GUS: THE RIF WAR WAS A COLONIALIST'S WAR (1921-1926) BETWEEN THE SPANISH (HELPED BY THE FRENCH FROM 1924 — WHO ELSE?) AND THE MOROCCAN LOCALS... BUT THE MOROCCANS WERE TRIBAL AND SOMEWHAT DIVIDED... HISTORY SEEMS TO FAIL RECORDING THIS DIVISION WHICH COULD HAVE LED TO THE REAL DEMISE OF THE TRIBES VERSUS THE COLONIALISTS... HERE ONE NEEDS TO READ SAINT EXUPERY TO UNDERSTAND THESE DIVISIONS, in Terre des Hommes (Wind, Sand and Stars):

If you want to convince someone who does not refuse war of the horror of war, do not treat him as a barbarian: try to understand him before judging him.

Consider this officer from the South who commanded, during the Rif War, an advanced post, planted in the corner between two dissident mounts. One evening, he received parliamentarians from the western massif. And we were drinking tea, as we should, when the shooting broke out. The tribes of the eastern massif attacked the post. To the captain who expelled them to fight, the enemy parliamentarians replied: “We are your guests today. God does not allow us to abandon you..." They joined his men, saved the post, then climbed back into their eagle nest.

But the day before the day, when, in their turn, they prepared to assault it, they sent ambassadors to the captain:

- The other night we helped you...

- It's true.

- We burned three hundred cartridges for you...

- It's true.

- It would be fair to return them to us.

And the captain, great lord, cannot exploit an advantage that he would derive from their nobility. He gives them back the cartridges which will be used against him.

The truth for man is what makes him a man. When one who has known this dignity of relationships, this loyalty in the game, this mutual gift of an esteem which engages life, compares this elevation, which was allowed to him, to the mediocre good nature of the demagogue who would have expressed his brotherhood to the same Arabs with great slaps on the shoulders, had they flattered but at the same time humiliated, this one will feel towards you, if you reason against him, only a slightly contemptuous pity. And he will be right.

But you will also be right to hate war.

To understand man and his needs, to know him in what is essential, you must not pit the evidence of your truths against each other. Yes you are right. You are all right. Logic proves everything. One is right who blames the misfortunes of the world on the hunchbacks. If we declare war on the hunchbacks, we will quickly learn to exalt ourselves. We will avenge the crimes of the hunchbacks. And certainly hunchbacks also commit crimes.

To try to identify this essential, it is necessary to forget for a moment the divisions, which, once admitted, entail a whole Koran of innate unstable truths and the fanaticism that results from it. We can classify the men as men of the right and men on the left, in hunchbacks and non-hunchbacks, in fascists and democrats, and these distinctions are unassailable. But the truth, you know, is this that simplifies the world — and not that which creates chaos. Truth is the language that brings out the universal. Newton did not “discover” a law for a long time hidden like a rebus solution, Newton carried out a creative operation. He founded a human language which could express both the fall of the apple in a meadow — and the rise and fall of the sun....

TRANSLATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR.

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The Rif War (Spanish: Guerra del Rif) was an armed conflict fought from 1921 to 1926 between the occupying colonialists of Spain (joined by France in 1924) and the Berber tribes of the mountainous Rif region of northern Morocco. The Rif Republic alone was able to keep a European middle power and great power in check for a time.

Led by Abd el-Krim, the Riffians at first inflicted several defeats on the Spanish forces by using guerrilla tactics and with the help of captured European weapons. After France's military intervention against Abd el-Krim's forces and the major landing of Spanish troops at Al Hoceima, considered the first amphibious landing in history to involve the use of tanks and aircraft, Abd el-Krim surrendered to the French and was taken into exile.[10]

In July 1909, Spanish workers constructing a rail-bridge providing access to iron mines near Melilla were attacked by Rifian tribesmen.[11] This incident led to the summoning of reinforcements from Spain itself. A series of skirmishes over the following weeks cost the Spanish over a thousand casualties. By September, the Spanish Army had 40,000 troops in northern Morocco and had occupied the mountainous tribal regions to the south and southeast of Melilla.[12] The military operations in Jebala, in the Moroccan west, began in 1911 with the Larache landing. Spain worked to pacify a large part of the most violent areas until 1914, a slow process of consolidation of frontiers that lasted until 1919. The following year, after the signing of the Treaty of Fez, the northern Moroccan area was adjudicated to Spain as a protectorate. The Riffian populations strongly resisted the Spanish, unleashing a conflict that would last for several years.

In 1921, in an attempt to consolidate control of the region, the Spanish troops suffered the catastrophic Disaster of Annual in addition to a rebellion led by Rifian leader Abd el-Krim. As a result, the Spanish retreated to a few fortified positions while Abd el-Krim ultimately created an entire independent state: the Republic of the Rif. The development of the conflict and its end coincided with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, who took on command of the campaign from 1924 to 1927. In addition, and after the Battle of Uarga in 1925, the French intervened in the conflict and established a joint collaboration with Spain that culminated in the Alhucemas landing, which proved a turning point. The Spanish also used chemical weapons during the conflict. By 1926, the area had been pacified; Abd-el-Krim surrendered to the French that year, and Spain gained effective control of the protectorate's territory at last.

The Rif War still causes much disagreement among historians. Some see in it a harbinger of the decolonization process in North Africa. Others consider it one of the last colonial wars, as it was the decision of the Spanish to conquer the Rif – nominally part of their Moroccan protectorate but de facto independent – that catalyzed the entry of France in 1924.[13] The Rif War left a deep memory both in Spain and in Morocco. The Riffian insurgency of the 1920s can be interpreted as a precursor to the Algerian War of Independence, which took place three decades later.[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rif_War