The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire (43 page)

Glubb furthered his own education by reading classic Western accounts of the Arab world; like Lawrence he adopted Arab dress (though only in the field); and he provided invaluable topographical and human intelligence to the RAF. He also came directly to the aid of the Mesopotamian Arabs against the Ikhwan, fanatical Wahhabi warriors loyal to Ibn Saud. Ibn Saud tried to use the Ikhwan to further his ends in central Arabia, but even he couldn't control them. The 60,000-strong Ikhwan army mercilessly put to slaughter every male, from newborn to old man, of any village they attacked. Their goal was to convert the world to their brand of Islam by killing all dissenters. They had targeted Mesopotamia for conversion, and Glubb, witness to their terror and destruction, vowed to stop them. He did—in large part because Ibn Saud diverted his wild warriors to conquering the Hejaz and deposing Sherif Hussein. In 1925, Ibn Saud signed the Basra Agreement, pledging to uphold the border between Arabia and Iraq.

In 1926, Glubb received orders to return to engineering duties in England—which he was loath to do. Instead, he resigned his commission and became a civil servant of the government of Iraq. Though now a civilian, he was back in the saddle fighting the Ikhwan, whose Islamist fervor would not be bound by Ibn Saud's agreements with infidels. An Iraqi nationalist newspaper testified to Glubb's standing among the Arab tribes: Glubb, though undoubtedly an agent of British imperialism, “is the refuge to which
the nomads fly; he is the shield behind which they seek safety and he is commander and the prohibitor. It is sufficient to pronounce his name when all will fall down to their knees and to tell them that here comes Abu Hunaik and they will begin to tremble and then freeze as if thunder struck.”
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Glubb formed a new unit, the Southern Desert Camel Corps, made up of Iraqi border Arabs—each one chosen by Glubb himself—to provide better intelligence to the RAF and help sheep-herding tribesmen fend off Ikhwan raids. Supplementing the camels were a smattering of cars and trucks mounted with machine guns. The Corps stung the Ikhwan and despite its small size—it started with only 70 men—it played an important role in another peace agreement (in 1930) between Ibn Saud (who pledged to restrain the Ikhwan) and King Feisal of Iraq.

With Iraq set to become independent in 1932, the number of British advisors was dramatically reduced—even Abu Hunaik was made redundant. But he was not long removed from his camels. Feisal's brother Abdullah, the emir (and eventual king) of Transjordan, had his own troubles with tribal raiders (and later with Syrian gangs and terrorists spilling over from Jewish-Arab fighting in Palestine), and invited Glubb to recreate his camel-borne constabulary. He did this by forming a Desert Patrol within the existing Arab Legion, to which he was appointed deputy to Frederick Gerard Peake (a former colleague of T. E. Lawrence's)—without Peake's knowledge or consent while Peake was on leave. Peake never quite got over his irritation at Glubb's appointment, yet the two men proved an able pair—especially as Glubb was never happier than when far away from Peake, patrolling the desert and enjoying the company of the Bedouin whom he made the dominant force within the Arab Legion.

Glubb frequently rhapsodized about the desert stars, the Bedouin gift for hospitality with dinner set out before an aromatic fire, coffee served in little cups, and manly conversation into the evening. The journalist (and later Labour member of Parliament) Tom Driberg profiled Glubb in 1938:

Perhaps not surprisingly, Glubb was suspicious of Western oilmen, urban Arabs, Jewish immigrants (“In Palestine the influx of Jews and foreigners, and seventeen years of direct British administration, have made the country Levantine or Mediterranean”
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), and modernizing capitalism (“I do not wish to state that the importation of foreign capital into Transjordan might not be for the benefit of the capitalists. It would probably increase the total revenue of Transjordan. It might be for the general benefit of the human race. But let us be quite clear and honest—it would not be for the benefit of the tribesmen”
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).

Glubb relished life in the desert with the Bedouin. He said as much time and again; it was his tonic. As a romantic conservative, he wanted that honorable, free, martial life preserved forever; and he was a perpetual, ardent advocate for Bedouin interests to a degree that sometimes made British officials wonder if he hadn't gone native. He had, in fact, dual loyalties. When, in 1939, he became commander of the Arab Legion (and a lieutenant-colonel in Jordanian rank) he gave his word to Abdullah that on
all occasions, save a conflict between Britain and Jordan, he would serve as an Arab soldier.

But 1939 was a time when Britain needed her own soldiers, as she would soon be at war with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, imperial Japan, Soviet Russia, and their allies, which would include Vichy France and its imperial appendages, Syria among them. There were also fears of growing Nazi influence in the Middle East. Rumors had it that Ibn Saud was flirting with the Nazis. Growing Arab hostility to Jewish settlers—and occasionally to the British troops who protected them—in Palestine left Arab public opinion dangerously inclined to Nazi propaganda. Glubb rapidly expanded the Legion, acquired improved equipment for it, and continued his magnificent
training regimen, which would make the Legion the premier pro-British Arab fighting force.

In 1941, a military coup in Iraq made the country a Nazi ally. As the British prepared a counterstrike, Glubb organized Iraqi resistance to the new regime. He also pressed into service detachments from the Arab Legion, who proved loyal when other Arab units did not. In thirty days, the British reconquered Iraq, denying the Nazis its airbases, and recovering its oil supplies. Glubb characteristically blamed Iraq's near Nazi-defection to Britain's having vouchsafed the country a Western democratic government, when what was wanted was a federal state, united by the monarchy, which dispersed power from the cities to the more conservative rural areas.

In Glubb's view, the best method of British imperial administration was one that maintained order, but leant heavily on the local authorities themselves. He credited British success in Jordan to the fact that the British made a point of rarely intervening. “The British attitude to the Arabs,” Glubb said, “was ‘This is your country! You can have a rebellion if you like. We shall not mind!' This was not strictly true, but it was highly effective. The TransJordan Government was obliged to exert itself to maintain order.”
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It was the British imperial version of: That government is best which governs least.

In the 1941 Allied invasion of Syria, of which Glubb's Arab Legion was a part, many British officers came to believe that Syria independent of France would be a natural ally of Britain. The Syrian Arabs themselves appeared to take a pro-British line, feeling they were back in the heady days of T. E. Lawrence. British officers were not only anti-Vichy—that was their duty—but unimpressed by de Gaulle's Free French, who wanted to reclaim Syria for the French republic.

Churchill had pledged his support for de Gaulle's ambitions, but the Free French were naturally suspicious of their British allies. The British, they knew, were imperialists of a different sort from themselves. As the French General Philibert Collet noted: “Wherever the British have penetrated we
meet British officers who believe the Bedouins, the Kurds, the Ghurkhas, the Sikhs or the Sudanese (whichever they happen to command) to be the most splendid fellows on earth. The French do not share this passionate interest in other races—they only praise individuals or communities insofar as they have become Gallicized.”
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At the request of the Free French, Glubb and the Arab Legion were expelled from Syria.

The success of the Arab Legion raised Abdullah's prestige, and it was essential that the Legion was maintained, with a British subsidy, when Transjordan gained independence and Abdullah became king in 1946. Glubb, as the Legion's commander, became the de facto power behind the Jordanian throne, and as such he was the target of both Zionist and Arab nationalist terrorists. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre capture perfectly the Glubb Pasha (“an unlikely Lawrence”) of this period:

As the British mandate in Palestine expired in 1948, the Arab Legion was in an extremely difficult position. Zionists and Arab nationalists were already in a state of undeclared war. The Legion was uneasily in the middle, charged with maintaining order between the contending factions. When
the British left Palestine in May 1948, the Arab Legion—by agreement between King Abdullah and the Zionists, approved by the British—was ordered to occupy, as peacekeepers, the western half of the West Bank on a line from Nablus through Ramallah and Jerusalem to Hebron.

Israel, however, was immediately invaded by Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, and in the resulting war, the Israeli Defense Forces not only repelled the attacking Arab armies but occupied lands partitioned to the Palestinian Arabs. The Israelis also advanced into Jerusalem, which was supposed to be administered by the United Nations as an international city; Abdullah ordered Glubb to retake it; and the Legion captured East Jerusalem after stiff street-by-street combat. Glubb carefully kept the Legion's actions purely defensive, avoiding any attacks on areas the United Nations had designated Israeli territory; Abdullah, however, could claim he had joined his fellow Arabs in attacking the hated Israelis.

In 1949, the war ended with an armistice that divided Palestine between an enlarged Israel, Jordan (which took the West Bank), and Egypt (which gained the Gaza Strip). Glubb bemoaned the exodus of Arab Palestinians into Jordan, where he thought they would be a destabilizing influence. He was right: in 1951 an aggrieved Palestinian, in a plot organized by a former Arab Legion officer and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, assassinated Abdullah.

King Hussein, Abdullah's grandson, who ascended to the throne in 1952, was far less tied to Glubb than his grandfather was and made a point of ignoring his advice. He abruptly dismissed him in 1956, ending Glubb Pasha's career in the Middle East, though Glubb spent the rest of his life writing books and lecturing
about the Arabs. His devotion could never have been in doubt. He wrote, “I originally went to Iraq in 1920 as a regular officer of the British Army, seeking fresh fields of adventure.... But when I had spent five years among the Arabs, I decided to change the basis of my whole career: I made up my mind to resign my commission in the British Army and devote my life to the Arabs. My decision was largely emotional. I loved them.”
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It was clear that many of them loved him too, as countless Arabs left him as ward to their children. His wife helped create and support a school for Bedouin orphans and Palestinian refugees. His son, christened with the crusading name of Godfrey, took on the Arab name he had been given by Abdullah, Faris. He converted to Islam and became an activist for the Palestinians. Like his father he fell in love with the Arabs. His father's image of them had been perpetuated in the Arab Legion—of bandoliered, red-and-white keffiyehed Arab warriors who sang gaily in action. For a certain sort of Englishman, there was little in that image not to like.