Assessing
Italy’s Grande Gesto to Libya
Under a tent
in Benghazi on August 30, 2008, Silvio Berlusconi bowed symbolically
before the son of ‘Umar al-Mukhtar, hero of the Libyan resistance
to Italian colonial rule. “It is my duty to express to you, in
the name of the Italian people, our regret and apologies for
the deep wounds that we have caused you,” said the Italian premier.[1] Eastern Libya was the site of
the bulk of the armed resistance to the Italian occupation, which
lasted from 1911 to 1943. More than 100,000 Libyans are believed
to have died in the counterinsurgency campaign, many in desert
prison camps and in southern Italian penal colonies. Inside the
tent, Berlusconi and Libyan leader Mu‘ammar al-Qaddafi signed
a historic agreement according to which Italy will pay $5 billion
over the next 20 years, nominally to compensate Libya for these
“deep wounds.” The treaty was ratified by Italy on February 3
and by Libya on March 1.
Politicians
in both Libya and Italy have often presented the $5 billion as
reparations for the harm done to Libya by colonial rule. Qaddafi
hailed the treaty as an important historical precedent that proves
that “compensation entails condemnation of colonialism regardless
of the amount paid.”[2] Yet
neither the title nor the text of the treaty mentions the word
“reparations.” The text alludes to settlement of colonial-era
disputes, but officially the accord is called a “treaty of friendship,
partnership and cooperation.”
The treaty
was certainly not signed because Italy has suddenly come to terms
with its colonial past and desires to make amends. Although the
premier has made public noises of atonement for Italy’s colonial
past, Italians suffer from a general colonial amnesia and know
very little about their country’s adventures in Africa -- far
less, for instance, than the French know about Algeria. Even
the 1981 Anthony Quinn vehicle Lion of the Desert, about
Mukhtar’s rebellion, was utterly banned in Italy for many years
because, in the government’s words, it was “damaging to the Italian
army’s honor.” The original English-language version of the movie
has recently been screened at film festivals and seminars, but
it has never been dubbed into Italian, and Italian TV stations
have yet to broadcast it. The Italian government, for its part,
still seems more interested in “turning the page” on the past
than in exploring the full extent of the violence perpetrated
in North Africa three generations ago. The financial package
that Italy and Libya agreed upon would therefore be better understood
as the expression of a nexus of interlocking interests: on the
Libyan side, Qaddafi’s historical commitment to reparation politics
and his quest for moral victory over the country’s former colonizers,
and on the Italian side, strategic and economic gain. Berlusconi,
with characteristic tact, has openly and repeatedly described
the purpose of the treaty as “less illegal immigrants and more
oil.”[3]
Be that as
it may, Algerian and Egyptian politicians and intellectuals,
and a number of activists from sub-Saharan Africa, have proclaimed
that their countries should get deals similar to Libya’s for
the injustices they suffered at the hands of European colonial
powers.[4] These injustices include the killings
of civilians during anti-colonial uprisings, the destruction
of infrastructure during World Wars I and II, and the distortion
of local economies. Members of Algeria’s National Liberation
Front hoped that, after the Italian precedent, the European Union
would be able to put pressure on France and “get it to make amends
for what it did in Algeria.”[5] Ibrahim
Salih, former chairman of Egypt’s Court of Cassation, claims
that Britain owes Egypt no less than 100 billion pounds ($140
billion). “They [the British] plundered Egypt during World War
I to cover the costs of their battles against the Turkish, bought
Egyptian high-quality cotton for 20 years at very cheap prices,
killed many Egyptians who joined demonstrations against their
occupation and manipulated the country’s wealth in violation
of democratic rules and human rights,” Salih opined. “Are these
crimes not serious enough for England to pay compensation or
even offer an apology?” Not surprisingly, the British do not
see the parallel: A British diplomat based in Cairo ridiculed
the Italian-Libyan agreement as “media propaganda” aimed at appeasing
Qaddafi and opening the door for Italian companies to tap the
lucrative oil market.[6]
Setting aside
the self-interest in this diplomat’s cynical reaction, there
are important reasons why the Italian-Libyan treaty is not a
model to be emulated.
The Italian-Libyan
Treaty
The two major
ex-colonial powers in the Arab world, Britain and France, have
refused the very idea of state-to-state reparations or individual
financial payments to their former subjects in the Middle East
or elsewhere in Africa. Although Britain has atoned for some
of the massacres carried out during its reign in India and New
Zealand, the issue of apology, let alone financial compensation,
to Arab territories under British rule has never been a matter
of debate. As for France, in 2001 President Jacques Chirac admitted
for the first time France’s responsibility for the 1962 massacre
of hundreds of thousands of Algerians.[7] More recently, President Nicolas Sarkozy recognized that French
colonialism in Algeria was “profoundly unjust” but brushed aside
an apology for the 132 years of occupation as “unnecessary” and
stated that the two countries should look toward the future rather
than the past.[8]
In light of
the lack of precedent, Italy’s decision to sign a treaty with
Libya pledging a staggering $5 billion to its former colony came
as a surprise. In the 1990s, Italy paid for the construction
of a pediatric hospital in Benghazi and funded a research project
on the deportation of thousands of Libyans to penal colonies
in southern Italy. Such projects were carried out under the understanding
that they were small but concrete gestures aimed at redressing
past wrongdoing. Around 2005, Libya began demanding that Italy
make a “grande gesto” and proposed that the former colonizer
pay to transform Libya’s two-lane coastal road, built in the
colonial period, into a highway stretching from the Tunisian
border to Egypt. Disagreements dragged on as to whether Italy
would pay for the feasibility study or the actual highway construction,
and doubts arose as to the project’s social utility.
Given the
lack of legal compulsion, many wondered why Italy would even
enter negotiations for the treaty: $250 million per year over
20 years is not an insignificant amount of money, especially
in the midst of the current economic recession. No individual
Libyan has filed suit in an Italian court seeking damages for
colonial-era offenses; nor has the Libyan government raised the
issue at the International Court of Justice. And there was certainly
no pressure from Italian public opinion -- to the contrary. The
Association of Italians Repatriated from Libya has long demanded
that before paying reparations to Libya, Italy should first compensate
them for the property that Qaddafi expropriated in the 1970s.
The greatest
pressure to conclude the treaty came from the Libyan government,
keen to secure material concessions that would symbolize Italy’s
admission of guilt for the colonial past. For over 30 years,
Libya has actively attempted to shed light on the depredations
of that era, so as to embarrass Italy into offering some sort
of compensation, something that has come to be known as “reparations
politics.” Stealthier support for the treaty, however, came from
the Italian business and political establishment, eager to improve
bilateral relations with the North African country that is Italy’s
main source of hydrocarbons and most important trading partner
in the Mediterranean basin.
The terms
of the nine-page document signed by Berlusconi and Qaddafi, the
Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation Between the
Italian Republic and the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab
Jamahiriyya, were kept secret for nearly four months. Now that
the text has been disclosed by Italy, the enthusiasm of Italian
big businessmen and strategic thinkers is fairly easy to understand.[9] First is the treaty’s strong implication that the file of Libyan
grievances against Italy can now be sealed. In the preamble,
the two parties commit themselves to reinforcing peace, security
and stability in the Mediterranean and promoting cooperation
and integration through Italy and Libya’s respective roles in
the European and African Unions. The preamble also states that
the purpose of the treaty is to develop a “special and privileged”
bilateral relationship that includes a strong and wide-ranging
partnership in political, economic and other areas. The two countries
propose to continue collaboration on research on the manfiyun,
the Libyans forcibly “rendered” to Italy early in the colonial
period, but nevertheless intend the agreement to close the painful
“chapter of the past.” During the March celebrations for the
treaty’s ratification, Berlusconi solemnly stated: “The past
that with this treaty we want to put behind our shoulders is
a past that we, children of the children, are guilty of and for
which we beg your forgiveness.” (Skeptics who question Berlusconi’s
sincerity forget that, no matter how hypocritical and orchestrated
his remarks might be, the very fact that an Italian head of government
agreed to issue an official and public apology bears a symbolic
significance that one cannot easily brush aside.)
After an anodyne
first section, in which the two parties commit to respect international
law and the other’s sovereignty, the treaty gets down to business.
In the second section, Italy vows to make available funding --
up to $5 billion over the next 20 years -- for key infrastructure
projects, the nature of which is left undefined. Libya will have
the right to propose what type of infrastructure projects it
is interested in, whereas a joint committee of delegates from
the two countries will be in charge of examining the technical
details and the time frame for completion. The treaty states
that these infrastructure projects will be carried out exclusively
by Italian companies, with the funding managed by Italy. It does
not specify, however, how this money will be transferred. Libya,
on the other hand, commits itself to making available, at no
cost, the land necessary for completion of the projects, as well
as helping to acquire those building materials that can be obtained
locally and waiving customs duties on whatever needs to be imported.
On top of these major infrastructure projects, the treaty mentions
special initiatives such as the construction of 200 housing units,
the assigning of undergraduate and post-graduate scholarships
to 100 Libyan students a year, a health care program in Italy
for the victims of land mines, the reintroduction of pensions
for Libyans who have a right to them on the basis of Italian
records and pensions for their heirs, and the return to Libya
of manuscripts and artifacts removed from Libya in colonial times.
The costs of these social projects amount to a small fraction
of the total expenditure. The two countries also commit themselves
to settling disputes over payments owed by Libya to Italian firms
that operated in the country in the past.
In the third
section, the treaty states that a Partnership Committee will
be set up to consolidate the new cooperation in multiple fields
in order to promote “common objectives of solidarity between
people and the progress of humanity.” Article 18 refers to the
“strategic importance” of bilateral collaboration in the energy
sector. The next article deals with the “intensifying” of cooperation
in fighting terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking and
illegal immigration. The two parties also agree to set up a border
control system for Libyan land borders (50 percent funded by
Italy and 50 percent by the EU) to be run by Italian companies.
The last articles of the treaty deal with cooperation between
the two countries’ armed forces. Industrial partnership in the
defense sector is envisaged.
The treaty
does not specify the sources of the $5 billion and, at first,
many wrongly assumed that the Italian treasury would be saddled
with the tab. But an appendix to the bill presented to the Italian
parliament reveals that the funds will not be taken directly
from Italian taxpayers, but rather will be covered by a corporate
income tax of up to 4 percent imposed on profits made by Italian
oil companies operating in Libya. Although Italian oil giant
ENI is not explicitly mentioned in the treaty, the general understanding
is that the burden of payment promised in the treaty will fall
on ENI’s shoulders. ENI is already the largest foreign oil operator
in Libya, extracting an average of 550,00 barrels per day. In
2008, the Italian company, a sprawling conglomerate with 76,000
employees, two divisions headquartered in Milan and a third based
in Rome, inked new gas and oil contracts with Libya that will
protect its preferred position there until 2047.[10]
In fact, the
treaty was strategic in paving the way for the investment of
Libyan sovereign wealth funds in a number of Italian companies.
Since October 2008, the Libyan Central Bank has purchased $64.6
million in ENI stock and expressed interest in buying up to 10
percent of the company -- “a positive thing,” CEO Paolo Scaroni
told Italian parliamentarians. The value of ENI stock went up
by almost 15 percent when Libya announced its interest in further
investment. Libya has also bought shares in two Italian banks,
including the second-largest one, Unicredito, of which the North
African country now owns 5 percent.[11] The treaty also advantages smaller Italian
firms operating in Libya, as these companies were previously
obliged to pay “success fee” of up to 2 percent on the total
value of signed contracts. This tax went to a joint Libyan-Italian
company that in turned transferred the revenues to a “social
fund.” Created in 1998, this fund had the alleged aim of contributing
to Libya’s social and economic development and, ultimately, overcoming
the effects of colonialism. With the treaty, Libya agreed to
stop demanding this “success fee” and to shut down the joint
company. Finally, the treaty will benefit large Italian engineering
and construction firms, such as Impregilo, which are the most
likely to win contracts for the planned infrastructure projects.
In this respect, it is not unfair to surmise that the envisaged
payments to this and other construction firms are comparable
to a state-sponsored capital injection into Italian private companies
in order to boost Italy’s ailing economy.
The Libyan
state is also reaping rewards; according to a Libyan official,
investment in ENI will allow the Italian firm and Libya’s national
oil company to prospect together for fossil fuel deposits in
third countries. Obviously, Libya will also benefit from the
new infrastructure projects that Italy commits itself to, but
the main economic impact of the treaty will be in fostering foreign
investment and the joint ventures that the North African country
needs to bolster its insufficient technical know-how. By agreeing
to solve pending legal disputes with a number of Italian companies
who have been waiting to see their bills settled since the 1980s,
Libya is trying to show the business community that it will honor
contracts and thereby increase the international private sector’s
confidence in the country.
Ultimately,
the Italians hope that the agreement will boost Libya’s commitment
to combating illegal migration across the Mediterranean -- a
hot-button issue in Italian politics. In 2008, some 40,000 African
migrants arrived somewhere on Italian soil, many of them from
Libyan jumping-off points like Zuwara, west of Tripoli. Italy
maintains a “reception center” for such migrants on the Mediterranean
island of Lampedusa and it is routinely beyond its small capacity.[12] Politicians in Italy and in the EU, which has recently committed
to paying $20 million to Libya to cope with migration, consider
combating human trafficking to be critical issue. But no matter
how large the increase in illegal migration from North Africa
(it was up 75 percent in 2008), it is important to note that
the amount of attention to illegal immigration by sea is disproportionate
to its actual extent. In fact, immigrants arriving in Italy by
sea constituted only 10-11 percent of the total alighting in
Italy in 2007 and less than 15 percent in 2008. Images of African
corpses floating off the Italian coasts, footage of pregnant
woman crammed into wooden vessels and news of uprisings at the
“reception centers,” however, attract overwhelming media attention
and thus influence public perceptions. As a result of the symbolic
importance of being seen to defend national borders, countering
this human trafficking from Libya is pitched and perceived as
a national priority.[13]
The Problem
of Reparations for Colonial Rule
The idea that
nations and peoples should seek reparations for exceptional injustices
is linked to the legal principle according to which punishment
is required as a deterrent against similar actions being committed
again; it is also tied to the idea that those who committed injustices
have a moral debt toward those who have suffered and, conversely,
that victims have the right to seek redress for their suffering.
It is on these premises that Germany paid reparations to the
victims of the Holocaust and in 1952 reached an agreement with
Israel for the payment of $222 million for the cost of resettling
the Jews who had fled from Nazi-controlled countries.[14] In
1990, Austria made payments totaling $25 million to survivors
of the Holocaust. In 2001 the German government and a consortium
of German and American companies reached a Holocaust slave labor
settlement of $6 billion. In 1988 the US Congress signed into
law a bill titled the Civil Liberties Act, which allowed the
US government to compensate Japanese Americans who had been interned
during World War II.
Despite these
important historical precedents, all related to redressing the
injustices committed in World War II, the idea that European
states ought to make amends for the suffering inflicted upon
their colonial subjects prior to, during or after World War II
remains a controversial one. Unlike the settlement for the interned
Japanese, who were citizens or at least residents of the nation
that perpetrated the injustice, colonial reparations are being
demanded by citizens of territories that have long since become
independent states. When the matter becomes an international
dispute, unless reparations are agreed upon on a spontaneous
basis without resorting to courts (as was the case for the payments
to Holocaust victims), the main problem becomes finding the legal
forum that is competent to adjudicate such claims. Another crucial
question is whether it is even possible to quantify the damage
of colonial rule to a population. Furthermore, even if one were
to list and assign a monetary value to the damages, how are the
alleged victims of colonial rule supposed to be identified? Not
all suffered as a result of European imperialism; in the case
of Libya, some benefited. Some availed themselves of new opportunities
to acquire education, accumulate wealth or work in the colonial
service. Moreover, as Rhoda Howard-Hassmann and Anthony Lombardo
have pointed out, it is generally difficult to differentiate
the costs and benefits of colonial rule and those of post-colonial
successor states. “Individual victims of colonialism still alive
have been living under independent, post-colonial rule for 25
to 50 years, depending on the country. Post-colonial rulers were
violators in their own right of the principles of bodily integrity,
non-discrimination and private property” that colonial rule is
accused of violating.[15]
Aside from
Libya, few other formerly colonized states have tried hard to
get reparations from their European ex-rulers and, when they
have, it has been to no avail. In the early 1990s, the Organization
of African Unity appointed a so-called Group of Eminent Persons
with the mandate to explore the modalities and strategies of
an African campaign of restitution similar to the compensation
paid by Germany to Israel and the survivors of the Holocaust.[16] That
campaign failed because its members could not decide whether
slavery, European colonialism or neo-colonialism had caused the
greatest harm to Africans. In 2004 Namibia’s Herero tribesmen
filed several lawsuits in US courts against German companies
and the German government demanding $4 billion in compensation
for the massacre of 65,000 Herero during Germany’s rule in Namibia
some 100 years ago.[17] The German government issued
an apology but ruled out financial compensation for victims’
descendants, on the grounds that Germany was supporting its former
colony with development aid that had already totaled more than
$1 billion.[18] The most recent quest for compensation
is that initiated by the Kenya Human Rights Commission, which
represents the survivors of the so-called Mau Mau rebellion.
In 2008 the commission filed a lawsuit in the British High Court
demanding compensation for the death of thousands of Kikuyu who
between 1952 and 1960 were killed in the detention camps of the
British colonial government. Insiders, however, believe that
the ongoing Kenyan lawsuit will bear no fruit.
The laws concerning
reparations that have developed since World War II refer for
the most part to reparations between states for violations of
treaty obligations or other agreements. As reparations are required
under international law for genocide and crimes against humanity,
a number of countries have been able to file reparation claims
at the International Court of Justice for massive violations
that have occurred since the promulgation of the 1948 Genocide
Convention. Legally speaking, if the gross harm that Algeria
suffered during its war for independence from France (1954-1962)
was to be defined as abuse of human rights, then Algeria or individual
Algerians might have grounds for pursuing legal action for reparation
claims (unless the amnesty law signed at the end of the war or
any subsequent bilateral agreements with France ruled out reparations
a priori). Unfortunately for Middle Eastern nations that seek
compensation from the European countries that ruled them in the
first half of the century, international law does not make provisions
for retroactive payments for suffering prior to the 1948 Convention.
If a retroactive application were permitted, there would be no
limit to the potential claims that could be made at the International
Court of Justice to remedy any genocide in history. In that case,
the Armenian group Collective 2015: Reparations, an organization
that calls on Turkey to pay reparations alongside recognition
of the Armenian genocide, could have overcome Turkey’s continued
denial of the Armenian genocide by filing suit in an international
court with recognized jurisdiction. In juridical terms, however,
the Armenians and other nations or social groups who suffered
major human rights abuses prior to World War II cannot raise
their claims in an international court, because those forums
do not have jurisdiction over historical violations. Holocaust
reparation claims, being the result of a voluntary political
agreement between Israel and West Germany, were not part of a
lawsuit and thus did not require international law to coerce
Germany to pay.
If no spontaneous
reparation agreement is in place and international courts have
no jurisdiction, the descendants of victims of genocide and massive
human rights violations occurring prior to World War II could
attempt to have their case heard in US district court. This is
the legal channel that the Herero and other descendants of victims
of historical abuses have embarked upon. While the United States
is not involved in the case on either the plaintiff’s side or
the defendant’s, US courts can still claim jurisdiction under
the Alien Tort Claims Act. This 1789 law, which is increasingly
used by human rights activists and lawyers, allows US courts
to hear any case in which victims of human rights abuses perpetrated
by the state seek civil action or reparations from the state.
Even if the Herero case has not met with success in the US court
system, one cannot a priori rule out the possibility that other
claims for reparations could.[19]
But regardless
of the strength of the moral claims that formerly colonized countries
present, the exigencies of practical politics may impede these
countries from securing monetary compensation for the cruelties
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Are These
Payments Reparations?
Reparations,
however, need not be only about money. In the body of international
law, the term “reparations” is used in a wide sense to refer
to all those measures that may be employed to redress the various
types of harm that victims may have suffered as a consequence
of certain crimes.[20] Elsewhere,
the term is used to signify “reparation programs” aimed at distributing
justice to society at large. In either sense, the term, connected
etymologically to the word “repair,” suggests a field of interrelated
activity oriented around repairing frayed or torn relations handed
down from the past. Monetary compensation can be an important
component, but the modalities of repair are manifold and may
also involve trials of perpetrators, truth commissions, social
policies designed to rectify inequalities, restitution of artifacts,
memorials, changes in history curricula and more.[21] According
to transitional justice theory, which Libya refers to, reparation
projects ought to be linked to such complementary initiatives.[22]
Bearing in
mind these considerations, further problems with the Italian-Libyan
treaty become clear. First of all, its stated aim to close a
painful “chapter of the past” stands contrary to the goals of
reparation politics. Furthering historical inquiry should go
hand in hand with the process of settling past disputes. Reparations
without steps to ascertain the truth about past violations may
be perceived as an attempt to buy the victims’ silence and could
be counterproductive. Aside from government-funded research on
the manfiyun, relatively little serious scholarship has
looked into Italian rule in Libya, considered one of the most
violent colonial experiments in the Arab world. Whole chapters
have yet to be written on the establishment of concentration
camps in Cyrenaica and Syrtica, where more than 100,000 Bedouins
are believed to have died. Similarly, little has been written
on the so-called flying courts, mobile colonial tribunals that
flew into combat areas and sentenced to death thousands of captured
Libyans. More symbolically, Italy has yet to release the “missing”
proceedings of the trial of ‘Umar al-Mukhtar, who was hanged
at the age of 70. These are just a few of the most glaring gaps
in knowledge of the colonial history of Libya. How can this treaty
propose to close a chapter of the past when that chapter has
not been written?
The second
problem with the treaty lies in how the payments are being distributed.
The $5 billion that Italy has promised will not take the form
of cash payments or other direct compensation to Libyan individuals
or families who were the victims of Italian rule (as is the case
for German compensation of Holocaust victims). The so-called
reparations take the form of Italian investments in infrastructure,
defense and border control technology, and only to a much smaller
extent of services and scholarships. The money will be pumped
back into Italian construction and engineering firms who will
be in charge of building the jointly agreed-upon infrastructure
projects. In this respect, these payments resemble tied aid,
against which some countries, like Britain, have already enacted
legislation.
In theory,
the fact that payments go to infrastructure projects rather than
being divided up among the victims of colonial rule is not reason
to disqualify them entirely as “reparations.” Scholars have shown
that there are two types of reparations for colonial rule: One
is restorative, aimed at compensating those who have been physically
hurt in the past, and the other is what John Torpey has called
“anti-systemic.”[23] The
latter is rooted in the idea that past systems of domination,
such as colonial rule, were generally racist, violent and unjust,
and are the cause of continuing economic disadvantage suffered
by those who lived under the systems or their descendants. This
type of claim “views reparations as a means of transforming the
current conditions of deprivation suffered by the groups in question,
and is more frequently connected to broader projects of social
transformation.”[24]
Had Italy
and Libya programmed projects specifically aimed at a social
transformation, it would be possible to categorize these payments
as “anti-systemic.” But informal conversations with a number
of Italian government officials who were directly involved with
the drafting of the treaty and the negotiation process reveal
that, on the Italian side, little thought was given to the social
function of these payments and how they would benefit the past
victims of colonial rule. Again, aside from housing, scholarships
and radar, the signed treaty does not even specify the types
of infrastructure projects to be funded. Italians therefore appear
to have been more concerned with the treaty’s economic payoff
to Italy than its social function in Libya.
No Blueprint
A number of
Italian scholars have criticized the treaty for failing to emphasize
the historical dimension of Italy’s relations with Libya and
for omitting any mention of the past crimes that, allegedly,
this agreement seeks to redress. “In short, Italy is paying $5
billion, essentially an indemnity for the crimes committed over
30 years in Libya and for the 100,000 deaths that we caused,
but in the treaty there is no mention of that,” stated historian
Angelo Del Boca.[25] Baffled, Del Boca wondered if Berlusconi specifically
requested the omission of history or if the two parties had so
decided at the very beginning of the negotiations. Or could it
be possible, he mused sardonically, that they simply “forgot”
to mention the past? Sergio Romano, a former Italian ambassador
who has published on the Italian colonial past in Libya, was
similarly critical, but for other reasons. He called the Benghazi
meeting between Berlusconi and Qaddafi a “small theater of hypocrisy”
where “the Libyan leader pretended to believe that Italy was
the cause of all of Libya’s problems; and the Italian premier
pretended to feel regret for his country’s colonial past.”[26] Surprisingly, Italy’s ratification
of the treaty in early February 2009 did not trigger much debate
in the Italian media, which at the time was busy covering the
first days of the Obama presidency and the aftermath of Israel’s
attacks in Gaza. The criticisms of the treaty voiced by members
of Parliament were not echoed, by and large, in the newspapers.
Given the amount of money involved and the absolute novelty of
a treaty of this type, one would have expected Italian intellectuals
to discuss the treaty’s moral and philosophical dimensions, if
not the historical ones. But that debate never took place.
A few Libyans
voice the opinion that the amount to be paid by Italy -- $5 billion
-- is insulting, but most seem to cherish the agreement as a
just settlement and a moral victory. On the streets of Tripoli,
ordinary Libyans claim that Italians and Libyans are now “sawa
sawa,” which in the local dialect means “the same” or “equals.”
In their eyes, thanks to this agreement Italy has once and for
all set aside the discriminatory and racist attitude that characterized
the colonial period. Clearly such opinions mirror the official
rhetoric that the country’s state-controlled media has been broadcasting.
The Libyan media has referred to the financial aspects of the
treaty as payments for infrastructure projects in Libya, but
has so far failed to highlight the fact that the funds will benefit
Italian companies first and foremost. A few Libyans, both inside
the country and among exiles, have criticized the treaty as opportunistic
and compared Berlusconi to a marionette whose words are in reality
those of the puppeteer. One such critic was the 80-year old son
of ‘Umar al-Mukhtar, the man on the receiving end of Berlusconi’s
apology in the tent in August. Apparently, he had originally
refused to meet the Italian premier, who he accuses of representing
a country that still “hates the Libyan people and hates ‘Umar
al-Mukhtar,” but was eventually compelled by the Libyan authorities
to attend.[27]
Clearly, those
who thought that Italy’s announced scheme for Libya would trigger
a similar course of action across the rest of the Arab world
will be disappointed. First of all, it is highly unlikely that
the two other former colonial powers in the region would consider
reparation payments, in whatever form, as a priority. Secondly,
no other Arab state has yet led a government-sponsored campaign
to demand reparations for colonial rule in the same way that
Libya or other African states have done over the past 30 years,
or even shown interest in the idea. The few calls for colonial
reparations coming from Egypt and Algeria originated in individuals
or political parties that have not convinced their governments
to follow Libya’s example.
Now that the
details of the Italian-Libyan accord are known, the Libyan example
is more troubling as a potential precedent. The treaty is an
important step forward in the reconciliation process between
Libya and its former colonial master, but it should not necessarily
be upheld as a blueprint for other countries’ quests for compensation.
It is not with money alone that Italian crimes in Libya -- or
those of other nations elsewhere -- will be redressed.
Endnotes
[1] Corriere della Sera, August
30, 2008.
[2] Tripoli Post, September
7, 2008.
[3] Corriere della Sera, August
30, 2008.
[4] See, for instance, Karim Kebir,
“La France à l’exemple italienne: ‘El Cavaliere,’ Sarkozy et
nous,” Liberté, September 1, 2008; and François Soudan,
“Commedia dell’arte,” Jeune Afrique, September 7, 2008.
[5] ADNKronos, September 2,
2008.
[6] Gamal Essam El-Din, “Climbing
on the Bandwagon,” al-Ahram Weekly, October 9-15, 2008.
[7] Deutsche Presse Agentur,
September 26, 2001.
[8] Agence France Presse, December
4, 2008.
[9] For the full text of the treaty
in Italian, see “Ratifica ed esecuzione del Trattato di amicizia,
partenariato e cooperazione tra la Repubblica italiana e la Grande
Giamahiria araba libica popolare socialista, fatto a Bengasi
il 30 agosto 2008,” in Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati,
2041/XVI, presented to the Parliament on December 23, 2008.
[10] Associated Press, December
11, 2008.
[11] Platts Oilgram News,
December 9, 2008.
[12] Independent, December
29, 2008.
[13] Salvatore Coluccello and Simon
Massey, “Out of Africa: The Human Trade Between Libya and Lampedusa,” Trends
in Organized Crime 10 (2007).
[14] Elazar Barkan, The Guilt
of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (Baltimore:
John Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 3-29.
[15] Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Reparations
to Africa (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2008), p. 54.
[16] Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, “Reparations
to Africa and the Group of Eminent Persons,” Cahiers d’Études
Africaines 45 (2004).
[17] Allan D. Cooper, “Reparations
for the Herero Genocide: Defining the Limits of International
Litigation,” African Affairs 106 (January 2007).
[18] BBC News, August 14, 2004.
[19] Jeremy Sarkin and Carly Fowler,
“Reparations for Historical Human Rights Violations: The International
and Historical Dimensions of the Alien Torts Claim Act Genocide
Case of the Herero of Namibia,” Human Rights Review 9
(2008).
[20] Pablo De Greiff, “Justice and
Reparations,” The Handbook of Reparations (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 452.
[21] John Torpey, Making Whole
What Has Been Smashed: On Reparation Politics (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 49.
[22] On transitional justice, see
the website of the International Center for Transitional Justice:
http://www.ictj.org.
[23] John Torpey, “Making Whole
What Has Been Smashed: Reflections on Reparations,” Journal
of Modern History 73/2 (June 2001).
[24] Ibid., p. 337.
[25] Angelo Del Boca, “Solo soldi:
La memoria non c’entra sui massacri nemmeno una parola,” La
Repubblica, March 3, 2009.
[26] Sergio Romano, “Scuse italiane
alla Libia e teatrino delle ipocrisie,” Corriere della Sera,
October 4, 2008.
[27] Tripoli Post, August
30, 2008.
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