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THE CAMPAIGN IN SYRIA, 1839-40

30 Saturday Oct 2010

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With no effective inland communications in the province the Egyptian garrison depended on the sea for supplies and relief. The successful amphibious campaign waged by the British cut them off from Alexandria, and used superior mobility to destroy their strong points in detail.

The capture of Beirut was achieved by a combination of naval pressure, Turkish troops led by a British commodore, and Lebanese rebels. From his base in the north Napier armed the rebels, then advanced to meet Ibrahim Pasha, the leading Egyptian general, whom he routed at Boharsef on the Ardali Heights. Cut off from the surrounding countryside, blockaded and short of supplies, the Egyptians abandoned Beirut.

In 1839-40 the fate of the Ottoman Empire hung in the balance. The rebellious pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, had seized Syria and Palestine, built a powerful fleet, acquired the Turkish fleet by treachery, and annihilated the Ottoman army. With French political support he seemed set to overthrow the sultan. However, Palmerston secured the support of Russia, Prussia and Austria to guarantee Turkish independence, and directed Commodore Napier, who conducted a brilliant amphibious campaign along the Syrian coast. Command of the sea enabled Napier to cut off the Egyptian army from its base, then the British fleet attacked Acre, their last stronghold, on 3 November 1840. During a heavy and accurate bombardment, the main Egyptian magazine exploded. The Egyptians abandoned the town and retreated back into Egypt. Within the month Napier had forced Mehemet Ali to restore his allegiance to the Ottoman sultan, in the process destroying the French position in the Middle East. Although the French had a large fleet in the Mediterranean they were deterred from intervening by the speed of Napier’s campaign, and the mobilization of British reserves. They recognized that they would lose a maritime war.

 

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GOLDEN SQUARE

27 Sunday Jun 2010

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Name given to the four ex-sharifian, pan-Arab Iraqi army officers whose anti-British, pro-Axis politics led to the Rashid Ali coup of 1941 and the war with Britain that followed. The original “Four” included the leader, Salah al- Din al-Sabbagh, and Kamil Shabib, Fahmi Sa’id, and Mahmud Salman. They organized after the 1936 Bakr Sidqi coup and then joined with three other officers, Aziz Yamulki, Husayn Fawzi, and Amin al-Umari, to form a military opposition bloc to the government. Jamil al-Midfa’i’s government in 1938 tried to transfer the officers out of Baghdad, but succeeded only in making them more politically active.
The officers supported the goals of the Jerusalem mufti (chief Muslim jurist), Hajj Amin al- Husayni, who arrived in Baghdad and solicited Germany’s help to achieve total Iraqi independence from Britain and the pan-Arab goal of Arab unity of the Fertile Crescent. They opposed Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa’id’s severance of relations with Germany in 1939. In 1940 and 1941, the officers and the mufti were in contact with the Japanese and the Italians through their missions in Baghdad and supported Rashid Ali al-Kaylani’s government (31 March 1940 to 31 January 1941) as the British pressured Iraq to declare war on Germany. When Rashid Ali resigned, the pro-British regent, Abd al-Ilah, asked General Taha al-Hashimi, who had worked with the Four, to form a government, thinking that he could control the generals. But Taha’s weakness and the attempt by the regent to transfer Kamil Shabib out of the capital led them, in collusion with the mufti, to take control of the government in April 1941, with Rashid Ali again as the prime minister.
At the end of the abortive war against Britain in May 1941, the Four fled but were later caught and executed.
Bibliography Tarbush, Mohammad A. The Role of the Military in Politics: A Case Study of Iraq to 1941. London and Boston: Kegan Paul, 1982.

Palestine

30 Tuesday Mar 2010

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At the outbreak of World War II, Palestine was a British mandate on which about 1 million Arabs and nearly a half million Jews—the former indigenous, the latter predominantly immigrants—lived in chronic conflict. The British were obligated by the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to acknowledge Palestine as the rightful homeland of the stateless Jews. Shortly before the beginning of World War II, in July 1937, the British Peel Commission divided Palestine among the Arabs, the British, and the Jews, thereby provoking the Arab Revolt led by Hadj Amin el-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem. The revolt was crushed before the outbreak of World War II, Husseini fled, and the British administrators interned the other Arab leaders. This essentially forced the Palestinian Arabs to suspend political agitation for years, including the war years. Nevertheless, seeking to appease the Arabs as the war approached—and wanting above all to ensure access to oil in the region—Britain rescinded the partition of Palestine in May 1939, announcing its intention to create within a decade a single independent nation-state, which would include Arabs and Jews. Preparatory to the creation of the new state, Britain barred the sale of Palestinian land to Jews and capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 over the next five years. At the end of this period, no more Jewish immigration would be permitted without Arab agreement.
The new British policy did appease Arabs in Palestine even as it put the Jews in a corner. If they objected and opposed the British, they would be giving aid to the Nazis. Having little choice, therefore, the Jewish Agency—the political organization that worked toward the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—chose to cooperate with the new British policy and even mobilized agricultural and industrial resources to help Britain in its war effort. Jewish-owned war-production factories in Palestine became very important, and the rapid growth of this industry extended Jewish settlement, including irrigated and cultivated land, throughout the region. Although the British had sought to limit Jewish growth and influence in Palestine for the coming decade, its encouragement of Jewish war industries actually promoted the permanent establishment of Jews throughout the area.
At the outbreak of the war, some 136,000 Jewish men and women volunteered to join the British armed forces, and some even agreed to serve with Arabs in mixed companies. Jews fought in British units during the Western Desert Campaign and served with the Eighth British Army, primarily against the Italians. During March through September 1944, 32 Jewish parachutists from Palestine were dropped behind enemy lines in Europe to assist Jews in escaping the reach of the Final Solution.
Despite the large number of Jewish volunteers, it is estimated that only 30,000 Palestinian Jews actually served in the British armed forces, along with about 9,000 Palestinian Arabs. Palestine itself had little tactical or strategic significance in the war.
Further reading: Shepherd, Naomi. Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine, 1917–1948. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Palestinian Units under the Grand Mufti WWII

28 Wednesday Jan 2009

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Mufti Hdj Amin al-Hussaini inspecting Waffen SS recruits from Bosnia.


The Grand Mufti

Grand Mufti Hdj Amin Al-Hussaini (1895-1974) was a member of one of the most powerful clans in Palestine. Yassir Arafat was one of his distant relatives; other Hussainis (e.g. Faisal Al-Hussaini) still play a role in Palestinian and Jordanian politics. After serving as an Ottoman officer in World War I, he became a scholar in Islamic law and theology. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the abolishment of all old religious authorities made it necessary to establish the institutions to provide religious guidance and legal authorities on Islamic Law (Sharia) in the successor states, colonies, and territories.


The British Colonial Office made Amin Al-Hussaini Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in their Palestine-Jordan Mandate of 1921; his predecessor was also an Al-Hussaini. He struggled for the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs and put himself at the top of the resistance to Jewish immigration and was increasingly opposed to the British as well. He was the driving force behind the rising violence in the 1920’s and 1930’s, slaughtering probably more Arab political opponents than Jews. When he stirred up the big rebellion in 1936-39, the British arrested him, but he escaped and fled to Beirut.


It is a telling example of British-French rivalry in the Middle East that he (by now one of the major political figures in Arab Nationalism) was allowed to continue his activities from French controlled territory. The outbreak of World War II, however, brought the Allies closer together and the Mufti had to flee again—this time to Baghdad. Here he played a central role in the coup d’état of nationalist officers against the British in 1941. When the short war against the British was lost, he fled to Berlin.


The Mufti was well received by Hitler and he supported German efforts to raise SS-Legions from the Islamic populations of the Balkans and USSR. He was instrumental in the anti-British German propaganda aimed at the Arab Middle East. What he did not know was that the Germans had already promised Egypt to the Italians and certainly had no intentions of establishing the Mufti’s dream of an independent pan-Arab Empire. They might have tried to re-install him in Jerusalem—but they probably would not have been stupid enough to empower the most charismatic figure of the contemporary Arab national movement. This would be akin to making Joseph Stalin the governor of a Nazi occupied Russia. One thing, however, is certain: Not one Jew would have escaped the claws of the Mufti.


He escaped the doom of the Third Reich and reached Palestine with French support. He tried to regain the leadership of the Palestinian national movement. The disastrous war of 1948 drove him to exile again and deprived the clans of their traditional political legitimacy. Amin gradually lost all influence except in pan-Islamic circles. He spent the last 15 years of his long life in Beirut—he visited East Jerusalem for the last time a few weeks before the 1967 War.


Units Associated with the Mufti—“Centro A” and “Reparto Wanda”

On 1 May 42, Centro “A” (Arab) was formed as a mixed Italo-Arab commando unit. It originally consisted of 14 men from the Italian Army, 7 from the Italian Carabinieri, and 6 Cadres of mixed Italian and Arab origin coming from Arab counties. By the end of August, 1942, it had 15 officers, 12 NCOs, 80 Italian soldiers and 68 Arab volunteers. Centro “I” (Italian) was the sister unit of the Arab group composed of native Italians.


On 18 August 42, the Grand Mufti visited Centro A. He wanted to choose soldiers from this unit who would accompany him into Egypt and Palestine in the wake of the expected Italo-German victory and form the cadre of an Arab Army.


On 5 September 1942, the Reparto Missione Speciale formed under Captain Tellini. This unit was charged with the task of escorting the Mufti in Egypt. On 23 October 1942, Centro A was renamed Gruppo Formazioni A with 25 officers, 39 NCOs, 271 Italian soldiers and 100 Arab volunteers. It was organized into:


• 1st Reparto “Wanda” (5 platoons of Arabs)

• Reparto Guide—Esploratori (3 platoons of Italians, one of which was actually sent to Africa)

• Reparto Missione Speciale (the Mufti’s escort)


These units deployed to Naples to prepare for the Mufti’s escort mission, but this became impossible after El Alamein. On 15 Aug 1943, Gruppo Formazioni A (less one company) became the Battaglione d’Assalto Motorizzato (Motorized Assault Battalion). This battalion was located near Rome and after 8 September 1943 it joined in the fighting against the Germans.

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