France’s bloody colonial wars to subjugate North Africa’s peoples weren’t enough to achieve victory, so they weaponised ethnic and cultural diversity by engineering sectarianism, discord and rivalry
For colonial strategists ‘divide and conquer’ was the tool of choice in exploiting its victims' soft spots. And nothing gave the French more leverage than frictions between identity and ethnicity in North Africa.
For France there were two options. The colonised could either fight each other, and thus fail to unite against their colonial overlords, or rise up against mother France. With enough instigated friction engineered by colonial power structures, some relations never went back to the way they were, giving rise to modern sectarian tensions that refuse to be resolved.
North Africa saw heavy use of this technique under French colonial rule to strengthen its grip on countries, according to a broad range of historical and expert sources. France actively worked on creating distinct ethinc and linguistic divides within Maghreb societies. This was done with the express purpose of instigating internecine conflict and sowing division between peoples of the same country.
France exploited ethinc and linguistic diversity throughout North African societies to generate discord, division and conflict between sons of the same land. Abdulbasit Sharqi, the Algerian modern history researcher, says that France wielded the Amazigh and Arab issue in whichever way served its interests.
According to Sharqi Abdulbaset however, France “quickly reversed its stance on the origin-story ‘myth’, after determining that the Kabylie were actually aware of France’s racist policies”. French colonial studies focused on creating distinctions between Algeria and Morocco, as well as Arabs and indigenous Berbers. France colonised Morocco in 1912, after signing a Protectorate treaty which saw the Sultan accede his authority. After seizing the central power, France took the same approach to its interests that it had perfected in Algeria.
“This step was a pivotal for the Berber policy,” reveals Aurid, clarifying that General Henri at the time was the primary advisor to French authorities on Amazigh matters, and would apply the experience earned fighting the Kabylie tribes in Algeria when he was deployed to Morocco.
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