Foreign News: Revolt & Revenge

“That looks like one of them,” said the grim-faced French colon. From the six Moroccan tribesmen bound together with a single rope, he picked out a shaven-headed Berber, captured by the French Foreign Legion in the plundered shambles that had been the prosperous town of Oued Zem (pop. 4,600). A helmeted Legionnaire slapped the suspect on the head and led him out to be shot. Thus, last week began France’s bloody revenge for one of the bloodiest massacres of Europeans in modern colonial history.

La Date Fatidique and the days following the fateful date that brought thousands of Moslem terrorists out of the hills (TIME, Aug. 29), claimed the lives of 92 Frenchmen and at least 1,000 Moroccans. But that was only a beginning; last week the Berber tribes were still on the rampage in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains that straddle central Morocco. Shouting horsemen, brandishing antique guns, swept into Khouribga, where the French own phosphate mines, joined up with the Arab miners and hacked 203 people to death. Near by, Moroccan iron workers in the town of Ait Amar dragged their bosses into the streets and tortured them horribly. One French engineer was tied down and forced to watch while his wife was raped repeatedly, and his six-month-old child was slowly carved to death. The killers burned every house and destroyed every living thing they could find in Ait Amar. When a detachment of the French Foreign Legion arrived on the scene, all that was left alive was one cat.

French Attack. The French army met primitive savagery with mechanized ruthlessness. French regulars, supported by tanks, planes and field guns, rolled into the Atlas ranges. In the villages of central Morocco, French Legionnaires tore down houses and even tents. One French detachment was held up .by snipers firing from a house. The troops demolished the house with .75-mm. shells, then rolled over its ruins in a heavy tank. Feeble cries came from under the ruins, so the French backed up the tank and crunched it back and forth until no more cries came.

Another Legion task force mopped up around Oued Zem. Under Colonel Fran-gois Boreill (who led the fine French battalion in Korea), 4,000 or more Legionnaires, supported by two tank companies, drew a tight steel net around the Smala tribal area. After two days of bitter fighting in the barren, rocky uplands, Boreill closed the net. Soon afterwards, he spotted a band of Berbers approaching his command post, waving white flags.

Berber Submission. The horsemen brought news that the Smala tribe wanted to surrender. For the formal submission ceremony, Colonel Boreill chose a huge wheat field near a place called Tired Men’s Well. Next day, the French tanks were drawn up in a huge U. Long lines of Berher tribesmen filed in between them. Their women and children came with them, many carrying flags. The most important of the Berber Caids (local chiefs) arrived in a Chevrolet.

The Berbers piled their guns on the ground in front of the French. “You command us,” they wailed. “We are miserable wretches.” By the time General André Franchi arrived to accept their submission. 10,000 tribesmen and 5,000 Arab townsfolk were waiting to submit.

Franchi’s harsh tones boomed out through the loudspeaker: “You have behaved like stinking jackals! If France did not have a heart, all of you would be dead.” An old Caid in flowing robes made the surrender speech: “If this happens again, may you come back and decimate our tribe!” With that, tribesmen slashed the legs of twelve sacrificial bulls, and the beasts sank to their knees in token of abject submission. “Blood is spilled,” chanted the Berbers. “Peace returns.”

Rumblings in Islam. Peace was not to return that easily. At week’s end the revanche went on. Across half the world, Islam reverberated with sympathy and alarm. Seventeen Arab and Asian nations asked the U.N. to intervene. In Karachi, 5,000 Moslems burst through police lines and burned an effigy of “French Colonialism.” The U.S., with some 20,000 Americans stationed at the four SAC air bases in Morocco, maneuvered to keep from being involved. Anxious to support the cause of Arab freedom, yet loth to antagonize NATO Partner France, Washington only expressed concern and asked the French government not to use U.S. equipment in its African colonies.

The French pressed on with what Premier Faure called “unrelenting repression.” The fury of France’s revenge was the measure of Frenchmen’s alarm.

Grubstake. The French stake in North Africa is prodigious. With its empire in Asia gone, the loss of its African colonies could seal the doom of French claims to being a major power. France has invested tens of billions of dollars in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Its businessmen depend heavily on them for markets, raw materials and labor; its army taps their manpower. “Without North Africa,” French imperialists say, “France would have no history in the 21st century. We should be 40 million Frenchmen facing twice that number of Germans. Another Portugal.”

The French are determined to hang onto North Africa. The richest and most troubled part of it is Morocco. Larger than California and potentially as productive, Morocco is corrugated by the ranges of the Atlas Mountains. In the south is the Sahara, but in the north and west, along the Atlantic shore, Morocco abounds with vineyards, olive groves, forests and corn. More than 300.000 French colons, most of them settled in neat, irrigated farmsteads, have made its hillsides bloom. From its mines French engineers dig vast supplies of manganese and one-sixth of all the world’s phosphates. In its bustling seaside cities, linked by fine new railroads, roads and telephone wires, skyscrapers and modern factories tower above native medinas built before France was France. Casablanca, a squalid fishing port until the French arrived, is now a modern metropolis (pop. 700,000).

The French point with pride to their material achievements in Morocco. Infant mortality rates have dropped from 32 to 19 per 1,000 since 1930; Morocco’s population has tripled since 1912. The colons own only one-seventh of the land, but it is by far the best; they raise 30% of Morocco’s farm products but, unlike the Moroccans, get a. 20% rebate on their property taxes. Morocco’s fine French roads run past colon farms, its dams are sited with an eye to watering those lands.

All French children go to school in Morocco, but only one Arab child in ten has a chance to learn to read and write.

The colons regard the Moroccans as backward children, needing a firm hand. The two groups live apart—Christian and Moslem, Arab and European. “The only Moroccans the colons meet,” said one old French colon, “are the maid, the office boy and the sweeper.”

Moroccan People. The Moroccans outnumber their French masters almost 26 to i. There are 8,000,000 of them, roughly divided between the sedentary and city-dwelling Arabs and the lighter-skinned Berber shepherds. The Berbers are mountain folk, descendants of the original inhabitants of Africa’s northwest corner. Hordes of Berber horsemen helped the Vandals sack Rome, A.D. 455. The Berbers were Moslemized during the Arab invasions that carried the Crescent of

Islam all the way across Africa in the 8th century. Today they are heterodox Moslems, accepting the Prophet’s precepts but rejecting some of his strictures, e.g., their women go unveiled.

The French have gained by cultivating Arab-Berber hostility. The Arabs are city folk, the Berbers nomadic. A million Arabs work’in French factories, and many wear European clothes, including bikinis. Thousands travel to France in search of work and. returning, demand such privileges as trade unions and, a vote. Yet some of the differences between Arab and Berber are disappearing with the dying out of tribalism and the development of a mutual feeling of being Moroccans.

549 Wives. One of the first Frenchmen to come to Morocco officially was the ambassador of King Louis XIV. He found a mighty feudal empire under Ismail the Bloodthirsty. Ismail, who had at least 549 wives, asked for—and was refused—Louis XIV’s daughter as No. 550. When Ismail died, order in Morocco disappeared in the struggle for power among Ismail’s 800 sons (most of his daughters were strangled at birth).

In the 19th century scramble for Africa, Europe’s old empires found Morocco in uncharted chaos. The French moved in, after signing a “gentleman’s agreement” with Britain. France got a free hand in Morocco; Britain got one in Egypt. In 1912, the Sultan signed a treaty that placed his country under French protection. All that remained was to persuade the untamed Moroccans that this was a good thing.

Progress & Problems. The man chosen to persuade them was General Hubert Lyautey, the last of France’s great empire-builders. A dashing cavalry officer who helped establish French power in Indo-China and Algeria. Lyautey moved in with orders to “pacify” Morocco—”in the name and for the benefit of the Sultan.” For 13 years Lyautey ran Morocco singlehanded. He once issued a classic order to one of his officers: “Show your force in order to avoid using it. Never enter a village without thinking that the market must be opened the next day.”

Drawn by the fabled riches of their new possession, French settlers rushed into Morocco. By 1920 there were 51,000 of them: by 1936 there were more than 150,000. Seeing for the first time the glitter of the Western world, moved by the French ideas of liberté, égalité and fraternité, but shunned as inferiors, Moroccans by the hundreds felt the stirrings of nationalism.

Istiqlal. In 1943, during the Casablanca conference, President Roosevelt invited Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef to join him for dinner. Whether or not Franklin Roosevelt ever made the remark, the report soon spread that he had told the Sultan: “France is finished. Take back your country. We will help.” The Sultan’s chief interests lay in his harem (40 concubines), his garage (60 cars), and his afternoon game of tennis. Yet, as Imam (Commander of the Faithful), he became the man around whom Moroccans in the new Istiqlal (Independence) Party centered their hopes.

One day in 1947, the French handed him a paragraph to be inserted in a speech he was making in Tangier: “Look especially to France, lovers of liberty …” But when it came time to deliver the speech, Ben Youssef ignored the French paragraph, appealed instead for the solidarity of Islam. The French were furious. To-teach the Sultan a lesson, they appointed an imperious and impetuous new Resident General : Alphonse Juin, topflight field soldier and veteran of long years of service in North Africa. An old-fashioned imperialist, Marshal Juin had his own Moroccan to set up against Ben Youssef: El Glaoui.

Pasha of Marrakech. His Excellency Hadj Thami El Glaoui, Pasha of Marrakech, was born in the high Atlas about 80 years ago. His first profession was banditry, and he still rides round Morocco with a machine gun on his lap. Today, El Glaoui, still lean, dark and pantherish, is one of the world’s richest men. He takes a tithe of the almond, saffron and olive harvests in his vast domain, owns huge blocks of stock in French-run mines and factories, gets a rebate on machinery and automobiles imported into his realm. As a sideline, he reputedly takes a cut of the earnings of 6,000 prostitutes operating in the Marrakech area. El Glaoui’s fortune is somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million.

The secret of El Glaoui’s success is his usefulness to the French. Whenever the Arabs made trouble, Paris called on El Glaoui to raise his Berber levies and help restore order. El Glaoui still maintains that he is the chief of the Berbers. He got a bad shock last week when the Berbers joined the Arabs in massacring the French, and sent a letter to Paris calling El Glaoui a “myth.”

With French backing, El Glaoui began peddling a petition demanding Sultan Ben Youssef’s dethronement. On Aug. 20, 1953, El Glaoui’s horsemen came racing down the hills and surrounded the capital of Rabat. Ben Youssef must go, said El Glaoui. The colons loudly agreed. The French government suspected the strength of this movement, but was too weak-willed to resist it. Approving the order for Ben Youssef’s removal, Foreign Minister Georges Bidault solaced himself with the comment: “It was either the Cross or the Crescent.”

Bundled into an airplane with his two wives and a favorite concubine, Ben Youssef was whisked off to exile, now lives in Madagascar in a hilltop hotel, where he daily complains of the cold. Uninspiring in office, Ben Youssef in exile has become a national martyr. Many simple Moroccans claim to see his face in the full moon.

Black Hand. The French replaced Ben Youssef with a wizened old weakling, Sidi Mohammed ben Moulay Arafa. From that act, more than anything else, stemmed the Moroccan revolt.

The Nationalists denounced Moulay Arafa as a puppet and usurper. In the great mosque at Fez, the bearded priests of the Prophet issued a solemn edict: “In the name of Islam and the Moroccan people we demand the return of the legal sovereign, Ben Youssef.” Istiqlal’s moderate leaders, most of them French-educated businessmen with little stomach for violence, pleaded with their followers to avoid bloodshed, and petitioned the French for reforms.

“You don’t wish to deal with reasonable men, so you’ll have to deal with madmen,” said one of the Istiqlal leaders when the French arrested him. Madmen were soon on the warpath. In the teeming bidonvilles, where few Frenchmen dare enter, veiled women made grenades. Their menfolk banded together in terrorist societies—the Black Crescent, Black Hand, and many others. Egged on by the mullahs and by the Voice of the Arabs, a Cairo propaganda station supported by the Egyptian government, young Moslem fanatics began bombing French stores, derailing trains and stabbing French civilians. In 1954, the long knives and homemade bombs struck down 200 Frenchmen and wounded 500 more. Encouraged by French reverses in Indo-China, the Black Hand openly boasted: “Casablanca will become another Dienbienphu.”

White Terror. The French lashed back desperately. Thousands of Moroccans were jailed, tens of thousands beaten in brutal ratissages (literally, rakings-in) staged by the colonial police. Then the French colons began taking the law into their own hands. Nervous and jittery, like the British settlers in Kenya at the height of the Mau Mau war, they organized gangs of counterterrorists among the “poor white” Spaniards and Corsicans who lurk in Morocco’s big towns. French terrorists began shooting Moroccans in broad daylight, and the police did nothing to stop it. White terrorists in Morocco also murdered Frenchmen whom they suspected of being too sympathetic to the Nationalists. Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil, the influential editor of the modern Maroc-Presse, wrote Premier Faure: “The situation is getting worse.” That night last June, as he stepped out of his luxurious Casablanca apartment, Lemaigre-Dubreuil was machine-gunned to death. The 13 bullets in his body were of the same type as those used by the Casablanca police.

Premier Faure was shocked. Special detectives from Paris arrested the man suspected of organizing the White Terror. He proved to be Chief Inspector Jean Delrieu, formerly head of the Casablanca police department charged with combatting Arab terrorism. Faure called a Cabinet meeting, then put in a call to the Saar. He wanted to speak to Gilbert Grandval.

Exceptional Man. “We need an exceptional man,” the Premier told Grandval. “You are that man.” Grandval is broad-shouldered and handsome, the son of an haul bourgeois family whose Jewish name—Hirsch Ollendorff—he abandoned in World War II. He was one of the authentic French underground heroes. When the Allies landed in France, Grandval was commanding some 18,000 guerrillas in eastern France. An ardent Gaullist and a convert to Catholicism, he got for his reward a chestful of medals and the appointment as French governor of the battered but vital Saar. In ten years Proconsul Grandval rebuilt the Saar’s economy. “It was an experience to give life to a country,” he says with pardonable pride. Grandval steered clear of French politics, but cultivated a grand manner that sometimes irritated his superiors. No one questioned his ability or dedication or courage.

Landing at Rabat airfield, the new Resident General jumped down to the tarmac without waiting for the ramp to be rolled into place. Turning to a French official, he said: “Where are conditions most critical?”

“Casablanca,” came the answer.

“Good,” said Grandval. “We’ll go there day after next.”

Bold Reforms. That day, wearing his white uniform and carrying a white baton, the new Resident General drove into Casablanca’s teeming medina. Hostile Arabs surrounded him, but Grandval got out of his car, walked over to a Moroccan and extended his hand in friendship.

“How does it go?” he asked.

“It would go better,” said the Arab, “if Your Excellency returned to us our sovereign and our justice.”

Suddenly, a whole mob of Arabs started cheering and shouting for Ben Youssef. a serious offense in Morocco, where public mention of the exiled Sultan’s name is punishable with years in jail. A French officer stepped forward and asked permission to take “necessary measures.” Snapped Grandval: “Definitely not,” and strode back to his car.

Grandval quickly determined that the only way to stave off bloodshed was to press for immediate reforms. Boldly he declared an amnesty, freed 150 political prisoners and fired nine Frenchmen who opposed his policy of negotiating a peaceful settlement with the Istiqlal. Grandval’s combination of audacity and self-assurance won him more confidence among the Moroccans than any other Frenchman had enjoyed since Lyautey. They called him the “Man of the Last Chance.” But the colons hated Grandval, and the terrorism was on.

Sabotage. When riots broke out in Casablanca, the colons blamed Grandval for the death of six Europeans, killed by a terrorist bomb. When he attended the funeral of the victims, French hoodlums shouted, “To the gallows!” and, milling around him, ripped off an epaulet.

Under pressure from the colons, French bureaucrats in Morocco systematically sabotaged Grandval’s reform program. His orders were not carried out, telegrams were not delivered. Grandval appealed to Paris, but the colons were there before him. Conservative members of Faure’s coalition threatened to bring down the government if Grandval got his own way.

Then came La Date Fatidique (Aug. 20), and the massacre of Oued Zem. Too late, the French government realized that Grandval had been right. The bloodshed he had tried to forestall now was a fact, and would be avenged. Only the faith Istiqlal leaders had in Grandval kept the violence in the hills from spreading to the big cities.

To the impassioned colons, however, Gilbert Grandval was to blame. Grandval had bargained with the Moroccans, the Moroccans committed the murders. Therefore, Grandval was an accomplice, ran the colon argument. Their passions burst forth one day last week at an elaborate military funeral held in Rabat. The funeral was for tough-minded French General Raymond Duval. whose light plane crashed in the Atlas foothills during the operations against the Berbers. Because Duval had opposed Grandval’s policies, the fantastic rumor spread that the Resident had sabotaged the general’s plane.

At Duval’s funeral, muffled drums played the Death March. Officers bore his decorations on three cushions, and behind them walked Gilbert Grandval. The Resident General’s face was blue with fatigue. Climbing to the rostrum, Grandval addressed himself to Duval’s widow, sitting near by. “Madame . . .” he began, but a storm of voices from the 4,000 assembled colons drowned him: “Assassin!” “Dirty Jew!” “Get out!” Madame Duval got up to leave. A chaplain next to her pulled her back down. “If you go, blood will be spilled.” Grandval finished his speech, but as he drove away, the boos and jeers mingled with shouts of “Resign, resign!”

Back in his residency, the proud Grandval broke down. “I have discovered the depths of human ignominy.” he told one of his aides. Picking up the telephone, he called Premier Faure and. after two months in office, offered his resignation.

Head on the Table. Faure, the nimble master of political maneuver who had appointed Grandval. urged him to reconsider—but only halfheartedly. A worldly-wise French bureaucrat remarked that the Premier thought “it might not be a bad idea to have Grandval’s head on the negotiation table.” Shocked into action by the bloodletting, the Premier had summoned more than a hundred Moroccan notables to a conference at Aix-les-Bains and was now eagerly searching for an acceptable political solution.

Faure’s solution was a rewrite of Gilbert Grandval’s plan to solve the throne question. He proposed to 1) remove Moulay Arafa—thus pleasing the Nationalists. 2) maintain the ban on Ben Youssef—thus pleasing the French colons. A three-man regency council would take the Sultan’s place, and alongside it would be formed a provisional Moroccan government, with representatives of all parties, including the still-outlawed Istiqlal.

At the conference in Aix-les-Bains.

Faure persuaded the Moroccans to accept the outlines of Grandval’s plan. A bigger problem was to win the support of the French diehards—in Morocco and in France.

Listening to the right-wingers in his Cabinet talk. Faure suddenly lit on the answer. He had Grandval’s head on a platter; why not use it to win his point? At week’s end. Faure agreed to sack Grandval in return for the support of his right wing in accepting Grandval’s plan.

Faure called his compromise a “solution . . . that cannot and ought not to fail.” Yet, directed as it was towards the necessities of French politics instead of the harsh realities that Grandval found in Morocco, it hardly did more than gloss over the true nature of the struggle. Beyond the nasty whirlpools of French politics, beyond the colons’ prejudice and the swirl of dynastic rivalry, loom forces that will be impervious, as they have been before, to maneuverings that gratify politics but ignore realities.