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from Mafraq on 12 May, Glubb’s Desert Force troops accompanied him
technically as his personal bodyguard—essentially an independent para-
military police unit—not as a military unit under British command. At
some point, possibly because he now had a significant mobile strike force
at his disposal (numbering about 700), instead of basing himself at H4,
Glubb was given the specific task of disrupting the road and rail commu-
nications between Baghdad and Mosul, where it was assumed that the
Germans were still operational. This he did. Glubb was also tasked to
persuade the northern and Middle Euphrates tribes to rise against Rashid
Ali’s government, cutting off their escape route by car or train to the
north. In the event, this latter task proved unnecessary, as the rebel leaders
fled not north, but east to Persia.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to examine why Glubb decided to aban-
don the notion of undertaking subversive work to raise a revolt against the
Rashid Ali administration and to substitute for it guerrilla warfare in the
Jazirah, the alluvial region of Upper Mesopotamia between the Euphrates
Fig. 8.1 John Bagot Glubb, Arab Legion commander (with Emir Abdullah of
Transjordan). Source: Wikimedia Commons