Did Italy pay colonial reparations to Libya?
By ACAS | 18 March 2009
An interesting question posed by Claudia Gazzini on the Middle East Report website:
Under a tent in Benghazi on August 30, 2008, Silvio Berlusconi bowed symbolically before the son of ‘Umar al-Mukhtar, hero of the Libyan resistance to Italian colonial rule. “It is my duty to express to you, in the name of the Italian people, our regret and apologies for the deep wounds that we have caused you,” said the Italian premier.[1] Eastern Libya was the site of the bulk of the armed resistance to the Italian occupation, which lasted from 1911 to 1943. More than 100,000 Libyans are believed to have died in the counterinsurgency campaign, many in desert prison camps and in southern Italian penal colonies. Inside the tent, Berlusconi and Libyan leader Mu‘ammar al-Qaddafi signed a historic agreement according to which Italy will pay $5 billion over the next 20 years, nominally to compensate Libya for these “deep wounds.” The treaty was ratified by Italy on February 3 and by Libya on March 1.
Politicians in both Libya and Italy have often presented the $5 billion as reparations for the harm done to Libya by colonial rule. Qaddafi hailed the treaty as an important historical precedent that proves that “compensation entails condemnation of colonialism regardless of the amount paid.” Yet neither the title nor the text of the treaty mentions the word “reparations.” The text alludes to settlement of colonial-era disputes, but officially the accord is called a “treaty of friendship, partnership and cooperation.”
The treaty was certainly not signed because Italy has suddenly come to terms with its colonial past and desires to make amends. Although the premier has made public noises of atonement for Italy’s colonial past, Italians suffer from a general colonial amnesia and know very little about their country’s adventures in Africa — far less, for instance, than the French know about Algeria. Even the 1981 Anthony Quinn vehicle Lion of the Desert, about Mukhtar’s rebellion, was utterly banned in Italy for many years because, in the government’s words, it was “damaging to the Italian army’s honor.” The original English-language version of the movie has recently been screened at film festivals and seminars, but it has never been dubbed into Italian, and Italian TV stations have yet to broadcast it. The Italian government, for its part, still seems more interested in “turning the page” on the past than in exploring the full extent of the violence perpetrated in North Africa three generations ago. The financial package that Italy and Libya agreed upon would therefore be better understood as the expression of a nexus of interlocking interests: on the Libyan side, Qaddafi’s historical commitment to reparation politics and his quest for moral victory over the country’s former colonizers, and on the Italian side, strategic and economic gain. Berlusconi, with characteristic tact, has openly and repeatedly described the purpose of the treaty as “less illegal immigrants and more oil.”
Be that as it may, Algerian and Egyptian politicians and intellectuals, and a number of activists from sub-Saharan Africa, have proclaimed that their countries should get deals similar to Libya’s for the injustices they suffered at the hands of European colonial powers. These injustices include the killings of civilians during anti-colonial uprisings, the destruction of infrastructure during World Wars I and II, and the distortion of local economies. Members of Algeria’s National Liberation Front hoped that, after the Italian precedent, the European Union would be able to put pressure on France and “get it to make amends for what it did in Algeria.”[5] Ibrahim Salih, former chairman of Egypt’s Court of Cassation, claims that Britain owes Egypt no less than 100 billion pounds ($140 billion). “They [the British] plundered Egypt during World War I to cover the costs of their battles against the Turkish, bought Egyptian high-quality cotton for 20 years at very cheap prices, killed many Egyptians who joined demonstrations against their occupation and manipulated the country’s wealth in violation of democratic rules and human rights,” Salih opined. “Are these crimes not serious enough for England to pay compensation or even offer an apology?” Not surprisingly, the British do not see the parallel: A British diplomat based in Cairo ridiculed the Italian-Libyan agreement as “media propaganda” aimed at appeasing Qaddafi and opening the door for Italian companies to tap the lucrative oil market.
Setting aside the self-interest in this diplomat’s cynical reaction, there are important reasons why the Italian-Libyan treaty is not a model to be emulated.
Read the rest here: http://www.merip.org/mero/mero031609.html