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Background: The beginning of colonization in Libya

The conquest of Libya took place in two phases; the first was considered a more superficial and approximate stage, it began on the 4th of October 1911 under Giovanni Giolitti’s command. The expansionism would have ensured raw materials and a new land to migrate for italians. Additionally, Italy would have benefit economically from the conquest because it could gain the control of the Sahra trade. However the most determinant argument to conquer LIbya was the southern question that took place in Italy during the 1890s.

The landless and sharecropping peasants in the south were putting pressure on the Italian ruling elites claiming for land and roting rights. Following a series of riots and rebellions in the south, the ruling classes attempted to find a solution to this problem by relocating Italian peasants in colonies.

Giolitti assumed that since Libyans had resented Ottoman rule from 1551 until 1911, Italians would be welcomed by the local population, however, this was not the case. Libyans for a long time placed a strong resistance against the occupation and fought heroically anti-colonial resistance with a strong army of volontiers from 1911 to 1915, then they managed to defeat the Italian army that in 1916 made a truce.

Mussolini Regime and the integration of Fascism

The second phase started with the arrival of Benito Mussolini, an Italian politician, leader and founder of the National Fascist Party. He rose to power as Prime Minister of Italy from March 1922 until his deposition in 1943. With his arrival he took control over the colonization expenditure and the scale of the occupation escalated.

He referred to Libya as “The fourth Shore” because it represented the fourth side of the national quadrilateral completed by the three coasts of the Adriatic where there are Trieste, Bari and Durazzo.

This second phase was more effective. Deadly instruments of war were used because it was clear that in order to empty the land the native population had to be defeated.

The motive behind this colonization was that fascists dreamed of settling 500,000 to 1 million Italians in the “fourth shore”.

The state financed and officially-organized a mass-migration of peasant-farming families on the African coast of the Mediterranean

Amongst the 6,000 families who were admitted “to plead” only 1,800 of them were selected. The requirements were clear, working-units - which did not include friends or relations but only close family members - had to be composed of at least 10 members, all healthy and loyal. Additionally, the family had to be experienced in the field of agricolture.

The settlers desired to migrate as Italy was becoming over-crowded and there was a strong urge to “own land”. These farms were ready in seven months; the colonists walked into efficiently executed white farmhouses with irrigating aqueducts, asphalt roads and private lands that averaged to thirty-seven acres.

Family’s were also given the possibility to frequent their village-center that included church, cinema, sports and co-operatives.

Italy was enthusiastic about this project because the country wished to achieve self-sufficiency in the production of corn and oil and furthermore because they had estimated that by 1943 the national population living in Libya would reach 100,000 of which an approximate 40,000 men representing a strong military reserve in a strategic corner of the Mediterranean.

Population Resistance

Omar al-Mukhtar

However, the Italians had underestimated the resistance of the Ottoman army and in particular of the Libyan population. In fact, even if the government of the country was apparently weak, the society was used to self administrate itself based on religious or sectarian organizations. Once arrived in Libya, the fascists faced a poor yet organized and stubborn resistance that they had to fight for 20 years.

The face of the armed Arab opposition, mainly happened in Cyrenaica under the leadership of Omar Mukhtar, where Italian forces under the Generals Pietro Badoglio and Rodolfo Graziani waged punitive pacification campaigns which turned into brutal and bloody acts of repression.

However, with the arrival of Mussolini, the generals were given the command to stop compromising with the resistance and to defeat it with violence at whatever cost in order to free the land for settlement.

The Frontier Wire, a barbed wire fence was built from the Mediterranean to the oasis of Al-Jaghbub to sever lines critical to the resistance. Soon afterward, the colonial administration began the wholesale deportation of the people from the mountains of Jebel Akhdar, to deny the rebels the support of the local population.

Mass deportation

Members of the nomadic tribes of Cyrenaica with their herds during their forceful transfer to the Italian concentration camps.

Fascist Italy maintained several concentration camps in Cyrenaica (Eastern Libya) during the later phase of its occupation of that country. In order to win against the resistance in Libya the Italian troops were ordered to isolate the native.

Furthermore, Italy felt that they had the right to colonize the whole mediterrane because they are the successors of the Roman empire. Mussolini desired to to transplant a new Roman and Fascist civilization within the African land.

Firstly a fence along 300,000 miles of the Egyptian border was built in order to cut the supply of primary resources. Shortly after between 100,000 to 110,00 children, women, elderly and 600,000 animals were moved to the Sirte desert in concentration camps in Suluq, El Magrun, Abyar and El Agheila where 16 concentration camps had been built and tens of thousands died in squalid conditions.

Fascist Italy maintained several concentration camps in Cyrenaica (Eastern Libya) during the later phase of its occupation of that country. After the initial invasion in 1911, the Italian control over much of the country remained ineffective.

This destructive period went on from 1929 until 1934. The local population died of starvation, untreated diseases and overall deprivation of support and aid. By the end it was estimated that a mass number of 60,000 to 70,000 people died.

Estimates of deaths in concentration camps

Italian concentration camps in Libya 1930-1933

Estimates of the people who died in these camps vary. The total number of Libyans who died either through combat or mainly due to starvation and disease is unclear, however, in 1910 the Libyan population was made up of around 1.5 million people while in 1943 it significantly decreased to 800,000.

Ilan Pappé estimates that between 1928 and 1932 the Italian military "killed half the Bedouin population (directly or through disease and starvation in camps)." Italian historian Emilio Gentile estimates 50,000 deaths resulting from the suppression of resistance.

Genocide recognition

Since the first phase of the colonization Italian media reported a distorted narrative of the conflict. The Italians were depicted as liberators from Ottoman rule, and the repression campaigns, such as the ones following the battle of Sciara Sciat, were hidden from the population. On the other side, the Arabs were descibed as 'beasts' that needed to be civilized by the Europeans.

For this reason, for the italian population was difficult to believe to the genocide accusation to the National Fascist colonization capaign in Libya. This part of colonization history is almost and erased memory. Internationally, the Italian people are recognised as people of culture, arts, and beauty, and hence they are thought to be incapable of committing such crimes.

Italian Fascism is still today cosidered moderate in comparison to the Nazist party in Germany, when the truth is that the latter took inspiration from Italian concentration camps and methods of repression.

However, the Libyan colonization can be considered a genocide because te population was killed intentionally and the cultural, biological and economic basis of the community was completely destroyed and replaced.

2008 cooperation treaty

On 30 August 2008, Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a historic Friendship, Partnership and cooperation treaty in Benghazi. Under its terms, Italy will pay $5 billion to Libya as compensation for its former military occupation. In exchange, Libya will take measures to combat illegal immigration coming from its shores and boost investments in Italian companies. The treaty was ratified by Italy on 6 February 2009, and by Libya on 2 March, during a visit to Tripoli by Berlusconi.

The intent was therefore, to put an end to the disputes related to colonialism, but contemporarily, create an advantageous economic condition for Italy.

References[edit]

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2. ^ Ilan Pappé, The Modern Middle East. Routledge, 2005, ISBN 0-415-21409-2, p. 26.
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External links[edit]

• Campo di Concentramento at I Campi Fascisti