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evidence that Glubb was Six, yet certain circumstantial facts strongly sug-
gest that he may well have been—before, during, and after the Second
World War—either as an SIS officer or as someone with considerable
regional influence who worked closely with the service to protect British
strategic interests in the Middle East. We might perhaps assume that
Glubb was never an officer in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), for
there is no record of his ever being allotted an SOE symbol, nor is there
any SOE personal file (P/F) on him to be found at Kew. However, the
absence of a P/F sometimes serves as confirmation that an SOE member
at some point, usually after the war, also served in MI5 or MI6, who nor-
mally retained such files. In fact, Glubb’s status in the eyes of SOE has
been explicitly clarified, for, as the threat of Nazi invasion from the north
began to look ever more alarming, he is named in the official ‘Arab World
SOE History’ as being in sole charge of SOE affairs in Transjordan: ‘All
our activities ... were placed in the hands of Glubb Pasha, the commander
of the Arab Legion, in December 1941. It was considered that his high
prestige with the Arabs best fitted him to raise Arab resistance in
Transjordan.’ So, rather than sending a field commander to the desert
region to assume responsibility for all propaganda and special operations,
SOE merely attached a liaison officer to Glubb who could also train
Glubb’s men in sabotage operations. Glubb’s contacts apparently proved
most valuable and kept the Arabs from seizing the opportunity of war
conditions to revert to their old Bedouin ways of raiding their neighbours,
that is, Saudi Arabia and Palestine (Fig. 8.1).^3
After they entered Iraq, taking Rutbah Fort on 11 May 1941, Glubb’s
Arab Legion Desert Force acted as pathfinders, spearheading KINGCOL
and reconnoitring the optimal eastward route for HABFORCE across the
desert between Rutbah and Habbaniya. Once RAF Habbaniya had been
relieved on 18 May and the bridge at Falluja captured, Glubb and his
Bedouin peeled off from the main column and headed north, together
with some Life Guards and some 25-pounders, to fulfil a mission of their
own. Even before the advance across the desert to Habbaniya, Glubb had
been tasked to proceed to H4, an IPC pumping station on the Mosul-
Haifa pipeline near the Iraqi-Transjordanian frontier, which he was to use
as his base for the organization of subversive activities including the estab-
lishment of an underground resistance movement in Iraq ‘along the whole
length of the Euphrates.’ This mission was considered political (i.e. clan-
destine) rather than military, and Glubb was first expected to enter Iraq
alone, without any military escort, to carry it out. When he finally advanced
SIX: HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY’S SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE