Revolt of the Arabs

Syria and Lebanon were gone, so was Indo-China. Last week France was enmeshed in another colonial agony--this time nearer home.

Violence that came close to actual war fare blazed across French North Africa. In an 850-mile arc from Constantine in Algeria to Casablanca in Morocco, more than 800 were killed and thousands more wounded in a spreading, sporadic rebellion that brought the wrath of Islam close to the shores of Europe. The uprisings threatened to cut off France's vast colonies in equatorial Africa. More than 300 million Moslems were already feeling their impact, from Senegal to the Celebes. In the eye of the storm were 20,000 Americans--airmen and their families stationed at the four Strategic Air Command bomber bases in western Morocco.

Shocked Alarm. In Paris there was shock and alarm. Premier Edgar Faure, who had appointed an able man to bring peace to Morocco and had then hung back from letting that man put through the reforms he demanded, condemned "this terror and savageness," and grimly warned of French retribution. In the Moroccan capital of Rabat, his appointee, French Resident General Gilbert Grandval, was shocked at the bloody collapse of his efforts to win a compromise.

"The man who arrived in Morocco a month and a half ago with the ardent desire to restore order and peace by friendship has a broken heart," said Grandval. "There is no motive that can excuse such a crime."

Day before the fighting broke out, Grandval had rushed back to Morocco from Paris with a special invitation to the nationalist leaders, asking them to meet with the French Cabinet to work out a compomise. Because Grandval had won their trust, most nationalist leaders accepted this last-minute offer. But though the moderates in Morocco urged calm on their impatient people, the extremists would not be stayed. As so often before, the French concessions came too late.

Fateful Date. The seeds of revolt had been sown over 43 years of French insensitivity to the political and spiritual longings of North Africa's Arab peoples. France gave North Africa roads, hospitals and the works of Voltaire, but not the political liberty it demanded. The spark that ignited the violence was struck one day last week. It came on La Date Fatidique (literally, the fateful date).

It was the second anniversary of the dethronement of Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef as head of some 9,000,000 Moroccan Moslems. On Aug. 20, 1953, the French bundled Ben Youssef aboard a DC-3 and exiled him, ostensibly to "save" him from his own people, actually because he supported their demand for more political freedom. So flimsy a pretext was an insult to North Africa's faithful. Morocco's urgent nationalists flatly refused to accept the weak and wizened old man whom Paris foisted on them in Ben Youssef's place. Ben Youssef, never very popular as Sultan, became in exile a martyr.

To Moslems throughout North Africa, Sidi Mohammed ben Moulay Arafa, the French puppet Sultan, is a false prophet and usurper. Last month the Moroccans served notice that La Date Fatidique would be a day of prayer and demonstrations for Moulay Arafa's removal and Ben Youssef's return. Terrorist tracts, bearing the black crescent sign of the Arab underground, quickly made plain what this might mean. In the sacred name of Allah, the tracts urged all Moroccans to "avenge our dead heroes cut down by Imperialist French bullets."

Imperative Duty. The French were dismayed and alarmed. Since last month's riots in Casablanca (TIME, July 25), 60,000 of their troops have been standing guard in Morocco, but more, apparently, were needed. From its limited reserves in Europe, the French army flew a battalion of marines and a company of security police to beef up the Moroccan garrison. It even took space on commercial airliners to fetch hundreds of Senegalese NCOs from their units in Indo-China.

On the eve of La Date Fatidique, glittering Casablanca was closed down like a morgue. The wealthy fled to Tangier, the poor boarded up their doors. In the medinas from Fez to Marrakech, white-kepied Legionnaires set up machine guns and searchlights, covering the street intersections. Nationalist agitators sawed down telephone poles and tore down the street lamps, to ensure darkness for their escape.

The French commander of the Casablanca area, General Andre Franchi, broadcast an appeal for calm. "I am a man who knows and loves the Moroccan soul," he said, "but I have the imperative duty of maintaining order." Franchi ordered his troops to fire if disobeyed, then added: "I ask God to avoid this at all costs."

Burning Alive. All that night there was sporadic firing in Casablanca's slums. Next morning there was open revolt. A general strike paralyzed Morocco's principal cities; patriots broke out red Moroccan flags atop mosques and minarets. Out of Casablanca's teeming slums poured shrieking women and boys, some not ten years old. They waved pictures of Mohammed ben Youssef and shouted for his return. Hours before, similar gangs had caught an Arab who was suspected of collaborating with the French. They stripped and doused him with gasoline, then burned him alive. The French brought up 30 tanks and a battalion of green-bereted paratroopers. In the Carrieres Centrales, a warren of packing-case tenements, the Arabs built barricades. Young men shot stones at the waiting troops from slingshots; others ripped open their shirts and dared the Legionnaires to fire. Sometimes the soldiers did fire, at first high in the air, then point-blank to kill. "I brought down three myself," said a French sergeant with a Tommy gun.

The French claimed that only four were killed in Casablanca, but at one Moroccan funeral, newsmen counted 35 coffins.

Berber Rising. There were other uprisings in Rabat, Marrakech and Fez, but the worst fighting broke out where it was least expected: among the Berber tribes. Lean, eagle-eyed horsemen who accept the authority of Islam, though not all of its practices, e.g., they eat wild boar, the Berbers are the descendants of the proud indigenes of Africa's northwest corner. Many Berber tribes held out against the French until as late as 1934, but since then their Caids (chiefs) have accepted French gold.

The French encouraged Berber hostility to the Moroccan Arabs as part of their general policy of divide and rule. Two years ago the Berbers were persuaded to back up El Glaoui, the cunning old Pasha of Marrakech, who acted as France's agent in the removal of Ben Youssef. El Glaoui has teamed up with the right-wing elements among the French colons in North Africa to delay and sabotage Gilbert Grandval's plans for reform and self-government.

An important segment of Berbers had now switched sides. "There is new hope in Morocco," the Berber Caids wired Premier Faure recently. "We respectfully ask you to put an end to the El Glaoui myth . . . There is no question of accepting the Pasha of Marrakech as the chief of the Berbers. They form a part of the whole, the Moroccan people." But when the French continued to temporize, the Caids told their Berbers to saddle up.

No Prisoners. Pouring down from the hills, thousands of Berber horsemen from the Ouled Aissim tribe smashed their way into the prosperous little town of Oued Zem, 80 miles southeast of Casablanca. With screaming women at their side, some of them riding bicycles, they swept through the European quarter, setting fire to every house, killing every white man in sight, in the most savage massacre of Europeans in modern Moroccan history.

Old Widow Voivier ran a grocery store in the main street. Knives cut her down. Other knives dismembered her son and daughter and finally the daughter's three children. Another mother was disemboweled when she tried to protect her child. People caught in cars or trucks were dragged out, had their noses and tongues cut off, and then were stuffed back into their cars to be burned alive. Then the mob burned the hospital, pausing to butcher seven patients in their beds.

Oued Zem was alone with its horror for more than four hours. When French troops arrived, a Legionnaire lieutenant shouted to his command: "We take no prisoners!"

Hand to Hand. It was the same at Khenifra, a fortified town in the Atlas Mountains. Thousands of Berber warriors surrounded the city and besieged those Frenchmen who were not killed in the main onrush in the Mayoralty. When a Legion column arrived, the French and Berbers fought hand to hand in the streets. A French patrol was caught in withering fire from front and rear, and suffered heavy losses. In another street action, 69 Berbers were reported killed. Later, the French dropped paratroopers from battered old German Junkers, escorted by British-made jets.

Death in Algeria. While the French army had its hands full beating back the Moroccans, other fanatical Arabs saw their chance in Algeria, North Africa's richest province and legally a part of France.

With perfect timing, gangs of Algerian fellaghas (rebel bandits) raided French police stations and stormed the railroad station on the outskirts of Constantine (pop. 119,000). Fourteen Frenchmen standing at a bar were blown to bits by a bomb. The fellaghas called themselves "The Army of Liberation"; they were joined by urban terrorists known as "Death Battalions." The rebels swept through dozens of French villages, burning, looting and killing. Scores of French civilians were knifed or torn to pieces before the troops swung into action.

Pitched battles broke out in half a dozen Algerian towns. It was impossible to count all the casualties, but reliable estimates ranged as high as 560 dead (460 of them rebels) and possibly thousands injured.

All told, La Date Fatidique claimed the lives of some 650 Arabs and 200 Frenchmen. French North Africa was in flames, and at week's end there was still no knowing how far the flames would spread, or how they would be put out.

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