Republic of the Rif

The Republic of the Rif was the confederate republic of the Rif mountains in Morocco that existed between 1921 and 1926. It was created in September 1921 when a coalition of Riffians and Jebala under Abd el-Krim rose in the Rif War against the Spanish protectorate, which France and Spain had carved out of Morocco by their treaty of 1912. The Spaniards had known unrest since the 1890s, but in the summer of 1921 their colonial troops were massacred at the Battle of Annual, and Abd el-Krim founded an independent republic with its capital at Ajdir and a modern government to replace the old tribal structures. A long war of independence followed, in which Spain used chemical weapons imported from Germany from 1923, the first wide use since the Great War. France joined Spain in the late stages, and in 1925 the two powers raised a joint force of half a million men with tanks and aircraft. Technology and numbers told against the Riffians, and after the joint victory the Republic was dissolved in 1926.