Book Review: Spies in Arabia

Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire in the Middle East

by Priya Satia.

Published by Oxford University Press,

London.  472 pages, 2008.

Reviewed by Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN

Stanford University Associate Professor Priya Satia has published an award

winning book that pieces together the evolution of British intelligence in the

Middle East.  Those with an interest in intelligence networks and Middle East

affairs will find this book worth reading.  Special Duty Agents traveled under

cover of the Palestine Exploration Fund before World War I, and British Royal

Engineers traveled Egypt and the Sudan as part of Egypt’s Survey Department. 

You will enter a world in which internal competition for intelligence occurred

among British officials in Cairo, London, and Delhi.  However, Horatio Kitchener

the British High Commissioner in Egypt, and Sir Reginald Wingate Sirdar

(Military Commander) of the Egyptian Army viewed Africa and Western Arabia their

administrative responsibility.  Externally, there would be a pre-World War I

race between the British and Germans for archeological discoveries, prestige,

and intelligence access.

During World War I, Richard Meinertzhagen served as General Edmund Allenby’s

intelligence chief, when the British were threatened by Ottoman forces allied

with the Triple Alliance.  Meinertzhagen rode into no man’s land, pretending to

be hit, and dropped a pouch containing falsified “confidential” documents.  When

the Ottomans got hold of the papers they were duped into believing a major

British attack would come through Gaza, and that Beersheba would see only a

reconnaissance in force.  This deception led to the British victory at the

Battle of Megiddo.  The deception not only included documents, but fake camps

built in the Jordan valley, dust sleds to kick up sand to mask activity and

troop numbers, and hotels vacated suddenly.  These deceptions of World War I

would be rediscovered by the British in World War II and used against the Axis. 

Satia does a great job getting into the real military creativity of T. E.

Lawrence (of Arabia), which was about enhancing the formidability of the desert

as a vast space.  The author emphasizes that Lawrence saw space as a deterrent

to Ottoman deployments and re-deployments in Arabia.  The British had to contend

with waves of new political movements to maintain control Turanism (Turkish

nationalism), Pan-Islamism, Bolshevism, and Pan-Arabism.  This needed the

arranging of covert rule, which is the subject of an entire chapter.  Perhaps

one of the more intriguing discussions among British intelligence leaders was

the need to exploit the success of the Arab Bureau in Cairo, and create a Muslim

Bureau linking Cairo to Gibraltar, Malta, Constantinople, Aden (in Yemen),

India, and Singapore as intelligence sensors.  The book dives deeply into the

management of the Iraqi British Mandate, but pays little attention to the

management of Egypt as a British Protectorate or the suppression of the 1919

Revolt in Egypt.  The revolt would lead to the removal of the false pretence

that Egypt was under Ottoman suzerainty, a political fiction since the early 19^th

century.  Satia work is worth reading and recommended for Middle East Foreign

Area Officers, intelligence professionals, and counter-terrorism experts. 

Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein is the author of “Militant

at the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism.