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A large number of Libyans were killed, exiled, and imprisoned for opposition to the [protofascist] occupation[.] The [protofascists] were unsuccessful in gaining control of the majority of the territory and the resistance of the local population had pushed them back to the cities of Tripoli, Homs and the coastal strip between Zanzur and Zuara in Tripolitania and the cities of Benghazi, Shahhat (Cirene), Derna and Tubruq in Cyrenaica by 1915.

Local notables formed a semi-autonomous government, the Tripolitanian Republic (al-Jumhūriyya al-Ṭarābulusiyya), in Tripolitania and the [protofascist] government recognised the control of the Sanūsiyya, a revivalist Sufi religious movement, over the hinterland in Cyrenaica and their leader, Idrīs al-Mahdī al-Sanūsī, was granted the largely ceremonial title of Amir of Cyrenaica.⁷

A shift in policy occurred after the Fascist government came to power in 1922, as Benito Mussolini rejected the Liberal government’s policy, in place since 1911, of collaborating with local Libyan élites. Mussolini’s first Minister of Colonies, Luigi Federzoni, pushed for what the [Fascists] considered the riconquista of the hinterland in early 1923 to transform it into a space open for Italian demographic colonialism (Cresti 2011, 92).

This riconquista was undertaken by Rodolfo Graziani, nicknamed the ‘Butcher Graziani’ by the local population, who was in command of all [Fascist] forces in Tripolitania by 1928 (288). In 1930, he was appointed the vice-governor of Cyrenaica and instituted a repressive campaign against the indigenous population, which included the clearing of ground, the razing of enemy villages, the seizure of crops and livestock, and destruction of wells.

Although Graziani was not solely responsible for the repression of the anti-colonial resistance, he became a symbol for the local population of the tyranny and barbarism of […] colonial rule. Viewing Libya as Italy’s rightful possession, he argued that ‘the wheel of fate’ had been ‘planted and stuck […] a thousand fiery Italian souls’ in the ‘untouched sands’ of the Libyan desert.⁸

Franz Fanon has argued that the first colonial encounter ‘was colored by violence and their cohabitation — or rather the exploitation of the colonized by the colonizer — continued at the point of the bayonet and under cannon fire’ (Fanon 2004, 1).

This kind of systemic colonial violence was experienced by women as well as men. Violence was indiscriminately inflicted on Libyans as colonial subjects, but it was also gendered. Women’s experiences of violence overlapped men’s but was not identical.

There were gendered divides in the way [wherein Fascists] approached men and women involved in the resistance, often using women as ammunition against men. The [Regio Esercito] consistently inflicted humiliation on Libyan men by attacking women and children in hopes of bringing the resistance to an end by targeting their honour and manhood.

Women were often on foot during engagements and those who rode camels or horses were usually weighed down with luggage and children. Men, on the other hand, rode on horseback unburdened, giving them greater speed and mobility in battle.

The [Fascists] did not hesitate to exploit the more vulnerable position of women. The safety of children on the ground during battles was a constant concern for women, with Jamīla Saʿīd Sulaymān mentioning that children ‘lived a life of exhaustion and hardship during the war and most of them died during Italian bombardments’ (al-Hāyn 1989, 11).

The lack of mobility of women and children made them easy targets for capture. For example, at the battle of al-Ḥaqīfāt, in the region of Suluq, the [Fascists] captured more than 60 women and imprisoned them at the prison called Giardina (Zahrā 1995, 35).

Mabrūka bint ‘Abd al-Rahmān bin Salīm told of an incident in which her tribe was bombarded by the [Fascists] and the men fled to a nearby area while the women remained. When the [Fascists] arrived, they demanded the women send an agent to the men and broker an exchange between them — their weapons for the release of the women. As a result, the men sent their weapons to the [Fascists] and the [Fascists] let the women go (al-Hāyn 1989, 131).⁹

This was not the only case of women being captured by the [Fascists]. In fact, the majority of the women involved in the resistance were captured at least once.

Many women were questioned while in [Fascist] custody. Jamīla Saʿīda Sulaymān, for example, proudly recounts that she stood up under interrogation when the [Fascists] suspected her of being responsible for the downing of one of their planes:

I was interrogated harshly about the crash of the airplane and I denied that there was any close relationship between myself and the individual who brought it down. I said only that those who were fighting the Italians on that day were from my tribe (al-Hāyn 1989, 12).

And Huniyya Sulaymān Idrīs Abū Baqusa was subjected to more than one interrogation and described the torture of her and her mother at the hands of the [Fascists]:

They questioned everyone individually and the questions revolved around the mujāhid Sulayman Idrīs and our ties with Massʿūd al-ʿUbaydī and if he was the one that had brought that use to the territory of the ʿUbaydāt tribe and if he had helped us in our ordeal. We denied any knowledge of Massʿūd al-ʿUbaydī as he denied any knowledge of us.

Both he and his children were tortured because of this. He was thrown to the ground every day and whipped and we suffered the same treatment and were tortured despite our young ages. I remember that among the methods of torture was imprisonment in an enclosed space for seven days without food or water. And they would take my mother out every day and whip her 50 lashes with a whip that was frayed at the end. But she did not respond or reveal the location of my father or the mujāhidīn and denied any knowledge of Masʿūd al-ʿUbaydī […]

This brutality caused my brothers Ibrāhīm, Abd al-Laṭīf and Ṣalāḥ to flee while my mother failed in an attempt to escape where she was exposed to torture, as I have mentioned, and us little children were the reason for her continued imprisonment. We all suffered under the worst that a person could be exposed to who has fallen into the hands of oppressive imperialists like the Fascist Italian colonizers […] As for my mother, she was tortured continuously for several days and they rubbed salt in the wounds so that it would be more painful (al-Hāyn 1989, 110).

Huniyya Idrīs Abū Baqūsa was young when she witnessed her mother beaten and tortured and was tortured herself. In hopes of extracting information about the location of the mujāhidīn and its leadership from them, the [Fascists] subjected the women to extreme physical abuse. Torture was used consistently by the [Fascist] government as a tool to pacify the indigenous population of Libya.

In spite of the overwhelming brutality of [Fascist] rule, the employment of torture was not unique to their colonial policies. Torture was intrinsically linked to colonial history and the repressive nature of the colonial state (Lazreg 2008, 3).

Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a historian of Algeria, argued that ‘the essential feature of the practice of torture […] is that one man or one class of a society claims absolute power over another man or another class of society’ (Vidal-Naquet 1963, 167). In the case of Libya, male colonial officers inflicted absolute power over female bodies, which they starved, exposed, and brutalised (Lazreg 2008, 3).

[…]

Beyond the capture of women, narrators highlight other ways that women and children could be used to punish mujāhidīn. The children of mujāhidīn were sometimes kidnapped and raised by [Fascists] as punishment for their parents’ resistance (al-Hāyn 1989, 14). The [Fascists] also executed the wives and children of mujāhidīn who refused to surrender. When Ibrīk al-Lawāṭī, fled to Egypt to avoid capture by the [Fascist] authorities, they executed his wife and daughter in al-ʿAqīla concentration camp as a kind of collective punishment for his actions (Zahrā 1995, 36).

Fāṭima ʿUmar al-Mukhtār tells of the bravery of women facing execution including a woman who began to trill (zaghrata) when the [Fascists] threatened to execute her. When asked why she was celebrating, she said because ‘I want to be like ʿUmar al-Mukhtār’, who[m] they had hanged (Zahrā 1995, 61). This echoes the interview with Fāṭima al-ʿAqariyya, pointing to the heroism in the face of violence as a central theme of women’s narratives.