Desert storms... BOOK review

SETTING THE DESERT ON FIRE: TE Lawrence and Britain’s Secret War in Arabia 1916-18
by James Barr

Bloomsbury £20 pp362

On November 14, 1914, just 10 days after the Turks entered the first world war on the side of the Germans, the grand mufti of Constantinople declared jihad, a holy war, against the British and their allies. It was a cynical move to unsettle Muslims in British spheres of influence, particularly in India and Egypt. The Turks, who had reigned over much of the Middle East and North Africa for 400 years, expected Sharif Hussein, the ruler of Mecca, to support the call. But Hussein saw a chance to gain advantage with the British, whom he approached with specific demands. In reply, Sir Henry McMahon, British high commissioner in Egypt, assured him that if the Arabs helped the British they would have independence in a swathe of land from the Arabian peninsula through modern Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. It was, as James Barr shows, a deception that has had disastrous consequences.

How significant was the Arab support to the Allies? Robert Graves suggested it changed the course of the war — if the Arabs had sided with the Turks and the holy war had spread among the Indian army, the story might have had a different ending. Lord Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, felt it important that the Arabs should not be alienated. So those promises of post-war independence were given and the Arab tribes rose against the Turks.

The story of the Arab revolt has been well told on many occasions, not least by its most famous participant, TE Lawrence. His Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a passionate account of his war, but it does not present the whole story. In Barr’s Setting the Desert on Fire, the author puts the story of the Arab revolt and Lawrence’s heroics in a wider context. This broad canvas takes in two extraordinary years of war and scores of significant characters. Lawrence and Kitchener became household names, but men such as General Allenby, who led British forces in Palestine and Syria, Gilbert Clayton, the head of the Arab Bureau in Cairo, Ronald Storrs, the Oriental Secretary, and Fakhri Pasha, the Ottoman general who held out in Medina until January 1919, are less widely known. Barr has been diligent in his research, travelling to many of the locations and consulting a range of British archives. He even had forensic tests done on Lawrence’s notebooks in an attempt to glean the contents of its missing pages.

As events proceed from the outbreak of the revolt to the arrival of Lawrence, and as the action moves from the Hejaz to Damascus, the possibility of confusion both on the ground and in the story increases, but Barr guides us through in minute detail, which occasionally means that we lose sight of the bigger picture. More fully fleshed-out characters would also have helped the narrative drive. But Barr does provide fresh insight, showing for instance how the British government never expected to have to honour its vague assurances to Hussein. He reminds us that, contrary to popular belief, Lawrence neither started the revolt nor ran it single-handed. He points at the conflict of policy between the British High Commission in Egypt, which backed Hussein, and the government of India, which supported his rival, the Wahhabi leader Ibn Saud. He even digs out evidence of Syrian support for Zionism, which led Alan Dawnay, the officer responsible for Hejaz operations, to write that he “expected no difficulty in establishing a friendly and sympathetic relation” between Arabs and Jews. And his forensic testing adds more weight to the suggestion that Lawrence lied about being captured and abused by the Turks.

more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-2202629,00.html