page_title: Askari
section_title: Spanish colonies
hierarchical_section_title: Askari / Spanish colonies
context_page_description: An askari was a local soldier serving in the armies of the European colonial powers in Africa, particularly in the African Great Lakes, Northeast Africa and Central Africa. The word is used in this sense in English, as well as in German, Italian, Urdu and Portuguese. In French, the word is used only in reference to native troops outside the French colonial empire. The designation is still in occasional use today to informally describe police, gendarmerie and security guards.
  During the period of the European colonial empires in Africa, locally recruited soldiers designated as askaris were employed by the Italian, British, Portuguese, German and Belgian colonial armies. They played a crucial role in the conquest of the various colonial possessions, and subsequently served as garrison and internal security forces. During both World Wars, askari units also served outside their colonies of origin, in various parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In South Africa the term refers to former members of the liberation movements who defected to the Apartheid government security forces.
context_section_description: As noted above "askari" was normally a designation used in Sub-Saharan Africa. Exceptionally though, the term "askari" was also used by the Spanish colonial government in North-West Africa, in respect not of their regular Moroccan troops (see regulares), but of a locally recruited gendarmerie force raised in Spanish Morocco in 1913. They were known as the "Mehal-la Jalifianas". This was the equivalent of the better known Goumiers employed in French Morocco.
  Indigenous members of the Tropas Nómadas or desert police serving in the Spanish Sahara were also designated as "askaris", as were the other ranks of the Native Police (Policia Indígena) raised in Melilla in 1909.
caption: Askari, Mariano Fortuny, 1860
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