Territorio Sahara Libico

The Southern Military Territory (Italian: Territorio Militare del Sud) refers to the jurisdictional territory within the colony of Italian Libya (1911–1943), administered by the Italian military in the Libyan Sahara.

This military territory was below Italian Libya's four coastline provinces of Tripoli, Misurata, Benghazi and Derna. Officially it was not part of Italian Libya and was divided in four military sections:

The population was mostly Arab, with minorities of Berbers and blacks. Italians were concentrated in the administrative capital Hon, but there were a few even in the fortress Gadames.

In 1938 the Military Territory had 1,100,000 km² with 50,889 inhabitants (nomads like the Tuaregs were not calculated as resident population).

The military territory expanded after concessions from Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and a territorial agreement with Egypt. The Kingdom of Italy at the 1919 Paris "Conference of Peace" received nothing from German colonies, but as a compensation Great Britain gave it the Oltre Giuba and France agreed to give some Saharan territories to Italian Libya.

In 1936 the Aozou Strip was added after being ceded from Chad, then part of French Equatorial Africa after the Mussolini-Laval agreement of 1935.

In 1931, the towns of El Tag and Al Jawf were taken over by Italy. Egypt had ceded Kufra district to Italian Libya in 1919, but it was not until the early 1930s that Italy was in full control of the place. In 1931, during the campaign of Cyrenaica, General Rodolfo Graziani easily conquered Kufra District, considered a strategic region, leading about 3,000 soldiers from infantry and artillery, supported by about twenty bombers. Ma'tan as-Sarra was turned over to Italy in 1934 as part of the Sarra Triangle by the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, who considered the area worthless and so an act of cheap appeasement to Benito Mussolini's attempts at empire. During this time, the Italian colonial forces built a World War I–style fort in El Tag in the mid-1930s.

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Wikipedia