Exit the Colonel (5 page)

The history of the Italian experience in Libya remains an object lesson in the futility of outside efforts to occupy and tame the country. Stuck in their coastal bases, the Italians made glacial progress in expanding rule into the hinterlands over the course of the first four years of the formal invasion of Libya. The campaign for Tripoli was a case in point: the push began in November 1911, but months later the Italian forces were only ten miles from where they had started.
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The Fezzan column, led by Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Miani, was sent to take the south, but wound up with hostile tribes encircling them like vultures. By 1915, the invaders had been pushed back to their coastal beachheads at Homs, Misurata, Tajoura, and Tripoli, and were forced to evacuate other posts by sea.

In the wake of the 1918 armistice after World War I, the Italians changed their tactics, leaving troublesome Cyrenaica aside to focus on pacifying the more pliable Tripolitania. General Vincenzo Garioni led a force of seventy thousand men to Libya, bragging that he would take Tripoli “within two months.” He did not succeed. For some time, the western rebels were willing to make concessions just to be left alone, that is,
letting the Italians keep their bases at Homs, Tripoli, and Zwara, and to claim limited authority over surrounding areas, in return for a measure of self-determination for local Libyan communities. The Italians conceded to the Tripolitanians the right to a parliament and Italian citizenship, and offered the same to the people in Cyrenaica in October 1919. Polling themselves through tribal councils, the easterners flatly rejected the Italian offer, saying dismissively they would “only tolerate Italians on the coast.”
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The tenor of the Italian-Libyan relations turned sinister in 1922, with the rise to power of Benito Mussolini (Il Duce), who was described much as Gaddafi would be later—variations on “ruthless buffoon.” Libyan tribal chiefs repeated their demands for self-rule under a Muslim leader. Italy, for its part, said that if the chiefs wanted peace, Italy would collaborate; otherwise she would assert her rights by force.
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Mussolini signaled his intentions by appointing the savage Guiseppe Volpi governor of Libya from 1922 to 1925. Sensing a change in Italian resolve, the people in the various subregions of Libya looked for safety in numbers: the Tripolitanians sent envoys to the Senussi leader and future king, Idris, offering to recognize him as their leader in return for Cyrenaica's assistance in holding off the expected Italian onslaught. In 1922, Idris was declared the emir of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, in absentia. He had left the country for Cairo, where he remained in exile for twenty years.
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Volpi underestimated the Libyan rebellion as the “work of a few troublemakers.”
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Though he was successful in putting down the Tripolitanians, he did not foresee confronting as charismatic a leader as Omar Al Mokhtar in the east. Since 1912, Al Mokhtar, a teacher of the Koran and follower of the Senussi order, had been the undisputed mastermind behind an anti-Italian desert and mountain guerrilla warfare campaign. As a means of increasing pressure on Al Mokhtar, Rudolfo Graziani, vice governor and then governor of Cyrenaica from 1926 to 1934 (aka the “Butcher of the Fezzan”), forcibly relocated nearly a hundred thousand residents of the Jebel Akhdar into concentration camps, then sealed the eastern border with barbed wire to prevent relief supplies from entering through Egypt. Graziani also deployed Eritrean mercenaries against the Libyan resistance—neither the first nor the last use of African mercenaries in a Libyan conflict.

Al Mokhtar was finally captured in an ambush in September 1931 and hanged publicly at Sollouq, at the age of about seventy-three. His last words, “We will never surrender, we win or we die,” became a common rebel refrain during the 2011 uprising. Estimates are that two hundred thousand people,
of a population of less than 1 million (extrapolating from the 1954 census), or nearly a quarter of the Libyan population in 1930, lost their lives as a direct result of Italian policies.
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The relationship between Libya and Italy currently remains contentious. Many modern Libyan writers and intellectuals think the Italians decimated indigenous Libyan culture and blame Italian persecution for xenophobia and an ingrained suspicion of central authority, which permeated Libya's relations with the outside world for decades. Others see in Italian repression the roots of creativity in resistance. Interestingly, one of the few and relatively rich outlets for Libyan cultural expression, a magazine called
Libya Al Mussawara
(
Illustrated Libya
) began as an Italian propaganda tool. The fact the Libyans did not turn on the Italians in the wake of WWII and permitted many of those who wanted to stay to do so, unmolested, has been put forth by Libyans in the wake of the 2011 revolution as evidence of a national capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation.

Large parts of Libya, particularly the eastern regions, were destroyed in World War II. At the center of a bloody back-and-forth battle between Allied and Axis forces, large parts of Benghazi were reduced to rubble. Libya was, as a whole, decimated, disunited, and dirt poor; while Tripoli was basically spared, the eastern cities were destroyed by relentless bombings (Benghazi alone suffered a thousand air raids).
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Not only was the country physically in disarray, the lack of a central (or even effective local) administration was a major impediment to reconstruction: “Until its future had been settled and its temporary military administrations replaced by permanent government, there could be little post-war recovery,” noted one historian.
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If there was a positive side to all the havoc wrought by the colonial powers and the collateral damage of WWII, it was the fact that the war had highlighted Libya's strategic value. Britain and the United States, in particular, wanted to maintain bases in Libya in order to protect vital sea routes leading to the Suez Canal. They found in Libya a small population still uninfected by a growing wave of Arab nationalism and grateful to be rid of the Italians, whom the Allies had forced to cede their former African colonies as part of the Paris Peace Treaties signed in February 1947. At this time, Tripolitanians favored unifying the provinces, while Cyrenaica would
only accept Senussi rule; inhabitants of the far less populated Fezzan (some, at least) preferred French oversight, presumably because it would facilitate commerce with other French territories to the west and south.

In the late 1940s, there was widespread consensus within Libya on the need for eventual independence, national unity, and membership in the Arab League, but strong internal dissent about how best to achieve these ends.
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None of the European powers, each for its own reasons, wanted a united, independent Libya. As of September 1948, the prospective mandatory powers had reached no agreement on Libyan's future. The British and the Italians, in order to ward off a UN decision unfavorable to their interests, drew up in 1949 what became known as the Bevin-Sforza Plan, named for the respective foreign ministers, proposing ten-year trusteeships of each region by its colonial squatter. The French would have the south (Fezzan); and the British, the east (Cyrenaica). Italy would take the western slice of its erstwhile Fourth Shore (Tripolitania). The Libyans were vehemently against the Bevin-Sforza Plan, and the UN dismissed the proposal shortly after it was tabled.

All parties to discussions of independence had grave concerns about how an independent Libya would support itself, as it would immediately join the ranks of the poorest countries in the world: 13 percent of local exports were scrap metal; peanuts, animal hides, and fodder came next. The average annual per capita income was about $25, illiteracy was a staggering 94 percent, and there were virtually no trained local doctors.
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Given that oil had not yet been discovered, the country had one great untapped resource: the latent (that is, underdeveloped) skills of a small population.

In November 1949, the United Nations General Assembly voted that Libya should become an independent, united country within one year. A National Assembly composed of sixty deputies for Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan each was appointed through leaders in July and charged with writing a draft constitution.
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The assembly met for the first time in plenary session in Tripoli on November 25 and spent more than a year debating various models and precedents. The members addressed the thorny issue of the physical seat of government by naming Tripoli, Benghazi, and Sebha (the capital of Fezzan) joint seats of government, with a yearly shuffling of the official capital from one city to another.
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The Federal Kingdom of Libya came into being on December 23, 1951, under the leadership of King Idris, who had returned from Cairo. The new government was a hereditary constitutional monarchy,
with legislative authority vested in a Senate and House of Representatives. In line with this structure, the king nominated a governor for each region, with a group of forty representatives, ten of whom he appointed himself.
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While the process behind Libya's bid for independence was chaotic, Libyans were demonstrably proud that theirs was the first North African country to win its independence. As was the case with other states in the Mediterranean basin—Lebanon was a prime example—Libya benefited from the help of successful émigrés, many of whom returned in the 1950s and 1960s to help rebuild the country. There was a genuine desire, encouraged by optimistic returnees, to modernize Libya and to strengthen cooperation with other Arab countries and the West.

Negotiations with the West over rent for military bases began in 1954. Expecting no further discussion, the United States offered Libya $1 million a year for use of Wheelus Air Base in Tripoli. This was far less than the earlier agreement with the interim British authorities, which had paid $15 million annually.
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US Embassy personnel explained to the Libyans that the prevailing sentiment in Congress was that “host countries” should contribute to the financial burden of defending the free world from Communism. Thus, Libya could rely on congressional “goodwill” in providing development assistance under terms of the Eisenhower Doctrine, which supported countries in staving off Communist influence.
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Prime Minister Mustafa Ben Halim proposed the two countries form a Libyan-American council to oversee the application of this development assistance, in line with the terms of the Eisenhower Doctrine. After receiving no response and noticing that the Egyptians had successfully played the Soviets for assistance in building such structures as the Great Aswan Dam, Ben Halim decided to follow the neighbor's example: “We arranged for rumors to circulate about all kinds of aid from the Soviet Union, and watched as the British and American embassies went into top gear confronting this new situation.”
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This elicited an angry response from the Americans, who chastised the Libyans for making such moves without prior consultation with Washington. Having caught the United States' attention, Ben Halim was able to go ahead with his proposed Libyan-American council, and US aid was forthcoming in larger amounts. Vice President Richard Nixon made an official visit to Libya in March 1957 to ensure that Libya had returned to the right path (i.e., anti-Communist).
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Libyan-American relations improved; from 1953 to 1960, cash transfers amounted to more than $172 million, not including substantial grants of American wheat.
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Centuries of relative poverty and hardscrabble existence and concerns about how an independent Libya would make ends meet were suddenly overturned after the confirmation that this impoverished, underpopulated, and undeveloped country was actually rich in resources. It was as if someone on welfare had just won untold riches in the lottery. Virtually overnight, Libya was transformed from a charity case to a country feted by international companies and their governments.

Commercially viable quantities of oil were confirmed in Libya in 1959.
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Standard Oil (which later became Esso Sirte and then Exxon), along with W.R. Grace and the Libyan-American Oil Company, discovered or developed most of Libya's large fields, including Mabruk and Amal. Esso built the first export terminal at Marsa el Brega (Brega port), from which the first shipment of Libyan crude departed on August 8, 1961. American independents Continental (Conoco), Marathon, Hess, and Bunker Hunt were among twelve American companies awarded sixty concessions in 1957. By 1969, American companies were producing a full 90 percent of Libyan oil.

In the late 1970s, Esso started to train Libya's first generation of scientists, managers, and technocrats, an effort that would have far-reaching consequences for US-Libya relations. Its accelerated training program focused on grooming professionals from the key oil logistics towns of Brega, Ajdabia, Jalo, and Misurata to take over the maintenance and operation jobs initially staffed by Americans. Further, Esso built a local operations training center to extend Libya's capacity to provide its own technical training. By the early 1980s, more than two hundred sixty Libyans had benefited from Esso-backed fellowships for graduate training abroad.
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The new eastern oil economy had immediate significance: it consolidated control within the hands of a new bourgeoisie, based in the east, and it increased the interest of the West in Libya's potential as a
provider of high-quality sweet crude, and as a small but potentially lucrative market for consumables, especially cars and electronics. The oil economy provoked massive migrations of people from rural areas to the city seeking jobs. The discovery of hydrocarbons was a boon for those with connections, but created considerable pain for others, as new immigrants from the countryside competed for a limited number of unskilled job opportunities.