Episode 68 The State of Occupation in the Rif during the term of Resident General Sporo

The State of Occupation in the Rif during the term of Resident General Sporo

​This period, ranging from September 13, 1923, to September 1924, was not a time of full-scale war. Al-Hajj Ahmed Bouayachi, a chronicler of the Rif War and a historian of Muhammad ibn Abd el-Krim, states in document number 423: "The front remained stagnant, moving neither forward nor backward, except for local skirmishes between the Mujahideen and the enemy." He further states in document number 421: "In reality, the idea of invading Al Hoceima by sea broke the back of the Rif because it came at a time when the forces of the Mujahideen were scattered across the long Western fronts, stretching from Oued Laou to the Rahuna tribe on the border between the French and Spanish zones. This line extended through the outskirts of Ouazzane to Sidi Bouaqba in the Akarnaya tribe. The Eastern front stretched from the Awlad Bouker of the Metalsa tribe to Sidi Ahsain on the Mediterranean Sea, in addition to the intense guarding along the coastline extending from Sidi Ahsain to Oued Martin near Tétouan. A portion of the regular Riffian forces had accompanied Muhammad ibn Abd el-Krim to the Tétouan front, where the weight was placed upon the men of those tribes. They obeyed the Riffian leadership in their movements, which turned them into real men after finding them as mere puppets, moved only by the heroic Riffian hands."

​As for the front from Tétouan to Ksar el-Kebir, the withdrawal left a wound for the Spaniards that would not heal, stabbing their pride to the core. The tribes of that front had to bear the consequences of those wounds, standing firm against the arrogance of the occupation troops. In this manner was the state of the Eastern front. The front lines, extending from the three Awlad Bouker of the Metalsa tribe, passing through Bishar and Tifarouine to Sidi Ahsain, were all centers occupied by Spanish troops from the time of their recapture between 1921 and 1923. After Resident General Primo de Rivera arrived in Tétouan on September 24, 1924, and assumed his position—being described as a dictator—the Spanish government chose him to carry out an accelerated withdrawal.

• The Failure of the Eastern Command and the Reality of the Withdrawal.

​"...not to place Spanish soldiers on the peaks of the mountains held under the Mujahideen’s surveillance in the Western front. Implementing the agreement reached between the General Command and the leader Al-Raisuni, the Spanish government granted him the rank of General on October 16, 1924, and on November 1, 1924, announced the withdrawal from the occupied centers, but the Mujahideen were lying in wait."

​"Al-Hajj Al-Bouayachi says: 'When General Primo de Rivera announced the withdrawal from the forward positions on the Western front and implemented it, he did not declare the same for the Eastern front, nor did he implement it there. Perhaps this was due to the tragedies that befell the retreating soldiers from Chefchaouen and others. The military command protested to the Resident General that the withdrawal would cost them losses they did not expect from the army command in their centers, so they held their ground, and thus the Eastern command remained as it was under the occupation.'"

​"It is notable that the 'tragedies that befell the retreating soldiers' refers to the Eastern regions that were recaptured between 1921 and 1923 after the defeat at Annual. The author masked the reason for the withdrawal from the Western front, as he did not apply the same to the Eastern front, which led him to seek imaginary reasons. The difference between them is clear; the occupation soldiers on the Western front were fundamentally different from those on the Eastern front, as General Berenguer submitted his resignation after the occupation of Tazzarine about sixty days later, having left his soldiers on the Western mountain peaks dying without relief. The rebellious tribes surrounded them, preventing any food or essential life supplies from reaching them, even preventing them from drinking water, which is necessary for animal life. Nothing was sent to them except by air, and much of it fell into the hands of the Mujahideen. Two years passed while they were in a state of severe suffocation, and some of them at the peak of Sidi Boushbil in the Beni Zeroual tribe were asked by the locals to surrender without weapons, but they refused, and the hardship increased until most of them perished from hunger and thirst at the peak of Sidi Boushbil in the Beni Zeroual tribe, unlike their brothers on the Eastern front, who were eating, drinking, celebrating, and occupying the tribes through peaceful means. All that he mentioned about the Riffian leadership..."

• The Strategic Objectives of the Al Hoceima Landing.

​"...manufactured men after finding them as puppets of empty speech. The author describes in his book (No. 424) the landing on land on the island of Alhucemas, which he refers to in his book sometimes by this name and other times by the name Al Hoceima, as they are synonyms for one another. He says that the Alhucemas/Al Hoceima coast was presented to the invasion for two reasons: First, Ajdir is the capital of the revolution, located in the heart of the Beni Ouriaghel tribe, and is not far from the landing site by seven kilometers. The invasion was directed toward the heart of the revolution. Second, the island of Alhucemas has been occupied for a long time since 1673 by Spanish soldiers with artillery and other defensive means, which prevented the revolutionaries from driving out the occupier for days of victories, and it is said that its area is a thousand square meters."

​"It lies in the middle of the water, and between it and the land are about five thousand meters. It monitors the movements of the revolution’s capital and is known by its coast, Shada and Fida. On September 7, 1925, the invading fleet arrived at the Bay of Alhucemas/Al Hoceima. The force that came from the city of Melilla was scheduled to land on the eastern side of the Nekor River, which pours into the Bay of Alhucemas. The forces that came from Ceuta and Melilla were on the other side; however, air currents and bad weather did not help the landing as scheduled. While that was happening, a reconnaissance plane flew overhead carrying Colonel Franco, who was entrusted with the landing operation, and thus was given absolute authority. He was leading the Foreign Legion. To ensure the operation, the fleet struck the village of Ajdir with one-hundred-millimeter cannons in anticipation of dawn. The landing boats stayed near Marsa Sbadia, waiting for the dawn of the eighth day to carry out the landing on land. According to Colonel Franco’s report, everything was quiet along that small coast, and the surveillance on the heights overlooking the sea was calm, and the sea reflected the lights on the coasts. It was supposed that our soldiers would land on the land, and on the eighth hour, they would set their feet on it, and they must land with weapons and ammunition. On the ninth of September 1925, the shelling of Sbadia occurred from the sea, and the air with cannons and machine guns, leaving..."

• The Infiltration of the Beach and the Betrayal of the Leader.

​"...on the beach. Then, the approach of the troop carriers was noticed, and the soldiers landed on the beach. They emerged from it, and Colonel Franco stepped out, followed by the Foreign Legion, wading through the shallow water after the sound of the military trumpet, and the water was reaching their shoulders. Thus, Franco preceded to the beach, then planted the Spanish flag. When the Riffian sentries woke up, they fired intermittent shots from their rifles, as they were taken by surprise. Some of them fled and went to seek protection with the leader Mouh Belqaja, who was under his command artillery in the burning beach in the tribe of Bqioua. The Mujahideen approached him, asking for permission to strike the occupied armies, saying: 'There is no need, because the enemy only wants to intimidate with fire from afar, and let him not set his feet on our land.' When they told him of the landing on the beach and the occupation of the land, he fled from the cave with his group and climbed up to Zait, running from the Spanish soldiers until they reached the leader El-Khattabi. When they informed him of the occupation of the Al Hoceima coast, he was near the occupied beach with what I learned, then he frowned, and his pain from this event appeared. Then he returned to him and said: 'Oh coward, I made you a judge over disputes, as I thought you had enough in this beach, and I sent you to it, and I did not know you were a failure. If I had enough time, I would have known your fate, but the events kept us busy.' Then he turned away from him and left him, saying to him: 'To me!' The English historian said: 'This leader was one of the Spanish agents, and he was not loyal to the revolution!!!'"

​"Here is the interrogation between the leader and his brother, M'hamed bin Abd el-Krim. M'hamed says in his will to his brother when his face was turned to lead the war on the Western front: 'You must take charge of the defense of the coasts of Ghomara and Oued, and I will take charge of the defense of the Rif, no matter what it costs me.'"

​"The author continues in his description of the history of the restoration of the Spanish armies to all the occupied centers in the Rif, after they were vacated by the armies of occupation following the defeat of Annual, saying: 'The official Spanish circles considered General Berenguer responsible for the war in the north, and for the defeats of his army in Annual, on the Eastern front from the year 1921 starting from the back to the end of Nador, and the reality is that the one responsible for it is General Silvestre the arrogant...'"

• The Crisis of Spanish Leadership and Failed Negotiations

​"...the situation, its pride and its misery. After the defeat, General Berenguer tried to resign from his position as Resident General in Tétouan and General Command of Northern Morocco, but the Madrid government, who knew the real reasons for the defeats, did not accept it from him and assigned him to continue his mission on July 15, 1922, whenever it decided to replace him with a civilian person, deciding to appoint instead of him a civilian person, in order to benefit from his experience instead of the military men who have the military arrogance that brought aversion of the locals from dealing with them, then it chose Mr. Silabela. But he did not assume the General Residency until after the resignation of General Burguete, then it proved his failure to withdraw the occupied armies from the mountain peaks on the Western front, then it appointed instead of him General Sporo, who was able to ensure the truce and spent it with the leader Al-Raisuni after what had been guaranteed to him by his predecessor Burguete. As will come in the detail of that in its place. At this date, the situation of the Spanish army on the Western front was similar to the situation it was in shortly before the Annual defeat in 1921, which it gathered shortly after, and occupied all its centers one by one from Aroui to Tifarouine to the peak of Tizi Azza and Mida, and from it to the site of Qalb Beni Touzin on the 'Extended Alif' front, and from it to Sidi Masoud and Sidi Ahsain on the coast. The war there ranged between severity and leniency, that is, it was limited to local skirmishes only. When the civilian Resident came, he froze the battles on the Western front, which extended its line from Teksas including Tétouan and Chefchaouen to the north, passing through Arba Ayacha to the limits of the southern tribes. In these circumstances, he tried to make contact with the leader Abd el-Krim on the Eastern front, so he sent envoys of the General Residency, Mr. Idris Al-Rifi Al-Temsamani and Bensaid Al-Slaoui, to the center of Tifarouine to contact the Riffian leader to open negotiations with him there. The negotiations actually took place, and the civilian Resident took the leader Muhammad Acharat to the place of negotiations, after he had escaped from the Rif to Fez, then moved to Tétouan. The content of these negotiations which took place in Tifarouine with the leader, and especially the coast of the Rif, and specifically Al Hoceima, was sought by the leader Muhammad and his brother that the landing on the Rif coasts, and especially Al Hoceima, was difficult to execute, so they showed aversion to it. The Spanish idea had been tempting them for a long time; however, they found difficulty in implementing it due to the density of machine guns and artillery..."

•  Spanish Defensive Stagnation and the Steadfastness of the Rif Tribes.

​"...distributed along the coast. Therefore, the enemy will try to land on the coasts of Ghomara to whatever is lower than that in its history."

​"This is confirmed by what the Spanish historian Robert Furno said in his history 'Abd el-Krim and the Rif': 'That there were no skirmishes between the years 1922 and 1924, despite the presence of two hundred thousand Spanish soldiers in the north of Marrakesh, and at the end of the year 1922, Spain was in the Western front adopting a defensive position from its soldiers entrenched in the mountain peaks. If we followed what we wrote about the battles that took place in the East from the first day, the Spanish army resumed the advance on restoring its centers around the city of Melilla, to restore what it lost after the Annual defeat, it did not meet in its advance except from the cells of those thorns which he suffered when restoring the center of Azrouhar in the Qala tribe, and the mountain of Aroui, then stayed with them for a year. Then it resumed the advance forward, but it witnessed horror in Dar Driouch from the Nador region, and then in Beni Leith, then it continued in its advance through Mara, Bmizar, Alma, Tizi Azza, and Tifarouine to Sidi Masoud, and Sidi Ahsain on the coast."

​"As the chronicler of the leader Abd el-Krim also says in his description of the battles that were taking place on the Western front from the north: 'Specifically from Oued Lou, descending from the Chefchaouen mountains of the towering mountains with solid rocks; where the enemy chose to be the peak of Tlanbout, with its rough terrain, to overlook from it on the right side of Yemen, and the north, and the security road to Chefchaouen, and to protect the garrisons distributed along the coast of Teksas in the north, and the battles in it were mutual. The Spanish army did not take a step forward until after it left a history filled with tragedies, and all those battles took place between the years 1922-1924, and they were not offensive by the Spanish army in all those places, however, the steadfastness that he met from the men of the tribes made him bounce on the rocks of faith and stability; it is he who defeated and deterred him despite..."

• The Impact of Riffian Resistance on the Spanish Internal Front.
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​"...to two hundred thousand Moroccan soldiers, and that faith and steadfastness is what the Spanish people rebelled against their government, as some of their circles called for it as the Spanish people rebelled against their government in Madrid, as it reached half of Marrakesh to the military, and the rebellion spread until it crossed the civil range to Marrakesh, and killed its officers, so they went out against the Madrid government, and the rebellious riots spread across all the Spanish people, and the chaos almost overwhelmed the Iberian Peninsula, then it was exposed to total chaos, and the Spanish women were coming out in protests in the major cities, and some of them were going to the railway, and throwing themselves on it so that the train carrying their children would pass on their way to Marrakesh, and until this limit, the steadfastness of the men of the Western front in the face of the occupied Spanish armies, which were composed of sons of Spain, and alongside it the sons of South Morocco who were generous with France for Spain in the war of the Mujahideen on the Western front from the north. Thus, the war and industrial manufacturing collapsed in the face of the steadfastness of the men of the Jebala tribes led by the immortal hero Leader Moulay Ahmed Al-Raisuni, the leader of ideal defense, who was confused in his command between the French and Spanish colonialism. If not for those great battles fought by the mountain heroes and the consecutive victories in which they inflicted on the occupied enemy those heavy losses in men, money, and war equipment, which the Spanish army suffered in the north of Morocco, all of it east and west, until it preferred to destroy its youth and the destruction of its men, and the depletion of its wealth; if the costs of its war in Northern Morocco in 1923 reached twenty million sterling pounds. This amount is considered the largest amount spent in the attrition war in the north; if all the countries of Christian Europe participated in financing it, even America. If the colonial powers did not participate in Northern Morocco, and the death of his men in the battles against the enemy, it would not have tasted the sweetness of Spanish colonialism and its food and drink, and likewise if it were not for its cooperation with those who attacked some of the loyalists with assassination, destruction, and annihilation of what it was able to control over a sip of water in our Muslim lands."

• The Rise of Primo de Rivera and the Climax of the Colonial Crisis.

​"Al-Bouayachi says: 'And all what happened in Spain serves the interest of the dictator Primo de Rivera, and it is the appropriate time to ascend from the bottom to the summit of politics in Spain, and he was looking to save his nation through the way of authoritarian rule, and the general state of Spain was collapsing before those great ones that he collided with in the North, and that this level is not equal to his peers in those battles that were taking place in the North, east and west, which destroyed the Spanish youth and its great ones on the day its heroism collided with the rocks in the North; the matter which forced Spain to look for men to choose and consider in its choice of aristocratic and national sentiment, so it was guided to the man it was looking for in the shadows, and he is that dictator Primo de Rivera, who had previously given a speech in which he supported the idea of abandoning the war in the North with the withdrawal of all Spanish armies from Morocco, and returning it to Spain, so his reward from the military rulers obsessed with the colonial idea was to exclude him from Catalonia, and considered his statement a slur on the military honor, and a crime against the majesty. When that military majesty collided with the national rocks in the North, those considerations and military glories went with the wind in Spain, and resentment and sorrows replaced pleasure and joy, and hope replaced despair, and the call to abandon the war in the North became the hope of all the Spanish people. At that time, the dictator prepared himself and remained waiting for his time, so the armies of Berenguer on the Western mountain peaks became exposed to hunger, and the bullets of the heroic Mujahideen were not helping, and he did not want to help, and at that time, it became necessary to turn to their dictator as a leader to solve their difficult problem on the Western front in the North, especially in the mountains of Beni Arous and Oued Lou and Chefchaouen and others from those towering peaks, and in addition to hunger, cold, and bullets. The General Command had harnessed three Resident Generals, Burguete, then the civilian Mr. Sylia, and after him Sporo, and each of them failed in solving the soldiers' problem who became dying without help, and he could not feel the inability to submit his resignation, and that long period helped the Mujahideen and enabled them to take revenge on the enemy soldiers, and they slaughtered them upon their withdrawal with a terrible slaughter. In those circumstances, the dictator of Spain, Primo de Rivera, was appointed Resident in Tétouan on September 15, 1924, while he was...'"

Topics Covered in This Episode

Battle of Al Hoceima,Contemporary Moroccan History,General Sporo,Muhammad ibn Abd el-Krim el-Khattabi,Primo de Rivera,Rif History,Riffian Resistance,Spanish Colonialism,​Taher El Lhioui,Tifarouine,

See also the previous episodes linked below 

https://northern-morocco-archive.blogspot.com/2026/07/episode-66-spain-on-its-knees.html

https://northern-morocco-archive.blogspot.com/2026/07/episode-67-crucible-of-command-internal.html

The Raisuni Archives: Uncovering the History of the Northern Moroccan Resistance
Translated and Edited by Jaafar Lhioui

​🌐 Digital Archive: northern-morocco-archive.blogspot.com

Note: The images featured in this post are artistic representations created with the assistance of AI to help visualize the historical context; they are not intended to be interpreted as historical documents or archival photographs."

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بقلم: الباحث جعفر اللهيوي
المشرف على منصة "أرشيف شمال المغرب" للتوثيق والبحث التاريخي.