Fitzgerald: Arabia Petraea, Or General Petraeus' Middle East (Part 3)

5. Remain in touch with your leader as constantly and unobtrusively as you can. Live with him, that at meal times and at audiences you may be naturally with him in his tent. Formal visits to give advice are not so good as the constant dropping of ideas in casual talk. When stranger sheikhs come in for the first time to swear allegiance and offer service, clear out of the tent. If their first impression is of foreigners in the confidence of the Sherif, it will do the Arab cause much harm.

Comment: spend as much time with him as possible, but don't flatter yourself that you have actually become his confidant or that you, in turn, should ever fully trust him. He will do exactly as he wishes to further his own interests, and if temporarily his interests and your interests, in his view, coincide, then you may win his collaboration. But he does not trust you, and if you trust him you have not sunk below the surface of Arab and Muslim life.

Don't let other sheikhs think for one minute that you, a non-Muslim, could have managed to be taken into the confidence of the Sherif; that would cause his stature, his hold over his men, to diminish. No Muslim should be seen entering into a relationship of real intimacy and trust with an Infidel, for to do so would contradict the spirit and letter of Islam, and would alarm. However, seeing one's Sheikh inveigle non-Muslims for his own, Muslim, purposes will not arouse criticism from his men, but admiration.

6. Be shy of too close relations with the subordinates of the expedition. Continual intercourse with them will make it impossible for you to avoid going behind or beyond the instructions that the Arab C.O. has given them on your advice, and in so disclosing the weakness of his position you altogether destroy your own.

Comment: part of #5. Authority is based on unquestioning submission; don't come between the Arab C.O. and any of the men from whom he expects such submission. You weaken him, and he will never forgive you for this, and may become your enemy.

7. Treat the sub-chiefs of your force quite easily and lightly. In this way you hold yourself above their level. Treat the leader, if a Sherif, with respect. He will return your manner and you and he will then be alike, and above the rest. Precedence is a serious matter among the Arabs, and you must attain it.

Comment: forget the rules of Western man, and adopt the ways of Muslim man. Do not show interest in their views, or even their wellbeing. Save all of that for the Sherif. You must be like him: "above the rest." That is the rule in Islam, for all the prating about the "naturalness" and "justice" of Islamic social relations: a hierarchy, with differences between ruler and ruled, in any context, far wider than anywhere in the West.

8. Your ideal position is when you are present and not noticed. Do not be too intimate, too prominent, or too earnest. Avoid being identified too long or too often with any tribal sheikh, even if C.O. of the expedition. To do your work you must be above jealousies, and you lose prestige if you are associated with a tribe or clan, and its inevitable feuds. Sherifs are above all blood-feuds and local rivalries, and form the only principle of unity among the Arabs. Let your name therefore be coupled always with a Sherif's, and share his attitude towards the tribes.

When the moment comes for action put yourself publicly under his orders. The Bedu will then follow suit.

Comment: You must lose your own identity in that of the Sherif. You must be self-effacing. He is the center of attention at all times. Do not take any position on your own, even if you know it to make sense or that it would promote British interests; always submit to, and mimic his views.

9. Magnify and develop the growing conception of the Sherifs as the natural aristocracy of the Arabs. Intertribal jealousies make it impossible for any sheikh to attain a commanding position, and the only hope of union in nomad Arabs is that the Ashraf be universally acknowledged as the ruling class. Sherifs are half-townsmen, half-nomad, in manner and life, and have the instinct of command. Mere merit and money would be insufficient to obtain such recognition; but the Arab reverence for pedigree and the Prophet gives hope for the ultimate success of the Ashraf.

Comment: extension of 6, 7, 8. Arab tribes are always at one another's throats. Lawrence refers to the "Ashraf" - that is the Arab plural for "sharif," and here there is some confusion. The word "sherif" can apply to members of the descendants of the Prophet, and Lawrence's particular "Sherif" was from the very family that had been entrusted with the task of serving as the Guardians of the Two Holy Sanctuaries (Mecca and Medina). But the word "sharif" can also mean, loosely, a tribal chief or emir. So what, after all, does the advice come down to? That the ruling class, or those with an immediate claim to being the rulers, are those with the "pedigree" of such descent.

Think for a minute of how airily Lawrence notes that "the Arab reverence for pedigree and the Prophet gives hope for the ultimate success of the Ashraf" - while "mere merit and money would be insufficient to obtain such recognition." So "merit" - the ideal basis for leadership, anywhere - is with a phrase dismissed. And "money" was the entire basis of Lawrence's relationship with the "Sharifian forces" - the money given to them to buy or rather rent loyalty, and the money given to them to buy guns when the guns were not given outright.

And should not Lawrence have taken the occasion to explain that if "pedigree" counts, it is only "pedigree" in relation to Islam, to Muhammad? No other "pedigree" really matters. And should he not have explained why there is no equality, no nascent democracy, among the Arabs? (By the way, elsewhere Lawrence does contradict himself, and describes something akin to the democracy of the desert, when what he is really describing is a state of anarchy, of each tribe against each tribe, with lives of permanent razzias and warfare.)

He might have put it this way:

"Remember: there is no democracy or natural equality among the Arabs. Individuals do not matter, but are submissive to the Ruler as they are submissive, in their faith, to the not-to-be-questioned authority of Allah. The ruler is an absolute despot, and what justifies his rule is his status as a Muslim. Descendants of Muhammad, real or imaginary, have pride of place: because Muhammad is the most important human who ever lived, the Model of Conduct, the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil). Where in the advanced West we at least try to consider individual merit, the Arabs consider the family pedigree, and the surest claim to rule is that of descent from Muhammad. This is not limited to the Arabs of Arabia. The rulers of Morocco claim, too, to be a Sherifian house. The relationship to the Muhammad trumps everything else."

10. Call your Sherif 'Sidi' in public and in private. Call other people by their ordinary names, without title. In intimate conversation call a Sheikh 'Abu Annad', 'Akhu Alia' or some similar by-name.

Comment: extension of 6,7, 8, 9. Show obeisance in public to the Sherif, and in private, make use of one of the other names by which he is known. Study the Arab system of naming, that is, Kunya. Try to master some of it. Individualism as we understand it has no place in Islam. Everyone is connected, in this most collectivist of faiths. You may be connected to a place: the town from which you are born, Al-Baghdadi, Al-Tikiri, or country with which you or some ancestors were associated: Al-Misri, Al-Ajami. You may be known by an honorific connecting you to your son, or to your father, or to an event, or to a cause: Abu Jihad, Abu Ammar, and so on. The elaborate Kunya system of naming suppresses the individual, treats him as part of a continuum: the son of, the father of, or of the greater collective, and perhaps that system deserved from Lawrence a word or two of analysis, which he failed to provide.

11. The foreigner and Christian is not a popular person in Arabia. However friendly and informal the treatment of yourself may be, remember always that your foundations are very sandy ones. Wave a Sherif in front of you like a banner and hide your own mind and person. If you succeed, you will have hundreds of miles of country and thousands of men under your orders, and for this it is worth bartering the outward show.

Comment: Surely this is the most important point, wrongly stated by Lawrence. To state that "the foreigner and Christian is not a popular person in Arabia" is misleading; it would be like writing, in 1918, that "Germans are not popular in England." It does not convey the fact that no Muslims can possibly be expected to be anything but the most temporary of allies with Infidels, whom they deeply mistrust, and any British officer who was to believe that some local gunga-din, "his friendship forged in war," really meant him well and could be trusted, was a fool. Dozens of American and other Infidel soldiers have been killed by Muslims whom they were training, or with whom they went on missions, precisely because the American commanders believed that such a phrase as "the foreigner and Christian is not a popular person in Arabia" was enough of a warning about inculcated Muslim hostility toward all Infidels. It was not in Lawrence's day; it is not now. Lawrence kept fooling himself about the Sherifians: they wanted money, weapons, and after the Turks were defeated, they wanted countries for themselves. And they got those countries, even had those countries specially created for them: Iraq was created out of three former Ottoman vilayets (Basra, Baghdad, Mosul); Jordan, that is, the Emirate of Transjordan, was created out of Eastern Palestine, territory intended by the League of Nations to be included in, and covered by the provisions of, the Mandate for Palestine. Instead, when Faisal was put on the throne of Iraq by the British, his older brother Abdullah clamored for a country he could call his own, and the result was that Emirate of Transjordan that, in 1946, became the Kingdom of Jordan.

Some may think that Lawrence's next item adequately conveys the meretriciousness and disguised but deep and permanent hostility of the Arabs to Infidels: "However friendly and informal the treatment of yourself may be, remember always that your foundations are very sandy ones. Wave a Sherif in front of you like a banner and hide your own mind and person. If you succeed, you will have hundreds of miles of country and thousands of men under your orders, and for this it is worth bartering the outward show." I don't think it does. And as for the last bit of advice - "Wave a Sherif in front of you like a banner and hide your own mind and person. If you succeed, you will have hundreds of miles of country and thousands of men under your orders, and for this it is worth bartering the outward show" - it has no relevance, if the military men in question don't happen to have within reach a "Sharif" - one of the Ashraf - that is, a member of the family that was entrusted with the guardianship of the Two Holy Sanctuaries of Mecca and Medina. As general advice, it is irrelevant; it is worthless.

12. Cling tight to your sense of humour. You will need it every day. A dry irony is the most useful type, and repartee of a personal and not too broad character will double your influence with the chiefs. Reproof, if wrapped up in some smiling form, will carry further and last longer than the most violent speech. The power of mimicry or parody is valuable, but use it sparingly, for wit is more dignified than humour. Do not cause a laugh at a Sherif except among Sherifs.

Comment: Perfectly Polonius. Not less, but not more. Keep your sense of humor, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, don't be too sarcastic with the natives, and don't make fun of whoever is the local chief. No Infidel should dare to criticize or mock a Muslim, unless given an explicit sign by someone of high rank that it is permissible, but only very gently and circumspectly, to do so. And no sally ever can be directed at something to do with someone's observance of Islam, but only at some personal foible.

13. Never lay hands on an Arab; you degrade yourself. You may think the resultant obvious increase of outward respect a gain to you, but what you have really done is to build a wall between you and their inner selves. It is difficult to keep quiet when everything is being done wrong, but the less you lose your temper the greater your advantage. Also then you will not go mad yourself.

Comment: The notion that if you "lay hands on an Arab" that it is this that "build[s] a wall between you and their inner selves" is misleading. There is already an "inner wall" that long ago was built by Islam to prevent you, the Infidel, from understanding, or gaining entry even to the antechamber, of their inner selves. You must tell yourself, remind yourself, at every step: I don't really know what that man is thinking. I don't really know what he thinks of me, or what, if he could do anything, he would do to me. If you take any other attitude, you are risking your life and that of your men.

14. While very difficult to drive, the Bedu are easy to lead, if you have the patience to bear with them. The less apparent your interferences the more your influence. They are willing to follow your advice and do what you wish, but they do not mean you or anyone else to be aware of that. It is only after the end of all annoyances that you find at bottom their real fund of goodwill.

Comment: The Bedu will not take obvious direction from a non-Muslim, but will do so if they can save face by merely "taking advice" that will, in their eyes, contribute to their own wellbeing and promotion of their interests. They have no larger goal than more power and more loot and greater aggrandizement, and they will not suffer any command from any Infidel. Only commands that are packaged as something else -- as advice, given hesitantly -- are likely to work. And that is because a gulf separates Muslim from Infidel, not to be permanently bridged. But where interests happen to coincide, a perilously swaying footbridge may be constructed, requiring a temporary suspension of belief by the Muslim in the perfidy of the Infidel, in order not to collapse into the waiting abyss below.

15. Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is.

Comment: Polonius-level, and inaccurate to boot. "It is their war" - the war against the Turks was fought by the Allies, and the major victories in the theatre of war with which Lawrence was familiar were made entirely by the British and Australian troops, with intelligence provided by the Palestinian Jews of the Nili Group. Then there is the vagueness of "the very odd conditions of Arabia" - which are what? The sand? The camels? The minds of Muslim men? He should spell out those "odd conditions." To me the oddest condition, and the one that explains why "your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is" is that you will delude yourself into thinking you have had a greater effect on the Muslims and their attitudes that you really have had, but you will realize, after the fact - Lawrence himself, in his last years, expressed in his Letters, obliquely, his own great disappointment in the Arabs - that so much of it was wasted effort. I am sure that in 2-3 years all those involved in the Iraq venture, including General Petraeus and his colonels, will come to realize how misguided it was, and what a fantastic squandering of resources - men, money, materiel, attention - it represented. These resources are misdirected when the war of self-defense against the Jihad requires other, more effective, far less costly methods. But the main theatre of war will then be recognized, by more in the American military, as not being in Iraq, nor Afghanistan, nor Pakistan, but rather within the countries of Western Europe.

16. If you can, without being too lavish, forestall presents to yourself. A well-placed gift is often most effective in winning over a suspicious sheikh. Never receive a present without giving a liberal return, but you may delay this return (while letting its ultimate certainty be known) if you require a particular service from the giver. Do not let them ask you for things, since their greed will then make them look upon you only as a cow to milk.

Comment: There's a whole lot of gift-giving among the Arabs, as a way of currying favor. So do it yourself - bribe and ply them with things. But the idea that you will be "winning over a suspicious sheikh" is wrong. You won't have won him over. You will have temporarily rented, just possibly, and to what extent you will not be able to gauge, his services or his temporary collaboration.

That's it.

One point Lawrence makes is one that should be put up in CAPS all over Congress, the Executive Office Building, and the Pentagon too: "Do not let them ask you for things, since their greed will then make them look upon you only as a cow to milk." But that's exactly what has happened in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, and now in Yemen. It doesn't have to be this or that individual; it is the "Pakistani military," say, or "the Iraqi government." They are out to get absolutely as much as they can, and the favorite phrase uttered by various Arabs has been - listen closely - the "Marshall Plan." That is, they have the gall to pretend, or to try to make us pretend, that they, Muslims and Arabs, are as much a part of our civilization as were the war-ravaged countries of Western Europe. But the economic paralysis in Muslim lands is not the result of war, but of their own inshallah-fatalism and hatred of bid'a, innovation. The fact that not even the U.A.E., Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, any of the fabulously rich, grotesquely rich, recipients of the more than twelve trillion dollars that have gone to the Muslim members of OPEC since 1973 alone, has managed to get off total reliance on oil, to create the semblance of a real economy, is telling. But while it is telling, those who have been both making and executing American policy appear not to have been listening or grasping this, and so they keep coming back to more American aid, failing to recognize that Islam will always prevent the kind of economic development that we think we are encouraging, and for which we have been shelling out so much.

17. Wear an Arab headcloth when with a tribe. Bedu have a malignant prejudice against the hat, and believe that our persistence in wearing it (due probably to British obstinacy of dictation) is founded on some immoral or irreligious principle. A thick headcloth forms a good protection against the sun, and if you wear a hat your best Arab friends will be ashamed of you in public.

Comment: What Lawrence describes as a "malignant prejudice against the hat" has to do with the hat being associated with non-Muslims, with Christians, with the West. When Ataturk passed the Hat Act, banning the fez and requiring the wearing of Western-style hats and caps, he was delivering a blow against Islam. This is not understood in the West, but the Hat Act was part of his systematic campaign to constrain the power of Islam (in the absence of the ability to take Islam straight on, which would have been impossible, even for Ataturk). The fez allowed one to bow during those canonical prayers, and easily; the Western hat or cap had to be removed for prayer. It's one more thing to put in a pile, along with shoes, at the entry to a mosque, and then to try to retrieve successfully.

18. Disguise is not advisable. Except in special areas, let it be clearly known that you are a British officer and a Christian. At the same time, if you can wear Arab kit when with the tribes, you will acquire their trust and intimacy to a degree impossible in uniform. It is, however, dangerous and difficult. They make no special allowances for you when you dress like them. Breaches of etiquette not charged against a foreigner are not condoned to you in Arab clothes. You will be like an actor in a foreign theatre, playing a part day and night for months, without rest, and for an anxious stake. Complete success, which is when the Arabs forget your strangeness and speak naturally before you, counting you as one of themselves, is perhaps only attainable in character: while half-success (all that most of us will strive for; the other costs too much) is easier to win in British things, and you yourself will last longer, physically and mentally, in the comfort that they mean. Also then the Turks will not hang you, when you are caught.

Comment: Why is "disguise not advisable"? Because you are already, as "a British officer and a Christian," a figure of suspicion. Don't try to hide it - as if such were possible. (Charles Foucault traveled in Morocco disguised as a rabbi, it's true, but few would have had Foucault's abilities.) On the other hand, wearing "Arab kit," Lawrence thinks, may make "the Arabs forget your strangeness and speak naturally before you, counting you as one of themselves." If he allowed himself to believe that, he really was deluded. The point about the Turks not hanging you, however, is a good one - but irrelevant to what American soldiers need to learn, preferably before they go to Iraq.

19. If you wear Arab things, wear the best. Clothes are significant among the tribes, and you must wear the appropriate, and appear at ease in them. Dress like a Sherif, if they agree to it.

Comment: Polonius on Madison Avenue: look sharp and feel sharp. A Men's Warehouse Ad. Who could disagree? Are there others who don't care if you make an impression with your dress? Not likely, not back in 1918.

20. If you wear Arab things at all, go the whole way. Leave your English friends and customs on the coast, and fall back on Arab habits entirely. It is possible, starting thus level with them, for the European to beat the Arabs at their own game, for we have stronger motives for our action, and put more heart into it than they. If you can surpass them, you have taken an immense stride toward complete success, but the strain of living and thinking in a foreign and half-understood language, the savage food, strange clothes, and stranger ways, with the complete loss of privacy and quiet, and the impossibility of ever relaxing your watchful imitation of the others for months on end, provide such an added stress to the ordinary difficulties of dealing with the Bedu, the climate, and the Turks, that this road should not be chosen without serious thought.

Comment: An extension of the previous three. Fit in with the Arabs, accustom yourself to the savage food" and "strange clothes," endure "the complete loss of privacy and quiet," accept "the impossibility of ever relaxing your watchful imitation." In other words, if you can do the impossible, that only....well, that I, Lawrence of Arabia, have managed to do, then do it. On second thought, don't even bother. No one else could do what I have done.

21. Religious discussions will be frequent. Say what you like about your own side, and avoid criticism of theirs, unless you know that the point is external, when you may score heavily by proving it so. With the Bedu, Islam is so all-pervading an element that there is little religiosity, little fervour, and no regard for externals. Do not think from their conduct that they are careless. Their conviction of the truth of their faith, and its share in every act and thought and principle of their daily life is so intimate and intense as to be unconscious, unless roused by opposition. Their religion is as much a part of nature to them as is sleep or food.

Comment: Surely this should not be placed so far down, as #21, almost an afterthought, long after the sartorial advice and that about being careful how you treat your particular sharif. "Religious discussions will be frequent"? What does this tell us? How "frequent" are "religious discussions" in the military of non-Muslims? Good to know that among the Bedu "Islam is so all-pervading an element" that there need not be fervor - in other words, they take the centrality and rightness of Islam to be so obvious, that they need not think about it. Good for Lawrence to note that their faith, and "its share in ever act and thought and principle of their daily life is so intimate and intense as to be unconscious...[that] their religion is as much a part of nature to them as is sleep or food" - this is surely the most important remark in the entire piece. But Lawrence does not explain what has to be made explicit: that Islam is based not only on the rituals of worship, that is, the Five Pillars, but also rests on a division of all of humanity between Muslim and non-Muslim, and inculcates the idea that between the two a state of permanent hostility, of permanent war, but not always open warfare, must exist. Had he said this, he might have usefully warned against any great expectations or hopes, sensibly dashing them. But he did not. And those who take Lawrence as a guide, if they fail to note just what Islam inculcates at this point - this faith that is "in every act and thought and principle of their daily life" - are misleading others.

But could they? Could the Fort Leavenworth colonels, could General Petraeus, really enlighten their troops about what Islam teaches, what the texts and tenets tell us, what attitudes and atmospherics naturally arise among Muslims? I don't think they could. Because if they were to fully grasp what this meant, they would lose belief in the mission, and as good soldiers, they are willing, apparently, to ignore those parts of reality that get in the way of, that might cause them abandon hope for, the mission with which they have been entrusted.

But what about those under them, what about the lieutenants and captains and privates who have experienced training, going out on missions with, trusting, Muslim Iraqis, both Arabs and Kurds? When, for example, those soldiers notice how much more trustworthy are the Kurds than the Arabs, what are they to make of it? Are they to be told, truthfully, that this is not only a result of American protection for Kurds from 1991 to 2003, by providing air cover from attacks by the Arabs, but that the non-Arab ethnic identity of Kurds does not reinforce, but works against, the power and hold of Islam, and that this is a lesson likely to be useful in other, though not in all, Muslim countries? For example, in Afghanistan that might be true, but less so in Pakistan, a state founded of, by, and for Muslims, while Afghanistan was a state whose various peoples were, over time, Islamized, and where, until recently, because of the level of life, the full message of Islam had not quite, in its full and consequently most dangerous form, been disseminated.

22. Do not try to trade on what you know of fighting. The Hejaz confounds ordinary tactics. Learn the Bedu principles of war as thoroughly and as quickly as you can, for till you know them your advice will be no good to the Sherif. Unnumbered generations of tribal raids have taught them more about some parts of the business than we will ever know. In familiar conditions they fight well, but strange events cause panic. Keep your unit small. Their raiding parties are usually from one hundred to two hundred men, and if you take a crowd they only get confused. Also their sheikhs, while admirable company commanders, are too 'set' to learn to handle the equivalents of battalions or regiments. Don't attempt unusual things, unless they appeal to the sporting instinct Bedu have so strongly, unless success is obvious. If the objective is a good one (booty) they will attack like fiends, they are splendid scouts, their mobility gives you the advantage that will win this local war, they make proper use of their knowledge of the country (don't take tribesmen to places they do not know), and the gazelle-hunters, who form a proportion of the better men, are great shots at visible targets. A sheikh from one tribe cannot give orders to men from another; a Sherif is necessary to command a mixed tribal force. If there is plunder in prospect, and the odds are at all equal, you will win. Do not waste Bedu attacking trenches (they will not stand casualties) or in trying to defend a position, for they cannot sit still without slacking. The more unorthodox and Arab your proceedings, the more likely you are to have the Turks cold, for they lack initiative and expect you to. Don't play for safety.

Comment: Here there is oblique recognition of what we all know now to be true: the Sharifian forces never at any time included more than a few hundred warriors, on camel or horse, and the Bedu cannot be trained to Western standards of organization; neither they nor their sheikhs can "learn to handle the equivalent of battalions or regiments." The Bedu, according to Lawrence, are used to raiding - they lived by raiding, in fact - but they won't try something "unusual" by way of tactics or target unless their "sporting instinct" dictates otherwise (fine fellows, those Bedu, practically ready for the cricket ground at Lord's, with their upper-class "sporting instinct"). But Lawrence does mention that they have a higher goal - for them a most important goal - "if the objective is a good one (booty) they will attack like fiends." In other words, they are out, like the earliest Muslims, for loot, and that, not some higher ideal, is what moves them. "They will not stand casualties" - in other words, they are easily turned back, apparently, and they lack patience - "they cannot sit still without slacking." Note how here Lawrence has brought in the Turks, no longer giving advice on the Arabs, instructing his readers that those "lack initiative and expect you to." That's the kind of remark that led to the British disaster at Gallipoli.

23. The open reason that Bedu give you for action or inaction may be true, but always there will be better reasons left for you to divine. You must find these inner reasons (they will be denied, but are none the less in operation) before shaping your arguments for one course or other. Allusion is more effective than logical exposition: they dislike concise expression. Their minds work just as ours do, but on different premises. There is nothing unreasonable, incomprehensible, or inscrutable in the Arab. Experience of them, and knowledge of their prejudices will enable you to foresee their attitude and possible course of action in nearly every case.

Comment: The gist here is that the Arabs, or rather the subset known as the Bedu (that is, the nomadic tribes of the desert), will never level with you, and it is up to you to discover the secret wellsprings of their actions or inactions. Lawrence says: "they dislike concise expression." Translated: they are florid in their interminable speeches, and you can never get them to get to the bottom of something, or to express themselves clearly. "Their minds work just as ours do" -- do they? Are the powers of logic, is the familiarity with free and skeptical inquiry, just as advanced among Muslim Bedu as among the representatives of the most advanced societies, those of the West?

24. Do not mix Bedu and Syrians, or trained men and tribesmen. You will get work out of neither, for they hate each other. I have never seen a successful combined operation, but many failures. In particular, ex-officers of the Turkish army, however Arab in feelings and blood and language, are hopeless with Bedu. They are narrow minded in tactics, unable to adjust themselves to irregular warfare, clumsy in Arab etiquette, swollen-headed to the extent of being incapable of politeness to a tribesman for more than a few minutes, impatient, and, usually, helpless without their troops on the road and in action. Your orders (if you were unwise enough to give any) would be more readily obeyed by Beduins than those of any Mohammedan Syrian officer. Arab townsmen and Arab tribesmen regard each other mutually as poor relations, and poor relations are much more objectionable than poor strangers.

Comment: Town and Country do not mix well or play with others: "they hate each other." No such thing as a "successful combined operation." And if you have been in the Turkish army, even if Arab by ethnicity and identification and language, you will "be helpless with the Bedu." Then there is a sentence which I assume refers to the urban Arabs, the "Syrians" as Lawrence calls them: "[T]hey are narrow indeed in tactics, unable to adjust themselves to irregular warfare, clumsy in Arab etiquette, swollen-headed to the extent of being incapable of politeness to a tribesman for more than a few minutes, impatient, and, usually, helpless without their troops on the road and in action." Now who are these "Syrians"? He means the northern Arabs, the Arabs of Syria, Lebanon, of what became Mandatory Palestine, the Arabs who stand in contradistinction to the true, pure Arabs of the Arabian desert. Incidentally, this distinction is to be found today, and one can find, at www.MEMRITV.org, for example, contempt expressed by those "Syrians" - that is, the Arabs of the north, the Arabs who live in towns and are not nomadic, the Arabs who regard with contempt for the "desert Arabs" of Arabia who are not, so the northern ones insist, "civilized," not part of the "civilization" that such words as "Umayyad" (Syria) and "Abbasid" (Iraq) and "Fatimid" (Egypt) evoke. And even more maddening today, for the "sophisticated" (a relative term) Arabs of Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and other northern centers, is that those desert Arabs, those primitives, are the ones who have all the money, and that maddens further, especially when they arrive in Cairo or Beirut or Damascus where rich Muslim Arab boys just want to have fun, and are not shy about treating the locals with contempt.

But surely there is something here that needs to be brought up to date, made relevant to the situation in Iraq - for which General Petraeus and his colonels were attempting to prepare themselves and others. The divisions in Iraq that count are not so much between the desert tribes and the urban population of Baghdad, or Basra or Mosul (still quite tribal, with a veneer of urban civilization that, now that the Jews are no longer in Baghdad, and now that the Christians are being harried out of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, becomes more translucent every day), but between Sunnis and Shi'a, or Arabs and Kurds, or Muslims and Christians, Muslims and Yazidis, Muslims and Mandeans and every other teeny-tiny remnant of an ancient sect, surviving where it can only because the Muslims have not until now turned their attention to making their lives even more insecure and deeply unpleasant than they have been.

25. In spite of ordinary Arab example, avoid too free talk about women. It is as difficult a subject as religion, and their standards are so unlike our own that a remark, harmless in English, may appear as unrestrained to them, as some of their statements would look to us, if translated literally.

Comment: Here Lawrence alludes to the position of women, the mistreatment of women, but as he was not much interested in women, he did not give it emphasis. But surely the reduction of women to breeding chattel is something that most strikes Americans and other Infidels in Iraq (or in any Muslim society). Of what use is this comment? He should have spelled out what he meant by "their standards are so unlike our own" - and he should have set out chapter and verse as to the treatment of, view of, women in Islam. He missed an important chance. And for anyone in the American military, perhaps especially now that women serve as combat soldiers, pilots, medics, as well as in Civil Affairs (to win hearts, win minds), it would have been good to fully prepare them for the mistreatment of Muslim women, so that they might not accept that mistreatment as merely different (Lawrence: "standards so unlike our own"). To avoid discussing the inferior position of women is dangerous and cruel. But of course to do this requires a willingness to tell unpleasant truths, instead of pleasant untruths, about Islam.

26. Be as careful of your servants as of yourself. If you want a sophisticated one you will probably have to take an Egyptian, or a Sudani, and unless you are very lucky he will undo on trek much of the good you so laboriously effect. Arabs will cook rice and make coffee for you, and leave you if required to do unmanly work like cleaning boots or washing. They are only really possible if you are in Arab kit. A slave brought up in the Hejaz is the best servant, but there are rules against British subjects owning them, so they have to be lent to you. In any case, take with you an Ageyli or two when you go up country. They are the most efficient couriers in Arabia, and understand camels.

Comment: Ah, the servant problem. Well, the "servant problem" in Iraq was solved soon enough, in the Green Zone, where the big shots found that the easiest thing to do was to take over the staffs - largely Christian - of maids and chauffeurs and cleaners and cooks and tasters - whom Saddam Hussein had employed. Why did he employ them? Well, because he knew they were not, could never be, a threat - given that Christians in a Muslim society were constantly on edge about their own security. He knew they would not dare to be in a political plot against him, whereas Shi'a Arabs, or Kurds (mostly Sunni), or even Sunni Arabs, from a different group or tribe or family, might well plot and work to eliminate him. Here is where explaining to the troops this appropriation of the same class of servants (drivers, cooks, etc.) from among the Christians might have helped. And some worry over the use, in some places, of Muslims might have been warranted. A friend of mine who served at FOB Danger in Tikrit tells of how he had to watch, with his gun at the ready, even the Kurdish gardeners tending the trees and bushes and grass that Saddam Hussein had had planted round his palace. But the need for such watchfulness came with experience, and was not part of the training received back at Fort Jackson, or Fort Bragg, or Fort Somewhere. But it should have been.

27. The beginning and ending of the secret of handling Arabs is unremitting study of them. Keep always on your guard; never say an unnecessary thing: watch yourself and your companions all the time: hear all that passes, search out what is going on beneath the surface, read their characters, discover their tastes and their weaknesses and keep everything you find out to yourself. Bury yourself in Arab circles, have no interests and no ideas except the work in hand, so that your brain is saturated with one thing only, and you realize your part deeply enough to avoid the little slips that would counteract the painful work of weeks. Your success will be proportioned to the amount of mental effort you devote to it.

Comment: More Polonius. Both obvious, and true. The alpha and omega of "handling Arabs" is the "unremitting study of them." And Lawrence, in the 27th of his 27 apercus (neither brilliant nor, often, particularly useful), offers do's and don'ts that at least contain a warning that suggests how not-to-be-trusted are the Muslim Arabs: "keep always on your guard," "never say an unnecessary thing," "watch yourself and your companions all the time," "hear all that passes," "search out what is going on beneath the surface."

Unremarkable, but apparently the kind of thing that some will need to have spelled out. But what Lawrence does not say is also, or even more, important. What explains this need to be on one's guard? Why must a British officer who is working with the Arabs against the Turks, helping to "liberate" them, and giving them money, supplying them weapons, perhaps giving them logistical support or even rudimentary training, have nonetheless to be constantly on guard? Why must one watch always what one says, what one does, why must one "search out what is going on beneath the surface"? He doesn't explain that Muslim Arab society is one of constant meretriciousness and deception, deception of Infidels, but also deception of fellow Muslims who are of a different group, tribe, family. It is the picture of a world in which homo homini lupus, despite all the talk about the unity of the Umma (a unity that expresses itself in solidarity against Infidels, but not in any other kind of solidarity). The rule is not pleasant, but it is a true one. I have heard, from Christians who grew up in Syria, about the astonishing mistrust of Muslims for one another, of how a Muslim man will not trust even his brother to be alone with his wife. "War is deception," Muhammad famously said, but in Islam, it is not only war, but life itself, quotidian existence, that is full of constantly shifting alliances and perceived interests, and always, shifting sands of deception of every kind.

That can be related to Islam, to the aggression and violence that it instills, so that even if, in the case of the texts, the aggression and violence are directed at non-Muslims. It can be related to the attitudes to which Islam naturally gives rise in its adherents, the atmospherics of Islamic societies, with their ill-concealed hysteria, the voices of daily life raised to a constant feverish pitch. (Sometimes it seems, in an Arab country, even within families, as if everyone is always yelling at the top of his lungs.)

So what does "Twenty-Seven Articles" by Lawrence, written in 1918 when he had less than two years of experience with those Sherifian forces about which he has now become such a self-proclaimed expert (it was just a few years before that he was a low-level assistant working as an archeologist under D. Hogarth at the Ashmolean), really offer? Keep in mind not the myth of Lawrence, but the reality: that the Arab troops of the Sherifian forces were not "100,000" as, at one point, in a display of that "vivid oriental imagination" we used to unembarrassedly hear about, the Sherif Husain claimed to have, but rather well under a thousand troops, and never more than a few hundred in any one operation. They did not conquer Damascus or any major city (unless Aqaba, then a sleepy tiny port, counts). Nor did they conquer Medina, the southern terminus of the Hejaz Railway. Nor did they do much against the Turks that would have ordinarily put the British in their debt. But the British arabophile officials in the Foreign Office would accept the Lawrentian myth, so that they could accuse themselves of having "betrayed the Arabs." And having made that accusation, they tried to "make it up" to the Arabs by being beastly to those "East European Jews" whom they found so demanding, so brash, so unwilling to treat them in the oily manner that the Arabs had perfected. Besides, unlike the Arabs, the Jews did not provide any of that local color that went over so well among the middle-class officials and military men who, in the Near East as in India, liked a good parade, liked natives who acted like natives. There wasn't much of that in Mandatory Palestine, but a few of the rich landed families, the Nashashibis, the Husseinis, the Khalidis, could put on a show - nothing like what India offered, but still...

So even though General Allenby and others on the spot knew that the Sherifian revolt was not of great military value, and even though it was Allenby who caused Lawrence's hasty decampment back to Blighty, the Lawrence myth took off.

Let's sum up what we think we - you and I - have learned from this portentous document that could easily be reduced to three or four paragraphs: Don't mock the Arab chieftain, don't contradict him, make him think your suggestions are his own. Don't be over-familiar with his men; they are his, and consequently your, inferiors. Do wear "Arab kit," but also make clear you are an English officer. Try, if you can, to endure their food, to endure their ways of living; try to fit in, but don't try so hard as to make them think you have forgotten who you are. Be careful on the subjects of religion and women. Realize that religion permeates the lives of the Bedu, to such an extent that they take it as a fact of nature, a given. Be careful discussing women; they have very different attitudes. Be careful with this, be careful with that. Understand that they do not like to take casualties, can easily be discouraged, have no taste for organization at a higher level, prefer small raiding parties, and are most enthusiastic about fighting when there is the promise of booty. Try to win their trust, but realize that even if you do everything you can to win their trust, they will still be untrustworthy themselves, and you must be constantly on your guard.

There's more to summarize, but at this point it's more of the same. You can look above to read Lawrence's original and the "Comment" put after each of the "articles," for yourself.

And you will immediately note the absence of the word "Islam" and, instead, and only a few times, oblique references to it, when the word "religion" is used. Repeatedly one wants to have Lawrence to connect the most important thing in any true Muslim Believer's life - the fact of Islam - to these attitudes. He tells us to be careful about discussing religion, but doesn't spell out exactly why a British officer should be so careful. He tells us that the Arabs have a very different view of women, but doesn't tell us why, what it is in the texts of Islam that might explain that "very different view." He tells us that the Arabs respect pedigree - a connection to the family of the Prophet -- in their rulers more than money or merit, but not why. He lived in the period, thank god, when there was none of that treacly and false stuff about the "three abrahamic religions" or "the three great monotheistic faiths" - these phrases would not have occurred to him, or to anyone in that period. But he still, if unconsciously, is running interference for Islam. He tells the British officers that as "British and Infidels" they will not be liked. But why? Why won't they be liked? Tell us more, tell us exactly why. And is it true that if we follow all the commandments about deportment we will actually become friends with the Arabs, trusted friends? Is that conceivable? Is that possible? Could they, would they, be friendly to us, if not our friends, if we did not ply them with weapons and money? That is, is their "friendship" with Infidels even possible without their getting a quid pro quo, cash on the barrel, and a lot more besides? The answer is no, and it was Lawrence's responsibility to explain why, but he didn't. Perhaps he had been among Muslims, people who are taught not to question authority but to acquire and maintain a habit of mental submission, and he, Lawrence, was influenced by this view, did not feel a need to explain further than he did (which was not much) the nature of the Arab minds and hearts that the British officers who read his text would be expected to have to understand. How is it possible, even today, that the American troops are not given, as part of Basic Training, a real course in Islam, not a fake course, not one limited to the Five Pillars of individual worship, and not one sanitized so much that it might have been produced by the O.I.C., or CAIR?

Mostly what we have here is a pseudo-authoritative collection of the obvious, or here and there the not-so-obvious, by one who was a naïf, for all of his experience, neither the first nor the last Westerner to come to Araby, and to be entranced by the Romance of the Timeless Desert, the Arabs Under A Starry and Infinite Sky, the Leathery-Faced Bedu With His Hawk, and his Hawk-Eyed Piercing Stare, The Kind Of Warrior Who Will Never Let You Down (but don't ever let down your guard with him, not even for second).

Those who went out to Iraq, on repeated tours, and learned the hard way about the Arabs and Muslims, and in learning it, became - inexorably - disenchanted with the task they were assigned, are seldom heard from. Some are still in the military, and not about to cause a stir by denouncing the whole strategy as one of waste and misdirection of resources that fails to take into account the need to divide and demoralize the enemy camp, the Camp of Islam. For no one dares, whose career depends on not offending his bosses in Washington, in the Pentagon or the Executive Branch, to openly tell a few home truths about Islam, and about the pre-existing fissures in Iraq that cannot be healed, and why the attempt to heal them should never have been made. No, they can't do it. But you and I can, and eventually, when what was predicted here would happen in Iraq does happen, we can then, perhaps, obtain a hearing.

Those who were involved in either the formulation of military strategy, or in the execution of such strategy, in Iraq, deserved to be told far more, these last few years, about what Islam inculcates. And how useful are the distinctions Lawrence made to Iraq today? Take, for example, something he mentions early on, his taxonomy of the Arabs that divides them between the urban "Syrians" (impliedly of the north) and the desert Arabs (impliedly closer to the Jazirat al-Arab, the Arabian Peninsula). How useful is this urban-dweller-vs.-desert-tribal-Arab to the situation in Iraq? Well, let's see. Would a Sunni Arab living near Fallujah have more usefully in common with a Shi'a Arab living in similar tribal circumstances, in southern Iraq, or more in common with an urban dweller, a Sunni Arab living in Baghdad? Would a Kurdish tribesman in the north have more in common with a Kurd whose family had lived for generations in Baghdad (there were some), or with a Sunni tribesman, living in a small village in Diyala Province, or Anbar? We know the answer, and we know that the "Syrian-Bedu" distinction is not useful for Iraq. But it retains its usefulness in another way, as a shorthand description of the split between those Arabs of Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, who think of themselves as the "civilized ones," as compared to the maddeningly rich, but comparatively "primitive," Arabs of the Gulf and the Peninsula. The resentments felt by those in the north lead them to console themselves for their relative poverty compared to the oil-rich "desert Arabs," and also for their backwardness vis-à-vis the Infidel West, by mentally returning to a fabled past of exaggerated glory ("we were the founders of civilization" and other claims of that type) that continues to nourish their imaginations and to protect them from any too-painful recognition of their own dismal reality.

The greatest of Lawrence's lapses is his failure to discuss, and in detail, Islam. There were others, at the time, who did. In the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch government in Batavia was greatly helped by the advice given by the scholar C. Snouck Hurgronje, certainly one of the two or three greatest Western scholars of Islam. Lawrence was not a scholar of Islam, not ever, and he simply picked attitudes up, but one doubts that he ever subjected Islam to systematic study.

In extenuation, consider the period. For Lawrence was not someone who had to worry about the responsibilities of rule. He was there for two heady years of fighting, exciting for him, a mild-mannered archaeologist, and no doubt in those days he still had faith in "the Arabs" - a faith that students of the late Lawrence suggest in his last years he lost. He didn't think too much about Islam, just as someone in ARAMCO, going out to Saudi Arabia in, say, the 1940s, wouldn't have given it much thought because Muslims worldwide were weak, had little money, had not yet been admitted by the millions into the advanced countries of Europe. That is, they had not yet been admitted into what used to be known, and was thought of still by Muslims, as the lands of Western Christendom, the enemy's territory. Western Christendom had not yet yielded, but for some amazing reasons was allowing deep behind its own defensive lines those who, being Muslims, could not possibly wish those countries, as Infidel nation-states that still have not submitted to Islam, well.

Why should an ARAMCO geologist or executive, have been thinking about Islam in 1940, or 1950, or even 1960? And why should T. E. Lawrence have thought about it, when the Arabs themselves were a comical fighting force? His description of them does not depict them as capable of military organization, beyond a few hundred men. Perhaps they were able to harry here and there some Turks, but were not even capable of taking the Turkish garrison, or of cutting off from all re-supplies, in Medina, a garrison that held out until the war was over.

So Lawrence's failure to treat what we now know to be the central fact of Muslim life, Muslim attitudes, Muslim ways of thought, Muslim views of the universe, is understandable.

But what is not understandable is that his "Twenty-Seven Articles" should apparently be held by some even now in such high regard, when Lawrence, in leaving out Islam, left out what makes Muslims, above all in the Arab lands, tick. There ethnic identity and faith are mutually reinforcing, unlike the case among many non-Arab Muslims, such as Kurds or Berbers or Iranians, whose pre-Islamic past helps that identity to dilute, or weaken, or offer an alternative, to the sole identity offered by Islam.

American officers and men who read, or who are given to read by their superiors, "Twenty-Seven Articles," will remain in many important ways unprepared for, and then surprised by, and then deeply disappointed in, their experience in Iraq.

Another article needs to be written, perhaps even called "Twenty-Seven Articles," that could be most useful if given to, digested by, officers and men going off to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, possibly to Yemen or Somalia or, for that matter, in a decade to Paris or London or Rome or Berlin, in the never-ending and never-to-end war of self-defense against the worldwide Jihad that cannot have an end, but can be reduced to manageable proportions. But the Pentagon, and the civilians in our government, are afraid of daring to discuss Islam openly, and afraid even of being caught discussing Islam, qua Islam, surreptitiously. And with so many Muslims allowed to wander the corridors of power, even in the Pentagon, they are right to worry. It is an absurd situation. And it is not only worry about "what the Muslims will think" and the unseemly and unnecessary need to keep being solicitous of Muslim sensibilities that prevents the production, by the government, of such an article.

So why don't you and I produce it here, ourselves? I'll offer, as Part IV of this series on Arabia Petraea, a version, a rough draft, of information about Iraq that might reasonably have been imparted to the departing troops, to make their own lives easier, and their disappoints in the mission less dramatic. And then others -- you, for example -- can in the thread following make suggestions as to additions and emendations. We don't have to worry. We don't have to be inhibited. We're not the White House. We're not the bigshots at the Pentagon. We're free to tell the truth.