Here is an interesting opinion piece/historical overview from Aljazeera English on the distressed situation facing the Rifians (riyafa) in Morocco's most Northern Region.
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The plight of the Rif: Morocco's restive northern periphery: |
The unrest in the Rif is based in the tumultuous history of Rifians as a battered people on Morocco's northern periphery
by Akbar Ahmed with Harrison Akins
Last Modified: 28 Sep 2012 09:20
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The
Moroccan journalist, Hamid Naimi, has received a number of ominous and
mysterious death threats in the last few weeks. Based out of the Spanish
enclave of Melilla on the northern Moroccan coast, Naimi's blistering
reports on the corruption of the Moroccan central government and its
treatment of the Berber periphery have become a thorn in the side of the
administration.
Naimi, originally from Morocco's northern region, the Rif, has been in exile since 2005, when his newspaper Kawaliss Rif ("Stories from the Rif") was shut down by the government.
The travails of Naimi expose the challenge of Morocco in dealing
effectively with its Berber periphery, particularly the Rifian Berbers
in the north. The Arab Spring protests across the country have led to
new constitutional reforms for the nation, yet more must be done to
account for and alleviate the problems of the Rif and its Berber tribes
who have felt neglected by the central government for decades.
Over
the past year, protests in the Rif pointed to the issues which plague
the region - high rates of poverty, unemployment, a media blockade and
brutal tactics employed by the police to crush any unrest. To
understand the current relationship between Morocco and its northern
periphery, we must look into the history of the Rif with its Berber
tribes and its interactions with the centre.
Resisting encroachment
The
largely unknown mountainous region of the Rif, meaning "the edge of
cultivated land", in northern Morocco has struggled with central
authority for the past century. The Rifian Berbers, ensconced in their
mountains, have lived according to a code of honour, hospitality and
revenge within their system of clans and kinship networks, allowing them
to regulate justice and social order without the presence of state
institutions for centuries. The Rifian Berbers, distinct from the Atlas
Berbers in central Morocco, have their own Berber dialect, Tarifit.
Sean Connery depicted the importance of dignity and honour among the Rifians with empathy in the 1975 film The Wind and the Lion. Connery,
himself a Scotsman, played the Rifian tribal chief Mulai Ahmed el
Raisuli with flair. The film recounts the historic events surrounding el
Rasiuli's kidnapping of an American expatriate, Ion Perdicaris
(portrayed in the film as a woman played by a glamorous Candice Bergen),
and his son for a ransom and control of two government districts from
the Moroccan Sultan.
Connery's
acting accurately displays el Raisuli's reputation of treating his
hostages with respect and hospitality, even going so far as protecting
them from harm. Perdicaris would later write of el Raisuli, "He
is not a bandit, not a murderer, but a patriot forced into acts of
brigandage to save his native soil and his people from the yoke of
tyranny".
The
Rifians with their sense of honour and fierce independence resisted the
encroachment of central authority. Beginning in the late 19th century,
Spain made a number of military incursions into the Rif region, clashing
with the Berber tribes. With the establishment of the Spanish
Protectorate of Morocco in 1912 over the north of the country, the
Spanish military attempted to bring the mountainous area under central
rule.
By 1921, Abd-el-Krim, a Rifian tribal leader, declared independence from Spain. Abd-el-Krim caught the attention of international media, appearing on the cover of TIME Magazine
in August 1925. To defeat Abd-el-Krim and his allied tribes, Spain
relied on overwhelming military force and the extensive use of early
forms of air power and chemical weapons to subjugate the rebellious
tribes.
King
Alfonso XIII of Spain captured the mood of the country when he stated
that the aerial gas campaign was for "the extermination, like that of
malicious beasts, of the Beni Urriaguels [Abd-el-Krim's tribe] and the
tribes who are closest to Abdel Karim".
The resulting war which ended in 1926 proved devastating for both: the
Spanish lost as many as 50,000 men and the Rifians had roughly 30,000
casualties.
With
the Rif's inclusion into independent Morocco in 1956, the Rifians felt
sidelined with Arabs, who represented the dominant culture, and others
from Francophone Morocco favoured for administrative posts within the
newly centralised government.
Violence
erupted in the Rif in October 1958 when tribesmen attacked markets and
local offices of the nationalist Istiqlal Party and, then, escaped into
the mountains. Despite these attacks against the state, the Rifians were
quick to express their traditional loyalty to King Mohammed V due to
his holy lineage, separating his religious authority from his political
authority.
This
has been how Berbers have viewed central authority throughout history.
During lulls in battles between government forces and Berber tribes of
the Atlas Mountains in the late 19th century, for example, Berber women
would kiss the Sultan's cannons and ask them for benediction in order to
defeat the Sultan's forces, as the cannons carried the Baraka, or blessing of the Sultan and thus the Prophet.
'Cruel punishment'
In January 1958, the government responded to the Rifians' overtures of violence with 20,000 troops of the newly formed Forces Armees Royales (FAR), over two-thirds of the entire army, led by Crown Prince Hassan, to carry out what the King called a "cruel punishment".
When
the Crown Prince's plane was landing in the Rif Mountains, he was
greeted by gunfire from Rifian sharpshooters hiding in the brush at the
edge of the landing strip. The FAR responded by indiscriminately bombing
entire villages and raping Rifian women. The uprising came to an end in
the following month with casualties for the tribesmen exceeding 10,000.
After King Hassan ascended the throne in 1961, the Rif
remained largely neglected by the central government and as a result,
suffered from some of the highest levels of poverty in the country. In the Rif in the 1960s, for example, the infant mortality rate within one week of birth was over 50 per cent.
With very little development from the centre and lacking economic opportunities, its people were forced to resort to widespread hash cultivation and smuggling merely to survive. Many
Rifians chose to settle in slums surrounding Casablanca and other major
Moroccan cities or travelled to Europe as migrant labourers with the
majority of Moroccan immigrants in Europe from the Rif.
The
bread riots in the Rif in the 1980s, sparked by rising food prices,
were quickly suppressed by the government with King Hassan describing
the Rifians in a nationally televised speech as "savages and thieves".
The
unrest in the Rif is based in their tumultuous history as a battered
people on Morocco's northern periphery. Understanding their history, the
people of the Rif need to be treated with compassion and sympathy. This
presents not only a dilemma for dealing with the Rif, but also an
opportunity.
For
the Moroccan centre, King Mohammed VI is almost unique in the Muslim
world as a ruler with a holy lineage. The King, with the compassion and Baraka of the Prophet, should act to help these beleaguered people while respecting their culture and understanding their history.
The
Rifians only want the rights and opportunities of full citizens of a
modern and inclusive Morocco. Only then can peace and stability be
brought to the troubled northern periphery of an important Muslim
nation.
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