His guerrilla tactics, which included the first-ever use of tunneling as a technique of modern warfare, directly influenced Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong and Che Guevara.

[13] Despite this, European authors such as historian Germain Ayache and anthropologist Robert Montagne [fr] assert that Abd el-Krim's family is entirely of Berber origin.

Despite this, French colonial authorities claimed that Abd el-Krim "forged an Idrissid ascendance" to gain legitimity due to Moroccan religious tradition.

[13] According to Mohammed Azarqan, the foreign minister of the Republic of the Rif, his surname comes from the Aït Khattab clan of the Ait Ouriaghel and has no relation with Umar ibn al-Khattab.

[18][19] At the age of 20, he studied for two years in Fez at the Al Attarine and Saffarin madrasas and subsequently enrolled as a student at the University of al-Qarawiyyin, the world's oldest institution of higher education.

In 1907, he was hired to edit and write articles in Arabic for El Telegrama del Rif, a daily newspaper in Melilla, where he defended the advantages of European—especially Spanish—civilization and technology and their potential to elevate the economic and cultural level of the Moroccan population.

In 1910, Abd el-Krim took a position as secretary-interpreter in the Native Affairs Office in Melilla, which brought him into close contact with the Spanish military bureaucracy and the town's civil society and gained a reputation for intelligence, efficiency and discretion.

The Spanish authorities sought to please the French, who had claimed the German agents roamed free in Melilla, thus they proceeded to hear a number of complaints on Abd el-Krim.

[24] In 1921, as a byproduct of their efforts to destroy the power of a local brigand, Ahmed er Raisuni, Spanish troops approached the unoccupied areas of the Rif.

[26] The catastrophic defeat of the Spanish forces at Annual and the ensuing massacre of Spaniards at Monte Arruit delivered a coup de grace to the Restoration regime in that country, and what it was known as the African "adventure" became referred to as the Moroccan "mess" or "cancer".

By September 1925 the Spanish Army of África, supported by a combined Spanish-French fleet, landed in Alhucemas bay, barely a dozen miles from Abd-el-Krim's capital and birthplace, Axdir, while several colonials and even metropolitan French regiments were coming from the south toward the heartlands of the Rifian rebellion.

[29][30] other political entities Following his surrender Abd el-Krim was exiled to the island of Réunion (a French territory in the Indian Ocean) from 1926 to 1947, where he was "given a comfortable estate and generous annual subsidiary", before ending up in Cairo.

[32] In 1947, Abd el-Krim was given permission to live in the south of France after he had been released on health grounds; however, during his transfer he was freed from his French keepers and escorted to Cairo by Moroccan nationalists.

"[34] Abd el-Krim's flight to Egypt drew global attention to the Moroccan independence movement, highlighting the broader anti-colonial sentiment and the pivotal role of Cairo as a center of transnational activism.