The Moral Aspects Of Chemical Warfare In The Rif War (1921-1926): European Colonial Powers And The Ethical Dimension Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction – Analysis

Introduction

The Rif War (1921–26) was a pivotal, little noticed moment in the making of modern warfare and colonial violence. The war fought by Spain and France against the Berber uprising of Mohamed Ben Abdelkrim el-Khattabi in northern Morocco's Rif region saw the first use of chemical (Messari, 2014) weapons by European colonial powers post-World War I. In the following essay we address some of the profound moral aspects of this history, exploring the ethical lapses on behalf of Spain, France, and Germany in employing or exporting chemical weapons against civilian populations.

Based on original sources as well as modern scholarship, the dehumanization of indigenous peoples which made such atrocities possible, and illustrates the legal ambiguities that colonial interest in things like ivory called upon to explain itself. The latter part of this century has seen over a dozen contemporary humanitarian crises unfold resulting from these long-term effects of colonial policies; it also reflects their successors' struggle for historical validation and transitional justice, something understood very differently by indigenous peoples than by former European colonial powers. The article demonstrates how the Rif War displays the confluence of colonial racism, technological warfare, and moral vacuity that defined European imperialism in the twentieth century.

The mountainous Rif region in northern Morocco was the site of one of the most morally repugnant events in contemporary colonial history, when it became a theater between 1921 and 1926. For example, the Rif war, a war involving Spanish and French colonial powers against Berber independence under Mohammed Ben Abdelkrim el-Khattabi, was characterized by the widespread use of chemical weapons (Messari, 2014) on both military AND civilian targets (Balfour, 2002; Kunz & Müller, 1990). Forgotten in European memory, this war was a pivotal moment in mid-20th century military evolution and set ominous patterns for warfare using mass weaponry against subject peoples.

The ethical import of the Rif War transcends its own immediate temporal conditions. Spain, France and Germany, the latter in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles which forbade them from producing such weapons (Balfour, 2002:132), supplied άchemical weapons to what Sebastian Balfour has described as a "secret history of chemical warfare’’ against the Moroccan population. 1a – The Spanish army started using chlorine gas, diphosgene, chloropicrin and mustard gas indiscriminately on civilian populations, markets and water supply sources in 1921. Large-scale operations began in 1924 (Madariaga & Lázaro Ávila, 2003). The French, who initially were reluctant, also used gas from 1925, in particular the trapped chemist compounds such as chloropicrine shells and shell-filling since 1918 (Courcelle-Labrousse & Marmié, 2008).

This essay analyzes the ethics of chemical warfare in the Rif War within a variety of analytical contexts, including both tenets of colonial dehumanization and manipulation meant to make space for such crimes; grays present in international law; immediate and long-term humanitarian implications; as well as modern considerations regarding transitional justice and historical reckoning. In parsing this "forgotten war" we engage with key questions concerning the ethics of colonial violence, the culpability of states for historical crimes and the ongoing legacy of chemical warfare in communities on which it was inflicted.

The Republic of the Rif and Abd el-Krim's Independence Crusade

In order to appreciate the moral significance of the use of chemical weapons (Messari, 2014) during the Rif War, it is necessary first to understand both (a) what legitimate aspirations lay behind the Berber independence movement and (b) what remarkable state-building success Adb el-Krim had achieved. Mohamed Ben Abdelkrim el-Khattabi (1882-1963) became one of the most successful anti-colonial leaders of the twentieth century, unifying fractious Riffian tribes in opposition to Spanish and French imperialism (Pennell 1986; Woolman 1968). The military skills of Raisuli first became evident in the Battle of Annual (Chtatou, 2024, July 21, July 23), which took place on July 22, 1921 when Rif fighters handed a major defeat to Spanish soldiers under General Manuel Fernández Silvestre killing between 8,000 and 10,000 Spanish troops and capturing massive amounts of modern weaponry (Madariaga, 2009).

After this success, Abd el-Krim declared the independence of the Republic of the Rif on 18 September 1921; one of the first modern and indigenous peoples' republics in the colonized world. This confederate republic also had the kind of modern state that included cabinet, government departments and a commitment to education and infrastructure (Pennell, 1986). Abd el-Krim's experiment in state-building garnered attention from across the world, and became an inspiration to anti-colonial movements elsewhere in Africa, Asia and Latin America. His guerillas' tactics would eventually inspire revolutionary leaders such as Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong and Che Guevara (Sasse, 2006).

The Riffian Republic was more than a question of military threat to European colonial powers; it was a vision for the future that put in doubt the very existence of the colonial order across North Africa. Abd el-Krim also demanded not only autonomy in a colonial context but full independence and the withdrawal of the French-Spanish protectorate (Madariaga 2009). This existential threat to colonial rule helps to account for the extreme crackdowns the colonial powers would apply in their attempt to crush the Riffian movement.

Dehumanization as Moral Justification: Colonial Racism and Chemical Warfare

There was a justification for the use of chemical weapons (Messari, 2014) against the Riffian population, based on a dehumanization campaign of Moroccan Berber people that spanned Spanish and French colonial discourse. An example from the primary sources suggest Davey also Indigenised indigenous populations using a syllogism of subhumanity which generated its own moral equation allowing European colonial powers to use weapons they acknowledged were unconscionable even in Europe. A secret letter from a Spanish general to King Alfonso XIII described the Riffian people as "entirely unrepentant and uncivilised [sic]... They consider it blasphemy to make use of any aids to survival, such they decrepitate," referring them as "a hundred thousand savages" who "despises all the benefits of civilization. They are impervious to kindness and only fear retribution" (quoted in Balfour 2002, p. 99). The king of Spain himself had supposedly called Riffians "wicked animals" (Balfour, 2002).

High Commissioner Dámaso Berenguer in his telegram to the Spanish Minister of War on August 12, 1921 shows more succinctly the moral depravity upon which chemical weapons are founded : “I have been obstinately resistant to the use of suffocating gases against these indigenous peoples but after what they have done, and of their treacherous and deceptive conduct, I have to use them with true joy"  (quoted in Balfour 2002:87). This extraordinary sentiment demonstrates the utter moral bankruptcy that colonial racism allowed. The use of the phrase” true joy ” is especially chilling — not simply a measure of strategic calculation, but what seems like sadistic pleasure in causing millions to suffer.

The dehumanization expressed in these statements reflects more general relations of colonial discourse that fixated the colonized as those who are ontologically less than beings/excluded from the moral community of the worthy ethical capabilities. As has been documented by María Rosa de Madariaga, Spanish colonial propaganda slotted Riffians into a picture of the primitive, treacherous and congenitally unable to rule themselves (Madariaga, 2005). Behind this racist ideology was more than one motive: it justified colonial rule as the “civilizing mission,” and sustained violent repression of resistance – but, crucially, such dehumanizing views also created a psychological distance that allowed brutal weaponry which flouted emerging international standards (Balfour, 2002).

The ethical consequences of this dehumanization are not confined to the particular circumstances of the Rif War. That Spanish and French authorities were willing to use gas against Moroccan civilians when doing so was a red line in even low-level European wars brings us face-to-face with a basic double standard in the enforcement of moral norms. Chemical weapons had been “justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world ” after the horrifying experiences in World War I (Geneva Protocol 1925). Yet this condemnation apparently applied only to "civilized" populations—that is, white Europeans. The racist disaggregation of moral proscriptions is thus one of the deepest ethical corruptions of European imperialism.

The German Connection: Hugo Stoltzenberg, and Arms Smuggling

The involvement of Germany in helping Spain's chemical warfare campaign added another dimension to the moral issues involved. Germany had long been forbidden from producing chemical weapons by the Treaty of Versailles (1919), but chemist Hugo Stolzenberg made it Spain's leading supplier instead (Kunz & M ller, 1990). On August 20, 1921—only just over a week after Berenguer's telegram of his wish to have gas "in real trifling" (sic)—Spain sent the official request to Germany together with that for mustards gas through Stoltzenberg’s company (Balfour, 2002).

A close associate of the "father of chemical warfare," Fritz Haber, Hugo Stolzenberg (1883-1967), had participated in Germany's World War I gas program (Müller, 1987). After the German surrender, Stoltzenberg was officially put in charge of the disposal of German chemical weapons stores at the Munster-Breloh depot. However, Stoltzenberg also endeavoured with his company Kampfstoffverwertung to maintain these stocks and to set up a secret chemical weapon production facility at Dornhagen (Kunz & Müller, 1990). The Germans first sent chemical weapons to Spain in 1923, and the shipments continued throughout the Period of the Rif War (Balfour 2002).

Stoltzenberg’s participation was more than just supplying. In 1923, he played a key role as technical adviser in the setting up near Madrid of the Fábrica Nacional de Productos Químicos, which became the most important manufacturing site for chemical weapons used in Morocco (Sasse, 2006). Stoltzenberg was later rewarded with Spanish citizenship for his role as an agent of colonial oppression while retaining his German businessman's status (Balfour, 2002: 132). This system permitted Germany to bypass the Versailles constraints and make money from the colonial poison gas trade.

German complicity needs to be specially considered on a moral level. Germany itself, with its own horrific experience of gas warfare in the Western Front and was actually under a special injunction not to acquire such weapons, was however the facilitating country for Spain’s chemical crusade against Moroccan civilians. It was very much a case of turning their back on the post-World War I disarmament regime, and instead choosing to subordinate moral considerations to economic incentives and geopolitical calculations. Germany wanted to keep its technical knowledge skill base, and economic influence (and make friends with would be allies at any cost of Moroccan lives) (Kunz & Müller 1990).

France was also drawn into supporting Spain's chemical warfare efforts. France supported Spanish intelligence with the supply of tear gas and other chemical agents ahead of France’s own military interference in 1925 (Balfour, 2002). This collaboration demonstrates how far the European colonial powers, despite occasional competition, were in solidarity when it came to crushing indigenous resistance movements by hook or by crook.

Nature and Extent of Use of Chemical Weapons

The chemical assault on the Rif population was indiscriminate, methodical and deliberately aimed at civilian objectives. Spanish forces used a combination of chemical agents, phosgene, diphosgene, chloropicrin and mustard gas (yperite) among them (Madariaga & Lázaro Ávila, 2003). Although chemical weapons were first unleashed in November 1921, with phosgene attacks on the fringes of Tangier, the offensive escalated dramatically in 1924 when aerial bombardment with mustard gas began (Balfour, 2002).

According to aviation general Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros in his autobiography Cambio de Rumbo, he was the first to use a 100kilogram mustard gas bomb during bombing from an airplane as early as summer 1924 (cited in Balfour, 2002). This was just one of the first uses of aerial chemical delivery, a harsh precursor to wars yet to happen. The air service made possible Spanish operations deep inside Riffian-held territory and provided an opportunity to attack populations who might have been immune from ground-directed attacks.

Spanish army tactics ordered the genocide of civilians and infrastructure. Popular targets were market places, human settlements, crop fields and water points (Balfour, 2002). The polluting of rivers and waterways was a two-fold enterprise: killing as many civilians as possible in the short-term, followed by damaging food production and potable water resources into the future. Its purpose was less to defeat Riffian armies than to render the country uninhabitable for its inhabitants and crush their will to resist.

The French use of chemical weapons (Messari, 2014), if more limited in extent, resembled the British pattern. American reporters brought out the French employment of chloropicrin gas to stem a Riffian breakthrough north of Fez in April-May 1925 (Courcelle-Labrousse & Marmié, 2008). French High Commissioner Lyautey asked for mustard gas shells and aerial bombs seven times between May and June 1925, but some of these requests were eventually withdrawn by Paris (Courcelle-Labrousse & Marmié, 2008, p.177). However, documentary evidence shows that France used chemical weapons taken from stockpiles installed in Morocco by the end of 1918 (Daudin, 2023).

The joint Spanish-French force spread themselves and attacked in absolute force, leading to the landing at Alhucemas on 8 September 1925. The convoy arrived in Cadiz on 21 July in what is regarded as the first amphibious attack with tanks and aircraft, supported by some 18,000 Spanish troops and an equivalent number of French soldiers; the total force would eventually reach over 120,000 men and auxiliary formations numbering half a million (Daudin, 2023). It was sanctioned by Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera and French Marshal Philippe Pétain, the same who later allowed Nazi Germany to operate in 'Vichy France' (Schiavon 2016).

Opacity of Legal framework and Exploitation of International Law

The chemical war in Morocco took place at a crucial stage in the evolution of international humanitarian law. The 1899 Hague Declaration had forbidden the employment of projectiles delivering poison gas, and in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) Germany was explicitly banned from keeping chemical weapons which it already possessed (Spiers, 1986). But a fully fledged international ban on the use of chemical weapons (Messari, 2014) did not emerge until the signing of the Geneva Protocol on June 17, 1925.

The Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare was united humanity's answer to the atrocities committed during World War I by its belligerent parties involving chemical warfare. The use in war of "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices" was banned by the protocol (Geneva Protocol, 1925). Spain signed the protocol in August 1926) and France in May 1921, just a few weeks before Abd el-Krim’s surrender, as well (Daudin, 2023).

Nonetheless, colonial powers exploited a crucial lacuna (gap) in international law: the Geneva Protocol worked solely for international state armed conflicts and not for conflicts between states and non-state elements or for purely internal colonial conflicts within a recognised territory of a state (Blake & Mahmud 2016). Both Spain and France contended that their protectorate status in Morocco plus the non-recognition of the República del Rif by other countries meant they were conducting internal wars, free of international relief conventions. This legal legerdemain allowed chemical weapons to be used against colonized peoples, at the same time that its use was forbidden in warfare among “civilized” nations.

The ethical resonance of this legal dodge is great (Soto, 2004). International law was built to shelter European populations and keep colonized people exposed to the most severe forms of violence. As Jean Pascal Zanders notes, the negotiations that led to the Geneva Protocol illustrated how international humanitarian law was constructed largely with European warfare in mind and did not afford those protections to people under colonial rule (Zanders 2021). This seletive implementation of legal prohibitions reflected a hierarchy of the human which had already divided humanity between those deserving protection and those who could be killed with no limits.

Furthermore, the use of chemical weapons (Messari, 2014) both before and after the Geneva Protocol was signed shows that legal vacuums have been cynically used. Spain initiated the organized use of chemical warfare in 1924, one year before hard-signing the protocol, and utilized it until 1927 after signing. This shows that formal respect for international treaties held little value once there were colonial interests involved. The reason the protocol did not mention colonial conflict meant there would be a legal loophole exploited, not only by France in Morocco but also for future colonial wars such as Italy’s use of mustard gas in Abyssinia (1935-36) and Japan’s chemical shell usage within China (1937-1945) (Schmidt 2015).

Immediate and Long-Term Humanitarian Consequences

The direct human cost of chemical weapons in the Rif War was devastating (Soto, 2004), and accurate records remain hard to determine due to intentional official misinformation. Mustard gas results in violent blisters on the skin, eyes and respiratory system with blindness, permanent harm to the respiratory organs and a slow and painful death frequently occurring following exposure (SIPRI, 1971). Unlike traditional weapons, chemical agents would not distinguish between soldiers and non-combatants, while the collective impact on trapped populations inside markets and villages was a horror to behold.

Testimonies of military fliers who experienced these raids offer insights into the terror on the ground. Some of this gassing was described in an autobiography by Pedro Tonda Bueno, La Vida y Yo (1974), which also recorded the poisoning from special chemicals dropped from planes on Rif agricultural land (Balfour, 2002). There were also long-term crises such as health and food security due to contamination of soil and water sources that arose from the conflict.

Arguably, the most alarming consequence of the Rif War is the endemic health crisis across this region. Fifty percent of all cancer patients in Morocco are found in the Rif region which has been described as a high-incidence area (Charqui, 2014). The head of the Association of Toxic Gas Victims (ATGV) in the Rif, said: "studies show there are strong indications that the cancer is due to gases used against resistance in north" (quoted in Balfour 2002). Although a direct link between the use of chemical weapons (Messari, 2014) and high levels of cancer has not been proven in independent scientific studies, the continued crushing health disparities in the Rif region call for inquiries into intergenerational impact of chemical warfare.

It’s hard to overstate the moral weight of these long-term health effects. If true, the high rates of cancer would be just one form of continuing violence — a legacy of colonial chemical warfare that is still killing and harming Riffian peoples a century after the war. This intergenerational injury constitutes what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence,” a violence that takes place gradually and for the most part out of sight, making it also hard to see who should be held accountable, but not therefore any less necessary (Nixon, 2011). That the survivors and descendants of those who lived through these initial chemical attacks today may be dying from cancers connected to this accumulated exposure only adds to the moral injury, which must receive recognition and reparation.

Pollution is a further aspect of the long-term costs. MG is a persistent chemical agent that remains toxic for a long time, especially in soil and groundwater. Pharmacological pollution of agricultural lands and water sources may have caused an enduring environmental deficit that has continued to undermine the health and welfare Riffian people. This environmental aspect of chemical warfare introduces an ecocide to the chapter of ethical infractions that characterised the Rif War.

Memory, History and the Tyranny of the Past 

The Rif War today is still what Daudin (2023) fittingly has named a “forgotten war”, crossing meanwhile European historical discourse but also to certain extent Moroccan national narratives. This amnesia about the past is not random, it’s a product of a clearly defined collection of which histories we choose to remember and forget. The campaign of chemical warfare was classified an official secret in Spain for decades. Rudibert Kunz und Rolf-Dieter Müller were the first to generate a thorough history of the chemical weapons program, based on 19th century archives (Kunz & Müller, 1990).

Campaigns for historical recognition and justice have come from civil society movements in both Morocco and Spain. Protests have been organized by the ‘’Plataforma contra el complejo militar de la Marañosa’’ calling for the closure of the facility at La Marañosa (which still remains operational as a military research establishment) and recognition of historical crimes committed by Spain's chemical weapons program (Raha, 2023). In Morocco, the Amazigh World Assembly (AMA) made a demand to Spain in February 2018 for an official apology with respect to chemical weapons and a reparations process (Daudin, 2023). Spain has not extended that apology or made reparations (Raha, 2026).

In 2018, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, floated the idea of measures to "heal wounds" from the Rif War and Battle of Annual (Morocco World News, 2018). A statement from Borrell however, focused on Spanish suffering during the conflict, most notably at the Battle of Annual, where thousands of Spanish troops were killed. The stereotypes that it is conveying, the Spanish victimisation, the neglection of Moroccan victimisation through chemical weapons attacks are examples that represent the numerous obstacles for a true historical reckoning. Thoughtful transition to justice means not just recognizing that hard things happened, but owning the moral harm of it and its aftermath.

Reparation requests have taken several practical directions, calling for the building of oncological hospitals in the region to account for higher rates of cancer incidence; creating Moroccan-Spanish teams that should investigate how much these chemical agents are in relation with today’s illnesses; moral recognition from Spain, France and Germany towards historical responsibility; counting victims and compensating them; or legal movements inside Spanish and French judicial systems against who legally sold products to loose them (Charqi, cited in Raha, 2023).

The importance of the Rif War ranges beyond an exercise in historical accountability to debates about weapons of mass destruction, colonial legacy and international humanitarian law today. The war set dangerous precedents, to be applied in other colonial settings over the years. Italy’s employment of mustard gas in Ethiopia (1935–36), Japan’s use of chemical and biological warfare agents during the Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 1945) — as did the subsequent uses of chemicals weapon in asymmetrical conflicts - all followed the example set by Rif (Schmidt, 2015). The readiness of “civilized” countries to use banned weapons against colonised people exposed the selective and contingent application of humanitarian norms and the continuing racial hierarchies underpinning international law.

In addition, the Rif War sheds light on current discussions about the suitability of international humanitarian law for non-international armed conflicts and asymmetric warfare. We see that the legal differentiation of international and internal conflicts – on the basis of which colonial powers weaponized chemical warfare in violation of the agreement – is carried over into contemporary international law and, correspondingly, offers a potential backdoor for state violence against rebel forces or other excluded groups. This move towards the universalization of humanitarian norms is far from being an accomplished project, and while there may be justifiable legal reasons to end this chapter we find in the Rif War a lesson demonstrating how legal ambiguities can facilitate atrocity.

Comparative Analysis: The Rif War as a Challenge to Colonial Chemical Warfare

The Rif War should be understood in the wider context of colonial chemical warfare in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the Geneva Protocol nominally banned chemical weapons use, colonial powers understood the ban to apply only to wars with other "civilised" states. This established a moral-legal double standard that continues to enable the use of chemical weapons against colonized peoples on several continents.

British used chemical warfare in Iraq during the early 1920s and Winston Churchill, reputedly called for gas to be used against the "uncivilised tribes" (Schmidt 2015). Italy made wide use of mustard gas during its invasion of Ethiopia (1935-6), dropping chemical bombs on military, civilian and, perhaps even hospitals (SIPRI 1971). Japan carried out large-scale research on chemical weapon and biological warfare from the 1930s to World War II, leading to its use in China killing hundreds of thousands of civilian people (Harris, 2002). These latter cases show significant similarities with what happened in the Rif war: the portrayal of colonized peoples as less than human, manipulation of legal grey areas, attacks on civilians and memory obliteration.

And what sets the Rif War apart is when it occurred—the first organized use of chemical weapons after World War I—and how smoothly and quickly so many European powers collaborated to follow up with a chemical attack. German technology and expertise, French providing of chemical agents and intelligence, and Spanish running the aerial bombing campaign: such complicity in colonial violence across Europe is evidence enough. This was an international collaboration, across national boundaries showing that despite European competition with one another colonial powers were in the end ideologically united when it came to crushing indigenous people all over the world by any means necessary.

Moral Frameworks for Judging the Use of Chemical Weapons

The chemical war in the Rif War is condemned by a creative multiple ethical framework. Given a deontological approach, the employment of weapons causing superfluous misery fails to meet basic moral obligations. Chemical weapons cause a particularly grotesque kind of harm — blindness, suffocation, skin blistering, agonizing death — that are beyond what can be seen as militarily necessary. The outright ban on chemical weapons that followed World War I acknowledged that some methods of warfare are so repugnant as to be unacceptable, regardless of strategic arguments.

Both retributive and utilitarian analysis would condemn the Rif chemical warfare campaign. The basic class characteristic of chemical weapons, i.e., that they do not discriminate between belligerent and nonbelligerent persons, made their employment ‘indiscriminate’ and led automatically to large-scale civilian loss of life and suffering. The enduring, if as yet unknowable, health and environmental implications — including the possibility of inter-generational damage in the form of increased cancer rates — push the utilitarian calculus yet more strongly against chemical weapons use. Even if one were to agree with the premise that putting down Riffian resistance could be justified on utilitarian grounds (a premise which in any case should not stand), the means of suppression themselves were disproportionate and produced externalities far outweighing prospective benefits.

Virtue ethics focuses on the character, and on what kind of people and communities we form, as reflected in our actions. The Rif War exposes an extensive moral decay in colonial institutions. Every time people like Berenguer express “true joy” at the idea that there’s more gas to throw at indigenous people, something dies, and not just his soul: it’s a form of moralisation by colonialism. Military commanders, scientific allies like Stoltzenberg, political leaders as well as rank-and-file soldiers were all involved in efforts that would have been described as monstrous if they had been committed against western populations. This moral compartmentalisation - the capacity to feel and sustain a civilized self-conception while performing heinous acts against others marked as racialised - is a sort of moral schizophrenia that colonialism both demanded and produced.

From a just-war perspective, the chemical war campaign violated several principles. The principle of distinction based on the identification of combatants from non-combatants was willfully flouted with targeting markets, civilian population, and farming infrastructure. There was a gross failure to observe the principle of proportionality, i.e., that military operations not cause harm that is excessive in relation to legitimate military objectives. The necessity principle: that action should be no more than is necessary to fulfil some legitimate purpose, and was replaced by the doctrine of maximum violence, brutality and fear.

Conclusion: Toward Historical Justice and Moral Reckoning

The Rif War constitutes one of the most morally relevant but least examined episodes within twentieth-century colonial history. The racist policies of, first Spain and then France, against the Amazigh people included systematic use of Chemical weapons with support from Germany, already a widespread crime against humanity which demands recognition, answering to this new element cannot be anything but truth: reparation. This essay has explored several aspects of this moral catastrophe: the dehumanization of colonized subjects that could stomach such atrocities; the exploitation of loopholes in international law; the devastating short- and long-term humanitarian aftermath, and ongoing contestation for historical justice.

The use of chemical weapons in Morocco deviated radically from some basic areas of moral agreement within different ethical traditions. It was the deliberate imposition of unnecessary suffering on civilian populations; it epitomized the moral perversity that colonial racism spawned war continues in the current elevated cancer rates and environmental degradation in the Rif region of Morocco. The lingering health crisis in the Rif—if it turns out to be chemical weapons exposure— is a violence that lingers on and that keeps killing people a hundred years after the war.

A real reckoning with history runs deeper than the academic recognition of past sins. It requires concrete steps: formal apologies by Spain, France and Germany; reparations to affected communities such as medical facilities or a research program; environmental clean-up where contamination remains; education efforts so this history is not forgotten; and even possibly criminal justice accountability for companies and entities that benefited from the production and use of chemical weapons (Messari, 2014).

Its relevance extends to the more contemporary controversies surrounding weapons of mass destruction, the legacy of colonialism and the international legal framework for humanitarian law. The Rif War demonstrates how a legal order can be established that protects one group while exposing another to outrageous violence. The selective imposition of moral prohibitions based on racial classifications is an affront to humanity that continues to manifest itself in many ways. Addressing this history and the racial hierarchies embedded in international law is necessary to achieve universal humanitarian protection.

Riffian resistance to independence under Abd el-Krim was a valid contest against imposition and a fight for indigenous self-rule. The short-lived Republic of the Rif offered an alternative political model that influenced anti-colonial movements worldwide. The European response was to use weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations, showing how far colonial states were willing to go to maintain power. This story should not just be a warning of the horrors of chemical warfare, but a reminder of indigenous people fighting back against overwhelming force.

Ultimately, the Rif War highlights the moral necessity of historical memory. The silencing of this history — its omission from European textbooks, its sidelining in Moroccan national narratives and decades of state repression — is an ongoing injustice in itself. Memory is a form of justice in itself; it enables us to honour the memory of those who suffered and whom we have lost, and it serves as a safeguard against the normalisation of atrocity. As the centenary of the end of the Rif War approaches in 2026, we must decide whether to remain silent and complicit in historical erasure, or to critically engage with this dark chapter in colonial history and its enduring legacies. The moral issues raised by the Rif War point us towards the latter path: towards acknowledging those past crimes and ensuring that such horrors are never repeated.

You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatouon X : @Ayurinu

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