Sir John Glubb Dead at 88

Lt. General Sir John Glubb who, as Glubb Pasha was commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, died Monday at the age of 88.

More so than the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, Glubb personified romantic British identification with the Arab cause, which he supported both as a soldier and as a distinguished author and historian. His service in the Middle East spanned the rise and fall of Britain as the most influential power in the region.

When he arrived in Iraq in 1920, British influence was at its height but when he was expelled from Jordan 36 years later it was crumbling rapidly.

In March 1939, Glubb was appointed by Emir Abdullah to command of the Arab Legion which, as a small mechanized force of Bedouin, had been involved in skirmishes with Arab gangs infiltrating through Transjordan to fight the British in Palestine. With the outbreak of World War II, the force was expanded and took part in the suppression of the pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in 1941.

After the war, Glubb and his Legion were drawn into the escalating Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine. With its British officers, the 4,000-strong Legion proved to be the most effective Arab army in the 1948 Palestine war. As a result, it succeeded in holding much of the West Bank territory allotted to the Arabs in the United Nations partition resolution of November 29, 1947.

Glubb remained head of the Legion after the signing of armistice agreements between Israel and her neighbors. But with the assassination of King Abdullah in 1951, is personal position was seriously weakened. He became a target of anti-British fanaticism whipped up by President Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and in 1956 King Hussein expelled him from Jordan on seven hours’ notice.

He remained true to the Arab cause nevertheless and an unbending critic of Israel. In his autobiography, published a year after his ejection from Jordan, Glubb wrote:

“I believe that the creation and maintenance of the State of Israel by armed force was a mistake. That the result has been disastrous for the British and Arabs alike is only too obvious. It seems to me not improbable that it will ultimately prove to be disastrous for the Jews also.”

Following the Six-Day War, he advanced the theory that the war had been stirred up by the Soviet Union deliberately to weaken the Arabs and make them permanently dependent on it.