Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Histoire militaire – Liban“

Au mois de septembre 1983, l’armée libanaise accomplit, dans la localité de Souk al-Gharb, son premier baptême du feu d’envergure depuis le début de la guerre civile au Liban, huit ans auparavant. Surprenante pour les contemporains, la performance de la troupe fut aussitôt utilisée par le pouvoir libanais afin de se présenter comme le défenseur de l’unité nationale face aux agressions étrangères. Pourtant, la bataille de Souk al-Gharb est aujourd’hui tombée dans l’oubli, quand ses protagonistes se divisent autour de son souvenir. En se fondant sur cette expérience combattante inédite, l’article examine le fonctionnement de l’armée libanaise dans le contexte de la guerre civile. Grâce à une vaste enquête orale menée auprès des vétérans, il met au jour les éléments de cohésion des unités combattantes, tout en nuançant la lecture confessionnelle qui sert souvent à expliquer les trajectoires des militaires au cours du conflit. La bataille de Souk al-Gharb ouvre ainsi l’histoire de la guerre du Liban à celle des grands conflits modernes, confinée d’ordinaire au cadre occidental. Elle prête aussi à une réflexion sur la place de la guerre civile dans la mémoire de l’institution militaire et de son personnel. Dans les usages mémoriels de la bataille ou leur absence, se lisent les failles d’une société divisée et son rapport problématique au passé.

AbstractThe Society for Libyan Studies has been in the forefront of research and writing on the modern history of Libya. The example was set by the first president of the society, Sir Duncan Cumming. Following the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa in 1942–43, he was closely involved with the British military administration of Libya. In this role he was instrumental in establishing local self-government and lobbying for Libyan independence, finally achieved in 1951. In retrospect it is clear that he also laid the groundwork for the study of the emergence of Libya as a modern state. Historians and members of the SLS, such as John Wright, have followed suit and have made major contributions through their books and articles to our understanding of the history of Libya. Long may this continue.

Abstract An analysis of P. Geneva D191, P. BM EA 75019+10302, P. Penn 49.11, and P. Turin 2097+2105 leads to a new interpretation on the political events at Thebes during the Renaissance Era. Ramesses XI played a major role in the restoration of order with the help of Libyan troops. He decreed the Renaissance Era with the will of restoring control in the South. Nesamun, at the death of his brother Amenhotep, was compelled to return to his former position of second prophet of Amun while that of first prophet was left vacant for at least two years. After year 4 or 5 of the Renaissance Era, Piankh, who arrived at Thebes with the king, progressively installed a system of power which will prevail throughout the 21st Dynasty. In this new structure a military family of probable Libyan background occupied all the Theban secular and religious functions while maintaining a fictitious allegiance to the northern king.

AbstractControversy surrounds the reason why the centenaria were introduced into the pre-desert area of Tripolitania. This paper examines two conflicting theories; that of Goodchild that they were military in origin and that of Brogan and the Unesco Libyan Valleys team that they were in the main merely substantial private dwellings. The main contribution of this study is to provide new evidence from Latino-Punic inscriptions that the centenaria were private dwellings on private land.

The Balkans and the territory of the Ottoman Empire (especially the Straits region and Asia Minor) on the eve of the First World War were the main region where Russian and Austro-German interests clashed. The article deals with the reaction of the Russian press to sending of the German military mission to Istanbul in winter 1913—1914, headed by General Liman von Sanders. The author stressed that this action of the Berlin Government contributed to the further growth of anti-German sentiments in the Russian society on the eve of the First World War.

AbstractTwo brief reconnaissance visits to archaeological sites in Cyrenaica in November 2010 and April 2012, for the purpose of a new archaeological guidebook, led to a variety of observations concerning rural sites which have been little discussed since the 1950s. The predominant theme was a need for a wide-ranging and detailed reassessment of the chronology and nature of rural settlement. This was carried out in Tripolitania in the 1980s by the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeological Survey, but nothing comparable has been done in Cyrenaica. Sites previously regarded as Byzantine or early Arab have yielded early Roman pottery, and many once taken to be military, with strengthened defences, now seem more likely to be civil and to have been shored up following earthquake damage.

Peacekeeping and economic union are the two most important dimensions of African integration. The first section of this article aims to analyse some current challenges to African peacekeeping, peacemaking, and African integration. The continuing Libyan civil war epitomizes the diplomatic stalemates and military stalemates which form the limits of current African peacekeeping. It exposes the North African Regional Capability and North African Standby Brigade as paper structures which do not exist operationally, and so limit the capacity of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council. The military intervention of states outside Africa can polarize conflicts and escalate civil wars. Africa’s colonial epoch serves as a warning of the potential dangers of foreign military bases in Africa. In parts of West Africa, states sub-contract peacemaking and anti-terrorist operations to unsupervised local militias, which are lawless at best, and commit ethnic killings at worst. African integration fares better in the economic dimension. The second section analyses African integration, with its focus on the most recent step of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which starts to lay the cornerstone envisaged four decades ago in the Lagos Plan of Action, and three decades ago in the Abuja Treaty for an African Economic Community. The historic track record of African continental organizations indicates that a decade will be a realistic minimum period for it to be substantially implemented. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System will help operationalize the AfCFTA by lowering forex currency transaction charges. Severe difficulties can be predicted for future attempts to upgrade the AfCFTA into a continental customs union, and ultimately into a continental common market.

El estudio del ejercicio del gobierno municipal de Setúbal a lo largo de los siglos finales de la Edad Media permite constatar el creciente control ejercido por la Orden de Santiago respecto al poder concejil, que se materializa, bien en la intervención en el proceso de designación de los más importantes cargos concejiles, bien en la interferencia en la creación de la normativa municipal. Estos aspectos no constituyen aspectos particulares de esta villa portuaria medieval, sino que se documentan en otros núcleos urbanos integrados en la jurisdicción de la Orden de Santiago. Las estrategias de control y reproducción del poder detectadas se asientan en el establecimiento de una red de vínculos que ligan a diversos individuos que integran la administración municipal y la estructura administrativa de la orden de Santiago.

AbstractThe most outstanding oasis fort of the limes Tripolitanus, Myd(---)/Gheriat el-Garbia, saw the deployment of various military units between AD 198/201 and 275/80. Archaeological research in 2009/10 focussed on the fortifications, particularly the main and rear gates, the northern angle tower and interval towers 2 and 4 as well as the curtain wall at its south corner. The towers of the porta praetoria have been reconstructed theoretically with three storeys, at an overall height of c. 12.5 m. Of the headquarters building two of the rear rooms, including the shrine, were excavated. A monumental inscription of a length of c. 9.0 m and corresponding architectural elements suggest the existence of a groma building. Completely unexpected by archaeologists as well as ancient historians and rather spectacular is a late Roman reoccupation of the military site: after a hiatus of c. 80+ years building activities were undertaken within the fort and repairs and the blocking of the main gate could be observed and probably attributed to the deployment of a unit of limitanei between AD 360/80 (at the earliest) and 430/55. The reoccupied fort might be identified with the so far unknown castra Madensia, where the milites munifices were garrisoned (Notitia Dignitatum Occ. 31, 30). Further evidence of occupation, possibly of a Libyan chieftain and his tribe, has been assigned to the second half of the fifth century, continuing thereafter until AD 540+.

Arab spring memberikan pengaruh signifikan terhadap keadaan sosial dan politik di Libya era Muammar Khadafi. Jumlah pengangguran meningkat dan kegiatan bisnis wiraswasta mengalami kesulitan sehingga berdampak terhadap gejolak politik di wilayah tersebut. Tujuan penelitian dalam artikel ini adalah untuk mendeskripsikan masa kedatangan Islam hingga Kemerdekaan di negara Libya, menganalisis gejolak politik era Muammar Khadafi hingga era Arab Spring. Prosedur metode penelitian sejarah memiliki empat tahapan, yaitu heuristik; kritik sumber atau verifikasi; interpretasi atau eksplanasi dan terakhir penulisan sejarah atau historiografi. Hasil penelitian dalam artikel ini, yaitu: Pertama, Negara Libya adalah negara bagian Afrika Utara dengan sistem berbasis Islam, wilayah ini sebelum kedatangan Islam pernah dikuasai oleh Kerajaan Byzantium (Kristen). Secara historis, penduduk Libya menganut mayoritas Islam. Selanjutnya, pada dinamika Politik Libya Pra Arab Spring telah mengantarkan sejarah baru dalam perpolitikan Libya. Sejeak Muammar Khadafi membentuk sistem politiknya sendiri dengan Dewan Komando Revolusi (militer) berperan penting dalam penyusunan kebijakan dan konstitusi negara. Setelah rezim Khadafi berakhir, dinamika politik di Libya membawa perubahan yang signifikan. Terakhir, krisis Politik di Libya memang terjadi secara penuh ketika Arab Spring terjadi Jazirah Arab dan masuk ke wilayah Libya sehingga menjadi negara mengalami kekacauan secara politik sehingga mempengaruhi distablisasi negara dan berakibat kepada kemerosotan sosial di negara tersebut. Muammar Khadafi dianggap dikator dan otoriter dalam kebijakan negaranya yang berdampak negatif terhadap sosial masyarakat Libya. Akibatnya masyarakat melakukan gejolak terhadap negara tersebut dengan menuntut agar Muammar Khadafi turun dari jabatannya. The Arab Spring had a significant impact on the social and political situation in Muammar Khadafi's Libya. The number of unemployed people increased and self-employed business activities experienced difficulties, which had an impact on political turmoil in the region. The research objectives in this article are to describe the arrival of Islam to Independence in the country of Libya, analyzing the political turmoil of the Muammar Khadafi era to the Arab Spring era. The historical research method procedure has four stages, namely heuristics; source criticism or verification; interpretation or explanation and finally historical writing or historiography. The results of the research in this article, namely: First, the State of Libya is a North African state with an Islamic-based system, this region before the arrival of Islam was once controlled by the Byzantine (Christian) Empire. Historically, the Libyan population adheres to the majority of Islam. Furthermore, the political dynamics of Libya before the Arab Spring has ushered in a new history in Libyan politics. Historically, Muammar Khadafi formed his own political system with the Revolutionary Command Council (military) playing an important role in drafting state policies and constitutions. After Khadafi's regime ended, the political dynamics in Libya brought significant changes. Finally, the political crisis in Libya did occur in full when the Arab Spring occurred in the Arabian Peninsula and entered the Libyan region so that the country experienced political chaos that affected the destabilization of the country and resulted in social decline in the country. Muammar Khadafi was considered a dictator and authoritarian in his state policies that negatively affected the social of Libyan society. As a result, the people made turmoil against the country by demanding that Muammar Khadafi step down from his position.

The article is dedicated to tribes and tribal narratives in the political life of contemporary Libya. While it is widely acknowledged that the tribal factor is crucial in the Libyan history, its role in the political process of the last 10 years remains unclear. The tribes do not seem to become key military and political actors, they remain at the fringes of various reconciliation projects. Their political subjectivity itself brings out a number of controversial interpretations. Considering all that, the author aims to research the role of the tribal factor in social and political processes and discover manifestations of tribal narrative among non-state actors, particularly so-called militias. The following research is based both on published sources and author’s interviews with Libyan informants. The first part of the article looks into historical dynamics of the tribal factor. The second one analyzes the transformation of this role in the conditions of social modernization. The third part demonstrates specific traits of tribal strategies in the 2010s. The fourth one identifies elements of the tribal narrative in the actions and agendas of urban militias that have emerged after the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. The article shows that even though the urbanization process of the 1970-80s indeed led to the downfall of tribes as main socio-political structures, it has not yet fully replaced the tribal narrative by the times of the Arab Spring. As a result, the decomposition of statehood brought out the reconstruction of tribal structures according to the new social conditions.

The ostraca of Bu Njem come from a military outpost on the North African fringes of the Empire. Vernacular languages were spoken in the area. The ostraca record, among other things, contact between soldiers and the local population, and contain various African (Punic or ‘Libyan’) words and names, some of them previously unrecorded. The soldiers themselves have in many cases African names, or names with a special African connection, and it is likely that many were recruited locally. If so they may not have been fluent Latin speakers, and consequently the Latin which they wrote raises unusual questions. Is it Latin at all, or perhaps a pidgin or Creole? Or, on the contrary, is the language merely bureaucratic and formulaic Latin of no great interest? Do we, at last, have some hard evidence for a regional variety of Latin, in this case perhaps influenced by a substratum language or languages?.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been a noticeable increase in German efforts to ensure security in the Mediterranean Sea. This is part of the growing activities to ensure a strong strategic position in North and West Africa, including the settlement of existing armed conflicts here as sources of threats to instability for Germany and its EU partners. Consequently, Germany found itself increasingly interested in finding reliable strategic partners, one of which is Algeria, which makes the topic of this article relevant. The purpose of the study is to examine bilateral security and defense relations with a special focus on the second half of the 2010s and early 2020s with the help of comparative and event-analysis. Having an applied character, this topic has not yet found detailed coverage in the works of both domestic and foreign, especially German, researchers. The historic background of the German-Algerian dialogue is presented. The growth of high-level contacts in the second half of the 2010s is shown, with Germany having to focus on negotiations with the frequently changing figure of the Algerian prime minister. The article also explores the constraints for the cooperation of German and Algerian armed forces on land and sea, as well as the dynamics of military-technical cooperation. The bilateral cooperation in the resolution of the armed conflict in Mali, first of all, in its northern region (Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu) is considered. The political and diplomatic cooperation on the Libyan track in the middle and second half of the 2010s, as well as shortly after the Berlin Conference on Libya in January 2020, is revealed. In the early 2020s, there was a sharp decline in the intensity and volume of bilateral cooperation in almost all areas. In addition to COVID-19, the importance of domestic political factors and the temporary decline in the practical value of the partnership in Libya and Mali for Germany are stressed. A forecast of the dynamics of bilateral relations is finally given.

The past two decades have seen dramatic changes of perspective and an explosion of new information in the broad fields covered by this overview. Within the constraints of space allowed it is not possible to cover all aspects or to mention all relevant publications. References to pre-1969 work have been kept to a minimum, except where dramatic revision of older views is now necessary.The traditional picture of the Roman frontier in Tripolitania owes an incalculable debt to the pioneering work of Richard Goodchild. Much of his observation remains of the highest value (accessible particularly through the volume of collected articles (edited by Joyce Reynolds), Goodchild 1976), but in the 40 years since his initial work on the limes Tripolitanus (1949a/b; 1950a/b; Ward-Perkins and Goodchild 1949) the available body of data has increased greatly and the conceptual framework for interpreting it has changed considerably (the scale of the reappraisal may be judged by comparing Brogan and Smith 1957 and 1985). The most controversial aspects of Goodchild's work concern the date of the development of a frontier in Tripolitania and the interpretation of the fortified farms which are so characteristic of the zone: ‘…no traces of a pre-Severan limes have yet been found. In this respect it may be significant that the linear fossata which Baradez has proved to constitute the central feature of the Numidian limes, and which he tentatively dated to the Hadrianic period, have not yet been found in the area of modern Tripolitania … Apart from … the outer fortresses of Gheriat el-Garbia and Bu Ngem … the military works of the limes Tripolitanus seem to have consisted almost exclusively of fortified farmhouses occupied by Libyan limitanei.’ (Goodchild 1950 = 1976, 44).

A good deal has been written about the origin and recruitment of centurions, but their language use has not been analysed as an index to their literacy, culture, educational levels, and (in some cases) bilingualism. This paper will be about the sociolinguistics of the centurionate. I take as my starting point two poems from Bu Njem in the African desert, one of which has only recently been published for the first time.The military outpost of Bu Njem (Golas, Gholaia) lay 200 km south of Cape Misurata in the desert of Tripolitania. The fort, the construction of which began some time after 24 January 201, was garrisoned by auexillatioof thelegio III Augusta, and later by anumerus collatus. From here there survive ostraca of various kinds dated mainly to the 250s, but in this paper I am going to deal with the unlikely topic of poetic activity within the camp. Curiously, we have poems set up on stone in the name of two centurions, both of them acrostichs which spell out the centurions' names. The first, in iambic senarii and dated 202–3, has the name of Q. Avidius Quintianus, the second, dated to early 222, that of M Porcius Iasucthan;Iasucthanis of Libyan origin. This poem, on a charitable view, is composed in hexameters. The poems provide remarkable evidence for the cultural and linguistic level of centurions, if one can make the assumption that the texts were the responsibility of the two centurions themselves.

This article assesses the Liberal and Fascist administrations’ shifting attitudes towards colonial concubinage during the years of the repression of the anti-colonial resistance in Italian Libya (1911–32). Also known as mabruchismo, concubinage in Libya closely resembled its counterpart in Italian Eastern Africa, as it involved middle- to upper-class Italian officers coercing colonised women into engaging in often exploitative intimate relationships. During the first 20 years of colonisation of the territory, the colony's military administration employed an ambiguous stance regarding the practice, condemning it discursively to ingratiate itself with the local elites while unofficially allowing it to provide safe sex to its officers. When the resistance was defeated in the early 1930s, and the Fascist administration began its demographic colonisation plans, colonial concubinage was prohibited as out of place in a racially segregated settler colony. This article employs an analysis of official archival sources to trace the regulatory framework that shaped the lives of the Libyan women and Italian officers engaged in concubinage in a shifting colonial society. The colonial administrations’’ regulatory efforts toward colonial concubinage testify to the crucial role that Libyan women and racially ‘‘mixed’’ relationships played in shaping categories of race, class, and gender relative to the Italian colonial context.