Moroccan activists seek damages over "Spanish chemical war" (Feature)

By Sinikka Tarvainen and Mohsin el-Hassouni Jun 23, 2009, 2:08 GMT

Rabat/Madrid - 'They threw something like sulphur. People went blind. Their skin turned black and fell off. Cattle became swollen and died. Plants suddenly dried up,' Mohammed Faragi recalled in 2002.

Faragi was only a boy when the then colonial power Spain used chemical weapons to quash a rebellion in Morocco's northern mountainous Rif region in the 1920s.

But when Faragi was interviewed by the Spanish daily El Pais, the then 91-year-old man retained a vivid memory of what had happened.

'For weeks we could not drink from streams,' he said. 'I was told the water was poisoned.'

Neither Spain nor Morocco wants to discuss those events, but Moroccan activists like Rachid Raha do not intend to let the memory die.

'We are going to lodge a complaint at Spain's National Court in the autumn' against those responsible for 'a crime against humanity,' Raha told the German Press Agency dpa in a telephone interview.

The National Court is known for pursuing human rights violations in other countries, ranging from Latin America to China.

Raha is president of the World Amazigh Congress, which represents the Imazighen, also known as Berbers.

Imazighen were the original inhabitants of North Africa before the Arab conquest in the 7th century, and large numbers of them live in the Rif.

Groups like Raha's are no longer alone in trying to open a discussion about the use of chemical weapons in the 1920-26 Rif war.

They now have the support of one of the main parties in Morocco's coalition government, and of several left-wing or regionalist parties in Spain.

Imazighen have a history of opposing outside rule, and in the 1920s, Amazigh rebel leader Mohammed Abd el-Krim staged an uprising against both colonial Spanish and Moroccan rule.

Abd el-Krim proclaimed independence in 1921 and sought international recognition for a Rif republic.

The rebel movement inflicted heavy defeats on Spanish troops, prompting Spain to join forces with France, which controlled another part of Morocco.

Madrid used mustard gas and other German-designed chemical weapons, though these had been prohibited by the 1919 Versailles Treaty. The attacks often targeted civilians.

Spain has not officially acknowledged that it resorted to chemical warfare in the Rif, but such practices have been documented by historians in Spain, Morocco, Germany and Britain.

'It is not known how many among the thousands of war victims were killed by chemical weapons,' Raha says.

However, eight decades after the Rif republic was crushed in 1926 and Abd el-Krim went into exile, the Rif population has higher rates of cancer than the rest of Morocco, activists like Raha claim.

The Moroccan government and some medical experts have denied such allegations.

Morocco has not requested damages for the chemical warfare from Spain, an attitude Raha attributes to fears of diplomatic problems, and to what he sees as persisting discrimination against Imazighen in the north African kingdom.

Not only did Morocco participate in fighting Abd el-Krim, but it also quelled another Rif uprising after independence, using napalm against the rebels in the late 1950s.

King Mohammed VI has taken measures to promote the Berber language and culture, but the Rif remains poor and partly dependent on illegal cannabis cultivation, following decades of official neglect.

In the run-up to Morocco's recent local elections, however, the case of the 'Spanish chemical war' was taken up by the National Rally of Independents (RNI), one of the main parties in Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi's coalition government.

The party has documents proving 'the horrors committed in the Rif,' RNI president Moustapha Mansouri said, calling for a joint Spanish-Moroccan investigation on the consequences of the use of chemical weapons in the Rif.

In Spain, the leftist Catalan party ERC has tried to raise the subject in parliament since 2005, but proposals to debate it have been opposed by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists and the opposition conservatives, ERC representative Joan Tarda told dpa.

Spain does not need to apologize for events that had occurred so long ago, opponents have argued, also stressing Morocco's reluctance to discuss the issue.

Tarda, however, compares the Rif chemical warfare with the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by Nazi German planes during Spain's 1936-39 civil war. That attack became symbolic of the horrors of war after Pablo Picasso immortalized it in his painting.

There is a 'model of impunity' in Spain in relation to past human rights violations, Tarda says, associating the Rif question with what he sees as the reluctance of the main parties to discuss the abuses of 1939-75 dictator Francisco Franco.