That area is
known today as Libya.
Copyright 2007 T. Sheil & A. Sheil All Rights Reserved
Back in our first run, things were quite different. We lived in an apartment on Staten Island. In 1999, we moved to a house in another state. Things were pleasant.
Our nation had a few problems. There was the Whitewater scandal and the philandering follies of Bill Clinton. Troubles spread throughout the Balkans. First the Serbs were driven out of Croatia, then Bosnia, and then the showdown in Kosovo. Most Americans never heard of those places before.
September 11, 2001 changed everything. We found ourselves at war with a fanatical enemy. Where suicide bombers had been a problem for Israel, they had now become an international problem. The term “jihad” became familiar in the Western world.
Jihad. It seems like a new thing,. However, we can learn from history because Western nations have faced it before. Islamic holy wars are well-documented from the 8th to the 20th Century CE. Suicidal fanaticism has also been faced and overcome.
The idea of the suicide bomber can be traced back to an offshoot of the Ismaili sect of Islam. A leader known as “The Old Man of the Mountain” commanded an army of fanatical warriors. They had been programmed, as it were, to die at a moment’s notice. Z When the Old man wanted to impress an envoy, he would arrange to have one of his men standing at a battlement. A wave of the hand by the leader, and that man would willingly jump to his death.
These men became known as “assassins.” It was a corruption of the term “hashishan.” which was thought to be the substance that caused their suicidal frenzy. The actual indoctrination lasted longer and was more subtle. At one point, the initiate would be drugged to sleep. He would awaken in a pleasure palace attended by women and luxuries,. Here the man would be given every pleasure. After a time, he would again be drugged and returned to the training hall. Leaders told him that the Old Man had arranged for him to visit Heaven to see his future reward for loyal service.
The Assassins were trained in every kind of killing. They specialized in close-range dagger attacks. I twas expected that most would be killed during or soon after the attack. These Assassins struck knowing they were about to die. The Old Man used them in political wrangling, threatening rulers with assassination of they did not do as he wished. The Assassins were very good at what they did. They were feared.
Assassins were not like Ninja. Assassins did not sneak. They struck openly, as this caused much more fear.
The Assassin tricks did not always work, and there was retaliation. The assassins feared the Knights Templar, who had retaliated every time there was an attack. The Assassins learned that killing a Templar leader only led to his being replaced by someone equally capable.
The Assassins met their end due to the Mongols, who besieged their mountain. The Assassins could not come down, and eventually starved.
The Ismaili sect of Islam itself remains in India, and is led by the Aga Khan. It has no vestiges of its dangerous offshoot.
In the latter part of the 19th Century of the Common Era, Britain was involved in Egypt and the Sudan. France had colonies in North Africa. Both nations had problems with local Jihads.
France had ongoing wars with Tuaregs, the Riffs and other Arab tribes. Arab leaders often gave their wars religious overtones and tried to stir up a spirit of Holy War against the Europeans. The difference was that they fought Near Eastern Arabs, who tend to be more capable than their Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf cousins. Arabs combined fanaticism with good tactical planning. This made rough going for the French Foreign Legion.
Arab Tribes stirred up the feelings of Holy War to attract fighters, instill resistance among civilians, and encourage men to fight with fanatical disregard.
Before 1850, the French had become so impressed that they recruited their own corps of Zouave light infantry and Spahi cavalry. North Africans were fighting for the French into World War II, when Moroccan Goumiers took the field in Italy.
France was able to eventually stave off the Arab tribes. It took a lot of manpower, use of better weapons and cooperation of the civilian populace. Ironically, it was a non-religious uprising which drove them out of Algeria.
Spain had North African territory of its own. In the eastern deserts, some tribes opposed European rule. They did not go away when Spain left North Africa, but kept fighting the new Arab government. Again, the idea of jihad keeps them fighting long after their chances of victory have been eliminated.
Britain has perhaps the clearest of recent problems with Jihad. During their time in Egypt, they were faced by a coup by an Arab Nationalist named Arabi Pasha. The Pasha was an Army Colonel who had gone from peasant to officer on his own merits. Arabi Pasha tried to use Jihad to stir up his troops. However, since the Turks were involved and were siding with the British, it was not effective. Arabi Pasha was defeated after a hard fight. He and his men again fought fanatically, but were overwhelmed by superior firepower.
The Egyptian adventure was a prelude to the Sudan. Problems arose when a local Sudanese chieftain began a campaign of his own,. Proclaiming himself the Mahdi, a title of esteem among Muslims, he began to unite the Sudanese tribes in a Holy War. First he attacked other tribes. Next, he went against the Egyptians. That led to British involvement.
The Sudanese dervishes were fanatical, whipped into a religious frenzy. Most were armed with swords and spears. On their side were sheer numbers, disregard for personal safety and religious zeal. The dervishes would swarm the British and attempt to crash through their formations. Against cavalry dervishes sacrificed their safety by throwing themselves under the horses’ feet to stop them. When repulsed, they did not run away. The skulked away dejectedly. It was not uncommon for dervishes to have losses in the tens of thousands.
Even after defeat, jihads still flared up in the Sudan. One Jihad into the Christian land of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) led to losses of half the Mahdist army. Nonetheless, shortly after returning to the Sudan, the Jihadists provoked another war with the British. Once again, they endured mass casualties. It took massive defeat to discourage the holy warriors from continuing.
Britain had years of rough going in an area it called “The Northwest Frontier.” That region encompasses what is now part of Afghanistan plus the “tribal areas” of Pakistan. Tribes frequently used Jihad to drum up support when fighting the British. While driving the British out of Kabul, the Afghans used suicide bombers. Men strapped with explosives charged into the British, detonating themselves and everyone in reach. The Afghans showed a talent for such fanaticism.
In 1908, the Philippine Insurrection brought American troops against Muslim fanatics. The Moros, a Muslim tribe who are named for the Moors, flared into open rebellion. Their tactic was to send a lone warrior into a camp, fighting until he was brought down. Ligatures would be put on his arms and legs to numb them from pain, and he would be given drugs. The warrior, known as a “juramentado,” would then rush into a camp in a bloody frenzy, attacking all in sight with his swords. He would only stop when dropped. There was no thought of anything other than dying as a result of his attack.
The Marines adopted a leather collar to blunt these sword strikes. The .45 was accepted because it had the hitting power to drop a man instantly, even if he were drugged. Other tactics were developed. General Pershing used a superb tactic. He had fifty captured Moro fighters tied to crosses. Forty-nine were gutted and had their entrails mixed with the guts of a pig. To Muslims, this is a sin. The fiftieth Moro was allowed to go home and tell his friends. That ended the Moro problem.
In 1911, Italy sought to consolidate its business interests on the coast of North Africa. The area was Turksih territory. Italy provoked a war with Turkey over Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. The Turks were allied with the local tribe, the Senussi. The tribe was also a an Islamic sect. Turkey intentionally stirred up a feeling of Jihad among the Arabs in their fight against Italy. The Senussi stopped fighting a few years later when Italy recognized their suzerainty of most of the desert areas. It flared agin when Mussolini decided to purge them out. Mussolini used tactics that killed from a quarter to half of the area’s population.
That area is
known today as Libya.
Here you see cases where four civilized countries: the United States, Britain, France and Italy, have {1}encountered Jihad in the past. The problem of Muslim holy war is not a new one. It is also not a matter of a few Medieval assassin cultists, nor tribes opposing colonial occupation. Jihad is used as a tactic which has strategic ramifications.
The armies that have faced Jihad have used different tactics to blunt it. The goal has been to make the idea of Jihad untenable. In Sudan, it was caused by the shock of great numbers of casualties. The Moros of the Philippines were dissuaded by a combination fo American resolve and religious taboo. Libyans gave up Jihad the first time through negotiations, the second time by brutal oppression and extermination. The North Africans were defeated by a combination of politics and military steadfastness.
Jihad is not a vestige of a distant past. It is recent. Our military leaders should be looking at the well-kept records and accounts of American, British, French and Italian participants in earlier anti-Jihad campaigns.
For us, we need to be resolved. We cannot allow the activities of modern Jihadist to cow us into ceding anything. The Jihad ends when the Jihadist sees that he cannot achieve his goal. Once he is convinced that he can neither win nor break even, he quits.
