174
Most importantly for Glubb Pasha, in less than a month, the Bedouin
tribesmen he had raised and trained himself as a paramilitary, mechanized
desert police force, had now proven their worth in battle, not only as an
advance reconnaissance patrol but also as a guerrilla raiding force. At the
same time, they had campaigned shoulder-to-shoulder with regular British
forces (Life Guards, Royal Artillery, and Royal Engineers), successfully
executing a huge pivot which outflanked the Iraqi forces north of Baghdad,
raiding the main Baghdad-Mosul railway line, and capturing the heavily
fortified Meshahida railway station on 30 May. Glubb’s shelling of the sta-
tion took the rebel Iraqis completely by surprise, and they fled. With the
main line cut at several points and northern Iraq isolated from Baghdad,
the Arab Legion occupied the fortress-like station building, and the British
troopers, gunners, and sappers returned to HABFORCE at Khadhimiya.^6
And so, after subsequently advancing 21 km further south to Taji Halt,
20.3 km from the city, John Glubb’s contribution and that of his Arab
Legion Desert Force to the Anglo-Iraqi War ended.^7 For the remaining
war years, in Syria, North Africa, and beyond, Glubb’s Bedouin troops
performed a vital role as the Allies’ most reliable desert guiding and recon-
naissance force.^8
Certainly the element of mystery surrounding Glubb’s executive chain
of command compounds one’s sense that here was a man whose various
successes, from curtailing lawlessness and fiscal noncompliance among the
tribes of the Middle and Lower Euphrates to terminating Wahhabi trans-
border raiding in Iraq and Transjordan, clearly served to further and
secure British strategic interests and foreign policy in the Middle East.
Since this was precisely the role of MI6 (or ISLD) in the region, one can-
not be blamed for speculating that Glubb may well have been Six ever
since the First World War. His army career had been most unconventional
in that he had volunteered as a young sapper officer to go out to Iraq after
detachment from his corps to perform various solitary functions among
the Arab tribes under the cover of an engineering assignment. After resign-
ing his commission in the Royal Engineers in 1926, Glubb held the civil-
ian appointment of ‘administrative inspector’ in Iraq and ‘political officer’
in Transjordan, technically answerable to the Middle East Department of
the Colonial Office (CO), whither he despatched periodic reports even
after assuming command of the Arab Legion. Officially, his remit was
broad: simply ‘to establish government control in the desert,’^9 which may
be interpreted equally as a service to Emir Abdullah (1882–1951) and to
the British government. However, apart from his military duties as com-