BATTLE OF MEDITERRANEAN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4430, 26 May 1941, Page 5

BATTLE OF MEDITERRANEAN

SYRIA IS A MIDDLE EASTERN CROSS ROADS.

A VITAL LINK ON THE WAY TO SUEZ

(By the Military Correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald.)

SYDNEY, May 16. German infiltration and use of French aerodromes has brought the strategical significance of the Syrian no-mau’s-land into the forefront of the Middle Eastern picture. Until the collapse of France, Syria wgs a citadel of Allied strength. The pre-war Syrian Army included more a. than 10,000 men, with a cadre so ' organised that a rapid expansion was possible. When war became probable, France quickly built up an Army of the Orient in Syria, with mechanised forces from France itself, in addition to large levies of picked warriors from the North African colonies, from French West Africa (including the famous Senegalese tirailleurs), and from the Foreign Legion. It is not known how large this army was. Estimates vary from 150,000 to 350,000, and the truth was probably between the two, much nearer the former figure than the latter. Organised by Marshal Weygand, this force later came under General Mittelhauser, and then under the Vichy High Commissioner, at present General Dentz. All observers agree that the Army of the Orient has dissolved into a mere fragment, probably little more than a single division. It has been a story of desertion, disaffection, demoralisation, and a not inconsiderable repatriation elsewhere. Consequently, France has no adequate force in Syria to resist foreign pressure, because the strength and attitude of the native levies are uncertain qualities. The collapse of France affected the strategical position in the Middle ■w East in other ways than the deterioration of the French Army of the Orient. It disrupted the unity of British strategy in the region between the Levant coast and the Tigris by affecting communications and by interposing a disorganised neutral mandatory territory between the ■ various areas in which Britain ' was interested. For instance, Britain’s only land link with Turkey was broken, and there was no longer any possibility of a solid belt of friendly territory sweeping round from the Dardanelles to Suez. It also deprived Britain of any possible use of the main railway and the best roads to the oilfields of Iraq, for these communications ran through the upper end of Syria, north of the Syrian desert. Although Syria is much larger on the map than Palestine or Trans-jordania, communications are infinitely easier north of Damascus. In short, Britain lost the only land connection with Turkey and the main land connection with the Mosul oilfields. GERMAN LEAP PREPARING. The position has naturally become much worse since the German occupation of Greece, the new pressure on Turkey, the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq, and the increase of Britain’s military responsibilities in the Middle East due to the irruption of German forces into Libya. Before France collapsed there existed a common integrated Anglo-French scheme of strategy for the Middle East, based on a pooling of manpower and communications, but now the British have to adjust their defences to their own resources and to the necessarily fragmentary communications that remain to them.

Since the fall of Greece, military attention has been forcused upon the possibility of the German use of Syria as a corridor for an attack either on the Iraqi oilfields or on Palestine and the Suez region from another direction. Vichy having given in to Germany, there is no technical reason why air-borne German troops should not land in Syria and establish themselves at the few strategical keypoints, astride the vital communica tions. It is true that Mosul is only 850 flying miles from the new German bases in the Greek and Italian islands, but the use of Syrian communications would halve the first step of that movement, and it would be good strategy to transport as many men as possible to western Syria, consolidate the defence of that country, and leave Iraq until later on, even if the resistance of Rashid Ali should collapse in the interim. The use of Syrian communications would not solve all of Germany’s problems, but it would facilitate movements by air and by road. Syria has several modern airfields, and the great trans-Syrian system of motor roads has been extended down the Euphrates practically to the Syrian frontier. Before France collapsed the highway through Aleppo to Deir-es-Zor, less than 100 miles from the Iraq frontier, was completed, and the last section was quite capable of use. The position regarding the railway to Iraq would be more difficult, because, for a long section, it runs just north of the Turkish frontier, and it is debatable whether a German force of occupation would have the same rights which the Syrian Government enjoyed under its agreement with Turkey. On 'the other hand, since the German occupation of Syria would virtually complete the encirclement of Turkey by the Germans, the Ankara Government might perforce become more reasonable about the use of the railway. CASE FOR BRITISH ACTION. Finally, the system of communications leading southwards would beckon towards Transjordania, Palestine and Suez; and if Germany could get across sufficiently strong forces she might feel tempted to indulge in a trial of strength with the British forces in Palestine, and thus attempt the completion of the princersmovement on Alexandria and Suez, with simultaneous attacks from Syria and Libya. It is because of these manifold strategical possibilities that would open up after a German occupation of Syria that the military question of preventive action on the part of the British would immediately arise, once it became known that Vichy had accorded any rights of transit to Germany through Syria. Syria may be a no-man’s land; but it is also the strategical crossroads of the Middle East, in the most literal sense of that term. Far more than German aid to the Iraqi rebels is involved; and since time is the most important factor in redressing the Syrian position either for good or for ill it is well to realise the immense significance of any granting of seemingly innocuous concessions by the French Government. With the example of Libya before our eyes, it would be the height of military folly to argue that Germany could not get military forces to Syria.