125
Independen North Africa
Crescent
, one of the underground groups that had Communist
affiliations Individually the resitants were heroes, however,
and the movements were judiciously signaled out for praise in
royal speeches although less favorably viewed by the Istiqlal,
which did not intend to lose the fruits of its generation-long
campaign. Only gradually
was urban order restored as the
police got the upper hand, and as some of the resistants them-
selves were incorporated into the police while others drifted
back to their ordinary occupations with the assurance that
they would be given a gamut of veterans' benefits and special
consideration
The reintegration of the Liberation Army in the countryside
was more delicate
. In the spring of 1956 it was continuing attacks on French outposts and government offices, and presented
3 serious threat to order in rural areas where dissidence was an
old habit. If the new state was unable to control all its territory,
there could be serious consequences. A Royal Army was created, mainly with volunteers who had served with French forces
and on the basis of personal and tribal loyalty to the King. It was
possible to integrare some of the rank-and-file of the Liberation
Army, who themselves came from rural backgrounds, into the
Royal Army afrer careful screening. But the Liberation Army
had also recruited urban resistants and political leaders whose
ideas did not seem suitable to the force the palace was building
up, and so good parts of it were never incorporated. Regrouped
in the far south of the country, they were patronized for a time
by Allal Al Fassi and his wing of the Istiqlal, which began
making claims to large parts of the Sahara in French and
Spanish hands, and they unsuccessfully tried to seize Ifni from
the Spanish in November 1957, a move which was meant to
emphasize the intransigence of their outlook--for they had
originally considered themselves part of a unified force meant
to liberate all North Africa and had close ties with the Algerian
rebels--and embarrass the government. Although this was the
last major enterprise of the Liberation Army, it lingered on in
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