AUTHOR’S NOTE
164 Words
AUTHOR’S NOTEThe French occupied Colomb-Bechar in Southern Morocco in 1903 and Bergnent in 1904. Determined not to see her European rival move into Morocco, Germany reacted immediately and called a conference in Spain of representatives from some thirty countries. From this meeting a mandate was granted to France and Spain to guarantee order in Morocco.
In 1911 France obtained a free hand and it was not until 1956 that Sultan Mohammed V obtained a treaty granting Morocco independence in the Northern zone.
In 1960 an earthquake demolished the city of Agadir, by then a celebrated summer resort, killing 22,000 people in fifteen seconds.
Tafraout in the beautiful Ammeln Valley is still as secret and mysterious as it was centuries ago. In the late 1930s French engineers slowly built a difficult, zigzagging road to the town and afterwards, when Sacheverell Sitwell visited Tafraout to extol it as one of the three most beautiful places in Africa, he wondered if he was the first Anglo-Saxon ever to see it.
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