In a stark passage from his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, TE Lawrence recounts days spent struggling against fever in the desert. As he lay in his tent, “suffering a weakness which made my animal self crawl away and hide till the shame was passed”, the man who later morphed into Lawrence of Arabia began to assess the dynamics of the Arab Revolt during the First World War.
It was an appraisal that not only helped lay the foundations for our present-day understanding of guerrilla warfare, but cemented the British army officer’s reputation as a military genius. Yet, in the same book, Lawrence also wrote of his desire to write his “will across the sky in stars” – a romantic statement of intent that has made him one of the most enigmatic figures in British history.
This month marks 80 years since Lawrence’s death from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. But, far from remaining rooted in the past, Lawrence’s legacy has taken on a new guise in others who have chosen to head to today’s Middle East in search of adventure – or an Islamic utopia.
For Lawrence, it was his brave feats of derring-do that initially thrust him into prominence. Aided by his band of Arab irregulars, he waged all out guerrilla war on a large but cumbersome Turkish military. But, while victory against the Turkish empire brought Lawrence fame, his failure to achieve unity for the Arabs forever seared the ultimate tragedy of this seemingly idealistic figure on to the public consciousness.
The intriguing image of the “western warrior” in the Middle East, as pioneered by Lawrence almost a century ago, is all the rage nowadays. For many of those western volunteers driven by a desire to fight with Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq against ISIL, Lawrence can’t be too far from their thoughts. Indeed, at the US Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Lawrence is on the syllabus. And of the US army officers I spoke to over the years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many were more than familiar with Lawrence’s work. As such, American mercenaries will surely know the path they are treading is not a new one, and that their romantic ideals of seeing off a seemingly immovable force for the sake of Arab “freedom” was once espoused by an illegitimate child of an Anglo-Irish father and Scottish mother.
Yet, somewhat perversely, the most profound notions of political idealism expressed by those leaving the West for the badlands of Syria have come from the men and women flocking to join ISIL itself. Some of today’s ISIL fighters began life in a traditional English neighbourhood, surrounded by all the mod cons of British society. But just as Lawrence, the product of an illicit relationship, found himself struggling to fit into the cultural norms of late 19th and early 20th century Britain before his Arabian adventures, so great personal crisis must have almost certainly proved pivotal in propelling British ISIL volunteers towards a life of wanton violence and cruelty.
In seeking to contribute to the creation of a so-called Islamic “state” in Syria and Iraq, ISIL’s male volunteers have spawned a similar influx of women – and girls – from the likes of Britain and France, all similarly infused with a quixotically delusional view of the world. Indeed, ISIL has presented an opportunity for males to fight and die for their Islamic ideals and offered the prospect of marriage and motherhood to its female volunteers craving the chance to belong to a cause – however brutal in nature.
Lawrence’s own world view was purer and more intellectual than today’s Arabian “warriors” from Britain, America and elsewhere. He would almost certainly have found ISIL and their methods as depraved and baffling as the rest of us, and, just as he publicly damned the British occupation of Iraq during the 1920s, he would have shown little surprise at the modern Middle East’s descent into anarchy. But it remains a curious fact that eight decades on from Lawrence’s death, the Arab world still retains a certain romantic appeal for many western types intent on searching out its most conflict-ridden reaches.
Alasdair Soussi’s book, In The Shadow Of The Cotton Tree, is out now
On Twitter: @AlasdairSoussi