Countering Arab Insurgencies: The British Experience

Abstract

The military forces of several powers, most notably those of the US and Britain, are currently engaged in counter-insurgency campaigns against Arab opponents in Iraq. Given this, and the likelihood that the Middle East will continue to be an area where Western forces will be operationally active, this article looks at what insights can be gained from an examination of past experience; that is, how British forces dealt with Arab insurgencies during the imperial period. While there is much that is different in the contemporary period, this article points out that there are continuities that need to be appreciated. Not least among these is the pressing need for service personnel to have a strong knowledge of local languages, with the understanding of culture that accompanies such expertise. There is a template here that has clear relevance, and which needs to be examined by those conducting the counter-insurgency campaigns of today.

Notes

1. W. Richard Scott, Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems (Englewood Cliffs, CA: Prentice Hall, 1991), p.311.

2. Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973), p.332.

3. See, for instance, Thomas Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem (London: Harper Collins, 1998).

4. George Kirk, A Short History of the Middle East (London: Methuen, 1964), p.5; Mark Allen, Arabs (London: Continuum, 2006), p.77.

5. Allen, Arabs, Chapter 6.

6. Ibid., p.87.

7. Friedman, From Beirut, pp.87–8.

8. It has been noted that the only thing that Arabs have in common is a language. Hans Tutsch, ‘Arab Unity and Dissensions’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.), The Middle East in Transition (London: Routledge, 1958), p.21.

9. Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (London: Phoenix, 2005), p.195.

10. Arthur Goldschmidt, A Concise History of the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999), Chapter 12; Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, p.417.

11. In John Glubb's foreword in James Lunt, The Barren Rocks of Aden (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1966), p.12.

12. Riggan Er-Rumi, ‘Iraq’, in Michael Adams (ed.) The Middle East: A Handbook, (London: Anthony Blond, 1971), p.204.

13. Friedman, From Beirut, p.87. See also Stephen Longrigg and James Jankowski, The Middle East: A Social Geography (London: Duckworth, 1970), p.228.

14. Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Sandy Thomas. He was seconded as the commanding officer of a battalion of Aden Protectorate Levies. Jonathan Walker, Aden Insurgency: The Savage War in South Arabia, 1962-1967 (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2004), p.29.

15. Lunt, Barren Rocks of Aden, p.29.

16. Gerald Butt, The Arabs: Myth and Reality (London: IB Tauris, 1997) p.180. This also leads to the unavoidable conclusion that, as James Lunt avers, in Arab societies ‘promotion by merit is simply not possible’, since nepotism would always win out; Lunt, Barren Rocks of Aden, p.173.

17. Friedman, From Beirut, p.91. Gerald Butt makes the same point; Butt, Arabs, pp.221–2.

18. Sadeq al-Azm, quoted by Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p.36.

19. Friedman, From Beirut, p.99.

20. Ibid., p.101.

21. Ibid., pp.98–101.

22. Ibid., p.91.

23. Butt, Arabs, pp.151, 154, 156–60.

24. Quoted in ibid., p.154. See also Fawzy Mansour, The Arab World: Nation, State and Democracy (London: Zed Books, 1992), pp.55–6.

25. Friedman, From Beirut, p.94.

26. Butt, Arabs, pp.178-9.

27. Friedman, From Beirut, p.104.

28. Butt, Arabs, p.161.

29. Friedman, From Beirut, Chapter 4. Also Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, p.421.

30. See Butt, Arabs, Chapter 5, ‘Absolute Power’.

31. Said Aburish, Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (London: Bloomsbury, 2001), pp.199, 98.

32. Friedman, From Beirut, p.89.

33. Butt, Arabs, p.170.

34. The British never dared station their soldiers (Christian) on (holy) Saudi soil, given the insult this would have represented. They carried out control in the 1920s through the use of aircraft based in neighbouring regions. It is interesting in this respect that al-Qaeda began as a movement designed to remove US soldiers from the same holy Saudi soil in the early 1990s. Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, p.429.

35. In working with Yemeni tribes in the 1950s, there were those among the SAS operating there who thought that the SAS motto should change from ‘Who Dares Wins’ to ‘Who Pays Wins’. David Smiley (with Peter Kemp) Arabian Assignment (London: Leo Cooper, 1975), p.192.

36. Rod Thornton, ‘The British Army and the Origins of its Minimum Force Philosophy’, in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.14, No.2 (Spring 2004), pp.83–106.

37. Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, p.431.

38. Maj. Gen. Charles Gwynn, Imperial Policing (London: War Office, 1934), p.5.

39. Stephen Longrigg, Iraq, 1900 to 1950 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p.113.

40. Air Marshal Sir John Salmond, ‘The Air Force in Iraq’, Royal United Services Institute Journal, Vol.70, No.479 (Aug 1925), p.484.

41. Lt. Gen. Sir Aylmer Haldane, The Insurrection in Mesopotamia, 1920 (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1922), p.31

42. Longrigg, Iraq, p.119.

43. Haldane, Insurrection in Mesopotamia, p.28.

44. Longrigg, Iraq, p.87.

45. Haldane, Insurrection in Mesopotamia, p.312.

46. Ibid., p.30.

47. Ibid., p.34.

48. For the genesis of this policy see Lt. Gen. E.C.M. Burns, Between Arab and Israeli (London: George Harrap, 1962), pp.62, 65–6.

49. Haldane, Insurrection in Mesopotamia, p.16. Army strength was 7,000 British and 60,000 British Indian Army troops.

50. Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, p.431.

51. Haldane, Insurrection in Mesopotamia, pp.334–5.

52. Air Marshal Sir John Salmond in telegram to London of 1 November 1922. Quoted in Salmond, p.488.

53. David Hirst, ‘Hizbollah Has Achieved What Arab States Only Dreamed Of’, Guardian, 17 August 2006, p.33

54. Longrigg, Iraq, p.96.

55. Ibid., p.94.

56. Christopher Catherwood, Winston's Folly: Imperialism and the Creation of Modern Iraq (London: Constable 2004), p.137.

57. In speech to House of Commons in December 1919, quoted in Tim Garden, ‘Air Power and the New Imperialism’, The 2002 Royal Aeronautical Society Sopwith Lecture. Online at <http://www.tgarden.demon.co.uk/writings/articles/2002/020701raes.html>.

58. David Omissi, ‘The Mediterranean and the Middle East in British Global Strategy, 1935–39’, in Michael Cohen and Martin Kolinsky (eds.), Britain and the Middle East in the 1930s (London: Macmillan, 1992), p.4.

59. Air Commodore C.F.A. Portal, ‘Air Force Cooperation in Policing the Empire’, Royal United Services Journal, Vol.82, No.526 (May 1937), p.344.

60. Quoted in Charles Townshend, ‘Civilisation and Frightfulness: Air Control in the Middle East between the Wars’ in Chris Wrigley (ed.), Warfare, Diplomacy and Politics: Essays in Honour of AJP Taylor (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986), p.81.

61. The RAF took over in Palestine at the same time as it did in Iraq in 1922, but the Air Staff were agreed that ‘air action was not suitable to the particular problems of public security in a more-or-less civilized country like Palestine where the principal centres of trouble are the towns’. Philip Towle, Pilots and Rebels: The Use of Aircraft in Unconventional Warfare, 1918-1988 (London: Brassey's, 1989), p.45; Notes on the Tactical Lessons of the Palestine Rebellion, 1936 (London: War Office, 1937), p.5

62. Portal, ‘Air Force Cooperation’, p.346.

63. During this same period, as one American source relates, ‘American use of airpower never seems to have considered the notion of the “humanity” of air operations’. Anon. ‘Wood, Fabric, and Wire: Insights from the Biplane Era, 1919–1936 Forward’, online at <http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/biplane.html p.26 > .

64. Wg. Cmdr. J. A. Chamier, ‘The Use of the Air Force for Replacing Military Garrisons’, Royal United Services Institute Journal, Vol.66, No.462 (May 1921), pp.205–16.

65. Ibid., p.206.

66. Ibid., p.210.

67. Ibid., p.210.

68. Ibid., p.213.

69. Ibid., p.216.

70. Salmond, ‘The Air Force in Iraq’, pp.484–98.

71. Ibid., p.497.

72. Much of this stems from the British Army's dismissal of Palestinians as fighters compared to the more effective Iraqis it encountered in the 1920s. Notes on the Tactical Lessons of the Palestine Rebellion, 1936, p.5.

73. Bernard Fergusson, The Trumpet in the Hall (London: Collins, 1970) p.34. Fergusson later became Governor-General of New Zealand.

74. A figure who was to prove controversial in the Second World War, Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, when senior air officer in Palestine, lamented the restraint: ‘The only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand’. Quoted in Charles Townshend, Britain's Civil Wars: Counter-Insurgency in the Twentieth Century (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), p.110.

75. See H.J. Simson, British Rule, and Rebellion (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1938).

76. Fergusson, The Trumpet in the Hall, p.34.

77. Smiley, Arabian Assignment, p.206.

78. Walker, Aden Insurgency, p.87.

79. See, for instance, Spencer Mawby, ‘From Tribal Rebellions to Revolution: British Counter-Insurgency Operations in Southwest Arabia, 1955-67’, Electronic Journal of International History, <http://www.history.ac.uk/ejournal/art5.html>, p.15.

80. From Lawrence's ‘Twenty-Seven Articles’ of August 1917. Quoted in Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia (London: Heinemann, 1989), p.965.

81. Haldane, Insurrection in Mesopotamia, p.313.

82. John Glubb, War in the Desert: An RAF Frontier Campaign (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960), pp.70–6.

83. Walker, Aden Insurgency, p.157.

84. See, for instance, Longrigg, Iraq, pp.114–18.

85. Mawby, ‘From Tribal Rebellions to Revolution’, p.7.

86. Gen. Sir Charles Jones, ‘Problems of Counter-Insurgency in the Middle East’, Royal United Services Institute Journal, Vol.63, No.650 (May 1968), p.108.

87. Fergusson talks of villagers in Palestine trying this trick during the Ottoman era. Fergusson, The Trumpet in the Hall, p.34.

88. Ironically, Nasser, an Arab, did make mistakes in this respect. He believed that tribalism was just an invention of imperialist nations to stop the Arabs from being united. His lack of success in Yemen can be partly attributed to this lack of understanding of the importance of the tribal nature within Yemeni society. David Holden, Farewell to Arabia (London: Faber, 1966), p.103.

89. US forces made many mistakes in Afghanistan with their use of air power against what were supposed to be al-Qaeda or Taliban villages, acting on false intelligence provided by local warlords who wanted to see rival villages punished. Such US actions created a legacy of bitterness that reached as far as the president, Hamid Karzai. In Afghanistan in general, ‘the most common factor in the civilian deaths was the American reliance on incomplete information to decide on targets’. Dexter Filkins, ‘Flaws in US Air War Left Hundreds of Civilians Dead’, New York Times, 21 July 2002, p.7.

90. Brig. G.S. Heathcote, ‘Operations in the Radfan’, Royal United Services Institute Journal, Vol.62, No.641 (February 1966), p.33.

91. Haldane, Insurrection in Mesopotamia, p.29.

92. Keith Jeffrey, ‘Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency Operations: Some Reflections on the British Experience’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol.2, No.1 (Jan. 1987), p.135.

93. Fergusson, The Trumpet in the Hall, p.38.

94. Jones, ‘Problems of Counter-Insurgency’, p.105.

95. By the 1950s and 1960s, and lacking good Arabists who could ‘cajole’ information from suspects, the best interrogation results were actually achieved by those who took a harsher line. One author, recalling Oman in the late 1950s, tells of the success of a Texan whose brusque interrogation techniques British advisers thought ‘uncouth’. Smiley, Arabian Assignment, p.90.

96. Walker, Aden Insurgency, pp.16, 27.

97. Glen Balfour-Paul, The End of Empire in the Middle East: Britain's Relinquishment of Power in Her Last Three Arab Dependencies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p.13.

98. Ibid., p.13. Haldane in Iraq in 1920 had also made the point that, ‘It must be remembered that there are those – and they embrace a considerable portion of the population – who are accustomed to and prefer an alien government’. Haldane, Insurrection in Mesopotamia, p.25.

99. Jones, ‘Problems of Counter-Insurgency’, p.105.

100. Ibid., pp.105–6.

101. Smiley, Arabian Assignment, p.203.

102. Jones, ‘Problems of Counter-Insurgency’, p.107.

103. Ibid., p.112.

104. Simson, British Rule, and Rebellion, p.127.