Her Serene Highness Karima Chami, known for five years to the Algerian public media as the granddaughter of Emir Abdelkader, palavering on all occasions with her pretty Levantine accent (having lived for a long time in Syria and Lebanon after her birth in Algiers) , collecting along the way honors due to his rank, donations for a hypothetical orphanage, promises of high positions and material benefits including a luxurious apartment in Algiers, has just revealed the pot aux roses in a live on YouTube.
Of a princess, she would only have the pretension, supported by relationships forged with members of the Algerian embassy in Washington from her residence in Houston, her corruption of everything that was possible to be corrupted, including a member of the emirial family based in London, in addition to the complicity of the intelligence services despite the accusations of fraud launched by the Emir Abdelkader Foundation, while all the antennas of the state apparatus would have seen nothing but fire.
Enough to add a scandal to this Annus Horribilis for the neighboring Regime!
The story of this usurping princess comes just as I was completing my investigations around an authentic prince whose hectic life, strangely unknown, resembles a soap opera made up of intrigue, espionage and secret agents.
His story is all the more interesting for us, Moroccans, because of his disturbing positions, which led to his loss in a battle against the troops of Mohamed ben Abdelkrim Khattabi.
This is Abdelmalek, last son of Emir Abdelkader.
Trained in Damascus, his hometown, he was promoted within the Ottoman army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel and the title of aide-de-camp to Sultan Abdülhamid II.
But, writes Pierre Bardin, “disappointed in his ambitions, in 1900 he requested reinstatement to French nationality. In connection with the Young Turks party in Constantinople, he believed his life was threatened, he fled to Egypt and from there reached Tangier in 1902. In Morocco, we found him with the agitator Bou Amama…”.
In 1903, he was in fact received in Zaouia and headquarters of the sheikh’s staff in Figuig before joining the ranks of the army of the rebel Jilali Zerhouni, alias Bouhmara, who named him leader of his cavalry.
Moving from an alliance to its opposite, Abdelmalek quickly appeared in the service of the French army with the post of colonel and wasted no time in serving French interests in Morocco after the Algeciras Conference, dedicated to the Moroccan question, then that the desires of European powers were heightened in a context of colonial expansion and Franco-German diplomatic tensions.
In article 3 of the Algeciras Conference, it is stipulated that to help the Sultan in organizing the police, “Spanish officers and non-commissioned instructors, French officers and non-commissioned instructors, will be placed at his disposal by their respective Governments, who will submit their designation for the approval of His Sharifian Majesty.”
Abdelmalek is thus appointed as commander of the police tabors in Tangier.
“This position allowed the emir to realize some of his ambitions,” writes the Algerian man of letters and historian Aboul-Kassem Saadallah, continuing, a few lines later, that Abdelmalek seems to have been “dissatisfied with the position he occupied, considering it inferior to the rank that his pride demanded. The French, he told Harris, constantly posed obstacles to his ambitions..
But, as the famous adage would say: “He who has only one door, may it be closed to him forever”!
The Germans were there, in continuous contact, from its base in Tangier.
Abdelmalek had even secretly warned them, with the outbreak of war in 1914, of the expulsion of the ministers of the Central Powers, giving them the possibility of eliminating any damaging written trace.
Then, “yielding to their entreaties, writes Jean Saulay, he agrees to withdraw to the mountains, to the eastern borders of Morocco and his mission seems to be to provoke an agitation to the east of Taza likely to cut off relations between Morocco and Algeria..
So there he was, deserting his Tabor in Tangier and declared, in December 1914, an enemy of France, calling for a general revolt and engaging in several battles after bringing his family to safety.
Living first in the regions of Taza then Melilla, he mobilized a few tribes, established contact with the Moroccan leaders of the anti-colonial struggle and continued the links with the man nicknamed the “Lawrence of Morocco”the German agent Barthels Hermann, alias Albert Barres.
Abdelmalek is also close to Mohamed ben Abdelkrim Khattabi, who has collaborated with him since 1915 in the name of holy war, before the latter took distances transformed into open war…
It must be said that, in his thirst for power, Abdelmalek, seeing the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Germany from which he aspired to political-military support, now directed his gaze towards another occupying power, the Spain which seized on its ambitions by providing it in Melilla with the means to organize a Harka.
Abdelmalek had just dealt a hard blow to the so-called jihad and made a major enemy.
It was during one of his battles, armed by Spain, against the troops of Abdelkrim Khattabi, that he was to die on August 7, 1924, killed near the camp of ‘Azib Midar by a bullet. in the heart.
Significant panegyric: an extract from the Spanish press, taken from an article published under the title “La Muerte del Cherif Abd-el-Malek” saluting his “noble fight for civilization and for the protecting nation”!
