Rumbling in the Mountains

In the more carefree days of the '20s, when foreign quarrels were considered remote and romantic, Abd el Krim, the Rif fighter, was one of the glamorous newspaper heroes of the day. He is now a testy and unshaven old man of 76, withering away in Cairo exile, but last week he was back in the news.

For centuries, on the barren brown mountains that were once a part of Spanish Morocco, the Riffs have lived, a sturdy Berber breed whose way of life was war. Feuding and fighting among themselves, they were seldom united; but Abd el Krim in the 1920s managed to bring them together long enough to drive out the Spaniards. Only after Paris dispatched Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain to lead 160,000 French troops against him was Abd el Krim defeated in 1926. Taken prisoner, he escaped to Cairo, where since 1947 he has continued to rant, first against the French, and, since Morocco's independence, against King Mohammed V.

Hilltop Casbah. A couple of months ago the Riffs of Morocco began to complain openly against the King's government in Rabat. They resent the city-bred administrators that Rabat has sent to govern them, claim that non-French-speaking Moroccans have been frozen out, and that government police have used arbitrary methods, including "torture that even the French could not devise." Six weeks ago an organization called the Rif Liberation and Liquidation Movement suddenly came to light, patterned after the hierarchy of the Algerian rebels across the border.

Today the Rif mountains have become a sort of giant casbah, ruled by an underground that is becoming each day more highly organized. Last week TIME Correspondent Stanley Karnow received an anonymous phone call inviting him to visit their camp. A clandestine meeting with Riff leaders in Rabat was followed by a scribbled note of introduction in Arabic; he was led into the hills, first by car and then by mule, handed on from guide to guide. Rocks and bushes along the roads and paths turned out to be camouflaged tribesmen. Time after time he and his guides were stopped for identification, though recognized ("We're training them carefully," it was explained). Even government troops are working secretly for the movement.

"We Will Act." Though Abd el Krim remains the symbol, the real leaders of the movement are a far cry from the traditional chiefs of oldtime feuding days, reported Karnow. They have neither telephone nor telegraph, but they keep in touch through an elaborate network of signal fires and scores of runners who can relay a letter from 250 miles away within two days. One typical leader is a Madrid-educated lawyer known only as Sadek, who has stumped the region, whipping up the tribesmen with fiery speeches from balcony and rooftop. The chief of the Riffs' "central region'' is 33-year-old Mohammed Salem A'Mezzian, who claims he sent the King a list of 18 demands but never got a reply. Of all his demands, he regards as the most important the return of Abd el Krim. "If the other 17 points are accepted and that one ignored," he warns, "we will act."

Just what sort of action is never specified. The Riffs pose as serious a threat to the King as the dissatisfaction of the Istiqlal Party radicals in the cities. Last week the King made a small but significant act of conciliation. At a brief ceremony in the town of Alhucemas, 42 farms, confiscated by the Spaniards in 1928, were formally restored to the family of Abd el Krim. In broadcasting the news, the official Moroccan radio for the first time referred to the exiled rebel by his old honored title of emir (chieftain).

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