The Strategy of the Green Mountains

In the previous article we followed the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish war in September 1911 and the first phase of the Cyrenaican Senussi Bedouin resistance, in which Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ brought the local Bedouin tribes together for a common defense against the Italian advance inland from Benghazi. We saw how the Ottoman peace treaty of Ouchy in October 1912 forced the Senussi brotherhood to determine its position anew, and how it resolved to continue the anti-colonial resistance, now on its own authority. This article follows the years between 1913 and 1923: the building up of the resistance under the Italian colonial stabilization, the First World War and its consequences for Cyrenaica, and the rise of the guerrilla strategy in the Jebel Akhdar that would reach its mature form under the leadership of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀.

The years between 1913 and 1915

Cyrenaica after 1912

After the peace treaty of Ouchy every Cyrenaican community stood before the same question: what to do under an Italian sovereignty that was already settled on paper. Among the Bedouin tribes this was deliberated at length, and three roads lay open: submission to Italian authority, emigration to Egypt or to the southern Saharan zone, or continuation of the armed resistance under the leadership of the Senussi brotherhood. The great majority of the tribes chose the third road, and that choice bound the Cyrenaican community to the leadership of the Senussi brotherhood.

On that decision Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ would be able to rest his whole building up of the resistance years later, when the supreme military command was entrusted to him.

In the years immediately after Ouchy, Italy enlarged its occupied territory while the resistance held on. Tobruk fell on 4 and 5 October 1911, Derna between 16 and 18 October of that same year, and after that the Italian line pushed step by step inland into the Jebel Akhdar. The Senussi Bedouin forces, under the leadership of Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ and with Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ as local commander, held that advance back to a considerable degree with sustained guerrilla operations against the Italian positions.

For the Cyrenaican Bedouin population these were years of hardship and uncertainty, in which the conditions of war disrupted the pastoral economy they lived by and losses fell in the fighting with the Italian troops. Yet morale held, for the local networks of Senussi zawiyas took in the families that the wartime struck hardest.

The First World War

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 touched Cyrenaica keenly. Italy stayed neutral at first, joined the Allied side against the Central Powers in May 1915, and thereby shifted a considerable part of its military attention from Libya to the European fronts. The Ottoman Empire, which had been fighting alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary since November 1914, sought an approach to the Senussi brotherhood in 1915 for a joint undertaking against the Italians and against the British in Egypt.

Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ accepted that invitation, and in 1915 the brotherhood invaded western Egypt together with Ottoman officers. In its first phase the campaign yielded several Senussi victories, but it ended in defeat against the British troops at the Battle of Aqaqir in February 1916. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ it was a strategic schooling, in which he could observe the wider consequences of an undertaking that involved the whole brotherhood.

The transition to Idris al-Sanusi

In 1918 Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ handed the supreme leadership of the Senussi brotherhood to his cousin Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀. Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif ﵀ left Libya for a spiritual seclusion in Ottoman territory, and he died in 1933 in Medina, at the close of a spiritual and political activity that had played itself out in an international setting. Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀ had been born on 12 March 1889 and was therefore about twenty-nine years old in 1918; he took the supreme leadership upon himself and opened diplomatic negotiations with the Italian authorities about a possible peaceful outcome for Cyrenaica.

Between 1919 and 1922 the talks between Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀ and the Italian colonial authorities produced several accords, in which the brotherhood received a form of internal autonomy in the Jebel Akhdar zone in return for a nominal recognition of Italian sovereignty. The Treaty of Regima of 1920 and the Treaty of Bu Maryam of 1921 fixed that relation: internal Senussi rule under nominal Italian suzerainty. What came of it was a peaceful coexistence that granted the Cyrenaican Bedouin population some rest after the long years of war.

The construction of forts

In the years of Italian colonial stabilization, between 1913 and 1922, a net of Italian forts and logistical posts rose in the Jebel Akhdar zone, at strategically chosen places, with stone walls, with an armament of cannons and machine guns, and with provisions for the troops who were to be stationed there. For the resistance that Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ saw approaching, that was the strategic problem for which he had to develop tactics.

He studied the Italian building technique, had himself informed by local informants about the structure of each separate fort, and designed from that a method of attack for the operations that would follow. The line was that the Cyrenaican fighters would not attack the fort walls directly, but would cut the garrisons off from their supplies and from their support.

The role of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in these years

The diplomatic years were for Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ years of spiritual and administrative work, with little armed action. He administered the Senussi zawiyas in his sphere of influence, he maintained the ties with the local Bedouin tribes, and he consulted Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀ about the future of the Senussi work under the changed political circumstances.

His skepticism about Italian intentions did not disappear in the process, and by his own judgment a resumption of the resistance was inescapable. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ prepared for it in silence: in these years he travelled repeatedly through the local Bedouin communities to consult about the shape a renewed common defense might take, and he bought weapons through the networks of the Senussi brotherhood.

The exiles in Egypt

Between 1913 and 1923 a steady stream of Cyrenaican Senussi family members and followers moved to Egypt, by which the resistance could anchor itself outside the colony as well. Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀ stayed there repeatedly for his diplomatic work, and the exiles settled in Alexandria, in Cairo and in a few large groups in the Egyptian western desert zone. From them came what the resistance needed on the other side of the border: logistical support, contact with Muslim communities elsewhere in the world, and weapons acquired through Egyptian intermediary traders.

In Cairo Sayyid Muhammad Idris ﵀ built up a political presence, and he pleaded with the British colonial authorities in Egypt for the international recognition of a Cyrenaican Muslim state. The British authorities handled this warily, for their own colonial strategy required an intensive diplomatic traffic with Italy, so that they had to avoid open support for an opponent of the Italian colonial power.

The Fascist era

In October 1922 Benito Mussolini acquired the Italian premiership by way of the so-called March on Rome, and with that Italian colonial policy in Libya took a harder turn. Mussolini and his Fascist movement renewed in their propaganda the claim to Libya as the Fourth Shore, and they rejected the peaceful coexistence of the preceding years in favor of a resumed colonial subjugation. In 1923 the Italian authorities formally repudiated the accords with the Senussi brotherhood, and they began to prepare the armed confrontation.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ that reversal meant that his years of preparation now had to be carried out. In 1923 he received from Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀, who in these months withdrew to Egypt in order to awaken international attention for Cyrenaica by diplomatic means, the formal appointment as overall military leader of the Cyrenaican resistance. He was by then sixty-five years old, physically still vigorous despite his age, and in his spiritual and administrative formation fully equipped for the command.

The internal organization of the adwar

The adwar units were set up so that the existing cohesion of the Bedouin tribe was at the same time the cohesion of the unit. Each adwar was composed of fighters from a single tribal affiliation, so that the internal bond of the tribe worked directly to the benefit of the unit. The sub-commander came from an aristocratic layer of the tribe and was appointed by Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally, after consultation with the tribal shaykhs.

Every week each adwar gathered at remote places in the Jebel Akhdar, where the military planning could be discussed in safety. Under its sub-commander the unit carried out its tactical preparation there: reconnaissance among themselves, storage of weapons and ammunition in secret cave complexes, and joint training in the Cyrenaican guerrilla tactics. On this organization the guerrilla struggle would be able to rest for eight years.

The Jebel Akhdar as foundation

The Jebel Akhdar zone is a plateau of several hundred meters in height, with densely wooded slopes on its northern side, with wide pasture lands in its higher parts, with numerous smaller mountain valleys that offered outstanding defensive positions, and with water sources woven into the life of the local Bedouin population; that landscape was the natural base on which the resistance could be built. The Italian troops were fitted out, in their armament and in their organization, for the coastline and for flat fighting terrain, and they met difficulties in the Jebel Akhdar in their advance, so that the mountain country became the defensive zone from which the Cyrenaican guerrilla fighters operated.

The Italian colonial doctrine under Mussolini

The Italian colonial doctrine under Mussolini was a mixture of Fascist ideology and practical power politics. The reconquest of Libya was to be a national prestige undertaking in which Italian colonial power would be visibly demonstrated, and the colonial convention of step-by-step pacification gave way in the process to a military subjugation without regard for the local communities.

The resistance had to adjust itself to that new course. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ recognized the changed shape of his opponent and discussed with his naib leaders which adaptations the guerrilla strategy needed against the harder Italian course.

The guerrilla strategy

In the course of 1923 and early 1924 Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ completed the guerrilla strategy with which the Cyrenaican resistance would be conducted under his leadership. It rested on a number of fundamental elements that would remain recognizable over the seven years that followed.

First, the organization of the resistance in so-called adwar, small guerrilla units of several dozen to several hundred men each, which operated independently but stood under a shared coordination. Second, the hit-and-run tactic, in which the Cyrenaican fighters attacked an Italian position, inflicted losses on it and withdrew into the mountain valleys before the Italian main force could move to retaliation.

Third, the bond between the armed fighters and the Bedouin population, which supported them with food, with hiding places and with intelligence. Fourth, their mobility, which carried them in and out of the Sahara, with the Egyptian border as a resting place where the Italian troops could not move freely. And fifth, the bond with the networks of the Senussi zawiyas, which carried the logistical support of the resistance.

The financing of the resistance

The principal sources of money for the Cyrenaican resistance were the zakat contributions that the local Bedouin communities rendered to the Senussi brotherhood, the donations of Cyrenaican exiles in Egypt and of Muslim communities elsewhere that supported the cause, the payments for the arms supply, which were carried by the existing economic structures of the brotherhood, and the spoils taken at the Italian positions.

Without that financial base the struggle could not have been sustained so long. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ accordingly devoted much attention to it, and he managed the available means with an administrative prudence calculated on a struggle of years.

The adwar in practice

Each adwar stood under a sub-commander personally answerable to Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, and it was precisely that arrangement which made it possible to carry out the strategic line everywhere at once without ever entering the pitched battle in which the Italian firepower would come fully into its own. The shared line was worked out in regular meetings at remote places in the Jebel Akhdar, where Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ discussed the strategy with his sub-commanders and issued instructions for the operations ahead.

In the first years of its execution, between 1923 and 1927, the strategy proved successful. The Italian troops, for all their armament, could not keep up with the Cyrenaican Bedouin in mobility, and they suffered loss after loss in a chain of smaller engagements that slowly wore the colonial occupation down. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally these were the years in which his strategic thinking translated itself into results.

The role of the local women

One part of the Cyrenaican resistance that has only slowly received in modern historiography the attention it deserves is the role of the local Bedouin women in supporting the armed fighters. They prepared the stores of barley breads and dried dates that the fighters could carry with them on their movements through the Saharan zone, they kept weapons and ammunition among the household stores, and they passed the reports of Italian troop movements on to the units in the field.

Without that support the armed struggle could not have been waged, and Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ acknowledged this fundamental role. He gave his naib leaders repeated instructions laying down the protection of the Bedouin women, he spoke in his Friday sermons about their spiritual worth in the community, and he urged the Bedouin men to care and protection for their female family members.

Spiritual discipline in wartime

Alongside the military side, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ held his fighters to a strict spiritual discipline. All five of the daily prayers had to be performed in congregation under every circumstance, every fighter had to carry out the Senussi wird daily for himself, the Ramadan fast was maintained even under the conditions of an active campaign, and the Quran recitation went on at the evening gatherings of the adwar units.

That discipline gave the Cyrenaican fighters the moral steadfastness on which the resistance could sustain its long duration. For the Italian observers who studied them in their daily conduct it was an unexpected phenomenon, one that damaged their own colonial analysis of the opponent.

The weekly Friday sermons

The guerrilla work did not interrupt the weekly Friday sermon. Whenever the fighters were gathered for an operational rest at remote places in the Jebel Akhdar, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ addressed them on the spiritual side of the operations that lay ahead.

The sermons that Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ delivered there continued the tradition of Senussi preaching. He spoke about the responsibility of the Muslim in the face of colonial domination, he gave on the basis of the Maliki fiqh the juridical justification for the operations, and he urged his hearers to steadfastness.

The logistics of the resistance

The logistical organization of the resistance under Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ put the economic self-reliance of the Senussi tradition into practice. He laid supply chains through the Jebel Akhdar zone, to which the local Bedouin communities delivered their contributions, and he organized the arms deliveries through Egyptian intermediary traders, who kept getting through despite the Italian attempts to blockade the Egyptian border.

Without that logistics the resistance would have had to give up exhausted within a few months. That it held its ground for eight years between 1923 and 1931 is the proof of what Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ had set up here.

The Trans-Saharan routes

The Trans-Saharan routes between Cyrenaica and the wider international Muslim community became of great importance to the resistance in these years. Through Kufra in the southern Cyrenaican Saharan zone, and through additional posts in Wadai and in Chad, the Senussi zawiyas kept the connection with international Muslim support open. The Italian colonial authorities repeatedly undertook attempts to cut those routes, and with the capture of Kufra in 1931 that connection would in the end be damaged.

Toward the Battle of Bir Bilal

In this article we have followed the years between 1913 and 1923: the development of the Cyrenaican resistance, the First World War and its consequences for the Senussi undertaking in Egypt, the passing of the supreme leadership to Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀, the peaceful accords of 1920 and 1921, and the renewed Italian colonial pressure under Mussolini from 1922 onward. We saw how Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ was appointed overall military leader of the Cyrenaican resistance in 1923 and how in the months that followed the guerrilla strategy of the adwar took its form. To one of the most remarkable engagements of this phase of the resistance, the Battle of Bir Bilal in 1923, the following article devotes its attention.

Sources

• E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Clarendon Press (1949), pp. 148–214.
• Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya, State University of New York Press (2009), pp. 198–248.
• Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia, vol. 2: Dal fascismo a Gheddafi, Mondadori (1988), pp. 14–86.
• Anna Baldinetti, The Origins of the Libyan Nation, Routledge (2010), pp. 214–268.
• Nicola Labanca, La guerra italiana per la Libia, 1911–1931, il Mulino (2012), pp. 124–198.
• Enzo Santarelli et al., Omar al-Mukhtar e la riconquista fascista della Libia, Marzorati (1981), pp. 268–334.
• Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, Princeton University Press (1986), pp. 168–214.
• Habib Wadaa al-Hesnawi, Fascist Colonial Policies Toward the Arabic-Speaking Inhabitants of Libya, 1911–1943, Garash al-Habayyib (1988), pp. 56–124 [in Arabic with English summary].