympathy for Abd el viii PREFACE Krim, for the Rifians, and indeed for all Moroccans, in whose country I have lived on and off for the past sixteen years. My book begins with a discussion of twentieth-century Euro­ pean rivalry for control of Morocco, the political condition of that country in the early 1 goo’s, the eventual triumph of France over her various rivals, and the subordinate role assigned to Spain in the Moroccan scheme of things. It goes on to describe the moun­ tainous area of northern Morocco, over which Spain had long exercised a certain degree of peripheral control, and the tribes, particularly the Riñans, who live there—their economy, their way of life, and their relationship to the Moroccan Sultanate. Subse­ quent chapters are devoted to Spanish interests in Morocco during the fifty years preceding the establishment of the Protectorate in 1912, to the attempted occupation of the Spanish Zone by its new masters, and to the advent of Abd el Krim’s rebellion in 1921. The tremendous rout of the Spanish Army at Anual is detailed, in­ cluding its political effects in both Spain and Morocco, which cul­ minated in the Spanish withdrawal from Chaouen. An account of France’s involvement in the Rif Rebellion, the military cooperation between France and Spain, and the ultimate defeat of the Rifian rebels concludes this history of the Protector­ ate, and brings the reader to the summer of 1927, when Spanish Morocco was at long last occupied and governed as a single unit. A final chapter traces briefly the subsequent careers of the leaders on both sides of the rebellion, shows how the uprisings were re­ lated to the Moroccan nationalist liberation movement of the mid­ dle 1950’s, and describes the setting up of the modern Moroccan state and its present relation to the Rif. The problems encountered in attempting a transliteration from Arabic or from thamazighth (the Berber language of the Rif) into English are considerable. When one considers that the name for the mountain town near Tetuan is variously spelled Chaouen, Shawan, Chauen, Xauen, Chefchaouene and Chechaouene, and that the most common Arabic name, Mohamed, is also spelled Mo­ hammed, Muhamed, Mohamet, and various other ways, one has some idea of the difficulties involved. In general, the French have been more successful at such transliteration than the Spanish. My own solution has been to use names and places as I have encoun- PREFACE IX tered them in source material—Spanish terms for the Spanish Zone and French terms for the French Zone—but even here I have had to be inconsistent. I owe an enormous debt to the American social anthropologist David Hart for sharing with me his expert analyses of the politico- social structure of the Rifian tribes, and for commenting on many other aspects of northern Moroccan tribal life. I am grateful too for the friendliness and good humor with which he endured my frequently obtuse interpretations of anthropological data. I wish to thank James F. Herriott for his help in researching material; Daphne Whitmarsh for her assistance with maps; Curt Day for his firsthand information about the Escadrille Chérifienne; and Car­ men Griffin and Ricardo Saavedra of the United States Informa­ tion Service library of Tangier for their many kindnesses. I am also indebted to Father Enrique López de Toro of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, Francisco Vêlez of the Biblioteca Española in Tangier, A. J. Sindall of the library of the British Embassy at Rabat, and E. F. E. Ryan of the Garrison Library at Gibraltar for their friendly cooperation. Abdeslam ben Thami ould Hadj as­ sisted me with Arabic translations and acted as my guide on tours of the Rif. Thanks are also due to Mohamed Azerkan, George Greaves, Ian Moxon, Marie Black, Eric Gifford, Merle Edelman, Donald An­ gus, Len Cowley, John Koon, Burnett Bolloten, Lie. Alfonso Quin­ tana y Pena, George Hills, and John Wall, all of whom contributed to the book's production in various ways; and to Jess Bell and Gene Tanke of Stanford University Press, as well as to Stanley Payne of the University of California at Los Angeles, who supplied invalu­ able assistance and direction. Tangier, 1968 D.S.W.