The Glubb Reports: Glubb Pasha and Britain's Empire Project in the Middle East 1920-1956

Tancred Bradshaw

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137380104
• eBook ISBN: 9781137380111
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

The Glubb Reports studies papers written by General Sir John Glubb, the long-serving British commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion. It covers issues such as the role of tribes and desert control, the impact of Palestine, the Arab Legion's role in the first Arab-Israeli war, the expansion of the Arab Legion, and Glubb's dismissal in 1956.

1

Glubb, Tribes and Iraq, 1922–1930

Introduction

This chapter discusses Glubb’s attitude towards tribes and his experience of desert operations in Iraq during the 1920s. The reports contain numerous comments on the nature of Bedouin society and the problem of raiding, and desert control, which dominated the early years of his career in Iraq and Transjordan. Glubb held the tribes and their customs in the highest regard, but he was well aware of their weaknesses. His experience of tribes and desert control were fundamental because he formed his ideas about how to control the desert. He argued that the Iraqi Government failed to comprehend the problem, and that technology, including vehicles and radios, gave the authorities an overwhelming advantage over the tribes. Furthermore, Glubb realised that the most effective way to establish control over the tribes was to recruit tribesmen. He applied the lessons he learnt in Iraq with great success in Transjordan.

Glubb and the tribes

Glubb was a distinguished example of a British officer who was fascinated by the Bedouin. His writings show that he was infatuated by life in the desert:

The charm of the desert nights never palls. Only those who have experienced them can understand the joys of evening in the desert, seated in a circle round the campfire in the clean soft sand, beneath the sparkling Arab starts or the still white light of the full moon. In the glowing embers stand the brass coffee pots, from which are poured again and again the little cups of bitter coffee. Every now and then a new bush is thrown on the fire, which flares up suddenly to a bright flame illustrating the lean figures seated around and filling the air with a sharp aromatic fragrance. The talk may last until after midnight, quiet, unending, unembarrassed, without subservience or familiarity. Indeed, the most attractive quality of tribesmen of the old school is that they are almost unaware of social distinctions, and thus are always natural. At first local politics, grievances, poverty or raid losses may be discussed. But as familiarity increases we forget the poverty, misery and the uncertainty of today, and outcome the tales of the good old times, of deeds of raiding prowess, of noble gestures and fantastic hospitality.¹

Glubb adopted a romanticised impression of the tribes and life in the desert:

The great attraction which they exercised on the occasional Europeans who met them lay in the fact that they lived in a different world, which was neither class-conscious nor race-conscious, and so suffered neither from the aggressiveness nor from the alternative servility of those communities whose members were constantly obsessed by doubts as to their own value in comparison with other groups with which they came into contact. A complete lack of self-consciousness – to be perfectly natural, as we say – was one of the most attractive human qualities. The Bedouins thirty of forty years ago were unaware of the existence of class or racial inequalities. As a result, they unconsciously treated all en as equals, without any mental embarrassments or reservations.²

Many British officials tend to ‘prefer’ tribesmen to effendis. Perhaps this is due to the fact that effendis are imitating us, and we natural see the errors in that imitation. Perhaps even more, British officers resent effendis because the latter compete with them, and intrigue against them. The tribesman is so different from the European that he does not compete or clash.

If, however, the present analysis is to be of any value, it is essential for us to preserve an Olympian impartiality, and on no account to be swayed by parochial prejudices. Except for an admixture of Turk, Kurd, or Circassian in certain big cities, the effendis are much the same race and the tribesmen, talk of ‘liking’ one class or the other is irrelevant.³

Glubb believed that the Bedouin were a race apart because of their reliance on the camel, which could not be raised in well-irrigated areas. This meant that they could only live in the desert. The Bedouin were therefore separate from farmers and townspeople, and were forbidden from mixing with or marrying the settled population. Life in the desert was particularly harsh, which produced ‘extreme individualism’ caused by the precarious nature of Bedouin life characterised by the constant threat of starvation and thirst, and the likelihood of being attacked.⁴ Glubb argued that ‘a Bedouin in the strictest sense, is a camel-breeding nomad of certain specified tribes’,⁵ or ‘purely nomadic tribes living by camel breeding’.⁶ According to his definition, Transjordanian tribes such as the Beni Sakhr, Howeitat and Sirhan were not purely nomadic because they owned land, but they did migrate to the desert part of the year with their livestock, including camels.

One of the notable features of the Bedouin was the ancient tradition of raiding, (1) which Glubb referred to as a ‘sporting game’. (3) Sir Harold Dickson, in his remarkable study of the Bedouin, argued that tribal warfare followed strict rules of conduct, especially regarding the inviolate status of women. He noted that ‘raiding is the breath of life to the Bedouin’, and the tribesmen must have raids because it denoted to them ‘everything that is manly and sporting’.⁷ Glubb believed that there was a close parallel between Bedouin warfare and the chivalric fighting he associated with Richard Coeur de Lion and the Crusades: ‘When an Englishman, in these days, comes into intimate contact with the Arab nomads, he discovers in their customs, perhaps rather unexpectedly, an amazing similarity to the customs and outlook of European chivalry of the feudal period.’⁸

The Bedouin developed a system of fighting that resulted from tribes wandering the desert and coming into conflict over scarce grazing and water supplies. The tribes’ main possession was their livestock, and in a conflict, each side would seize animals (usually camels) from each other. This process encouraged counter-raiding in order for the tribes to recover their livestock. Glubb believed that the Bedouin’s reliance on their animals meant that resistance was impossible, forcing them to surrender to their opponent. However, the Bedouin’s mobility on camels and horses made them well suited to offensive operations and guerrilla warfare. Glubb argued that tribal conflict was a form of sport and to the ‘Bedouin … war provided excitement, glamour, fame and heroism, in lives otherwise monotonous with the dull routine of herding animals and watching them graze’.⁹ The ambitions of the Bedouin warrior were to perform noble deeds – ‘glory, not the safety of his community is his object’. This meant that the method of fighting counted for more than victory, and that ‘competition in performing heroic deeds becomes the life passion of the nomad’. This resulted in a complicated code of rules for war.¹⁰ It is therefore not surprising that Glubb held the Akhwan¹¹ in contempt for their routine breach of this code of conduct because they were responsible for massacres. (3)

Desert control and the tribes in Iraq

One of the main problems the British faced in Iraq was the assertion of the state’s authority in the desert hinterland. In Iraq, the British authorities sought to rebuild and solidify the power of the shaikhs, which they believed had been diminished during the Ottoman era. There were practical reasons for the adoption of this policy, which was heavily influenced by the British experience in India. British officials, such as Sir Henry Dobbs (high commissioner for Iraq, 1923–1929), believed that enhancing the authority of the tribal leaders would undermine the authority of the urban politicians and balance the power of King Faisal I. The British also relied on the shaikhs because they wanted to assert their authority at the lowest possible cost. Instead of deploying large numbers of troops, they sought to take advantage of the traditional division between the tribes and the townsmen.¹²

British officials misunderstood the nature of the tribes in Iraq,¹³ but Glubb was very critical of government policy on the desert. In one of his earliest reports on the problems caused by Akhwan raiding, he argued that the government in Baghdad was too slow to realise the nature of the situation in the desert, and that it had completely failed to defend the nomadic population against Akhwan raids. (1, 6) Glubb also believed that government policy on the tribes was based on the fallacious argument that there ‘is little more similarity between the old-fashioned Bedouin raid and modern Akhwan methods of warfare, than between international rugby football and a European war. The opponents are the same, but one is sport, governed by rules and involving little danger while the other is ruthless warfare.’ (2)

Glubb fervently argued that one of the fundamental problems in dealing with raiding was the attitude towards the Saudi ruler Abd al-Aziz Al Saud (commonly known as Ibn Saud), who founded Saudi Arabia in 1932. Glubb was convinced that Ibn Saud was instigating raids across the Najd–Iraq frontier, which led him to argue that Ibn Saud ‘is a completely unscrupulous Oriental monarch, whose intrigues are guided solely by what he considers to be his interest’.¹⁴ He believed that British officials had succumbed to the ‘provocation theory’, which assumed that the presence of government forces in the desert provoked the Akhwan. Glubb contended that Ibn Saud opposed the presence of British forces in the desert because if the government appeared to be strong his tribes would join the authorities.¹⁵ (4) He remained antagonistic towards Ibn Saud well into the 1940s, which may have been a reflection of the long-running tension between the Hashemites and the Sauds. However, the tribal situation was nuanced, and Ibn Saud went to great lengths to remove suspicion of his complicity in ordering raids and to avoid British intervention by blaming the Iraqi Government for raids.¹⁶

Glubb consistently warned about the threat of Akhwan raiding, which belatedly led the Iraqi Government to introduce a more interventionist policy in the desert. He argued that the establishment of government control in the desert was a necessary and inevitable step, but he believed that desert operations were hindered by the failure of the security forces to cooperate. He also believed that the policy of using aircraft, known as ‘air control’, to intimidate and attack recalcitrant tribes was an expensive failure. He summarised tribal warfare in straightforward terms: ‘Bedouin war is like war in the air, the best defence is to hit back harder’. (5) During his time in Iraq, Glubb developed several methods that were the precursor to the ‘humane imperialism’ that he applied in Transjordan.¹⁷ His attitude towards the tribes was clearly influenced by Sir Robert Sandeman’s¹⁸ policy of dealing with tribes in Baluchistan in the late 19th century that relied on treating these communities with sympathy, light taxation, the payment of subsidies and tribal law.¹⁹

Glubb argued that desert control was based on the authorities penetrating the desert, and that ‘the old principle of desert control, however, remains as true as ever, namely, keep in touch with every district and strike successfully in each area with a mobile force’.²⁰ In contrast with previous experience, technological developments, including vehicles and radios, made it much easier for government forces to enter the desert and overcome tribal resistance.²¹ Glubb believed that technology gave the government unprecedented mobility, which paralysed the tribes’ room for manoeuvre. He proposed that the government should maintain a permanent presence in the desert by building forts adjacent to wells, which would allow the security forces to exert influence over the tribes. His ideas required the government to establish law and order in the desert, and to punish raiders, but he argued that it was essential for the authorities to work with the paramount shaikhs. Experience also showed that regular forces were quite unsuited to the harsh conditions in the desert, and that officers serving in desert units had to have an intimate knowledge of the tribes. In September 1928, a camel force was established in the southern desert of Iraq. (7) This unit was recruited almost entirely from the tribes, and according to Glubb this 70-man force, using trucks armed with machine guns, played a central role in preventing Akhwan raids from penetrating southern Iraq.²² This small force was the precursor to the Arab Legion’s Desert Patrol, which he raised in 1930.

Glubb’s critical reports of events in southern Iraq received a mixed reaction in Whitehall. Although his expertise was acknowledged, senior officials in the Colonial Office, such as Sir John Shuckburgh,²³ expressed doubts about his judgement.²⁴ Members of the Foreign Office’s Eastern Department, which was responsible for relations with the Saudis, accused Glubb of ‘an excessive bias’ against Ibn Saud and accused him of using ‘intemperate and unreasonable language’ about the Saudi ruler.²⁵ These views reflected sharp differences between the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office concerning the role of Ibn Saud as a regional leader, and diplomatic problems associated with cross-border raiding. More significantly, Glubb’s reports show that he was willing to challenge the official mind in Whitehall, but this approach failed to endear him.

Conclusion

Glubb’s reports on desert control and administration in Iraq are an essential precursor to understanding the policies that he adopted in Transjordan. The reports listed below are notable because they provide the reader with an insight into his developing ideas about tribes and how the government might control them by peaceful means. His reports from Iraq also show that he was unabashed in criticising the government’s assumptions about the tribes and its failure to curtail raiding. Nonetheless, Glubb was well aware of the benefits of technology in assisting the authorities to penetrate the margins of the state with unprecedented ease. The establishment of desert forts adjacent to wells, and the use of radios and armed vehicles, gave an overwhelming advantage to the security forces compared with the tribes that relied on camels. The reports also pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Maps
• Introduction
• 1. Glubb, Tribes and Iraq, 1922–1930
• 2. Glubb and Transjordan, 1930–1945
• 3. Glubb, Transjordan and the Palestine Mandate, 1945–1949
• 4. Imperial Twilight: Glubb and Jordan, 1950–1956
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index