REBEL MOROCCO

Hokitika Guardian, 6 July 1928, Page 4

REBEL MOROCCO

FRENCH KEPT BUSY

There are as many French soldiers in Morocco in 19-8, 20 years alter the first troops landed there and France assumed charge of the protectorate, as there arc settlers and farmers.

True, the European civil population of the large cities for outnumber the military effectives, hut the fact remains that for every tiller of the soil in the country France must maintain a man with a rifle and a bayonet. French Morocco is divided into three zones—security, insecurity and downright rebellion. The first covers about four times as much area as the other two; but to even matters up the latter give the “protectors” four times more trouble.

LARGE “REBEL” ZONE

The “dissident or rebel” zone comprises practically the entire Middle "Atlas range, with a fringe of territory in the plain at the foot of the mountains, averaging 20 to 80 miles deep to the north and west. The Sous district, hinterland between Mogadour and Agadir, is also unsubdued, but Kasba-Tabala and the Beni-Mella in the Atlas are the most irreconcilable. Tile Cheleuhs, hardy and strong mountaineers, inhabiting the Middle At fas—about 150 miles from Casablanca—with frequent incursions into the plains, profess a fierce and wild independence. Sallying'from the mountains last autumn, and closing in on Kaska-Tab-la, they kidnapped the nephew of Resident General Theodore Steeg, his friend and two women. Held for ransom in the mountains for several weeks, the prisoners were released only upon the payment of a large cash indemnity, the amount of which has never been officially announced, but according to well-informed persons in Moroccan affairs, was over 1,000,000 francs gold. RANGER AREA INCREASED.

Even now from the French fort at Kenifrn one can hear the guns booming in tiie distance, the sound sent rolling back into the plains by the echoes of the mountains. 'Pile activities of the Chleuhs of late have forced the French to move the “insecurity posts” which, 1 for the settlers, mark the frontier between relative security and sudden death by kidnapping, 12 miles further west in the plains below the Middle Atlas. At some points the danger zone is now only 120 miles from Casablanca.