Lawrence Of Arabia's Two Year Revolt In Arabia 1916 -1918

Lawrence Of Arabia's Two Year Revolt In Arabia 1916 -1918

Thomas Edward Lawrence a British officer whose World War I exploits earned him the legendary name of Lawrence of Arabia, was an Oxford educated archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer. Lawrence was born in Tremdoc, Wales, on August 16, 1888. After graduating from Oxford he began working for the British army as an intelligence officer in Egypt in 1914. He spent more than a year in Cairo, processing intelligence information. Lawrence's exploits became legendary when he assumed the role as a liaison during the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the First World War. His narrative about his activities and associations, were vividly described in his writings which earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia that was used in a 1962 film base on his wartime activities. In 1916, he accompanied a British diplomat to Arabia, where he met Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, who had declared an uprising against Turkish rule. Lawrence convinced his superiors to aid Hussein's rebellion, and he was sent to join the Arabian army of Hussein's son Faisal as a British advisor. In 1917 and 1918, he and a small force of Arab Calvary won back Arabia from an invading Turkish Army.

Lawrence helped lead a two year revolt against the Turks which included major battles and dangerous missions behind enemy lines. The Hejaz Railway was one of the greatest civil-engineering projects of the early 20th century. It was Turkey's attempt at building an empire in the modern Middle East. If it would have been completed it would have been possible to travel from Constantinople all the way to the Arabian city of Medina over 1800 miles away. But the Hejaz Railway fell victim to ambitions of the combatants of First World War. For nearly two years Lawrence's raiders systematically attacked bridges and isolated supply depots breaking the supply lines to frontline Turkish forces. Lawrence an expert in demolitions led the British and Arab force during this campaign of attrition. By his own account Lawrence and is raiders blew up 79 bridges along the railway, becoming so skilled that he perfected a technique of leaving a bridge scientifically shattered.

The bridge was ruined, but still standing, forcing Turkish engineers the time consuming task of dismantling the wreckage before the bridge could be replaced. By the end of the First World War, the damage to the railway was so extensive that most of it was abandoned, leaving a trail of desolation that still today, ninety years later, stretches 600 miles into the Arabian Desert. Originally known as the birun marzi (outside the borders) or Department 9000, the Revolutionary Guards Corps decided to call their special forces the Quds Force, or Jerusalem Force. Quds in Arabic means Jerusalem, a promise that one day the Revolutionary Guards would liberate Jerusalem from the Jewish colonizers and destroy Israel. The Jerusalem Force has had a long history of backing coups, assassinating dissidents, and kidnapping foreigners. It was behind the Marine Headquarters bombing in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983, the most deadly attack against the U.S. Marines since the battle of Iwo Jima in February 1945. The attack took place in Beirut, on October 23, 1983, at 6:22 a.m.

A lone terrorist driving a Mercedes Benz water truck loaded with the military explosive PETN, equivalent to 21,000 pounds of TNT, accelerated through the parking lot south of the Marine Headquarters crashed into the Headquarters building before it detonated. This suicide bombing is believed to be the largest man-made, non-nuclear explosion in history. The driver of the truck is still worshiped today by Iran and its proxy Hezbollah. Mohsen Sazegara, a founding member of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and now a U.S. Iranian dissident, states the original charter of the elite force was to create a people's army but through years of political and military change it has transformed into a shadowy behemoth. Sazegara describes the Revolutionary Guards Corps as something like a blend of the Communist Party, KGB, business complex, and Mafia all in one organization. The Revolutionary Guards Corps could be compared to the Nazi Death heads who ran the over 2,000 death camps during the reign of Adolf Hitler.