Allied administration of Libya European possessions in Africa to gain independence. Allied administration of Libya The Allied administration of Libya was the control of the ex-Italian colony of Libya by the Allies from 1943 until Libyan independence was granted in 1951. It was divided into the following: The Allied administration was done by the United Kingdom in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, and by France in Fezzan. Officially Libya remained "Italian Libya" until February 1947, when Italy signed the Peace Treaty losing all the colonies and possessions of the defeated former Italian Empire. The British administered it as the British Military Administration of Libya. The French
Italian East Africa a threat to Egypt and those in the Italian East Africa a danger to the British and French territories in the Horn of Africa. Italian belligerence also closed the Mediterranean to Allied merchant ships and endangered British supply routes along the coast of East Africa, the Gulf of Aden, Red Sea and the Suez Canal. (The Kingdom of Egypt remained neutral during World War II, but the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 allowed the British to occupy Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.) Egypt, the Suez Canal, French Somaliland and British Somaliland were also vulnerable to invasion, but the "Comando Supremo" (Italian General