Thala-Kasserine Disturbances
The Thala-Kasserine Disturbances were an episode of unrest in April 1906 in western Tunisia, the first violent resistance against authority under the French protectorate since its establishment in 1881.
Inspired by an Algerian marabout, insurgents killed three French settlers in the Kasserine region before a gunfight in Thala left around a dozen of them dead and the rest in custody.
During this revolt, the 3rd Algerian Spahis Regiment deployed a squadron from Tebessa to confront the Fraichich tribe, who notably occupied the territory of El Ma Labiodh.
[10] On 26 April some dozens of Fraichiche bedouin from the Ouled Néji, Gmata, Hnadra and Hrakta subclans who were encamped on the plain of Foussana, near Kasserine, attacked the farm of a French settler named Lucien Salle[11] who was known as a violent, brutal, and greedy man.
[9] The next day, encouraged by their success, they decided to attack the French civil administration office in Thala, Tunisia, a symbol of colonial rule.
Ben Othman had convinced them they were invincible, telling them that the sticks they were carrying would spit fire when pointed at the infidels, and that the bullets of the settlers would melt like drops of water when they touched their bodies.
However, when they reached Thala they found themselves facing a well-defended base where dozens of armed French settlers and Italian workers fired on them at close range, leaving between ten and fourteen of them dead.
Ferhat, who had provided Amor Ben Othman with accommodation, was likewise accused of having sheltered the organiser of the murders, taken part in preparatory meetings and kept the captured French people prisoner.
The more extreme elements among the settlers saw the cause as being the lax and cowardly colonial policy which led to a lack of security in remote regions, and a failing justice system.
Abdeljelil Zaouche wrote on 25 December 1906 in Le Temps 'The day when, in North Africa, primary education is compulsory, we will no longer see Muslim peasants hanging on the words of a Yacoub, as at Margueritte, or lending an obliging ear to the nonsense of an Amor ben Othman, as at Thala.
Today, the Arab of the countryside is deprived of all intellectual culture; once he is enlightened he will be the first to mock the fanatics who emerge from the brotherhoods that all educated Muslims deprecate.'
[17] In fact, since 1897, the main settler lobby had insisted on an end to primary school education for Muslim children and the Thala-Kasserine Disturbances were perhaps the result.
In his Nouveau dictionnaire de pédagogie et d’instruction primaire, Benjamin Buisson, Director of the Boys' Normal School in Tunis and brother of Ferdinand Buisson, former Director of primary school education in France, wrote 'The events of Kasserine and Thala, in which a young Algerian marabout crossed the border and managed to raise an ignorant and fanatical population against isolated French settlers, demonstrate how dangerous it is to deprive the native population, and the young generation most of all, of all European contact.
[18] According to the historian Charles-André Julien, 'Myriam Harry's account caused a scandal in the French community in Tunisia, not for its portrayal of the settlers, but for the sympathy it expressed for the marabout, offering, if not a justification, at least an explanation for the revolt.'
[21] The Thala-Kasserine disturbances might be considered as initial events in the emergence of the Tunisian national movement (one of the French prisoners testified that he had heard the raiders declare that they planned to march on El Kef and Tunis).
Furthermore, although there were many Europeans at the mines of Ain Khemouda, close by the place where they had set off on their day of killing and looting, they had chosen to walk 12 kilometres to attack the farm of Lucien Salle, who was particularly hated.
[11] The most recent research concludes that 'born spontaneously from poverty and the particular conditions of the region, the Thala insurrection was not followed by unrest in any other part of the country and remained entirely separate from the claims of the movement which affected Tunis at the time.'
