Our Friends Beneath the Sands

by Martin Windrow

  HAVING NEUTRALIZED FIGUIG, Jonnart now sent a column to follow the tribes to their second centre at Béchar (see Map 11). On 22 June, Colonel d’Eu of the 2nd RTA left Ben Zireg with 1,100 men; as well as 18th (Mounted) Company/1st RE the force included significant numbers of Algerian tribal irregulars and ‘turned’ Dawi Mani. The colonel’s mission was to read the riot act and demand hostages for future good behaviour from Dawi Mani and Ouled Jarir camped around Ouakda and Béchar, and it is significant that a respected holy man, Si Brahim, had been invited up from the zaouia at Kenadsa oasis to act as mediator. On 25 June the column camped near Béchar; Colonel d’Eu brusquely repossessed any obviously rustled stock, the required hostages and guarantees were provided, and he departed on the 27th. While the involvement of Si Brahim by advance arrangement argues that the colonel had been intent on reaching an agreement, the next column to set out was clearly looking for trouble.

  At Béchar, Colonel d’Eu had rendezvoused with Captain Roger de Susbielle, the energetic chief of Native Affairs for the whole Zousfana, who had ridden up from his base at Taghit with 400 of his local irregulars, including Dawi Mani. On 26 June, Susbielle escorted the marabout Si Brahim back to Kenadsa; then his horsemen and camel-riders were joined, from El Morra in the Zousfana valley, by Lieutenants Riverain and Famie with 2nd Half-Company, 22nd (Mounted)/2nd RE. They rode north, and during 28 – 30 June ksars in the edge of the hills barring the way to the great Tamlelt steppe were severely ‘visited’. Most of the men of fighting age were absent, but Bou Kais was defended by a small gang of allegedly notorious Ouled Jarir raiders. Susbielle sent the légionnaires into the alleyways with the bayonet – his own renegades were no use for such work – and burned down the houses from which the tribesmen were firing. Susbielle would later be criticized for this raid, described even by Jonnart – an admirer – as imprudently provocative.17

  THE FACT THAT SOME DAWI MANI Arabs were now riding with French units underlines the dilemma faced by the different segments of that people in particular, though shared by other tribes. Their widespread economic activity was anchored to date-palm oases in the Tafilalt on the Oued Ziz in the west and on the Zousfana and Saoura in the east, and for all the clans the central pivot of the annual cycle was the Abadla plain on the lower Oued Guir (see Map 11). The ‘Tafilalt end’ of the Dawi Mani were loud in their defiance of the French, but the ‘Zousfana and Saoura end’ already had garrisons planted among them. The vital Abadla grainfields were clearly at risk, since the obvious next step in any French advance would be westwards to the Guir. Since 1901, the usual calculations of relative advantage – when to fight and when to negotiate – had persuaded eastern Dawi Mani on the Saoura and Zousfana to reach accommodations with the French; their vital interests were their need for access to the date-palms of the Beni Goumi oases around Taghit, and for freedom to pasture their flocks along the Zousfana without interference. Meanwhile, those western groups whose focus was the Tafilalt and the trans-Atlas trade came under constant pressure to resist the French from the blindly warlike Ait Khabbash Berbers, whose wide-ranging bands threatened reprisals against the palm-groves and caravans of the unenthusiastic. Many tents from three of the five ‘fifths’ of the Dawi Mani were now concentrated north of the Hammada du Guir between the Zousfana and the Tafilalt, forming an uncomfortable buffer between the French in the east and the noisy advocates of holy war in the west.

  It was not as if submitting to the French involved any intolerable subjection; the Dawi Mani were not the Lakota or Cheyenne – nobody wanted to drive them from their ancestral ranges on to some starving reservation. Those who resisted the French faced eventual defeat followed by heavy fines, but after submission they passed under only the lightest of yokes. Native Affairs officers installed in local oases expected to be kept informed about the movements of unsubmitted groups, but made few other demands. Tribal caids were accorded their proper dignity and their authority was unchallenged. All religious observances were scrupulously respected – indeed, the French made skilful diplomatic use of murabtin such as the holy men of Kenadsa, who were the traditional mediators among the tribes. The French Army offered protection – or at least, reprisals – against intertribal raiders, who did not cease to trouble the caids just because the French had arrived on the scene.

  Among submitted tribes local feuding had to be kept within bounds, but the district officers were not naive enough to imagine they could stamp it out entirely. Their small troops of moghaznis exercised superficial police functions, but only slave-traders, outlaw killers and ‘professional’ raiders had much to fear from them. Young bucks who hungered for action could always themselves enlist as moghaznis or (in the Far South) in the new Saharan Companies, updating their weaponry in the process and still enjoying some focused looting.18 The important rhythms of life – herding, farming, bartering in the oases, and the occasional absolutely irresistible killing – went on undisturbed; the French did not interfere with the seasonal movements of flocks, even all the way to the Tafilalt if needs be (since these were a conduit for useful intelligence). Finally, there was the attraction of the new trading opportunities across the Algerian border; these were already lucrative enough to present competition to the Tafilalt – Fes axis, to the fury of the caravan-masters and protection-gangs of the western Dawi Mani and Ait Khabbash respectively. There were strong pragmatic arguments for accepting the client relationship offered by this powerful new migrating tribe; but while pragmatism might have the last word, in a warrior culture it could not have the first. For those not yet in immediate contact with the French, both religion and honour demanded war.

  MAKING SENSE OF THE FIGHTING on the Algerian/Moroccan border required French politicians, for their part, to grasp the distinction between the small raiding party or djich, whose activities were the constant background music of frontier life, and the large war party or harka, whose more complex orchestration demanded skills and ambitions only rarely encountered. The Algerian and French colonialist press always tended to misinterpret the ambient folk music of the djich as the prelude to a full-blown symphonic harka.

  As typified by Captain Normand’s action west of Ksar el Azoudj on 29 March 1903, the workaday thefts and murders by parties of anything between a dozen and several score tribesmen were difficult to counter. The marauders employed the ancient skills of the hunt: knowledge of terrain, speed of movement, observation to judge the balance of threat and opportunity; the choice of approach, the stealthy creep forward, the timing of the decisive rush, a quick withdrawal. These were the short-term tactics of hot blood but relative weakness – of small, mobile groups operating at a distance from any base that had to be protected. They travelled light, each man carrying what little he needed for a few days, and even if successful they had to retreat to their home range rapidly before pursuit and retaliation could be mounted. The booty that justified the risk of raiding should ideally be easily portable – firearms, and horses that could run with the raiders; but the most lucrative prizes were flocks or camels, and since these were a dangerously slow encumbrance, rustling demanded careful reconnaissance and planning. If employed as Colonel de Négrier had intended, the compagnie montée had many of the same advantages as the Arab djich but with greatly superior firepower.

  The motivation of the djich was economic and recreational; the harka was political, and ostensibly religious, since only a charismatic marabout had the prestige to persuade the leaders of mutually suspicious clans to assemble a single force. A small army several thousands strong, the harka was encumbered by tents, families and flocks, since these could not be left unguarded against rival tribes when the fighting men went to war. These moved much more slowly than simple raiders, and gave the warriors a vulnerable ‘rear base’ to protect. With a collective leadership, the harka was also infinitely harder to control than a raiding party. Tribal peoples would not stay in the field for long, and large numbers could not be held together beyond the achievement (or frustration) of immediate and limited goals. In the
face of either success or failure a large force soon dispersed into separate groups obedient only to their immediate leaders – either drifting off with the loot of victory, or cutting their losses and running from defeat. The individual tent-groups were often weak in numbers, so no contingent could afford the heavy casualties of sustained fighting. The harka represented a hot-blooded but shortlived spasm, releasing pressure that had built up over time.

  A major French mixed-arms column had to employ the cold-blooded tactics of relative strength in pursuit of long-term goals. With a necessarily strong infantry element, it could not cover distances fast; it had to be provided with food and water collectively, and its supply train was a further drag on its mobility – in that, it resembled the Arab harka. Its ponderous slowness robbed it of initiative, but if it was attacked, its concentrated rifle and artillery firepower made it more or less invulnerable. (Though if badly led and foolishly deployed, with its units separated in difficult terrain, they were still vulnerable to piecemeal ambush – witness Captain Pein’s defeat at Charouine on 3 March 1901 – see p.284.) If the French column’s objective was a walled village, this was indefensible against bombardment followed by infantry assault, and usually surrendered after the first few shells had been fired. With local resources then added to its supply train, the column could often occupy its objectives for weeks, sending out its own raiding parties until the leaders of nearby tribes were forced to come in and submit. Even if no fixed base was assaulted, the column’s screen of cavalry could snatch up the flocks and herds from around the nomad camps, and its unhurried rhythm of march allowed it to drive them home. Since they were the principal economic resource of the tribes, their loss was as damaging as the sacking of a town would have been in Europe.

  NEWS OF THE FRENCH COLUMNS to Figuig and Béchar and of Captain de Susbielle’s razzia in June 1903 caused heightened alarm in the Tafilalt. As the French had long feared, angry tribesmen finally coalesced around a temporary war-leader to mount a harka; the required religious bridge over tribal differences was provided by Moulay Mustafa el Hanafi, head of a sharifian family from the Tizimi district of the Tafilalt, and by his warrior son Ba Sidi.

  The clearing-house for all intelligence information on the southern frontier was Captain de Susbielle’s base at Taghit, and from early July his agents began reporting a major convergence of warriors – not in the Tafilalt, but around the more central oasis of Boudenib on the upper Guir (see Map 11). Then, about a week into August, the daily flow of information into Taghit suddenly stopped; for four days no riders came in from the Guir, Kenadsa or Béchar, and Susbielle wondered if the harka had already moved far enough south to occupy the last two. He needed up-to-date information if his reports were to prompt timely troop movements, and on 14 August he sent some of his moghaznis riding north to join a Legion reconnaissance from El Morra across the hills towards Béchar, by Lieutenant Pointurier, with half of 22nd (Mounted) Company/2nd RE.19

  The mule platoons made a difficult night march over the rocky hills, and although daybreak on the 15th allowed Pointurier to study Béchar oasis with his binoculars, he could not make out much inside the great palmerie of 90,000 trees. The Ouled Jarir ruled this place, but centuries of tribal warfare had left all but one of the villages ruined, and the hundred or so inhabited houses were enclosed inside a kasbah. Pointurier led his légionnaires quietly down to the concealing edge of the palm-groves and sent out his native scouts. At 8am one slipped back from the village with the news that a harka had left two days previously, and was heading south for Taghit itself. Ba Sidi el Hanifi was leading Ait Khabbash, Ouled Jarir, Dawi Mani, Shaamba and smaller contingents totalling about 4,500 well-armed warriors, with at least 3,000 of their families; he had taken with him the leading villagers from Béchar to prevent them warning the French, and had left guards. The harka had plentiful food and ammunition, but more warriors on foot than horse-and camel-riders.20

  Pointurier had to make some fast calculations. He sent a courier to Taghit to warn Susbielle, and allowed the moghaznis to follow (their families were there); then, worried for the sergeant and 20 men he had left to guard his own base camp at El Morra, he led his légionnaires back there in a forced march over the djebel, arriving early on 16 August. Lamps were flashing and telegraph wires humming up and down the Zousfana valley, and on the 17th Pointurier received orders to take his half-company down to reinforce Susbielle’s garrison at Taghit. The harka would probably arrive there that same day, but Pointurier hoped to reach the fort by dawn on the 18th.21

  THE OASIS OF TAGHIT was in effect an inhabited pass, dominated by heights on both sides: the first 300-foot dunes of the Sand-Sea towered on the east, and a broken cliff of black rock rose 350 feet on the west. The old fortified village straggled up from the sand on to the ledges and terraces of this western cliff, overlooking the flowing Zousfana in its long corridor of palm-groves and vegetable gardens.

  The engineers escorted here by Major Brundsaux three years previously had had to forsake the usual rectangular plan, building the fort in an angular teardrop shape close above the village, along a sloping shelf about 150 feet up the escarpment. A steep track led from the fort up to the lip of the summit, where a rudimentary drystone redoubt sheltered the signallers’ lamp and telescope. Another track, down towards a spring on the valley floor, had been walled and roofed over to make a sort of raised 150-yard tunnel for water parties. The garrison in August 1903 was the usual mix of turcos and joyeux – Captain Guibert’s 7th Company from II/2nd RTA, and half of Captain Mariande’s 3rd Company, 1st Bat d’Af, totalling perhaps 300 soldiers – plus about 60 of Susbielle’s moghaznis led by Lieutenant de Ganay. The fort also mounted two 80mm mountain guns.22

  Warned by Pointurier’s rider during the night of 15/16 August, Susbielle made what preparations he could. His main achievement since his arrival the previous year had been establishing peaceful relations with Dawi Mani and other clans around this whole Beni Goumi group of oases. The route of the harka through the southern passes of the Djebel Béchar would bring them hooking up to approach Taghit from the south, and directly in their path lay the ksars of Bakhti and Barrebi. On the 16th, Susbielle sent out several mounted patrols, both to watch for the harka and to warn anyone they could reach to concentrate in the two most defensible villages – Taghit itself, and Barrebi, just over 2 miles to its south (see Map 12).

  At dawn on 17 August the harka was sighted about 4 miles to the south. The straggling army reached the Zousfana, pillaged evacuated villages and burned Bakhti, then turned north for Barrebi. Stoutly defended by Dawi Mani and the villagers themselves, the ksar beat off two Ait Khabbash attacks during the morning of the 17th. When his scouts reported this at about noon, Susbielle sent his deputy Ganay out with a fighting patrol of moghaznis to lure the enemy closer, backed by the rifles of Warrant Officer Gabaig with a platoon of Algerian Skirmishers; though outnumbered by more than ten to one, Susbielle had no intention of letting the warriors dictate the pace of events. A brisk engagement took place in the palm-groves some 1,500 yards south of Taghit; this drew groups of tribesmen together, providing a target for shrapnel shells from the fort. The patrol and platoon then fell back in good order, the cost being only one dead and four wounded, although one of the latter was Gabaig (who died two days later). That evening the harka settled down in sprawling camps between Bakhti and Barrebi; there was another failed attack on the latter village during the night, but Taghit was undisturbed.

  Early on the morning of 18 August, Lieutenant Pointurier and his 90-odd légionnaires of 22nd (Mounted) Company arrived from the north and entered the fort, bringing the garrison up to about 450 rifles. At mid-morning, Susbielle repeated his probing attack to distract the enemy from Barrebi; this time Captain Mariande led out his half-company of pimps and pick-pockets, and another fight developed among the gardens and irrigation ditches crowded in the shadow of the palms. As more tribesmen were attracted by the firing the gunners sent air-burst shells 500 yards ahead of Mariande’s joyeu
x. When the odds got too doubtful, the French fell back by fire and movement, and as they approached the fort Ganay led his moghaznis out again to cover their arrival, accompanied this time by some villagers and Dawi Mani – an encouraging sign. When the leading tribesmen reached Taghit, villagers manning the walls of the ksar exchanged shots with them for about an hour before the attackers retreated under shellfire. That day’s fighting cost the French three killed and two wounded.

  Susbielle had been told that Ba Sidi and other chiefs were encamped just over a mile to the south-east on the edge of the sand dunes, and on the night of 18/19 August he sent out a raid to try to slip between the scattered groups of tents in that direction. At 3.30am on the 19th, Captain Guibert set out with 100 of his Skirmishers and 40 moghaznis, backed by a platoon of the 22nd (Mounted) to cover their eventual withdrawal. Pointurier’s légionnaires had been grumbling at being held back the previous day, but Susbielle had wanted them intact as his reserve in case his sortie came to grief. The intelligence about Ba Sidi’s whereabouts proved to be mistaken, but at first light the Skirmishers confronted groups of enemy on foot and horseback who were drifting towards the fort. The soldiers opened fire at 600 yards, and continued to inflict casualties until the advancing tribesmen’s growing numbers prompted Guibert to begin the usual orderly withdrawal by echelons, covered by the mountain guns and, for the last few hundred yards, by the rifles of the Legion platoon.