arrest of Omar al-Mukhtar
Tripoli, dry ground in pain and failures
Mai colonization was most unfortunate of the Italian in Libya. And to think that everything seemed easy in October 1911, when Italian troops sent by the Liberal government of Giovanni Giolitti had landed at Tobruk, Derna, Benghazi and had ventured into the land without meeting any resistance by almost two thousand ill-equipped soldiers Ottoman garrison left to Turkey. If anything, our army had some problem by the Senussi, Muslims who, without conflicting with Istanbul, the mid-nineteenth century (in 1843 Muhammad al-Sanusi had settled in south-west of Cyrene), had given to the people of Tripoli and Cyrenaica new forms of political and social organization (in addition to a version of the traditional Muslim religious belief most modern, more suitable to the mentality and needs of the Bedouin population). But the Italian company had still happened, and in October of 1912 the Sublime Porte (the government of Istanbul) signed the Treaty of Ouchy (Lausanne) under which Turkey withdrew its forces from Libya, leaving the country to ' Italy. After that, the guerrilla and the Senussia continued - with the help of the army turkish not resigned to respect the decisions of Ouchy - could have created us in serious trouble if the impact site of the First World War and a plague epidemic (between 1916 and 1917) they had not mortified ambitions.
Thus, major conflict ended, the adventure of the Italian colonization of Libya was able to resume .
and proceed gradually to the conclusion that justifies the title of a book by Federico Cresti Carocci that the publisher is now appropriate to give to the press: not covet the land of others . The history has bequeathed to us the story of an Italy that liberal, after the war (1918) to march on Rome (1922), tried the route of peaceful coexistence with the Senussi and the local population was then Italy Mussolini to return to the path of arms. In part, things went well. But only in part. The experiment - following the First World War - of indirect rule and "association" of the premises, writes Cresti, actually showed "a spirit of reconciliation and respect for the people of Libya that might have been avoided, if applied continuously, following the massacres and disasters." But already in 1922, before the march on Rome at the time of the governorate of Giuseppe Volpi (when he was Colonial Secretary John Amendola) by the Italian, in Libya, had returned to the use of the hard way. So we can safely say that the second-Italian War Senussi, then emphatically presented as the fascist conquest of Cyrenaica, was laid before the advent of fascism.
A lthough then the season will be the bloodiest of the conflict due to the responsibility of Marshal Pietro Badoglio ,
The Libyan who entered the scene at the end of 1928 stating that it would give respite to those who had not submitted ( "Neither he nor his family nor his cattle nor his heirs') and that of General Rodolfo Graziani, who since March 1930 and work began the last phase of repression of the toughest resistance. In this context, forced population movements were organized never seen before. Badoglio wrote shortly after the arrival of Graziani, " must first create a spatial separation Broad and well agreed between rebel groups and the population submissive, I do not hide the extent and severity of this measure will mean the ruin of so-called submissive population, but now the way we have been drawn and we must continue to the end even if it destroy the entire population of Cyrenaica . E Graziani took the order literally, organizing the relocation of the entire population of Cyrenaica along the coastal plain between the sea and the slopes of the plateau. It was a march in the winter, hundreds and hundreds of miles. It was a gesture of piety towards the nomadic populations of Gebel? Almost none. Badoglio so Graziani wrote in 1932: " not seek the return of exiles. It is better to lose them forever ... The Gebel should be mainly dominated by the settler Italian ... The native is convinced, or, rather, is used to consider the (concentration camps along the coastal areas of Cyrenaica and Sirtica) as its permanent destination. " Badoglio directives for the maintenance of populations in the camps, unless they were determined by a precise determination of mass destruction, were unsustainable, says Cresti, ' if they materialize would, in all likelihood, the gradual destruction of the populations concentrated. Graziani was more flexible.
But the outcome of those policies was in any case dramatic.
not calculate the exact number of deaths, which were numerous. Moreover Badoglio ordered anyone to go through the weapons, among the natives, had been found on the Gebel where the deportation had begun. In September of 1931 Umar al-Muktar, the senior leader of the Resistance (he was almost 70 years), was captured and hanged. On 24 January 1932 Badoglio was able to declare that the rebellion was finally crushed and Libya " completely pacified." According to official killed in operations against the Italians the guerrillas were, between 1923 and 1932, 6,500. But now scholars and Giorgio Rochat Angelo Del Boca, which in recent years have explored the issue, estimated that tens of thousands were rather different. Perhaps one hundred thousand. Many, of course, though infinitely less than those indicated by such contemporary politicians Libyan Buissière Salah (one million and a half) or Gaddafi (750 000) that correspond to twice in the first case, in the second to almost all of the local population to this' time of the Ottoman census of 1911. Ali Abdellatif Ahmid, a scholar of Libyan origin who currently teaches in the United States, estimates that half a million of his countrymen died in battle or of disease, hunger and thirst; 250 000 others were forced into exile in Egypt, Chad, Tunisia, Turkey, Palestine, Syria and Algeria. Another old Libyan, Salim Yusuf al-Bargathi, said the dead were to be deported between 50 and 70 000 (where Rochat and Del Boca estimate that were about 40 000).
On 13 August 1932, proposed by the Minister for the Colonies Emilio De Bono, was named president of Louis Race for the colonization of Cyrenaica .
Race, formerly a journalist in Mussolini's Popolo d'Italy ', Sansepolcro, former secretary of the beams of action, future Minister of Public Works, is launching an ambitious plan to to arrive at Italian willing to work hard. People, in general, with no criminal record is not spotless. It does not matter if affected as a result of convictions for political or common crimes. Circumstances that will force a result Italo Balbo to "clean up" between 1938 and 1939, the current immigration policy. But in the first half of the thirties is not subtle. In 1934 Amerigo Dumini also comes in Cyrenaica, convicted (albeit with a ridiculous penalty: six years of which four were pardoned) for the killing in June of '24, Giacomo Matteotti. Dumini, re-arrested in Italy for arms trafficking, had begun to blackmail and Mussolini, under pressure from the Interior Minister Arturo Bocchini was been "accepted" in Libya. Arriving there, he began to complain that the land had been allocated and the reduction of funding that had been promised. Shortly after arriving in Libya, Mussolini began to write letters to subtly blackmail, the money arrived, and within three years became a wealthy landowner. In 1939, the land of his company were acquired by the government of the colony and Dumini came up with a lavish compensation. It remained to Libya, when the British arrived, thanks to his mastery of the language (he was born in the U.S.) for a short period he also interpreter. In short, if passed it just fine. But for all the others that they had no weapons of blackmail against the Duce, were or were not affected, things went very differently.
already fraught with difficulties and adaptation of newcomers .
cases have been recorded "excitement of various organ functions, followed by mild depression ... especially in females ',' some major case of chronic disease ... some cases of chronic infectious eye shapes and some cases of ringworm and ringworm, but all that is not occurring for chronic infection with indigenous element 'frequent arthritic disorders, heart disease, syphilis, among children, lymphatic, scrofulous, skin diseases other , sporadic caso di tubercolosi. A detta di Armando Maugini, che dirigeva l'Ufficio per i servizi agrari della Cirenaica, i pugliesi erano quanto di meglio l'Italia potesse offrire alla Libia per la loro capacità di affrontare la durezza delle condizioni di vita di quella fase pioneristica. «Il colono pugliese» scriveva Maugini in un rapporto « è molto indicato per tale tipo di colonizzazione, non solo per lo spirito di adattamento e per la notevole sobrietà, ma anche perché, essendo molto attaccato ai parenti, ed essendo proveniente da territori aventi requisiti agrologici molto simili a quelli del Gebel Cirenaico, esercita un'influenza di attrazione verso gli elementi rimasti nella Madrepatria, i quali pertanto potrebbero un giorno intensificare spontaneously by the population of the areas already occupied Puglia. Luigi Race confirms: The choice of families was carried out initially in Puglia, near Bari, and more broadly, for the first group of six families from Corato transferred in full to the colony at the beginning of the activities, as an experiment , gave good results, and there was then a first point of support that could act as if they were made assimilator its contact elements from the same source ... The settlers have already set all well and have clung to their land, which have already been able to establish good attitudes to the exploitation . In the alternative are appreciated Abruzzi and Calabria.
conditions to start a new business in the colony were terrible.
the beginning of 1935 a community of thirty fishermen was transferred to Zuetina. But already in early June, many of them asked to return to Italy. The isolation and abandonment of the state of reduced making life very difficult: a reduced mobility for the all the bread that came from time to time Agedabia where the little oven and it worked very badly for the lack of bakers, flour and fuel. The boats were few and were damaged on the way from Italy. Sirtica the heat along the coast, reports Cresti, was such that by the end of the workday a part of the fish, low in bad condition, had to be thrown away. On the ground refrigeration equipment were poor: the premises of a small refrigerator had been turned in, but the ice available was insufficient. Even more difficult, Cresti continues, "had proved the sale of fish, the car was not equipped for the available transport and therefore had recourse to a private dealer." But the company had proved very profitable, and the contract was soon torn. In addition, fishermen were complaining of excessive taxation by local authorities since, once arrived at Benghazi and subjected out an audit of hygiene, often the fish had been considered spoiled and thrown away before he could reach the market. In the month of September to Zuetina not stay that four people, also wanting to return soon. In an attempt to revive the experiment were taken in contact with a cooperative of Trapani. But at the end of season, the last remaining were repatriated.
The 1936 was then, in Tripoli, due to drought, a bad year for crops .
is judged by that time a mistake to have sent to Libya families: the presence of children and old men had proved a dead weight la bonifica. E si cambiò registro. Il 1938 fu l'anno dell'operazione cosiddetta dei «ventimila». Tanti dovevano essere, secondo Italo Balbo, i «non emigranti» da trapiantare in Libia. Perché «non emigranti»? Il fascismo aveva sempre fatto una politica antiemigratoria e non poteva smentirsi. Il trasferimento in Libia dei ventimila, racconta Cresti, «venne così presentato dai giornali italiani come l'esatto contrario di tutto ciò che era stata l'emigrazione sofferta fino ad allora da quanti partivano alla ricerca di condizioni di vita che l'Italia non poteva offrire: non più un evento triste, ma un'avventura eccitante - dove l'inatteso era fonte di curiosità e non di angoscia (ovvero dove l'inatteso, as a source of anxiety was eliminated) - full of positive surprises, happy, no more separation, only from their own living environment and the society in which those who departed had lived until then, but the possibility of creating new ties strong group, with those attending the same event, no more continuation of poverty in terms of travel, but participation in the luxury of modernity, no longer the prospect of shortages, but the abundance, no longer the cold reception given to suspicious aliens at the border, but the manifestation of the warmth of a brotherly in a land that is not said to be more "overseas" but a constituent part of motherland. "
The departure from Venice was organized October 28, the anniversary of the March on Rome .
was great resonance all over the papers. Mussolini liked to a certain point the emphasis that gave Balbo operation. And when they were less than a year at the beginning of World War II, began to show signs of impatience with the same Balbo. Italy entered the war until June 1940, but the unfavorable development of the agricultural season had caused considerable difficulties at the end of 1939. In early '40 we had to organize new shipments, particularly of forage and animal feed. They were bought over a thousand oxen Maremma, but many animals got sick before you even leave and had to stay long in Civitavecchia, with new costs for the crop that was becoming more expensive. The cattle suffered in the winter of '40, which was followed by losses from malnutrition due to lack of fodder for animals. Over the months, then, had become increasingly difficult to find space for the transport of goods. During the months of April and May 1940 almost all ships were requisitioned for military service: In some cases the goods and materials already sent to Libya had been downloaded in Syracuse and Catania to leave the ship. A ship load of agricultural materials left from Genoa in the month October, was still stuck in mid-December in Palermo on hold to make the crossing. "In these conditions" the author notes, "was not advisable to send perishable goods, such as seeds or cuttings of vines." So, to reduce losses, it was decided to re-sell in Italy already purchased the materials to be sent to Libya. A disaster.
Italy entered the war in June 1940 and the 28th of that month falls in the sky of Tobruk, where the plane is boarded Italo Balbo (death raises some suspicion of a not yet felt the involvement of Mussolini).
takes its place Rodolfo Graziani, who Duce is now engaged in the offensive against Egypt. Follows in the months of February and March 1941, the first British occupation, writes Cresti, " such a violent shock to the building is still shaky in Cyrenaica of colonization." Practically there is no peace for Libya that when the work should reap the first fruits of the "twenty thousand", is found to be the scene of war. The settlers are panicked and they flocked to the credit institution to withdraw his savings, trying to flee to Tripoli and to return to Italy. As the advancing Allied troops, the Arabs on the spot - backed by a body Senussia fighting on the British side - whenever plunder has offered him the chance. They are characterized by ruthlessness Australians. He writes in his diary the agronomist Paul Sabbetta "Australian Military come, day and night, in houses paying asking different kinds, some handsomely, while others, almost always drunk, looting and raping the women while the men take at bay with weapons in hand . And the evidence of this violence are numerous. From Italy, the scheme seeks to minimize and to promote the image of a Libyan population of Cyrenaica in solidarity with the settlers. But between December 1941 and January 1942 for the Italians is the beginning of defeat. Still a terrible year and January 23 of '43 British troops make their entrance to Tripoli. Between Italy and Libya has cut off all contact. A few thousand Italians remain there to work until the end of the war and beyond. Even after that in '49 the UN General Assembly voted for the project to Libya as a state itself and after the proclamation, in '51, independence. It should be added that after the war, failed the Italian authorities on the region, there are bloody demonstrations hostile to the Arab Jewish community that had until then been a pillar of the Italian presence, so that in '38 Balbo had obtained some sort of exemption of Libya racial laws.
Pogroms more sanguinosi saranno quelli del novembre 1945
(particolarmente raccapriccianti perché compiuti proprio nei giorni in cui, con l'uscita dei superstiti ebrei dai campi di concentramento d'Europa, il mondo veniva a conoscenza delle atrocità compiute nei lager nazisti) e del giugno del 1948, all'indomani della nascita dello Stato di Israele. Poi si ripeteranno nel 1967 all'epoca della guerra dei sei giorni. Nel 1956 un accordo tra Italia e Libia regola la presenza nella ex colonia dei nostri connazionali che si trasformano, la maggior parte, in piccoli possidenti. Ma saranno tutti cacciati dopo il colpo di Stato degli ufficiali liberi guidati da Gheddafi, che nel 1969 rovescerà la monarchia senussa. Nel frattempo Libya, which did not yet know his oil fortune, had come to be one of the poorest countries in the world. The peasants-pastoralists of Cyrenaica, back on their ancient lands, unable to make use of capital equipment and of the Italian plant, had quickly brought the country in the tradition. Britain in the long run the military administration (1942-1951), had refused to invest their money in our former colony. And when the last Italian left in 1970, the budget of almost sixty years of their presence in that country could boast a few points to its credit. Even those that have marked the colonial experiences in other Third World countries. As if a particular punishment had befallen those who had disobeyed the commandment invented by Federico Cresti for the title of his book: Do not covet the land of others, in fact.
Source: SRS Paolo Mieli by The New York Times of Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Link: http:/ / www.corriere.it/cultura/11_febbraio_22/mieli_suolo_di_dolore_d19a4792-3e5d-11e0-a025-f4888ad76c86.shtml
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