Airman Scholar Sp05-1.indd - United States Air Force Academy

forces. Airpower was a shock to the forces of Hassan, and
their constant harassment using small bombs and machinegun
fire no doubt made the going a little rougher on the old
man and his weary troops; against such constant harassment,
Hassan’s hit-and-fade strategy was torn to shreds. However,
more than anything else it was Hassan’s inability to make a
decent camp near water because of the constant harassment
from the Camel Corps, the armoured car detachment, the
King’s African Rifle battalion, and the 1,500 conscripted
troops who were guarding all of the water wells in Somaliland
that compelled him to seek refuge in his fortress, as he had
done in years past 54 . Pape would call this strategy operational
interdiction, keeping Hassan’s forces away from the resources
essential to their war effort. Pape, however, argued that
this was an airpower strategy. Air control achieved success
through operational interdiction utilizing ground forces.
Hassan’s numbers were greatly reduced when the
British forces surrounded his fortress, and he was in no condition
to wait out a siege and still survive the inevitable assault
that would follow. Furthermore, at over fifty years of age,
Hassan was beginning to feel the strain of constant fighting
and fleeing. Therefore, I argue that while airpower was effective
in increasing the pressure on Hassan and denying him his
fast-paced hit-and-run strategy, without the mobile ground
forces constantly harassing the Mullah and keeping him from
water there is no way that he could be induced to abandon
his forces. Coercion, if it was achieved at all, was achieved
through ground power interdicting vital water supplies and
providing the threat of further punishment to Hassan and the
meager scraps of his raiders.
PART VI
MESOPOTAMIA
The British took control of Mesopotamia, which
would later be known as Iraq, during the First World War.
The British ground offensive to take the Ottoman Turk territory
began in what is now known as Kuwait. The British
charged northwards and took the port city of Basra, from
which they were able to resupply their offensive as it moved
northwards along the Tigris River 55 . While support operations
were being conducted by special operations forces, comprised
of Arab tribesmen led by British officers, to control the
western part of Mesopotamia, the bulk of the British mechanized
advance moved steadily on towards Baghdad until
the offensive was halted on the outskirts of Al Kut 56 . The
Royal Air Force came to the aid of the beleaguered ground
forces, allowing them to break through the Turkish lines and
take Baghdad, the principal city of the region. The British
continued advancing northwards and were stopped again in
early 1918 at the city of Kirkuk 57 . A terrible battle ensued,
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and the majority of British forces, outnumbered and cut-off,
were forced to surrender. In the summer of 1918, the British
launched a new offensive from Baghdad, relying more heavily
on mobile armoured car companies and air support 58 . The
British smashed through the Turkish lines, blew past Kirkuk
and captured Mosul, the northernmost city in Mesopotamia
and the last city before the Turkish border. Turkey sued for
peace and the war came to an end in the Middle East.
Or so it seemed on paper. The British signed a peace
treaty with the Sultan of Turkey, and as far as the Sultan was
concerned all of his territories in Mesopotamia, Transjordan,
Palestine, Syria, and Egypt were lost. There was, however,
no peace for the colonial administration of the Protectorate
of Mesopotamia 59 . Baghdad was a safe city for the British,
heavily defended by whole divisions of Indian troops and
several battalions of British regulars. Additionally, there were
still multiple squadrons of attack and pursuit aircraft in the
region, left over from the Great War. The regions around
Baghdad, however, belonged to no man and immediately
became an area of unrest and rebellion. Renegade raiding
parties belonging to warlord chieftains began attacking other
tribes and British officials. Shiite and Sunni clerics, interested
in their own personal power base, began trying to rouse
public support against the British and against each other. Terrorist
attacks and brutal massacres of small Imperial defense
forces and British administrators became common, forcing
the British into the safety of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra, leaving
the rest of the country to itself 60 .
To make matters worse, Bolshevik agents from the
Soviet Union infiltrated into Mesopotamia from the former
Russian territory of Northern Persia and began to fund
nationalist rebellions against the British in the east 61 . Agents
of the young Turkish revolutionary, Kemal Ataturk, penetrated
into northern Mesopotamia into a region known as
Kurdistan. Supplying some funding and munitions to the
Kurds, Turkish agents began trying to inflame the Kurdish
chieftains to rise up and fight the British to obtain an
independent Kurdistan 62 . By 1920, there were over 130,000
tribesmen violently under arms around the region 63 . British
forces suddenly found themselves desperately huddled atop
scant high ground with the flood waters of civil war rising up
around their ankles.
The British garrison in Mesopotamia was raised
to 17,000 British regulars and 85,000 Indian troops. The
estimated annual cost of supporting these forces rose to £30
million 64 . Winston Churchill had been placed in charge of
the Colonial Office following the brilliant success of the Air
Ministry in controlling Somalia, and now called a meeting
of all of the regional governors to decide what could be done
about the Middle East. In regards to Mesopotamia, it was