The New Man

Roughed up and shaken by an onrush of Moroccan rioters while the police stood idly by, France's energetic new Resident General Gilbert Grandval learned one lesson from the bloody rioting that greeted his arrival in Morocco (TIME, July 25). In Grandval's own dry words: "It seems the police are not able to perform their duties with the necessary ardor."

The fact is, Casablanca's police have openly collaborated with French terrorist gangs, and so one of the new resident general's first acts was to sack Police Chief Jean Vergnolle. Another was to turn the cops to traffic duty and to put the city's security in the more reliable hands of the military, including paratroopers, an extra battalion of the Foreign Legion and three squadrons of Gardes Mobiles imported from France.

The change was welcome to Moroccans, who hate and fear the trigger-happy local cops. At one street corner in the New Medina, a Foreign Legionnaire, facing some 200 Moroccan demonstrators alone with a jammed submachine gun, was sure that he was in for it. But as he stood his ground helplessly, the mob paused, and instead of rushing him, broke into a cheer: "Vive la Legion!"

Finding His Way. In the excitement of the first rioting, Grandval declared martial law; now he used his emergency powers to deport to Paris influential Georges Causse, president of the Presence Franc,aise, a powerful, pseudo-respectable organization of French colonials. The ill-concealed condonation of this group has helped spark much of the violence. "Dictatorship and oppression!" cried Causse's followers. "We have never systematically opposed French government authority." Replied Grandval: "I don't like to do this kind of thing, but I had no choice."

Then Grandval began threading his way through the problem of the Sultans, a maze as intricate as the alleys of a casbah.

He listened to the street cries for the return of Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef, whom the French banished two years ago. He talked to the French puppet Sultan Arafa, and found that Arafa has no stomach for the job and fears to be seen in public.

Standing His Ground. Grandval also talked things over with potent Thami El Glaoui, the tough, hated old Pasha of Marrakech, who plays the game on the French side only when it suits his convenience. A possible compromise favored by Grandval: pension off both Sultans and replace them with a five-man regency council composed of influential Moroccan leaders from all factions.

"After all," said France's resident general, "we are in the second half of the 20th century. We must show a certain measure of intelligence. We must not be weak, but any further policy of force in Morocco would be stupidity."

In seeking compromise solutions, Grandval could not yet count on any real support from warlike, wily Pasha El Glaoui. When Grandval arrived in Marrakech to pay an official visit to the old Pasha, he was surprised to find only a few Berber women lining the streets to greet him. Only later did he learn that enthusiastic thousands, eager to roar a welcome, were blocked from his route by El Glaoui's police.

Later, when the Pasha himself returned from calling on Grandval, a crowd of angry youths blocked his car's passage. Octogenarian El Glaoui himself seized a submachine gun and stood foursquare on the cobblestones until the mob dispersed. Before the sun went down on Marrakech that night, Morocco was the poorer by 10 more dead and 27 wounded.

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