Libyan genocide
| Libyan genocide | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Second Italo-Senussi War | |
 Inmates at the El Agheila concentration camp | |
| Location | Italian Libya |
| Date | 1929–1934 |
| Target | Libyans |
| Deaths | 83,000–125,000+ |
| Perpetrator |  Italian colonial authorities |
The Libyan genocide, also known in Libya as Shar (Arabic: شر, lit. 'Evil'),[1] was the genocide of Eastern Libyans and the destruction of Libyan culture during and after the Second Italo-Senussi War between 1929 and 1934.[2] During this period, between 83,000[3][4] and 125,000[5][6] Libyans were killed by Italian colonial authorities under Benito Mussolini. Over 25% of the population of Cyrenaica had been killed, resulting in a population decline from 225,000 to 142,000 civilians.[3]
This period was marked by a brutal campaign characterized by widespread major Italian war crimes, including ethnic cleansing, mass killings, forced displacement, forced death marches, settler colonialism, the use of chemical weapons, the use of concentration camps, mass executions of civilians and refusing to take prisoners of war and instead executing surrendering combatants.[3] The indigenous population, particularly the nomadic Bedouin tribes, faced extreme violence and suppression in an attempt to quell Senussi resistance to the colonial rule.[2] The Italian military killed half of the Bedouin population of Libya between 1928 and 1932.[7]
The genocide was based on a racist and fascist colonial plan to incite settler colonialism and settle poor Italian peasants in Libya. About 110,000 Libyan civilians were forced to march from their homes to the harsh Libyan desert and were then interned in Italian concentration camps in Libya. Between 60,000 and 70,000 mostly rural people, including women and children, and their 600,000 animals died of diseases and were starved to death.[2]
News about the genocide was heavily suppressed by Fascist Italy, evidence was largely destroyed, making remaining files in Italian concentration camps in Libya difficult to find even after the end of Fascist rule in Italy in 1945. The history that Libyans recorded in their Arabic oral history has remained hidden and unexplored in systematic fashion.[2][1][8] As a result, Italian colonization and atrocities in Ethiopia are better studied and more well known than Libyan cases.[1] It was not until 2008 that Italy apologized for its killing, destruction and repression of the Libyan people during its colonization of Libya, and stated that this was a "complete and moral acknowledgement of the damage inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial era".[9]
Background
During the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911, the Italians were portrayed as the liberators of Libya from Ottoman rule, concurrently concealing any evidence of repression campaigns and massacres during the war, such as the ones following the battle and massacre at Shar al-Shatt. On the other side, the Arabs were described as 'beasts' that needed to be civilized by the Europeans.[10]
Genocide
On 20 June 1930, Italian military officer Pietro Badoglio called for the annihilation of the entire population of Cyrenaica, and wrote to General Rodolfo Graziani: "As for overall strategy, it is necessary to create a significant and clear separation between the controlled population and the rebel formations. I do not hide the significance and seriousness of this measure, which might be the ruin of the subdued population...But now the course has been set, and we must carry it out to the end, even if the entire population of Cyrenaica must perish".[11]
By 1931, more than half of the population of Cyrenaica were confined to 15 Italian concentration camps where many died as result of overcrowding, lack of water, food and medicine. The Italian government experimented poison gas in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol against chemical and biological warfare. Badoglio had the Air Force use chemical warfare against the Bedouin rebels in the desert. This caused the nomadic way of life of the Bedouin to decline. Cyrenaica had a population of about 200,000 in 1911 during the Ottoman period, however it declined to 142,000 by 1931, with 40,000 dead and 20,000 in exile in Egypt.[11] Historian Ilan Pappé estimates that between 1928 and 1932 the Italian military "killed half the Bedouin population (directly or through disease and starvation in camps)."[7] Italian colonial authorities committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly expelling 100,000 Eastern Libyan Bedouins, half the population of Cyrenaica, from their settlements that were given to Italian colonist settlers.[12][13] Less than 40,000 Libyan survivors left Italian refugee camps, following their release in 1934.[14]
References
- ^ a b c Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif (2020-08-06). Genocide in Libya: Shar, a Hidden Colonial History. Routledge. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-000-16936-2.
- ^ a b c d Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif (2023), Kiernan, Ben; Naimark, Norman; Straus, Scott; Lower, Wendy (eds.), "Eurocentrism, Silence and Memory of Genocide in Colonial Libya, 1929–1934", The Cambridge World History of Genocide: Volume 3: Genocide in the Contemporary Era, 1914–2020, The Cambridge World History of Genocide, vol. 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 118–140, ISBN 978-1-108-76711-8, retrieved 2023-12-10
- ^ a b c Duggan, Christopher (2008). The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 497. ISBN 978-0-618-35367-5.
- ^ "Fascist Italy and the forgotten Libyan genocide". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 2023-12-10.
- ^ Shahmoradian, Dr Feridoun Shawn (2022-08-02). Reign of the Essence: Encyclopedia of Critical Thinking. ISBN 978-1-6655-6662-9.
- ^ "Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls". necrometrics.com. Retrieved 2023-12-10.
- ^ a b Ilan Pappé, The Modern Middle East. Routledge, 2005, ISBN 0-415-21409-2, p. 26.
- ^ Kiernan, Ben; Lower, Wendy; Naimark, Norman; Straus, Scott (2023-01-31). The Cambridge World History of Genocide: Volume 3, Genocide in the Contemporary Era, 1914–2020. Cambridge University Press. p. 141. ISBN 978-1-108-80627-5.
- ^ The Report: Libya 2008. Oxford Business Group. 2008. p. 17.
- ^ Aruffo, Alessandro (2007). Storia del Colonialismo Italiano: da Crispi a Mussolini. Rome: DATANEWS Editrice. pp. 48–65. ISBN 978-88-7981-315-0.
- ^ a b De Grand, Alexander (2004). "Mussolini's Follies: Fascism in Its Imperial and Racist Phase, 1935-1940". Contemporary European History. 13 (2): 131-132. ISSN 0960-7773.
- ^ Cardoza, Anthony L. (2006). Benito Mussolini: the first fascist. Pearson Longman. p. 109.
- ^ Bloxham, Donald; Moses, A. Dirk (2010). The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 358
- ^ Aruffo, Alessandro (2007). Storia del Colonialismo Italiano: da Crispi a Mussolini. Rome: DATANEWS Editrice. pp. 48–65. ISBN 978-88-7981-315-0.