Word: morocco
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...sands of North Africa, burning Moslem nationalism collided head-on with determined French colonialism. The tribesmen of Morocco slew hundreds and were slain by the hundreds in return; neither side troubled unduly to spare the innocent. The occasion for the bloodshed was local in nature but worldwide in its implications: Who should be Sultan of Morocco-a French puppet or the man the Moroccans themselves wanted as their Imam (Commander of the Faithful)? Deeper than this ran stronger currents: France's pride of empire, the Moroccans' longing for independence. In this confused situation, the nation that brought modern...
Shocked by the massacres that his government's indecision had done so much to provoke, Premier Edgar Faure strove to repair the damage that his predecessors had made inevitable. Faure's delicate problem: to find a middle way between Morocco's urgent nationalists and the angry French colons, whose remedy is simple repression. Moderate men on both sides had been ready to compromise, but violence drowned their voices and left the field to extremists. Faure's way out was characteristic of the balancing French politician: to adopt the moderate recommendations of courageous Resident General Gilbert Grandval...
...Moroccan Moslems. On Aug. 20, 1953, the French bundled Ben Youssef aboard a DC-3 and exiled him, ostensibly to "save" him from his own people, actually because he supported their demand for more political freedom. So flimsy a pretext was an insult to North Africa's faithful. Morocco's urgent nationalists flatly refused to accept the weak and wizened old man whom Paris foisted on them in Ben Youssef's place. Ben Youssef, never very popular as Sultan, became in exile a martyr...
Imperative Duty. The French were dismayed and alarmed. Since last month's riots in Casablanca (TIME, July 25), 60,000 of their troops have been standing guard in Morocco, but more, apparently, were needed. From its limited reserves in Europe, the French army flew a battalion of marines and a company of security police to beef up the Moroccan garrison. It even took space on commercial airliners to fetch hundreds of Senegalese NCOs from their units in Indo-China...
Burning Alive. All that night there was sporadic firing in Casablanca's slums. Next morning there was open revolt. A general strike paralyzed Morocco's principal cities; patriots broke out red Moroccan flags atop mosques and minarets. Out of Casablanca's teeming slums poured shrieking women and boys, some not ten years old. They waved pictures of Mohammed ben Youssef and shouted for his return. Hours before, similar gangs had caught an Arab who was suspected of collaborating with the French. They stripped and doused him with gasoline, then burned him alive. The French brought...