It has been told many times. During the two weeks that the Annual disaster lasted, in 1921, it is estimated that between 10,000 and 13,000 soldiers of the Spanish Army died. Some British researcher, such as Geoffrey Regan, raised the figure to 20,000. In any case, it was an unprecedented massacre from which surprising testimonies have been recovered, such as those collected in the book ‘Dying in Africa: The epic of the Spanish soldiers in the Annual disaster’ (Crítica, 2014), by Luis Miguel Francisco .
A telegram from the Rif, received on June 7 of that year, commented: «The capital Huelva was one of the first to be hit by a rebel bullet. Serene and spirited, despite being wounded, he remained on the parapet, from which he only left a few times to supply his men with ammunition, until another bullet killed him. Almost at the same time, four enemy projectiles hit the commander of the position, Captain Salafranca, who did not stop encouraging his forces despite his very serious condition.
Many of the corpses of their companions were viciously dismembered by the indigenous hordes of Abd El-Krim and forgotten on the ground forever. The situation that prevailed after General Silvestre’s troops were dismasted was so critical and desperate that some Spanish soldiers killed each other to obtain transport in which to flee. Most fell anyway.
There is a lot of information about that tragedy. The writer Ramón J. Sender later remembered the indigenous women who followed the Moorish rearguard torturing and finishing off the wounded Spaniards. Many had their teeth pulled out while they were alive to get the gold for fillings and fillings. Others were even cut open with a rubber band. Barbarism was its hallmark.
The leader
Another Spanish survivor managed to escape after faking his death, although after having his finger cut off. “The Moors mercilessly cut the throats of our soldiers with savage ferocity,” he commented on the troops of an Abd el-Krim who not only tried to win the war, but also crush, humiliate and terrorize our Army to record the hatred he felt towards Spain. This leader of the resistance against the Spanish and French administrations during the Rif War has gone down in history as the main person responsible for that massacre.
Every day, the newspapers in Spain published his actions in those years and, of course, during the days in which the aforementioned massacre took place between July 21 and August 9, 1921. The publicity he received was such that it is It is practically impossible to find news in which his brother Mhamed Abd el-Krim appears, considered by many to be the real mastermind of the Annual disaster.
One of the most surprising and, in some ways, contradictory details is that he planned it only two years after returning from Spain, where he had spent nine years studying and perfectly integrated into society. This journey began when, on December 28, 1910, he sent a letter to the director of the Malaga Teaching School, “begging” him to be admitted after the relevant exam. He was only 15 years old, but the position was granted to him and he immediately moved to the Andalusian city to live one of the happiest stages of his life, as he himself explained.
Classmates and teachers
So much so that, when he finished his studies with excellent grades, he decided to study Mining Engineering, this time in Madrid, until 1919, just two years before he decided to massacre those who at that time were his neighbors, fellow citizens, colleagues and teachers. It was then that he became a prominent soldier in El Rif and organized, together with his older brother, the resistance against the Spanish and French colonial troops, upon whom he inflicted important defeats in the north of Morocco, in the first months after returning. home.
The fact that the names of both brothers were very similar – Mhamed and Muhammad – caused deep confusion about their identity for years. On many occasions it was even believed that they were the same person, but that was not the case. The first was the great military strategist of the Riffian forces, while the second went down in history as the absolute leader of the emancipation movement. Both of them, however, spoke Spanish well, since their father had made a great effort to ensure that they received the best education.
When the Abd el Krim’s definitive break with Spain arrived and the attack on the positions of Abarrán, Igueriben and Annual, Mhamed already knew perfectly well the Spanish defensive system and all its weaknesses. It was from that moment on that he was mentioned in different ABC articles as “the brother of…” and, generally, in small notes. In 1921, two photographers from this newspaper managed to publish a portrait of him taken in Axdir, along with that of Colonel Silverio Araujo, who at that time was his prisoner. “Brother of the president of the Rif Republic, Minister of War and head of the forces fighting for independence,” can be read in the caption.
That same year, this newspaper reports that Mhamed is “a prisoner of the Kabyles of Gomara, who are still believed to be inclined to hand him over to the Spanish authorities.” In 1923, however, he was placed in France. In 1925, at the head of the Riffian Army in different parts of Morocco. However, he was not definitively defeated until May 1926, when he and his entire family surrendered to the French and lived on the island of Réunion for two decades. From there they moved to Port Said and, later, to Cairo, welcomed by the Egyptian Government. The famous Abd el-Krim died in 1963. Mhamed, for his part, returned a year later to Rabat, in independent Morocco. There he died from a heart attack, just when he was planning to return to the Rif.
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