Review: Genocide in Libya: Shar, A Hidden Colonial History, by Ali Abdullatif Ahmida

Abstract

This book is the work of a Libyan-American scholar who spent fifteen years researching the history of Italian colonial concentration camps (Mu’taqalat) in Libya between 1929 and 1934. Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, who teaches political science at the University of New England in the United States, based his methods of inquiry on local culture and values as well as archives and survivors’ first-hand accounts. According to the evidence that Ahmida was able to collect in his fieldwork and archival research, Fascist Italian colonizers subjected Libyans to all kinds of maltreatment, war crimes, starvation, deportations, displacement, concentration camps and murder. More than 110,000 Libyans, who inhabited the eastern part of the country, were interned in sixteen concentration camps and, by 1934, only 40,000 had survived the ordeal. The Fascists committed all sorts of criminal practices to quell nationalist resistance and resorted to widespread executions while the unfortunate Libyans who remained faced deportations, starvation, and disease, and then further rounds of executions.While attempting to challenge colonial and nationalist assumptions related to the understanding of the history of Libya, the author reveals how Libyans were subjected to Italian repression that culminated in genocide. Three issues or questions guide this book and the research behind it: how the Italian state hid and covered up the story of this genocide; how the recovery of the accounts of the survivors of this genocide can break the silence, and what both collective amnesia and living history can tell us about Libya and Italy and inform us about the larger meaning of the post-genocide world today. (4)The author sets an even wider goal for his research, which is understanding the history of genocide in Libya, Italy, and elsewhere, and exposing those who were behind the policy of racial genocide and the silence that followed it, making Italian Fascism appear less evil or more moderate compared with that of Nazi Germany. In fact, as we read further, we discover that Nazi Germany learned lessons from the effectiveness of the brutality of the Italians in Libya.The book comprises an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion, and is organized in a manner in which each chapter builds on the previous one, and in addition applies a multidisciplinary approach to the reading and interpretation of oral narratives, culture, and language. The introduction sets forth the extent of the brutality of Italy in Libya and gives an overview of the story of the book itself and how its idea evolved and was eventually realized after more than fifteen years of intensive research. The introduction engages with the theoretical and methodological literature and provides a critique that aspires to establish a new paradigm in relevant fields of scholarship by putting the global context in dialogue with the local one. The author also makes his critical contribution to orientalist and Eurocentric approaches, and argues that history has to be seen bottom up and not entirely confined to state centrism.Chapter 1, “Where are the Survivors?: The Politics of Missing Archives and Fieldwork,” offers historical background information to contextualize how Libyans resisted Italian colonization. It also provides a critical review of the existing accounts of Italian Fascism and the sensitive issue of genocide and silence. Visiting the location of the camps in Libya where genocide took place was significant and revealing as the author gives an illuminating description of them, supplementing it with numerous pictures throughout the book. The chapter deals with the missing colonial archival files related to the concentration camps. The Italian official archives, despite their significance, proved less useful given the instances of setbacks and denied access. But the author had better luck with British and American archives, which were particularly instrumental in shedding light on the internment and brutality of the Italian Fascists. Egyptian and Tunisian archives were also useful, especially in providing information related to Italian policies and the thousands of Libyans who sought refuge in these two countries. However, the bulk of the fieldwork was conducted in Libya where the author interviewed survivors and their families, and had access to Libyan archives, including the private libraries of certain families as well as university libraries, which helped to consolidate the study and analysis. The author examines the different sources dealing with anti-colonial resistance of eastern Libya through a critical analysis of public and private archives in various locations and in different languages. Throughout the chapter, the author makes use of oral history, recording and documenting the accounts told by survivors or victims of the Italian genocide and their families.Chapter 2, “Eurocentrism, Silence and Memory of Genocide,” reveals the scholarly skills and contribution of the author to the field of colonial history and genocide. The author examines and challenges Italian Eurocentric and colonial historical works that have until fairly recently presented Italian Fascism as benign in nature and as such would seem unlikely to have committed crimes such as genocide in Libya. The author argues that countering such biased Eurocentric scholarship is necessary in order that a comparative examination of the issue is possible. The acquiescence to this silence and the silencing of history and the voices of the victims as well as critical scholarship only contribute to bypassing moral responsibilities. Conversely confronting it can provide a voice for those who have been unjustly forgotten, not only in Libya but also in other places such as Algeria, Cambodia, Haiti, Congo, etc. The first moral and political responsibility of Italy and others is to open their archives so that the truth may be revealed.After a critical review of the existing literature and scholarship, Ahmida provides some background to the change of Italian policy in Libya that had existed from 1911 to the start of the Fascist era in 1922, which culminated in genocide. However, the author is aware that Italian colonial policies of removal, deportation, displacement, internment, and killing were not the monopoly of the Fascists alone. Highlighting the fact that colonial archives are still restricted and/or destroyed, the rest of the chapter details the policies of the Italian government and provides a background to the concentration camps as an official policy to pacify Libyans’ resistance. The author makes a worthwhile effort to unveil facts about this policy and its consequences based on the oral history and legacy of Libyan folk poetry. Describing the camps, the life in them, deportation, and its agonies, the predicament of the Libyans in the camps and their suffering, including lack of food and clothes, and forced labor, Ahmida paints a living picture of the concentration camps and the suffering of those imprisoned inside them. Translating excerpts of several poems makes the reader realize the reality of the painful experience. For someone who reads and understands the Libyan dialect, it is really difficult not to shed a tear. Here Ahmida’s use of poetry that narrates the genocide and its catastrophic consequences, especially in eastern Libya, really does capture what the term “Shar” exemplifies.“We Died because of Shar, Evil my Son.” This quotation, comprising the title of chapter 3, tells the story of death and trauma as told by one survivor of the concentration camps and in poets describing the life of Libyans exiled and imprisoned in southern Italy. The author provides the evidence for Italian genocide in Libya through an extensive presentation and analyses of oral narratives and poetry produced by survivors. The examples the chapter presents are testimonies of the experiences of forced deportations and internments in concentration camps, traversing gender, class, and age of the survivors. The author provides real-time stories as told by survivors and their families, supported by poetry and folk stories on all aspects of Italian colonization and the inhuman treatment of Libyans. This includes the deportation of people, but also the destruction of livestock, its confiscation, massacres, and starvation. One really heart-breaking part of the story relates to how people in the concentration camps suffered daily at the hands of Italian soldiers and how they prevented them accessing any food or water. The horrific reality is no more clear than in a long, epic poem with the title, “I Have No Illness but This Place of Agaila” (the area where one concentration camp was erected). This poem by a local during the period is well known in Libya and it paints a picture of the camps and “life” inside. It is an eloquent masterpiece showing the suffering, emotion, and pain of the Italian genocide.In the appendices, Ahmida provides a translation (by Libyan-American poet Khaled Mattawa) of a famous Libyan poem by Rajab Buhwaish, which eloquently describes life in the concentration camps. Here are some excerpts: I have no illness but this place of Agila, the imprisonment of my tribe and separation from my kin’s abode.No illness but endless grief meagre provisions and the loss of my black red-spotted steed who, when strife broke, stretched her solid flesh neck, impossible to describe, her peer does not exist.I have no illness but the raining of spears, best of friends who keep on striking as bullets whiz past.I have no illness but the loss of good men and all our possessions and the incarnation of our women and children.Nothing ails me except the beating of women whipping them naked not an hour are they left in peace. Not even a shred of regard for them, calling them “Whores” and other foulness, an affliction to the well-bred. No illness except the saying of “Beat them,” “No pardon” and “With the sword extract their labour.This combination of internment, starvation, the death of tens of thousands, and the subsequent trauma are really what the word Shar in the Libyan dialect conveys. But this Shar is even more evil than we normally assume, and Ahmida’s brilliant use of oral history and poetry reveals this and the hidden history of ordinary people told from a transgenerational perspective of cultural history bottom up rather than from the dominant state history.Having established that genocide was a historical fact that should be acknowledged and studied in a comparative global approach that allows for the Libyan case to impact the study of genocide, especially the Holocaust, the author in chapter 4, titled “After the Genocide,” shifts to the present and provides an analysis of what he calls the history of the present, that is, after the genocide. He focuses on real stories of what happened to survivors and the aftermath of colonialism and independence in Libya in 1951. The author analyses Libyan university students’ views about the genocide, and how the genocide has been represented by Italian, British, and US discourse in official and hidden histories. He also examines the content of a BBC film on Fascism and its legacy, in addition to coverage in both The New York Times and National Geographic magazine.In chapter 5, titled “Postscript,” the author examines existing Western theoretical approaches to the study of the Holocaust, such as those of Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Giorgio Agamben, who, according to the author, ignored colonialism and capitalism and were silent about the Libyan case. The author attempts to make his own contribution that aspires to alter the course of scholarship to encompass the Libyan case of genocide, thus widening Eurocentric Holocaust studies to become truly international. The chapter examines the developments in Libyan politics and analyzes their relation to the uprising in 2011. While this falls within the overall objectives of the book and its inquiry, it somehow departs from the main topic of the previous discussion. Here the author provides a portrait of the origins and politics of the modern Libyan state and how it evolved since independence, the monarchy, and the Gaddafi era. It discusses its fortunes at different phases based on the nature of the political regime, but also in relation to the politics of independence and its origins. This is used to shed light on the crisis that followed the 2011 uprisings within the context of the so-called Arab Spring where, as the author alludes, the Libyan state collapsed. This appears somehow irrelevant to the book and its main topic even though it falls within the author’s aim of a wider analysis that uses the case of genocide in Libya to argue for the need for a paradigm shift in studies of its history. Nevertheless, the discussion of the origins of the Libyan state and its developments is well-suited to the call for scholarship that values local history, language, and culture to overcome the failings of area studies in dealing with the postcolonial state and helps to decolonize knowledge as well.In the conclusion, titled “Towards a Paradigm Shift, Decentering Italian Fascism and Genocide Studies,” the author again poses the main questions that drove the research itself. Therefore, the content is an interesting discussion and analysis of Eurocentrism and issues relevant to how genocide should be approached. The author’s main thrust is to refute the long-held view about Italian Fascism and the attempt to conceal Italy’s colonial crimes. The main conclusion is that a new paradigm is needed to put the genocide in Libya and elsewhere in an appropriate perspective that refutes its consideration as solely European phenomena. The author concludes by calling for a re-examination of the Holocaust in light of the Libyan experience where genocide actually took place at least ten years earlier, as evidence presented in this book suggests, and shows how the Nazis took an interest in the Italian genocide in Libya. Ahmida unveils historical evidence about the connection between the Italian genocide in Libya and the Nazi Holocaust. The author uncovers that before World War II, three Nazi German generals, including Hermann Goering, a major figure in the Nazi leadership, responsible for concentration camps, were sent to Libya to “learn from the efficiency of the Italian colonial model in Libya” (120), namely how the Italians were successful in “removing the native population and emptying eastern Libya as a model for the Nazis’ future plan in Europe” (10).Despite the limited appreciation of oral history in mainstream academic histography, Ahmida has been one of the pioneers of the methodological use of oral traditions. This is the dominant feature in all his published books and articles, especially those devoted to Libya’s history, civil society, state formation, and Italian colonization. Oral histories have been considered as a low-quality source of producing and transmitting knowledge, but Ahmida has long endeavored to award Libyans’ oral history and its different levels of narrative a unique place that fills the gap in scholarship on his own country, but also addresses the need to incorporate local knowledge and narratives in history of all peoples. This attempt becomes even more significant when it encounters orientalist biases and vows to open the long-closed doors on crimes committed during colonial eras mounting to genocide. By doing this, Ahmida has uncovered evidence about the genocide in Libya which reveals that the silence in Western scholarship is a further reflection of Euro/Western centrism, and orientalism supported, albeit indirectly, by the rise in neo-Fascist or radical right-wing movements throughout Europe.The documentation and first-hand accounts that Ahmida provides are a confirmation of colonial crimes, but this revelation may not be enough to establish this historical fact, but it is enough to counter another aspect of this silenced history. The book does not tackle the delicate issue of how these crimes were not separate incidents but actually were part of the institutions of colonialism. This is important in realizing the decolonization of knowledge, but it is also important for Libyans because some voices are becoming so apologetic in defense of the so-called Italian achievements in Libya, so much so that the Fascist Italian Governor of Libya, General Italo Balbo, is seen as a founder of modern Libya. Therefore, the genocide and other criminal policies must be linked to other ordinary practices or impressive architecture, urban planning, structures, and institutions such as schools and other services that while appearing to compensate the locals were, in fact, to serve the colonizers. This will further help eradicate any illusions about the niceties of Italian colonization and the glorification of colonialism and counter the so-called Italiani brava gente (Italians are good and could not have committed such atrocities as genocide or use poison gas, thus reflecting another cultural level in addition to historiographical silence).These criminal practices went beyond the “normal/ordinary’ colonial needs of pacifying resistance to reveal the use of atrocities to make Libyans submissive subjects. Therefore, Libya should not be considered an example of good colonialism and modernization of an otherwise backward and tribal Muslim society, but an example where power and knowledge are inextricably linked. Here the term Shar, which is part of the book’s subtitle (“evil” in Arabic but also indicating starvation and death), may not suffice to reflect the traumatic horrors of genocide, imperialism, concentration camps, dispossession, deportation, displacement, and barbaric war that the Libyans faced at the hands of the Italian colonizers.Thus, the book calls for a new approach to counter the myths created by area studies and argues for the need for a paradigm shift, particularly in as far as genocide studies are concerned, in order to move beyond the limitations imposed by Eurocentrism. Therefore, the book is not confined to revelations and oral history about genocide in Libya, but a sincere call, supported by sound historical evidence and argument, to abandon the position that has for so long considered genocide only a matter for Europe and the Holocaust and take its study further to a global perspective. Moreover, the book marks a significant shift in that it places Holocaust studies well into literature and historical research in Arabic and moves beyond the hitherto limited and somehow ideological view considering Holocaust studies a matter of no interest for Arab scholars. Now that this book confirms that genocide was inflicted upon Libyans by the Fascists, the Holocaust becomes an even more a global phenomenon wherein there is a need for its reconsideration beyond Eurocentrism.