The Rif War was an armed conflict fought from 1921 to 1926 between Spain (joined by France in 1924) and Berber tribes of the mountainous Rif region of northern Morocco.
Led by Abd el-Krim, the Riffians attacked workers at 'Minas del Rif', an extremely rich, nearly pure magnetite iron mine, and at first inflicted several defeats on the Spanish forces by using guerrilla tactics with the help of captured European weapons. After an unprecedented large landing of Spanish troops at Al Hoceima, considered the first amphibious landing in history to involve the use of tanks and aircraft, as well as France joining the conflict, Abd el-Krim surrendered and was put into exile.
In July 1909, some Riffians attacked Spanish workers constructing a rail-bridge to provide access to iron mines near Melilla. This incident led to the summoning of reinforcements from Spain itself. A series of skirmishes over the following weeks cost the Spanish over a thousand casualties. By September, the Spanish Army had 40,000 troops in northern Morocco and had occupied the mountainous tribal regions to the south and southeast of Melilla. The military operations in Jebala, in the Moroccan west, began in 1911 with the Larache landing. Spain worked to pacify a large part of the most violent areas until 1914, a slow process of consolidation of frontiers that lasted until 1919. The following year, after the signing of the Treaty of Fez, the northern Moroccan area was adjudicated to Spain as a protectorate. The Riffian populations strongly resisted the Spanish, unleashing a conflict that would last for several years.
In 1921, in an attempt to consolidate control of the region, the Spanish troops suffered the catastrophic Disaster of Annual in addition to a rebellion led by Riffian leader Abd el-Krim. As a result, the Spanish retreated to a few fortified positions while Abd el-Krim ultimately created an entire independent state: the Republic of the Rif. The development of the conflict and its end coincided with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, who took on command of the campaign from 1924 to 1927. In addition, and after the Battle of Uarga in 1925, the French intervened in the conflict and established a joint collaboration with Spain that culminated in the Alhucemas landing, which proved a turning point. The Spanish also used chemical weapons during the conflict. By 1926, the area had been pacified; Abd-el-Krim surrendered to the French that year, and Spain gained effective control of the protectorate's territory at last.
The Rif War still causes much disagreement among historians. Some see in it a harbinger of the decolonization process in North Africa. Others consider it one of the last colonial wars, as it was the decision of the Spanish to conquer the Rif – nominally part of their Moroccan protectorate but de facto independent – that catalyzed the entry of France in 1924. The Rif War left a deep memory both in Spain and in Morocco. The Riffian insurgency of the 1920s can be interpreted as a precursor to the Algerian War which took place three decades later.
Spain, 13 kilometers across the Straits of Gibraltar from Africa, claimed influence over the Morocco region at the Berlin Conference (1884–1885). By the early 20th century, Morocco was divided into protectorates ruled by France and Spain. The Rif region had been assigned to Spain, but given that the sultans of Morocco had been unable to exert control over the region, Spanish sovereignty over the Rif was strictly de jure, existing only in the text of the General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa, to which the Riffians, who had de facto control of the land were not a party. For centuries, the Berber tribes of the Rif had fought off any attempt of outsiders to impose control on them. While the Rif mountains were visible to Europeans from ships in the Mediterranean Sea, Europeans had rarely, if ever, ventured into the area. Walter Burton Harris, the Morocco correspondent for The Times, who covered the war, wrote that as late as 1912 only "one or two Europeans had been able to visit the cedar forests that lie south of Fez. A few had travelled in the southern Atlas and pushed on into the Sus...and that was almost all". As Harris wrote, the Berbers "were often as inhospitable to the Arab as they were to the foreigner", and generally killed any outsiders who ventured into their territory.
Vincent Sheean, who covered the war for The New York Times, wrote that the Rif was a beautiful countryside of "[c]rimson mountains flung against a sky of hieratic blue, gorges magnificent and terrifying, peaceful green valleys between protecting precipices", a place that reminded him of his native Colorado. The Rif was also rich in high-grade iron ore, which could be easily extracted via open-pit mining. The promise of the Spanish state collecting revenues in the form of taxes and royalties from iron mining here was an incentive for it to bring the Rif under its control.
The Crown granted the concession to mine iron in the Rif to Horacio Echevarrieta. By 1920 he had brought out 800,000 tons of valuable high grade iron through relatively inexpensive open-pit mining. Though profitable, iron mining caused much environmental damage and required the displacement of the native people. As they received no share of the profits, the Rifians soon began to oppose the mining in their territory.
When Alfonso XIII ascended to the throne in 1886, Spain was considered a world power, with colonies in the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. But in the Spanish–American War, Spain lost Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines in 1898, and sold the Mariana and Caroline Islands to Germany the following year; reducing the once great Spanish Empire to only a few footholds on the Moroccan coast and Spanish Guinea. To compensate for the losses in the Americas and Asia, there emerged a powerful Africanist faction in Spain led by Alfonso, who wanted a new empire in Africa. Finally, many within the politically powerful Catholic Church, preached the need for a new crusade to continue the Reconquista by conquering Morocco, adding their voices to the Africanist choir. For all these reasons, Spain began pushing into the Rif in 1909.
The Berber tribesmen had a long tradition of fierce fighting skills, combined with high standards of fieldcraft and marksmanship. They were capably led by Abd el-Krim, who showed both military and political expertise. However, the Rifian regular army was never a very large force. The elite of the Rifian forces formed regular units which according to Abd el-Krim, quoted by the Spanish general Manuel Goded, numbered 6,000 to 7,000. Other sources put it much lower, at around 2,000 to 3,000.
The remaining Rifians were tribal militia selected by their Caids; they were not liable to serve away from their homes and farms for more than 15 consecutive days. General Goded estimated that at their peak, in June 1924, the Rifian forces numbered about 80,000 men, although Abd el-Krim was never able to arm more than 20,000 men at a time. However, this force was largely adequate in the early stages of the war. In the final days of the war, Rifian forces numbered about 12,000 men. In addition, Rifian forces were not well armed, with weapons badly maintained and in poor condition.
A small number of the Riffian troops were Algerian deserters from the French Legion, some of them probably inspired by Emir Abdelkader's revolt against France.
Initially, the Spanish forces in Morocco were largely composed of conscripts and reservists from Spain itself. These "Peninsular" troops were poorly supplied and prepared, few had marksmanship skills and proper battle training, and widespread corruption was reported amongst the officer corps, reducing supplies and morale. Of the Spanish troops in Morocco in 1921, well over half were completely illiterate conscripts from the poorest elements of Spanish society who had been sent to Morocco with minimal training. Despite assurances from General Manuel Fernández Silvestre that his equipment was sufficient to defeat the Rifians, in fact about three-quarters of the rifles at the Melilla arsenal were in shoddy condition due to poor maintenance, and a report from late 1920, which Spanish commanders never bothered to read, warned that many of the rifles held there were either unusable or more of a danger to the soldier firing them than to the enemy.