Hi Mat,

Thank you for another excellent article. As a military history buff, in particular Australian military history I found this piece particularly interesting.

What is also interesting is that in both WW1 and WW2 our troops were engaged in military struggles that also had significant political undertones.

The role played by T.E. Lawrence was - as you suggest - not without its controversy. The desire by the Arab leaders who followed Lawrence into the Arab Revolt was for their own independent state. As is now known from history, this was robbed from them in the post war Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) and the latter Balfour Declaration (1917) that led ultimately to the creation of the State of Israel.

Much of the current trouble in the Middle East stems from these decisions. The role of the 1st AIF in the Mid East Campaign was indeed critical to the success of the British operations. It is fairly clear from the history's that have been written of the campaign that the Australian's showed a greater empathy towards the Jewish people living under Ottoman Turkish rule, and even used them for intelligence support.

By contrast the Arab population was viewed with much less favor, and there was even the case at the end of the campaign of the massacre of Arab villagers by Australian and New Zealand light horse troops following the murder of a New Zealand trooper during an Arab robbery of the solider's lines.

By the time the 2AIF got to Syria the political sensitivities over the war with Vichy France meant that the 7th Division was given relatively little media coverage over their Syria campaign. Hence their epitaph "the Silent 7th".

The tensions in the region had also started to taken on a modern flavor as the Arab uprising in the Palestine from 1936-1939 (triggered by their opposition to large scale Jewish settlement from Nazi Germany) soured Arab-British relations. This uprising helped to form the foundation of the future Israeli military with creation of the Haganah.

Orde Wingate (of later Chindit fame) helped to create these Jewish paramilitary units and they form the "Special Night Squads" who conducted terror raids on Arabs including many examples of extra judicial killings.

By the time of the outbreak of WW2 the Arab population - particularly the Palestinian leaders - had become totally alienated from the British. They actively supported the Nazi Germans and did so out of their common anti-Semitic perspectives. All of this created significant problems for the British post WW2 and the tensions continue to the present.

However, you allude in your article to a "campaign along the lines of Libya would certainly work". Yet I'm not so sure of this. Libya was a very different situation. The rebellion started there largely in the east around Benghazi. This - as I understand it - is the home of the King Idris I whom Gaddafi overthrew in 1969. The conflict seemed to be based as much along tribal lines as anything. There was also a more well-defined leadership to deal with in the Libyan case.

By contrast Syria is more like Iraq. The divisions appear to be along religious lines with Sunni and Shia making up the key divisions. The Alawite group from which the Assad regime and most of the military leadership come from is a sub-branch of the Shia.

In many respects this conflict seems like a proxy war between Sunni and Shia with the former backed by the likes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the latter supported by Iran. The USA, UK and of course Australia are largely on the side of the anti-Assad forces and the Russians are still backing the regime.

This may be too simplistic a view, but I raise it here as I think we need to be cautious about trying to apply the Libyan model to Syria.

The US used largely air power and a few special forces troops to topple the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. However, they could do this because the "Northern Alliance" was still in place and formed a ready made on the ground force that just needed the air power assistance.

Much the same was happening in Libya. Yet this is not the case for Syria and I fear that we might find the overthrow of the Assad regime (as unpleasant as it is or has been) may bring to power a much less attractive and predictable alternative.

Finally, too much western involvement in Syria may risk a spilling over of the conflict into the Lebanon and potentially Iraq and Turkey.

What do you think?