Now that Turkey and Italy are effectively together on the side of the GNA government, such as it is, in Tripoli versus Gen. Haftar coming from the east, it is at least curious to recall that Italy took Libya from the Ottoman Empire in the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-12. About which Vladimir Ilyich Lenin wrote this:
The End of the Italo-Turkish War
Representatives of Italy and Turkey have signed preliminary terms of peace, according to telegraphic reports.
Italy has “won” the war, which she launched a year ago to seize Turkish possessions in Africa. From now on, Tripoli will belong to Italy. It is worth while taking a look at this typical colonial war, waged by a “civilised” twentieth-century nation.
What caused the war? The greed of the Italian money bags and capitalists, who need new markets and new achievements for Italian imperialism.
What kind of war was it? A perfected, civilised blood bath, the massacre of Arabs with the help of the “latest” weapons.
The Arabs put up a desperate resistance. When, at the beginning of the war, the Italian admirals were incautious enough to land 1,200 marines, the Arabs attacked them and killed some 600. By way of “retaliation”, about 3,000 Arabs were butchered, whole families were plundered and done to death, with women and children massacred in cold blood. The Italians are a civilised, constitutional nation.
About 1,000 Arabs were hanged.
The Italian casualties exceeded 20,000, including 17,429 sick, 600 missing and 1,405 killed.
The war cost the Italians over 800 million lire, or over 320 million rubles. It resulted in terrible unemployment and industrial stagnation.
The Arabs lost about 14,800 lives. Despite the “peace”, the war will actually go on, for the Arab tribes in the heart of Africa, in areas far away from the coast, will refuse to submit. And for a long time to come they will be “civilised” by bayonet, bullet, noose, fire and rape.
Italy, of course, is no better and no worse than the other capitalist countries. All of them alike are governed by the bourgeoisie, which stops at no carnage in its quest for new sources of profit.
But now the aspiring neo-Sultan Erdogan has his own lust for profit (the Ottomans also were imperialists over Arabs, a reality not realized by those in thrall to fast Eddy Said’s Orientalism)–and, guess what, IT’S ALL ABOUT HYDROCARBONS!
…Now there is a possibility that Russian and Turkish firms will put Libya’s oil and gas reserves in their sights…
Interesting also that Atatürk, all in black at the photo, made some of his bones in Libya.
Mark Collins
simpferpol 