05/28/2026
, 100 years ago, the Rif Republic was defeated.
Its history is inseparable from Mohammed Abd el-Krim (1882–1963), a pioneering figure in Morocco’s anti-colonial resistance.
Mao Zedong described him as “the embodiment of a leader of a people’s liberation war,” and Che Guevara visited him in exile in Cairo in 1959. Abd el-Krim united rival Amazigh groups in the Rif Mountains against Spanish colonial rule.
Beginning in 1921, his forces inflicted a series of humiliating defeats on Spain through guerrilla warfare, leading to the establishment of the Rif Republic later that same year.
The republic represented a deeply contradictory form of modernization. Abd el-Krim ruled without a parliament, and Sharia served as the legal framework. At the same time, blood feuds and slavery were abolished, a school system and telephone network were established, and Jewish communities gained greater rights.
In the summer of 1925, the colonial powers struck back. France, which until then had not been directly involved in the war but controlled southern Morocco, joined Spain in a coordinated military campaign. Under the command of Philippe Pétain, later a collaborator with N**i Germany, they launched an air war in which aircraft dropped 10,000 barrels of mustard gas, largely on civilian targets. The chemical weapons had been supplied by German manufacturer Hugo Stoltzenberg.
On 27 May 1926, Abd el-Krim surrendered to French forces. He was exiled to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and was only allowed to leave for exile in Egypt in 1947.
