Frontiers in North Africa

ii) The Varnier line

The situation was to be further codified in 1912, when Maurice Varnier was appointed High Commissioner for Eastern Morocco, as part of the process of French occupation. His delimitation was designed to provide a boundary between the administrative responsibilities of the Ain Sefra military command and those of the new French administration in Eastern Morocco. The portion south of Teniet el-Sassi more or less followed the 1845 treaty outline and the 1901 and 1902 delimitations. At Figuig, however, it then turned west and, following the mountain range along Jabal Grouz to the Oued Guir where the latter joined the Oued Zelmou. This line codified what had become French administrative practice in the wake of a further agreement between France and Morocco in 1910, whereby France recognised that Bouanane and Bodenib were Moroccan. French forces, however moved into the confluence of the Oued Guir and the Oued Zousfana, thus effectively treating these regions as part of Algeria. The westward projection of the line was not defined, except to warn that the Tafilalt and the basin of the Guir would have to be Moroccan (Trout 1969; 105-109).

The significance of this line was that it became the administrative boundary during the French Protectorate in Morocco, although the Moroccan authorities did not accept it, on the grounds that French forces had strayed into Moroccan territory before the Protectorate was declared in March 1912 and that the line merely codified this usurpation of Moroccan territory. In fact, although Varnier made many concessions to Algerian administrative demand, he did resist the extreme views of the French authorities in Algiers who wished to set the eastern Moroccan border at the Moulouya river. This stand was eventually confirmed by Marshal Lyautey once he became resident general of Morocco in 1912 (Trout 1969; 115). The result was that French Algerian forces were forced to abandon Figuig which they had occupied in June 1903 (Dunn 1977; 169).

The line itself had been based on a compromise between French treaty obligations to respect population centres clearly under Moroccan authority and French army attempts to extend its administrative authority as far eastwards as possible before the Protectorate was established. However, it did confirm another reality - the French occupation and alienation to its new administrative colonial construct of Algeria of far more distant populations and territories to which Morocco laid claim and where Moroccan representatives had regularly been appointed. Chief amongst these was Touat, which fell to French forces in 1901, along with Gouara and Tidikelt (Dunn 1977; 146). It is clear, however, that all these areas were considered by the Moroccan sultanate to be part of Morocco's overall sovereign sphere and Moulay Hassan I made considerable efforts to assert his authority over the Sahara that Morocco considered to be part of its own communal sphere. The problem was, as Ross Dunn points out, that Moulay Hassan's efforts failed largely because European powers refused to accept the Moroccan definition of the 'state' and because of the French army's refusal to accept Morocco's definitions of sovereignty (Dunn 1977; 169-170).