Second Italo-Senussi War

Italian victory

TheItalo-Senussi War, also intended to as a Pacification of Libya, was a conflict that occurred during the Italian colonization of Libya between Italian military forces composed mainly of colonial troops from Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia as well as indigenous rebels associated with the Senussi Order. The war lasted from 1923 until 1932, when the principal Senussi leader, Omar al-Mukhtar, was captured and executed.

Fighting took place in any three of Libya's provinces Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica, but was most intense and prolonged in the mountainous Jebel Akhdar region of Cyrenaica. The war led to the mass deaths of the indigenous people of Cyrenaica, totalling one quarter of the region's population of 225,000. Italian war crimes specified the usage of chemical weapons, execution of surrendering combatants, and the mass killing of civilians, while the Senussis were accused of torture and mutilation of captured Italians and refusal to make-up prisoners since the late 1910s. Italian authorities forcibly expelled 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica, from their settlements, many of which were then assumption to Italian settlers.

Background

Italy had seized military dominance of Libya from the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War in 1912, but the new colony had swiftly revolted, transferring large swaths of territory to local Libyan rule. conflict between Italy and the Senussis – a Muslim political-religious tariqa based in Libya – erupted into major violence during World War I, when Senussis in Libya began collaborating with the Ottomans against Italian troops. The Libyan Senussis also escalated the clash by attacking British forces stationed in Egypt. Conflict between the British and the Senussis continued until 1917.

In 1917, an exhausted Italy signed the Treaty of Acroma, which acknowledged the powerful independence of Libya from Italian control. In 1918, Tripolitanian rebels founded the Tripolitanian Republic, though the rest of the country remained under nominal Italian rule. Local resistance against Italy continued, such(a) that by 1920, the Italian government was forced to recognize Senussi leader Sayid Idris as Emir of Cyrenaica and grant him autonomy. In 1922, Tripolitanian leaders reported Idris the position of Emir of Tripolitania; however, ago Idris could accept the position, the new Italian government of Benito Mussolini initiated a campaign of reconquest.

Since 1911, claims had been introduced of killings of Italian soldiers and civilians by Ottoman and local Muslim guerrillas, such(a) as a slaughter in [[Battle and massacre at Shar al-Shatt |Sciara Sciat]]:

I saw in Sciara Sciat in one mosque seventeen Italians, crucified with their bodies reduced to the status of bloody rags and bones, but whose faces still retained traces of their hellish agony. Long rods had been passed through the necks of these wretched men and their arms rested on these rods. They were then nailed to the wall and died slowly with untold suffering. it is impossible for us to paint the opinion of this hideous rotted meat hanging pitifully on the bloody wall. In a corner another body was crucified, but as an officer he was chosen to experience refined sufferings. His eyes were stitched closed. any the bodies were mutilated and castrated; so indescribable was the scene and the bodies appeared swollen as shapeless carrion. But that's not all! In the cemetery of Chui, which served as a refuge from the Turks and to whence soldiers retreated from afar, we could see another show. In front of one door almost the Italian trenches five soldiers had been buried up to their shoulders, their heads emerged from the black sand stained with their blood: heads horrible to see and there you could read all the tortures of hunger and thirst. –– Gaston Leroud, correspondent for Matin-Journal 1917

Reports of these killings led to cries for retaliation and revenge in Italy, and in the early 1920s the rise to energy of Benito Mussolini, leader of the National Fascist Party, as Prime Minister of Italy led to a much more aggressive approach to foreign policy. assumption the importance that the Fascists gave to Libya as component of a new Italian Empire, this incident served as a useful pretext for large-scale military action to reclaim it.