From Lawrence of Arabia a lesson for today's strategists

(To Roberto Giambrone)
02/10/15

Eighty years ago, Thomas Edward Lawrence, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, died of the consequences of a motorcycle accident. The weight of the legend, consecrated by the cinematographic blockbuster of David Lean, still today makes difficult a clear and correct evaluation of its role on the Middle East front during the First World War. Much has been written about his exploits, the conquest of Aqaba in the 1917 and the triumphal entry into Damascus the following year, over the "betrayal" of the Arabs by the English and the consequent disappointment of Lawrence, who would be at the origin of his refusal of any honor and desire to atone for in the low ranks of the RAF under a false name.

The first to draw a ponderous and certainly not neutral, as well as irresistibly literary, picture of these incredible feats, it was TE Lawrence in the very famous Seven pillars of wisdom. Then, thanks to the far-sighted journalist Lowell Thomas, who in the immediate post-war period exalted the exploits of Colonel Lawrence in a kind of conference-show, the legend took over and influenced every future news.

Only in recent years have the studies on the history of Lawrence taken on a less conditioned view of mythology, thanks also to the so-called postcolonial studies. Parallel to these, in the analysis of history and military strategy a very interesting thesis took hold, according to which not only Lawrence would have been the greatest advocate of the modern guerrilla war, a fact that in itself was established, but would have been even prophetic in indicating a innovative policy in the Middle East geopolitical strategy. It is well known that his writings are a subject of study in American military schools and that they have been seriously considered by officers and strategists of the most recent conflicts, among others by General Stanley A. McChrystal.

While Europe struggled to count its victims in the trench war slaughterhouse, which left more than nine million soldiers on the ground, Lawrence experienced his "surgical war" ante litteram in the Hegiaz desert to wear down the empire's troops Ottoman. Targeted interventions, ambushes, attacks on railway convoys to cut supply lines, in short those guerrilla techniques that would have made school and that Lawrence theorises in a short essay written for theEncyclopædia Britannica.

But it is above all the strength of penetration into the cultural fabric of the Arab world, the strength of Lawrence's businesses, the trump card in the Middle Eastern "big game". Knowing, respecting and supporting the cause of the Arabs, Lawrence succeeded in obtaining their trust and the presupposition for their unity in the common cause against the Ottoman Empire. It was this symbiosis with the language, customs, customs and culture of the Arab people that allowed Lawrence to become "one of them", even their leader, and to have at his side, in the campaign against the Turks, Prince Feisal, son of King Hussein. Although, to the promise of independence of the Arabs, the British government had to add not a few gold bars to convince the leaders of the different Bedouin tribes to make a common front against the Turkish army.

The result is well known: the Ottoman Empire capitulated, but Great Britain and France, without the knowledge of Lawrence, had already shared the Middle East with the famous "secret" Sykes-Picot agreement by 1916. The desert hero did not give up easily. Determined to enforce the pact with the Arabs, he showed up at the 1919 Paris peace conference with "friend" Feisal, hoping to nail governments to their responsibilities. At the 1921 conference in Cairo the games will be made: to quiet Feisal and Lawrence, who in the days before the conference had animatedly debated the issue with Churchill, the state of Iraq and Transjordan were created to be entrusted to the Hashemites, to which Feisal belonged and brother Abdullah, sons of king Hussein. Feisal, to whom Colonel Lawrence, strong on the promise of the British, had guaranteed control of Syria and neighboring territories, had to settle for little more than an honorific title of King of the newborn state of Iraq, while the real and strategic control of the territory it passed to the Europeans, who traced the borders of the Middle East, more or less like the current ones, that the ISIS fanatics are questioning.

The imperialist power of the western imperialist power, which would soon trigger the fusion of interethnic contrasts and the ruinous growth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is myopia. The creation of the new states at table, with square and compass, did not take into account the incorporation of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, as well as Palestinians and Jews in the territory that would become the state of Israel. The disaster is still there for all to see.

Lawrence was destroyed; surrender to the reasons of colonial politics and power broke his dream of the sovereignty of the Arab people, so described in Seven pillars: "I intended to create a new nation, to re-establish a fallen influence, to give twenty million Semites the base on which to build an inspired palace of dreams for their national thought". Dejected and wounded in his dignity (even a spy has his own code of honor), he wished to expiate by enlisting himself twice as a simple soldier under a false name, first in the RAF and then in the army. Unmasked, he retired to private life, however much discussed, in the Dorset countryside, where he died in a trivial motorcycle accident, around which conspiracy conjectures were embroidered.

Lawrence, the mythical leader of a bloody war yet paradoxically more "human" when compared to current conflicts, marks the watershed between the old conception of war, substantially based on armies sent to ruin, and the new war strategies based on intelligence and interventions targeted. But Lawrence is also the last romantic hero, the idealist who combined the pen with the sword, a metaphor that would later recover, out of time, another visionary like Yukio Mishima.

There is something mythical in his biography and in the history of his exploits, whose evocative power is contained in some sentences of the Seven pillars, starting with the famous reflection on the dreamers: «All men dream, but not in the same way. Those who dream at night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake up during the day to discover the vanity of those images: but those who dream by day are dangerous men, because they can put their daydreams into practice, making them possible " .

The introspective and solitary young Ned, as he was called in the family, had begun to cultivate his dream since childhood. Of course it was a vague dream with imprecise contours, more than anything else an indefinite and fatal desire for legendary enterprises, for redemption from a childhood marked by the non-canonical coexistence of his parents, who could not marry because the father had not got a divorce from his first wife. The feeling of clandestinity and shame that that situation caused to the sensitive soul of the young Thomas Edward was compensated by an unbridled vitality, which he vented in the open air activity, most often in solitary, on foot or by bicycle. The sense of adventure, exploration and discovery, combined with a love of history forged the personality and physique of Lawrence, the latter decidedly thin and in poor health. But above all it will be the profound distance from a society in which Lawrence did not recognize himself pushing him towards that search for the absolute that would have materialized in the Eastern dream. Arabia and his people represented in Lawrence's eyes that essentiality, simplicity and purity that the West had lost. A fatal attraction.

The war, so concrete and terrible in its materiality, was an opportunity for Lawrence to meet his dreams, while the rigor and frugality of military life seemed to correspond to his ideal of life. But the more faith in the possibility of concretizing his dreams drove him towards the unknown, the more the brutality of war and above all the falsity of men dragged him into the turmoil of reality. The desert, which he had crossed on foot or by camelback, was not enough to quench his thirst for absolute and justice.

Disgusted by his own identity, so compromised with the hypocrisy of those who had also allowed him to embrace the East, Colonel Lawrence renounced his titles and his name and enlisted as a simple airman in the RAF, undergoing months of humiliation and lasts discipline. A «descent to the last step of the ladder», which will tell about it The stamp, published posthumously in the 1955. Here Lawrence was able to find, for a brief period, that ascetic dimension that seemed to belong to him profoundly: "The airmen have no assets whatsoever, they have few ties, little daily care". Unmasked, he changed his identity again to join the Royal Tank Corps. He managed to return to his beloved RAF for a few years before retiring to private life in the 1935, shortly before he finally left this world, unseated by one of his beloved Brough Superior SS100.

He left us a fascinating history, to tell the boys who still love the adventure, and not a few points of reflection for those who are currently grappling with the barking of the Near East.