| Sus War | |||||||
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| Sus-Unity Sus-Red Sus-Green Note: These 3 factions largely acted separately from each other, and waged a civil war throughout the overall Sus War | Morocco Moroccan Unity Guard |
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The Sus War was a major armed struggle between various factions of the Sus proto-state and various Moroccan governments, from 1956 to 1975.
Sparked by the 1956 Moroccan coup d'etat, and the new juntas persecution of the Shilha Berbers inhabiting the Sus region of Morocco, various armed factions within the Sus proto-state waged a mixed conventional-guerilla war against successive Moroccan governments and military juntas. The war began on 1 July, 1956, after the Agadir bombings, and ended on 4 November, 1975, with the Ouarzazate Agreements that saw the independence of the Sus recognized. The war was marked by the prolonged Siege of Agadir, which began in 1960 and ended when the war did, severe rebel infighting in a subconflict of the war called the Sus Civil War, and severe human rights violations, primarily by Morocco, which committed a mass ethnic cleansing campaign that resulted in the deaths of 15,000 Sus Berbers and the displacement of 90,000 more, but also some by Sus forces.
Background[]
Main article: Causes of the Sus War
Following the Treaty of Fes, France would establish a protectorate in the lands of Morocco. Although the Treaty de jure did not revoke Morocco's status as a sovereign state, de facto, it brought Morocco under the rule of the French. France would recruit Moroccan soldiers into its army during World War I. There were considerable amounts of domestic resistance to French occupation, especially among the Berber tribes of Morocco. The Zayanes waged the Zaian War against the French for 7 years, while the Rifians waged the Rif War against the French and the Spanish for 5.
Following the end of World War II, agitations among the Shilha of the Sus region began to grow, especially after the 1944 independence declaration was ignored by the French. Although violent acts were rarely undertaken, a protest movement among the Shilha would gradually develop.
Course of the war[]
Insurgency phase: 1956 through 1959[]
A group of Moroccan Arab nationalists rallying themselves under the Moroccan Unity Guard (MUG) staged a mass anti-Shilha riot and pogrom in late June- in retaliation for the violence, a group calling itself the Republic of the Sus launched a series of bombing attacks in the city of Agadir, directed at areas that were frequented by the Moroccan Unity Guard and its members. Insurgent actions across the Sus region followed, with the Sus group engaging in assassinations of MUG leaders, and attacks on Moroccan military bases and police installations. The Moroccan government immediately declared the group a terror organization- this, however, did not stop volunteers, both Shilha and of other Berber subgroups, from flooding into the new Sus group. In July of 1956, the group maintained about 750 armed members- this had more than quintupled to around 4000 by September.
The first, and arguably the most major and successful, (semi-)conventional military attack by the Sus group was the Seizure of Taroudant on 19 September, 1956. The Sus group sparked a mass protest rally that covered nearly the entire city, having overwhelmed police installations there, and the Sus group convened there to set up military defenses and get as many recruits as possible from Taroudant before the city inevitably fell to the Moroccans again. The remaining Moroccan defenders there began to attack the Sus group militarily, before being expelled decisively. The Sus group abandoned the city in October, after multiple assaults on the city- it had gained 1,000 recruits from there. Retrospectively, the Sus' tactics in the operation is generally seen to be the blueprint for a future series of uprisings in the Sus region that escalated the war from an insurgency into a more (semi-)conventional war.
The Sus insurgency sought support from the French, as Morocco had been supporting rebels of the Algerian National Liberation Front in the Algerian War. France, however, refused such offers, although it offered diplomatic sympathy to the insurgents. The insurgency continued at a low level, with the Sus group holding no actual territory (save for rural areas in which local inhabitants declared themselves "free Shilha territory"), but continuing major insurgent actions to weaken the Moroccan administration in the area. This dynamic continued even as the junta under Mohamed Bennani attempted dialogues with the insurgency. Inefficiency of the Moroccan counterinsurgency operations led to a late 1959 coup, ousting the junta, exiling Bennani, and having a Marxist system of government under Ali Yata be introduced.
Escalation: 1960 through 1963[]
Dialogue between Bennani's junta and the insurgency was ended immediately with the coup, and the war saw a rapid escalation from an insurgency to semi-conventional warfare, with the Sus uprisings. The Sus insurgents ousted government forces from rural areas, linking up with the "free Shilha territory", before sparking massive protest rallies that turned into an armed uprising as the Sus insurgents armed many protesters and rioters. The strategy allowed large swaths of land, urban and rural, to fall to the insurgents in weeks, and by the time the offensive had ended, cities like Tiznit, Igli, Sidi Ifni, Imsouane, Aoulouz had fallen to the Sus- Agadir had been surrounded.