MOROCCO: Brainwashed Berber

Among the French Moroccan soldiers captured by the Viet Minh Communists at Dienbienphu last year was a veteran warrant officer named Mohammed el Khabouchi. By the time the Communists let him go, they had taught him to hate his French masters. Last week French officials identified 36-year-old El Khabouchi as the commander of a thousand Berber rebels lurking in Morocco’s Rif Mountains. He hides out in the Spanish Moroccan hamlet of Talamrhecht, and on occasion sneaks across the border to shoot up his old home town of Tizi Ouzli, or to ambush passing convoys. El Khabouchi’s Berbers and other rebel bands are currently tying down seven times their number of French troops.