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 with the participation of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, with his work in the coordination and gathering of the local Bedouin tribes for the common defense against the Italian advance inland from Benghazi. We saw how the Ottoman peace treaty concluded at Ouchy in October 1912 placed the Senussi brotherhood before a strategic reorientation of its position, and how the general continuation of the anti-colonial resistance under the independent leadership of the Senussi brotherhood itself was then formulated. This article follows the course of the years between 1913 and 1923, with the gradual building up of the resistance under the Italian colonial stabilization, with the First World War and its consequences for the Cyrenaican situation, and with the gradual rise of the specific guerrilla strategy in the Jebel Akhdar that would be brought to its full form under Umar al-Mukhtar’s ﵀ general leadership.

The years between 1913 and 1915

The general Cyrenaican situation after 1912

After the Ottoman peace treaty of Ouchy, an extensive process of adjustment unfolded in the general Cyrenaican situation, in which the local Muslim communities had to formulate their coming position under Italian colonial sovereignty. The ordinary Cyrenaican Bedouin tribes conducted several extensive internal deliberations, in which the coming choice between submission to Italian authority, emigration to Egypt or to the southern Saharan zone, and continuation of the armed resistance under the leadership of the Senussi brotherhood was discussed at length and in depth. The great majority of the local tribes chose the continuation of the armed resistance, in a common choice that ultimately bound the Cyrenaican community to the general leadership of the Senussi brotherhood.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his coming role as general military leader, these local deliberations ultimately provided the extensive bed on which his coming building up of the general resistance in a communal form would be constructed.

In the years immediately after the Treaty of Ouchy, a gradual Italian colonial expansion unfolded in Cyrenaica, combined with a persistent Cyrenaican resistance. Italy carried out in the course of these years an expansion of its occupied territory, with the capture of the neighboring cities of Derna in November 1911 and Tobruk in 1912, and with the gradual expansion inland into the Jebel Akhdar in the years that followed. The Cyrenaican Senussi Bedouin forces, under the general leadership of Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ and with Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in a central position of local leadership, conducted persistent guerrilla operations against the Italian positions, operations that held back the Italian expansion to a very considerable degree.

For the ordinary Cyrenaican Bedouin population, these years meant a condition of hardship and uncertainty, with gradual and growing disruptions of its traditional pastoral economy through the persistent circumstances of war and with losses in the common armed exchanges with the Italian troops. But the common morale of the resistance was maintained, and the local networks of Senussi zawiyas carried out, in an organized form, a support of the ordinary Bedouin families in the difficult circumstances of wartime.

The First World War

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 had far-reaching and lasting consequences for the Cyrenaican situation. Italy, which remained neutral at the beginning of the war, joined the Allied side against the Central Powers in May 1915, and in these years it shifted a considerable part of its military attention from Libya to the European fronts. The Ottoman Empire, which had taken part in the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary since November 1914, conducted in 1915 an exchange with the Senussi brotherhood of proposals for a renewed common undertaking against the Italians and against the British in Egypt.

Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ accepted, in a strategic decision, the Ottoman invitation to a common undertaking, and in 1915 the Senussi brotherhood, in a common form with Ottoman officers, carried out an invasion of western Egypt. The campaign produced several Senussi victories in its first phase, but it ultimately ended in a defeat against the British troops in the Battle of Aqaqir in February 1916. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his Cyrenaican position, this Egyptian expansion meant a strategic experience in which he could gradually observe at close hand the broader implications of a general Senussi undertaking.

The transition to Idris al-Sanusi

In 1918 a transition in the supreme leadership took place within the Senussi brotherhood, in which Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi ﵀ gradually transferred his position 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, after a spiritual and political activity that had unfolded in an international setting. Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀, twenty-seven years old in 1918, exercised in his new position the general supreme leadership of the Senussi brotherhood, and he conducted extended diplomatic negotiations with the Italian authorities about a possible peaceful outcome of the Cyrenaican situation.

In the years between 1919 and 1922, several accords were reached in the exchange between Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀ and the Italian colonial authorities, in which the Senussi 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, with their provisions of internal Senussi autonomy under nominal Italian suzerainty, ultimately formed a gradual peaceful coexistence that granted the Cyrenaican Bedouin population a measure of rest after the long years of wartime circumstances.

The construction of forts

In the course of the Italian colonial stabilization between 1913 and 1922, the extensive construction of Italian forts and logistical posts unfolded in the Cyrenaican Jebel Akhdar zone. The forts were constructed at strategically chosen places, with extensive stone walls, with an armament of cannons and machine guns, and with logistical provisions for the coming Italian troops. For the coming form of the resistance under Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, this gradual construction of forts ultimately formed an extensive strategic challenge for which he was obliged to develop tactics.

He carried out several extensive observations of the Italian fort-building techniques, he acquired through local informants an extensive knowledge of the specific structure of each fort, and he developed specific guerrilla tactics in which the coming attacks on Italian forts were prepared in a thoroughly prepared form. The general line of these tactics held that the Cyrenaican fighters would not attack the fort walls directly, but that they would cut off the fort garrisons, in a form of extensive isolation, from their supplies and from their extensive support.

The role of Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in these years

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his Cyrenaican position, these diplomatic developments meant a period of gradual spiritual and administrative activity, in a much diminished degree of active armed resistance. He conducted the administrative affairs of the Senussi zawiyas in his sphere of influence, he maintained close ties with the local Bedouin tribes, and he undertook exchanges with Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀ about the future of the Senussi work in the changed political circumstances.

But in his personal spiritual attitude, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ retained a skepticism about the coming Italian intentions, and he carried out a gradual preparation for the coming renewal of the resistance, which in his own personal judgment he regarded as inescapable. In these years he repeatedly undertook journeys through the local Bedouin communities for consultation meetings about the coming form of a possible renewed common defense, and as part of this preparation he carried out purchases of weapons through the ordinary networks of the Senussi brotherhood.

The character of the exiles in Egypt

In the years between 1913 and 1923, a gradual migration of Cyrenaican Senussi family members and followers toward Egypt unfolded, in a development that ultimately placed the resistance in an extensive international bed. Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀ stayed repeatedly in Egypt in the course of his diplomatic activity, and extensive groups of Cyrenaican exiles settled in Alexandria, in Cairo and in several extensive groups in the Egyptian western desert zone. For the general continuation of the resistance, these exiles ultimately formed an extensive bed in which logistical support, diplomatic exchange with international Muslim communities, and gradual acquisitions of weapons through Egyptian intermediary traders could be continued.

In Cairo, Sayyid Muhammad Idris ﵀ gradually established a political presence in which he pleaded, in an elaborate and sustained manner, with the British colonial authorities in Egypt for an international recognition of a coming Cyrenaican Muslim state. The British authorities exercised in their dealings with the Senussi exiles a certain extensive caution, for the general British colonial strategy required an extensive diplomatic exchange with Italy, so that the British were obliged to avoid any open support of an opponent of the Italian colonial power.

The Fascist era

In October 1922 a political upheaval took place in Italy in which Benito Mussolini acquired the Italian premiership by way of the so-called March on Rome, in a development that would place Italian colonial policy in Libya, in its full scope, in a harder form. Mussolini and his Fascist movement carried in their propaganda work a renewal of the Fourth Shore aspiration, in which the gradual peaceful coexistence of the preceding years was rejected in favor of a resumed colonial subjugation. In 1923 the accords with the Senussi brotherhood were formally repudiated by the Italian authorities, and the coming armed confrontation was prepared for in its full scope.

For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his Cyrenaican position, the renewed Italian colonial pressure meant that his years of preparation for the renewal of the resistance had to be brought to execution in their full scope. In 1923 he received from Sayyid Muhammad Idris al-Sanusi ﵀, who in these months withdrew to Egypt in order to awaken, in a form of diplomatic exchange, international attention for the Cyrenaican situation, the formal appointment as general military leader of the Cyrenaican resistance. He was by this time sixty-five years old, in his physical condition still vigorous despite his age, and in his spiritual and administrative formation fully ready for the coming form of the general leadership.

The internal organization of the adwar

The internal organization of the adwar units unfolded according to an extensive design that ultimately combined the ordinary Bedouin tribal cohesion with the common Senussi bond. Each adwar was composed of ordinary Bedouin fighters from a specific tribal affiliation, in a form that ultimately lent the ordinary internal cohesion of the tribe to the general form of the adwar. The appointed sub-commander came from an aristocratic layer of the tribe, and he was chosen by Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally on the basis of common deliberations held with the tribal shaykhs.

The weekly adwar meetings took place at remote Jebel Akhdar locations, places, where the general security for the extensive military planning could be safeguarded in a thoroughgoing manner. Under the general direction of the appointed sub-commanders, the adwar carried out extensive tactical preparations, with reconnaissance missions among themselves, with storage of weapons and ammunition in secret cave complexes, and with common training in the specific Cyrenaican guerrilla tactics. For the general resistance, this internal organization ultimately formed the extensive bed on which the sustained guerrilla struggle could be continued over eight years.

The Jebel Akhdar as foundation

The Jebel Akhdar zone, in its geographical form an extensive plateau of several hundred meters in height, with densely wooded slopes on its northern side, with extensive pasture lands in its higher parts, with numerous smaller mountain valleys that ultimately offered outstanding defensive positions, and with water sources that stood in a gradual bond with the local Bedouin population, formed the natural bed on which the coming form of the resistance could be built. The Italian troops, in their armament and in their organized form adapted to the coastline and to ordinary flat fighting terrain, encountered serious difficulties in the Jebel Akhdar in their expansion, and the mountainous area formed the natural defensive zone from which the Cyrenaican guerrilla fighters could operate.

The Italian colonial doctrine under Mussolini

The Italian colonial doctrine under Mussolini unfolded in an extensive combination of Fascist ideology and practical colonial policy. For the general Italian Fascist policy, the coming reconquest of Libya ultimately formed an extensive national prestige undertaking in which Italian colonial power would be demonstrated on an imposing scale. Under Mussolini the Italian course took on a harder colonial form, in which the ordinary Italian colonial conventions of gradual pacification were replaced by an extensive military subjugation without regard for the local communities.

For the Cyrenaican resistance organization, this new Italian colonial course ultimately meant a challenge for which it had to formulate its coming adaptations. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his general leadership recognized the new shape of his opponent, and he conducted extensive deliberations with his naib leaders in which the coming adaptations of the guerrilla strategy to the harder Italian course were formulated in a far-reaching manner.

The guerrilla strategy

In the course of 1923 and early 1924, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ completed the working out of the specific guerrilla strategy with which the Cyrenaican resistance would be conducted in the coming years under his general leadership. The strategy comprised, in its full form, several fundamental elements that would remain clearly recognizable in its execution over the coming seven years.

First, the organization of the resistance in so-called adwar, that is, small guerrilla units of several dozen to several hundred men each, units which conducted their specific activities in a combination of independence and general coordination. Second, the adoption of a hit-and-run tactic in which the Cyrenaican fighters attacked the Italian positions, inflicted their losses, and then withdrew into the mountain valleys before the Italian main force could move to any retaliation.

Third, the bond between the armed fighters and the ordinary Bedouin population, in a common cooperation in which the local families supported the fighters with food supplies, with hiding places and with general exchange of information. Fourth, the mobility of the fighters, who could move in and out of the Sahara, with the Egyptian border as a resting place where the Italian troops had no freedom of movement. And fifth, the bond with the extensive networks of the Senussi zawiyas, which in an organized form carried the general logistical support of the resistance.

The financing of the resistance

The general financing of the Cyrenaican resistance unfolded through extensive sources that ultimately supported the sustained continuation of the resistance. The principal sources comprised the extensive zakaat contributions of the local Bedouin communities, which were rendered to the Senussi brotherhood in a communal form, the extensive donations of Cyrenaican exiles in Egypt and in other international Muslim communities that supported the general cause, the payments for arms supplies that were carried through the existing economic structures of the Senussi brotherhood, and finally the military spoils that were obtained from the ordinary attacks on Italian positions.

For the general resistance, this financial basis ultimately formed an extensive bed without which the sustained struggle could not have been continued in its full scope. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his general leadership devoted extensive attention to the extensive financial organization, with a gradual administrative prudence in which the available means were managed in an emphatic form for the sustained continuation of the resistance.

The adwar in their specific form

Each adwar was led, in its full form, by an appointed sub-commander who was personally answerable to Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀, and the specific form of the adwar made it possible to carry out the general strategic line in a communal form without the ordinary form of a general pitched battle in which the Italian firepower could have been brought to bear in its full scope. The common line of the adwar was worked out in regular meetings in remote Jebel Akhdar locations, in which Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ discussed the general strategy with his sub-commanders and issued specific instructions for the coming operations.

In the first years of its execution, between 1923 and 1927, this strategy proved itself successful. The Italian troops, who despite their armament encountered difficulties in keeping up with the Cyrenaican Bedouin in their mobility, suffered losses in the course of these years in a successive series of smaller engagements that gradually starved the Italian colonial occupation. For Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ personally, these were the years in which his strategic thinking gradually translated itself into a common series of results.

The role of the local women

A specific aspect of the Cyrenaican resistance that has only gradually received in modern historiography the attention that it deserves was the role of the local Bedouin women in their support of the armed fighters. The women carried out a form of logistical support that was indispensable for the coming form of the resistance. They prepared the extensive supplies of barley breads and dried dates that the armed fighters could carry along with them on their movements through the Saharan zone, they protected and concealed weapons and ammunition in the ordinary form of the household storerooms, and they conducted an extensive exchange of information in which reports about the Italian troop movements were passed on directly to the fighters.

For the general resistance, this female support ultimately formed an extensive bed without which the armed struggle could not have been conducted in its full scope. Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ in his general leadership recognized this fundamental role, and he repeatedly gave instructions to his naib leaders in which the protection of the ordinary Bedouin women was laid down in its full rigor. In his Friday sermons he spoke repeatedly about the spiritual value of the local women in the community, and he gave the ordinary Bedouin men extensive exhortations to attention and protection for their female family members.

Spiritual discipline in wartime

Alongside the military side, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ maintained the general spiritual discipline of his fighters in an extensive communal form. He demanded that all five of the daily prayers be performed in a communal execution under all circumstances, that the Senussi wird be carried out daily by every fighter in his personal form, that the ordinary Ramadan fast be maintained in an elaborate form, even under the circumstances of an active campaign, and that the Quran recitation be continued in a communal form at the evening gatherings of the adwar units.

For the ordinary Cyrenaican fighters, this spiritual discipline ultimately formed an extensive bed of moral steadfastness that sustained and supported the resistance through its long duration. For the Italian observers who studied the Cyrenaican fighters in their ordinary conduct, the spiritual discipline of the resistance was an unexpected phenomenon, a phenomenon that ultimately undermined the general Italian colonial analysis of its opponent.

The weekly Friday sermons

In the extensive guerrilla work of the resistance, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ continued the extensive weekly Friday sermons in a communal form. Whenever the ordinary fighters were grouped in remote Jebel Akhdar locations for an operational rest, Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ delivered extensive Friday sermons in which he discussed, in a communal form, the general spiritual side of the coming operations.

His Friday sermons in this form followed a common line that ultimately continued the general tradition of Senussi preaching. He spoke about the general Muslim responsibility for the extensive resistance against colonial domination and rule, he gave an extensive juridical justification for the ordinary form of the coming operations on the basis of the Maliki school of fiqh, and he delivered a spiritual exhortation to an extensive communal steadfastness.

The detailed logistical organization

The logistical organization of the resistance under Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ unfolded in a far-reaching form in which the economic self-reliance of the Senussi tradition was applied in a communal manner. He organized extensive chains of supply in the Jebel Akhdar zone, in which the local Bedouin communities delivered their contributions in a communal form for the general continuation of the resistance. He carried out extensive arms deliveries through the ordinary Egyptian intermediaries, in an exchange that ultimately produced a continuing flow of weapons despite the Italian attempts at blockade on the Egyptian border.

For the resistance in its long continuation, this extensive logistical organization ultimately formed the extensive bed on which the sustained guerrilla could be conducted. Without this logistics, the resistance would have had to be brought to an end within a few months in a condition of exhaustion, and its continuation over an extended period of eight years between 1923 and 1931 ultimately formed a proof of the extensive logistical organization that Umar al-Mukhtar ﵀ had set up.

The Trans-Saharan routes

The Trans-Saharan routes between Cyrenaica and the broader international Muslim community developed in the course of these years into an important bed for the general resistance. Through Kufra in the southern Cyrenaican Saharan zone, and through additional posts in Wadai and in Chad, the Senussi zawiyas, in a communal bond, kept the general form of the resistance connected with the support of the international Muslim community. The Italian colonial authorities repeatedly undertook attempts to interrupt these Trans-Saharan routes in a comprehensive form, and the Italian capture of Kufra in 1931 would, in its final outworking, undermine the general continuing Trans-Saharan connection.

Toward the Battle of Bir Bilal

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