Glubb Pasha and the Arab Legion

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Glubb also realized that his Arab troops needed the kind of self-reliance that required more than ability with knife or gun. In addition to combatting the Ikhwan, Glubb went to war against illiteracy, launching a reading and writing campaign among the Huwaitat.

By May 1931, the number of raids over the frontier had been cut by half. The Desert Patrol represented about a fifth of the Arab Legion’s 1,200-man fighting force.

Officially under Peake in the legion’s hierarchy, Glubb found himself taking on more and more responsibility for King Abdullah’s army until, in March 1939, Peake ended his 17-year Trans-Jordan career to retire in England. Glubb was now commander of the legion’s 2,000 men. In the 1940s, the Desert Patrol discarded the last of its camels and began to travel in open-air Ford trucks with Lewis machine guns mounted on tripods on the roofs of the cabs.

At that time, a new war raged in Europe. It soon spilled over into the Middle East, and in February 1941 a pro-German political party took over Baghdad. In April, the Iraqis declared war on Britain and laid siege to a Royal Air Force cantonment at Habbaniya on the Euphrates River, about 75 miles west of Baghdad. In immediate response, the British sent a column of 750 men across the desert to relieve Habbaniya and take back Baghdad. Glubb and a small contingent of his Desert Patrol accompanied the column. His orders were to assist Iraqi elements still loyal to the pro-British Emir Abdul Illah.

After a pro-British government was restored in Baghdad, Glubb returned to Trans-Jordan. In May and June 1941, he helped the British fight Vichy French forces in Syria, then spent the balance of World War II keeping the Bedouin tribes at peace on the frontier. By 1945, the Arab Legion boasted 16,000 men, all fiercely loyal to their British leader, whom they called Glubb Pasha (general). Transformed from a small police force of a few hundred, the legion was renowned throughout the Arab world as the most effective fighting force since the days of the caliphs.

After World War II, the legion’s size began to diminish. By 1947, it was down to 4,000 men. While most officers were British, a coterie of Arab leaders was being nurtured. Glubb evidently realized what the future would bring. The British government was preparing to evacuate the Middle East.

For Glubb and his employer, King Abdullah, a new menace began to loom from west of Amman. It came from what many of the Arabs considered an intrusion: the return of the Jews to Palestine.

‘Once the Jews came to look upon themselves as a race can they be blamed for wanting a country?’ Glubb asked. From his small office on a hilltop in Amman, he strove to lead his legion and, by extension, Abdullah’s country, into a new era. The coming declaration of Israel as an independent state promised to embroil the Arabs in a difficult war.

On November 30, 1947, the Arab Legion began operations in support of supply convoys to Arab forces around Jerusalem. Glubb tried to distance his force from direct involvement in the fighting–until May 1948, when the Jews of the Etzion Bloc, a group of settlements on the road north of Hebron, attacked Arab reinforcements and supplies destined for Jerusalem. On May 4, a week before the British Palestine Mandate would expire, Arab tanks, armored cars of the Desert Patrol and riflemen drawn from the Arab locals stormed the four Jewish settlements that comprised the Etzion Bloc. At stake for Glubb, from a military perspective, was a huge British-organized arms convoy bound for Amman.

Glubb met with Sheik Mohammed Ali Jabary, the mayor of Hebron, on May 10 and laid plans for a final attack. The call went out for villagers to help in this jihad (holy war). Armed with old rifles and Sten submachine guns, and bearing sacks in which to carry away booty from their looting, the villagers answered the call.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures