The Bitter Sea: The Struggle for Mastery in the Mediterranean 1935–1949. Simon Ball

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      The same informed observers were in little doubt that Britain’s enemies were fishing in these foetid waters. Propaganda, money and weapons flowed into the eastern Mediterranean. Signor Richettis aplenty plied their subversive and violent trade. In 1935 Captain Ugo Dadone, dashing traveller, explorer, journalist and zealous Fascist, set up a propaganda office in Cairo. ⁵ The Italians financed the radical Young Egypt movement. Young Egypt organized its paramilitary Green Shirts to ape the Black Shirts. The Ministry of Propaganda, then headed by Galeazzo Ciano, set up a radio station, Radio Bari, to appeal directly to Arab malcontents. In the summer of 1935 it began daily broadcasts that proved wildly successful because ‘adapted to the average puerile Arab mind’. Bari declared that: ‘the Arab populations of the Levant must be freed from the yoke of their present masters’. It traded on the message that Arab patriots…all those not contaminated by British gold–know well the consequences of Britain’s rule, they know how much grief and bloodshed Britain has caused…that it is in the interest of Fascist Italy that the Arab nations of the Levant attain their freedom and independence’. ⁶ The British soon noticed that Bari was ‘becoming increasingly popular in Arab cafes’. Arabs ‘sipped their coffee and swallowed Italian propaganda with every mouthful’. In 1937 it was calculated that over half of all the radios in Palestine were tuned into Bari. ⁷

      Mussolini made a spectacular appeal for a Fascist-Muslim alliance in March 1937. Marshal Italo Balbo, the Governor of Libya, had complained that the dreams of a Fourth Shore were far from realization. Not only was it actually hard to get to Libya from Italy, but it was virtually impossible to travel along the Mediterranean coast. The two halves of Libya, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, were bisected by the inhospitable Sirtean desert. If one wished to travel from the capital in Tripoli to Benghazi, Cyrenaica’s main port, all that was on offer was a weekly boat. He devised a grand plan, a road that would run the length of Libya’s Mediterranean coast, all the way from the Tunisian to the Egyptian border. The gleaming thousand-mile-long highway was completed at the beginning of 1937. An arch of triumph was erected in the middle of the desert. The road was so much Balbo’s project that it was nicknamed the Balbia. Though irritated by the name, Mussolini grasped the symbolic importance of Balbo’s achievement. Determined to claim the glory for this great monument of civilization, he agreed to preside over the festivities. ⁸

      A celebration of the civilizing mission, and the unveiling of plans for a mass influx of colonists from Italy, might have seemed an unlikely occasion for a celebration of Islamo-Fascist friendship. But in Balbo’s fertile mind he was to be the architect of pan-Mediterranean syncretism. Buildings, he decreed, were no longer to espouse European modernism but a ‘Mediterranean’ style. The minaret of the mosque and the tower of the Italian town were part of the same culture. ⁹ The Islamic part of that heritage must be respected. The Governor funded religious schools and banned the sale of alcohol in Ramadan. What better place than Tripoli,‘the new pearl of the Mediterranean’, Balbo convinced Mussolini, as a centre for mezzi insidiosi. ¹⁰

      The fondouks of the old town of Tripoli were torn down to make way for the new Mediterranean metropolis. The city was subject to a phantasmagoria of lighting effects. Balbo’s palace, the Cathedral and long stretch of the embankment were floodlit. An immense Dux was laid out in powerful electric lights attached to the newly constructed grain silo. The motto ‘Believe, Obey, Fight’ was picked out in twelve-feet-high lighting on the customs warehouse. A steel tower was erected in the castle square with a huge searchlight mounted on top. The light beam was visible for thirty miles all around. When everything was ready, Balbo left Tripoli for Cyrenaica. At Benghazi, he proclaimed that Mussolini was the ‘Protector of Islam’. Two days later the Duce himself stepped ashore at Tobruk. Accompanying him to Libya was a cruise ship filled with 120 journalists. Each journalist was provided with a car and servants so that they might follow Mussolini along the Balbia from east to west. The journey, by car and aeroplane, took four days.

      On the evening of 16 March 1937 Mussolini made a triumphal entrance into Tripoli. He was accompanied by a bodyguard of Arab cavalrymen. The route was lined by tens of thousands of Arabs brought in from the countryside. It was said that political officers had rounded up nearly the entire pastoral population. For weeks afterwards, ‘little columns of dust [would] betray the presence of nomads making the weary journey back’. Each group was equipped with banners to represent their particular Islamic religious society. The procession ended in the castle square. There, Mussolini was greeted by the dug-out son of the last Ottoman ruler of Tripoli and the Kadi, the head of the sharia courts. The Kadi in particular had a major role in driving home the point of the visit. The next afternoon he once more greeted Mussolini, at the mosque. ‘I take the opportunity presented by your presence among us’, the venerable judge intoned via a ‘slick Arabic interpreter’, ‘to express our profound gratefulness for the favour which Fascism has showered upon these our countries which enjoy the benefits of progress, well-being, justice and perfect respect for our Sharia courts.’ ‘We declare’, he continued, ‘that we are truly happy to lie under the shadow of the glorious Italian flag, under the Fascist regime. And how can we forget all that you have said and done in favour of Islam in such important circumstances of international politics, thus acquiring such lively sympathy among the 400 million of Moslem believers.’

      Balbo and Mussolini were far from finished, however. On the next afternoon, yet another group of Muslims pledged their loyalty. Arab soldiers of the Italian colonial army were drawn up in mounted array. One of their number rode forward towards Mussolini. ‘In the name of the soldiers and Moslems of Libya,’ he bellowed, ‘I have the honour to offer to you, Victorious Duce, this well-tempered Islamic sword. The souls of the Moslems of all the shores of the Mediterranean…thrill with emotion at this moment, in sympathy with our own.’ Mussolini pulled the sword from its scabbard and ululated a war cry Then the mounted men made a second triumphal entrance into Tripoli, where Mussolini addressed the Muslim crowd from the saddle, his words followed by running translation in Arabic, each sentence being greeted in turn by cries of ‘Dushy, Dushy’. ¹¹