Abdelkrim El Khattabi (born around 1882 in Ajdir, Morocco and died on February 6, 1963 in Cairo, Egypt), real name Mohamed ben Abdelkrim El Khattabi (Arabic:محمد بن عبد الكريم الخطابي; Amazigh:Image:Abdelkrim El Khattabi in Amazigh.jpg), was a Rif military leader, from the Rif, area Berber in the northeast of Morocco. He became the leader of a resistance movement against France and Spain in Morocco, then the icon of the independence movements fighting against colonialism. He will take the torch of resistance after the defeat of Mouha or Hammou Zayani, his companion the fqih Belarbi Alaoui said Cheikh Elislam rallied to the cause of Abdelkrim to continue the fight against the Spanish and the French.
Born in Ajdir in Morocco, the son of a cadi (Islamic judge) of the Ait Yusuf clan of the Aït Ouriaghel (or Waryaghal) tribe, Abd el-Krim was educated in traditional zaouïas and Spanish schools, eventually his education in he former University of Quaraouiyine in Fez, followed by three years in Spain where he studied mining and military technology. Between 1908 and 1915 he was a journalist for the daily newspaper of Melilla, where he advocated secularism and cooperation with Westerners in order to free the Umma from ignorance and underdevelopment.
He entered the Spanish administration, and was appointed chief cadi of Melilla in 1915. At that time he began to oppose Spanish domination, and in 1917 he was imprisoned for saying that Spain should not extending beyond the territories already occupied (which in practice excluded most of the uncontrolled areas of the Rif) and expressing sympathy for the German cause during the First World War. Soon after escaping, he returned to Ajdir in 1919 and together with his brother began to unite the Rif tribes into an independent Rif Republic. For this cause, he tried to appease the enmities between the existing tribes.
In 1921, as an unexpected spinoff of their efforts to destroy the power of Raisuni, a local brigand, Spanish troops approach unoccupied sectors of the Rif. Abdelkrim sends their general Manuel Fernández Silvestre a warning:if they cross the Amekran River, he would consider it an act of war. Fernández Silvestre would have laughed when he saw the message. The general sets up a military post on the river at Abarrán. The same day in the middle of the afternoon a thousand rifans had surrounded him; 179 Spanish soldiers were killed, forcing the rest to retreat. The days that followed after several bloody skirmishes for the troops of Fernández Silvestre an unexpected event occurred. Indeed despising Abdelkrim, Fernández Silvestre decides to challenge him, and with 3,000 men Abdelkrim manages in two days thanks to cunning to defeat Spain. For Spain, the battle of Anoual was a real disaster. It lost nearly 16,000 soldiers there, recovered 24,000 wounded, 150 guns and 25,000 rifles. In addition, 700 Spanish soldiers were taken prisoner. It is also the first defeat of a European colonial power, having a modern and well-equipped army against resistance fighters without resources, without organization, without logistics or stewardship.
Anoual's victory had a huge impact not only in Morocco but also around the world. It had immense psychological and political consequences, since it was going to prove that with reduced numbers, light armament, but also significant mobility, it was possible to defeat conventional armies.
On the strength of his success, Abdelkrim proclaimed in 1922 the Confederate Republic of the Tribes of the Rif, an embryonic Berber state. This republic had a crucial impact on international opinion, as it was the first republic resulting from a war of decolonization in the 20th century. He created a parliament made up of the chiefs of tribes which voted for him a government.
This first government created a currency and a state bank, a modern and independent justice system, road infrastructures, introduced the telephone and the telegram, erected bridges, set up structured irrigation, imposed order and security and above all banned blood feuds, clan wars and fought ignorance through schools. Several men (engineers, adventurers, businessman of all kinds), French, Spanish, German, British, American joined Abdelkrim in his fight. Thus around 1923, Ajdir the capital, had everything to modestly claim this status. Indeed next to the parliament, Abdelkrim erected schools, administrative establishments, a court of justice, a library, an archiving center, ministries, military bases...
En 1924, Spain withdraws its troops to its possessions along the Moroccan coast. France, which had claims to the southern Rif anyway, realized that letting another colonial power be defeated in North Africa by natives would set a dangerous precedent for its own territories, and re-entered the conflict. Trying to join all the Moroccan forces to form the core of a Moroccan liberation movement prior to a vast decolonization movement, Abdelkrim asked Sultan Moulay Youssef to join his cause. But this one, because of the pressure of the French general residence in Rabat, refused to fight against the colonial powers.
The entry of France into the war is not long in coming, but the pressure of public opinion, both European and international, subjugated by this Riffian resistance, makes the task more difficult and leads to the dismissal of Resident General Marshal Hubert Lyautey. .
From 1925, Abdelkrim fought French forces led by Philippe Pétain at the head of 200,000 men and a Spanish army personally commanded by Miguel Primo de Rivera, totaling 450,000 soldiers, began operations against the Republic of the Rif. The intense fighting lasted a year, but eventually the combined French and Spanish armies - using, among other weapons, mustard gas - were victorious over Abdelkrim's forces.
After the threat of genocide, Abdelkrim surrenders as a prisoner of war, demanding that civilians be spared. Nothing will happen, the colonial powers cannot allow such an uprising to go unpunished. Thus, from 1926, planes equipped with mustard gas bombed entire villages, making the Moroccans of the Rifs the first civilians gassed on a massive scale in history, alongside the Iraqi Kurds gassed by the British. It is estimated that more than 150,000 civilian deaths during the years 1925-1926, but no credible figure can be advanced.
In 1926, Abd el-Krim was exiled to Réunion, where he was first installed until 1929 at Château Morange, in the heights of Saint-Denis. A few years pass. He became a resident of the rural town of Trois-Bassins, in the west of the island, where he bought land and built a beautiful property. He lived there for twelve to fifteen years. In May 1947, having finally been authorized to settle in the south of France, he boarded a ship of the Messageries Maritimes from South Africa and bound for Marseille with 52 people from his entourage. and his grandmother's coffin, the Katoomba.
Arrived in Suez where the boat stops, he managed to escape and spent the end of his life in Egypt, where he would chair the "Liberation Committee for the Arab Maghreb". Mohamed ben Abdelkrim El Khattabi died in 1963 in Cairo where his remains still rest. At the end of independence, the repression of a revolt in the Rif caused more than 8,000 deaths between 1958 and 1961.