Italian Cyrenaica Italian Cyrenaica Italian Cyrenaica was an Italian colony, located in present-day eastern Libya, that existed from 1912 to 1934. It was part of the Italian North African territory conquered from the Ottoman Empire in 1911. The administrative capital was Benghazi. Italian Cyrenaica was formed in 1927, after it and Italian Tripolitania became independent colonial entities within Italian North Africa. In 1934, Italian Cyrenaica became part of Italian Libya. In the 1920s, Cyrenaica was the scene of fighting between Italian colonial forces and Libyan rebels who were fighting for independence from colonial rule. In 1931, the rebel independence leader Omar Mukhtar
Cyrenaica Tripolitania and Fezzan remained under Gaddafi's government control. Some proposed a "two-state solution" to the conflict, with Cyrenaica becoming an independent state, but this concept was strongly rejected by both sides, and the three regions were united again in October 2011, as rebel forces took Tripolitania and Fezzan and the government collapsed. Although a historical region, Cyrenaica has not had an official central government of its own for decades. Its individual provinces have reported directly to the central government in Tripoli. On 20 July 2011, The First National Conference for Federalism offered proposals for ways to quickly achieve stability in