 A fine article by Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "Lawrence of Arabia: Image and Reality," in The Journal of the Historical Society, December 2009, pp, 515-48, traces the reputation of T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935) through the near-century since his remarkable exploits during World War I and his famed recounting of those events in Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). Wyatt-Brown's account of Lawrence's role since 2006, when he had a deep impact on the American expeditionary force in Iraq, came as news to me. He focuses on Lawrence's 2,800-word summary of lessons learned in war, published in The Arab Bulletin, August 20, 1917, and bearing the supremely modest title, "Twenty-Seven Articles."
In it, Lawrence offers his "personal conclusions, arrived at gradually while [he] worked in the Hejaz and now put on paper as stalking horses for beginners in the Arab armies." He adds that the rules "are meant to apply only to Bedu [Bedouin]; townspeople or Syrians require totally different treatment." His advice includes such insights as "Win and keep the confidence of your leader," "Be shy of too close relations with the subordinates," and "Cling tight to your sense of humour." Wyatt-Brown explains the recent role of this slight, archaic document: A renewed attention to Lawrence's military understanding of Middle Eastern insurgency may have been helpful in the reform of U.S. policy in Iraq, once General David Howell Petraeus took charge. According to journalist Linda Robinson, before assuming that command, the general had studied Lawrence's writings at night.
He took special notice of the difficulties Lawrence had faced in organizing the Bedouins. Petraeus had his senior officers read "The Twenty-Seven Articles" and Seven Pillars of Wisdom. … The chief reform under Petraeus's orders was in the conduct of officers and soldiers toward Iraqi leaders and civilians and in making armed alliances with Sunnis willing to break with Al Qaeda. …
Petraeus soon recognized that the Iraqi power structure was rooted in tribal politics. Policies had to accommodate that Middle Eastern arrangement. … He adopted a major cornerstone of Lawrence's understanding of guerilla warfare. In the Army War College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Petraeus, David Kilcullen, and other strategists tirelessly worked out the new strategy, with Lawrence's observations providing a helpful point of departure. Like Lawrence himself, Petraeus used lavish distributions of money as the lubricant of good relations with the Iraqi tribesmen. He also adhered to Lawrence's dictum, "Do not try to do too much with your own hands" even if you can perform the mission better than the native forces. The general recast it as "the host nation doing something tolerably is normally better than us doing it well. "Twenty-Seven Articles," writes Wyatt-Brown, "has become something of a bible for current American military experts dealing with the problems of occupying and controlling" Iraq. Indeed, Lawrence earned the compliment of being almost plagiarized without a line of acknowledgment in the U.S. Army field manual for counterinsurgency. With Petraeus offering the Foreword, the document was compiled at Fort Leavenworth in 2005. Conrad Crane, a War College historian, and Lt. Col. John A. Nagl led a team of experts. When the University of Chicago Press published an edition, it received wide coverage that nearly made it a bestseller. A considerable number of passages, however, were paraphrasings of Lawrence's work, according to anthropologist Roberto Gonzalez. Petraeus himself was willing to credit Lawrence for helping him develop his counterinsurgency ideas. The general pointed out in an article in Military Review that Lawrence had given this advice: "It is their war, and you are to help them, not win it for them," a notion, Petraeus declared, as "relevant in the 21st century as it was in his own time in the Middle East during World War I." Wyatt-Brown sees the Lawrence-inspired shift as hugely consequential, perhaps saving "an enormous number of American and Iraqi lives." Ironically, "Lawrence's insights, though far less prominent, were more significant in [the American] Middle Eastern engagement than they had been in his own day." He credits Lawrence's deep insights into tribal culture to several factors: "years of training in the study of the Near East, its history, and its traditions," learning colloquial Arabic, visiting the region in 1909 and traveling over 1,100 miles mostly by foot. These interests, Wyatt-Brown concludes, "grew out of his unconventional love of the Bedouins and their habitat." Comments: (1) Traveling "over 1,100 miles, mostly by foot" in the Middle East constitutes an enviable education in itself. (2) Great strategists sometimes have unusual, even eccentric backgrounds. (3) The most difficult thing for a Westerner to learn about the Middle East – even more so than the Arabic language – is the abiding role of tribal culture. For a recent study, see Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Prometheus) by Philip Carl Salzman, a book I have highly recommended. (4) Military technology changed so much over the past century that contemporary warfare appears completely unlike World War I. But the human dimension hardly changed; thus does a Clausewitz or a Lawrence retain his importance. Daniel Pipes (See also this piece previously posted )
 Gen David Petraeus, head of Central Command or Centcom, did not elaborate on the plans, but said the military has considered the impacts of any action taken there. Asked about the vulnerability of Iran's nuclear installations, he told CNN: "Well, they certainly can be bombed. The level of effect would vary with who it is that carries it out, what ordnance they have, and what capability they can bring to bear." He added: "It would be almost literally irresponsible if Centcom were not to have been thinking about the various 'what ifs' and to make plans for a whole variety of different contingencies." Iran maintains its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, but the United States and other Western nations fear Tehran wants to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel has called Iran's nuclear programme the major threat facing its nation. Gen Petraeus declined to comment about Israel's military capabilities, according to CNN. Iran had until the end of last year to accept a deal offered five permanent UN Security Council members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany. It did not do so. Instead, Tehran gave the West until the end of January to accept its own proposal. Petraeus said he thought there was still time for the nations to engage Iran in diplomacy, noting there is no deadline on the enactment of any US contingency plans. But he added that "there's a period of time, certainly, before all this might come to a head". The Telegraph 
 Yemeni police have captured an al-Qaeda commander said to be behind the security threats that resulted in the closure of foreign embassies, officials say. Mohammed al-Hanq had evaded arrest on Monday during a raid by security forces in Arhab, 40km north of Sanaa, in which two of his relatives were killed and three other people wounded. "Mohammed al-Hanq and two others who were wounded were captured in a hospital in Amran [province], north of Sanaa," the official told the AFP news agency on Wednesday. They were found in a hospital in Reedah, in Amran, he said. The US embassy, which had closed for two days due to security concerns over an al-Qaeda threat, cited "successful" security operations north of the capital as it reopened on Tuesday. The British and French embassies, which also closed their doors, resumed operations on Wednesday. The French embassy remained closed to the public on Wednesday but the ambassador and staff reported for duty. The French foreign ministry announced the move on Tuesday night, saying: "We decided on the closure as a security measure after threats made public by known terrorist groups." Concerns that Yemen, a country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, has become a haven for armed groups were thrown into sharp focus when a Nigerian man allegedly trained in Yemen was charged with trying to blow up a US-bound jet. The botched Christmas Day attack was claimed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which also urged attacks on Western interests in Yemen. In the wake of the failed attack, General David Petraeus, the US regional military commander, travelled to Sanaa for talks with Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president. At the same time, Yemen sent army reinforcements to the eastern provinces of Abyan, Bayada and Shawba, where al-Qaeda fighters have hideouts, and raised the alert level in those regions. Al Jazeera
 Islamist elements in Pakistan’s military unhappy with President Asif Zardari are reported to be plotting to remove their country’s civilian government and replace it with a military dictatorship. Two days after General David Petraeus, chief of US Central Command, dismissed fears of an imminent military coup, Pakistan’s defense minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, was prevented Thursday evening by border officials from leaving the country to visit China.
According to one report, there are 248 such names on the border authorities’ list, including other high-ranking government members, of Pakistanis now denied exit rights. The ostensible reason for Mukhtar’s detainment was that he, and other ministers of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), is facing corruption charges and a possible jail term. Last Wednesday, Pakistan’s Supreme Court struck down the amnesty, called the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), which protected them and 8,000 other bureaucrats from prosecution, reviving old charges.
The Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the 2007 NRO amnesty that paved the way for Zardari’s murdered wife and then PPP leader, Benazir Bhutto, to return to Pakistan. With the Supreme Court’s ruling, several ministers are now expected to resign, endangering the survival of the Zardari civilian government. Opposition parties are also calling for Zardari himself to step down, but he has presidential immunity from prosecution. The Supreme Court’s NRO ruling, though, is expected to leave Pakistan’s president open to legal proceedings regarding his eligibility as a candidate in last year’s election. Columnist and former Pakistani activist Tarek Fatah writes that “religious right–wing backers of the Taliban and al Qaeda” in Pakistan’s military-industrial complex are behind this destruction of the Zardari government by legal means. “Working from within the government, military intelligence was able to coax a junior minister to release a list of supposedly corrupt politicians and public officials in the country,” wrote Fatah. “Leading them was Mr. Zardari himself – notwithstanding the fact that before he was elected president, he had been imprisoned for more than a decade by the military without a single conviction.” Zardari came to office a year ago last August, taking over from disgraced military ruler Pervez Musharraf who resigned under threat of impeachment. Musharraf had come to power after staging the last military coup against a civilian president in 1999. Pakistan has been ruled by military leaders for about half of its 62 year history, so military takeovers are almost a part of the political fabric. Army rule usually lasts about a decade before a civilian government is re-established which lasts an almost equal length of time. The current military threat to civilian rule is somewhat unusual, as Zardari has been in office only a year and four months. A main reason for the military coups, though, is that the civilian politicians’ corruption and incompetence eventually become too ruinous for the country. More at FPM
 The Iraqis gave one more piece of evidence tying Syria to the horrific twin bombings in August and General Petraeus has gotten in the mix, revealing that Al-Douri is in Damascus. That’s been widely understood, but this is the highest ranking U.S. official to confirm it and this fact hasn’t been pointed out in months. From MEMRI: In the third day of hearings at the Iraqi parliament, Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Al-Bolani is reported to have revealed in the secret hearings that the cellphone call record of the suicide bomber who blew up the Foreign Ministry last August indicates that he made his last call to someone in Damascus before the operation. In a related matter, General David Petraeus, U.S. CENTCOM head, told Al-Arabiya TV that Izzat Al-Douri, deputy to Saddam Hussein and one of the men most wanted by the Iraqi government, is in Damascus. [In his youth, Al-Douri sold ice blocks from a horse-drawn cart; he is known in Iraq as "The Iceman"] Sources: Al-Mada, December 15, and al-Rafidayn, December 14, 2009 World Threats
 DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Pakistani soldiers killed at least eight advancing Taliban fighters as they waged a major offensive against militants along the Afghan border Monday, intelligence officials said, while a top U.S. senator and general met with officials in the nuclear-armed nation. Both the Pakistani army and the Taliban have claimed early victories in the clashes in South Waziristan, a tribal region that Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremists use as a base to plot attacks on the Pakistani state, Western troops in Afghanistan and civilian targets throughout the world. The U.S. has backed the military offensive in the remote, rugged area. The army said Sunday that 60 militants and six soldiers have been killed since the offensive began Saturday. Two intelligence officials said at least eight more militants died Monday in a fierce battle in the Khaisur area, where they were coming closer to troop positions. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge the information to media on the record. They did not speak of any military casualties. The Taliban claimed Sunday to have inflicted "heavy casualties" and pushed advancing soldiers back into their bases. It is nearly impossible to independently verify any of the claims because the army is blocking access to the battlefield and surrounding towns. Read more here,,,, Source: FoxNews
 Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | November 04, 2008
THE US's preoccupation with Pakistan was strongly underlined last night as General David Petraeus, newly responsible for Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, made Islamabad his first port of call, and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama signalled a change of policy if he wins tomorrow's election.
The security deterioration in the nuclear-armed nation was dramatically demonstrated shortly after General Petraeus's arrival, when jihadi militants staged a rocket attack on the airport in the city of Peshawar, capital of the al-Qa'ida and Taliban stronghold of North-West Frontier Province, which he was scheduled to visit yesterday.
Pakistani television networks said there were no casualties. But the audacity of the attack -- with rockets reportedly landing near a runway used by civilian aircraft -- will not have been lost on General Petraeus as he held discussions over the crisis with top military commanders and civilian government officials in Islamabad.
The US general's trip comes amid frustration in Islamabad over a surge in US missile strikes on alleged militant targets on its soil. But General Petraeus was said to have given no ground to his critics yesterday, insisting the cross-border attacks were achieving results, and he was even tipped to push for permission to use greater force in the regions.
No doubt adding to the general's concerns were fresh signs of the country's political and economic instability as tens of thousands of anti-government lawyers and journalists took to the streets to mark the first anniversary of former president Pervez Musharraf's illegal declaration of a state of emergency last year, during which he sacked the country's chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry.
The democratic movement that grew from that, and is credited with bringing about the restoration of civilian rule, now bitterly opposes the new Government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari because of his refusal to reinstate the chief justice.
Mr Zardari is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia later today to seek funds from King Abdullah in a desperate attempt to save the virtually bankrupt country from having to submit to the terms of a loan from the IMF.
It is understood the Pakistani leader hopes the trip will line up support from the Friends of Pakistan group, of which Australia is a member and which the Government views as an alternative bail-out source to the IMF.
But a spokesman for Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday that the recently convened group had not considered providing financial aid to Pakistan.
"At its inaugural meeting on September 26, the Friends of Pakistan group agreed to enhance co-operation with Pakistan in five areas including stability, development, border security, energy and institution building. No consideration was given to a financial rescue package," the ministerial spokesman said. "We encourage Pakistan to continue discussions with the IMF."
Before leaving Islamabad, however, Mr Zardari was due to swear in 41 new cabinet ministers and ministers of state in a massive expansion of the Government that will more than double its size, despite the parlous state of the nation's finances.
As General Petraeus continued talks last night, reports from the US suggested presidential frontrunner Senator Obama was planning a significant change to US policy on South Asia should he win tomorrow's election.
In one of his final interviews before the vote, Senator Obama suggested there should be links between solving the conflict in Afghanistan and the long-standing dispute between Pakistan and India over Kashmir.
While the Bush administration has maintained a hands-off approach towards the Kashmir dispute, Senator Obama suggested his administration would be more closely involved in trying to resolve the conflict. Source: The Australian
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A fine article by Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "Lawrence of Arabia: Image and Reality," in The Journal of the Historical Society, December 2009, pp, 515-48, traces the reputation of T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935) through the near-century since his remarkable exploits during World War I and his famed recounting of those events in Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). 
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