Action at Defence Ministry at last Bigger challenges need to be faced

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20141127/edit.htm




    MR PARIKAR ON HINDSIGHT IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR PERFORMANCE TILL DATE IS NO BETTER THAN SAINT ANTONY. ST ANTONY NEVER PROMISED ANY THING BECAUSE HIS MOUTH WAS ALWAYS SHUT. ALAS MR PARIKAR YOUR MOUTH IS NOT SHUT BUT EVERY TIME YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH IT IS ONLY TO ANNOUNANCE THAT YOU HAVE SHIFTED THE GOAL POST OR  YOU  HAVE EVEN CHANGED THE SCORE BOARD ( DATED   27 NOV  2015 )





Action at Defence Ministry at last Bigger challenges need to be faced
                          By                        Inder Malhotra





                     

The Indian armed forces should be liberated from the stranglehold of the generalist BABUs  of the MoD

                  FOR over a quarter of a century the Indian Army has desperately needed artillery guns. But no matter how hard it tried it couldn't get them. One reason for this, of course, was the aftermath of the Bofors scandal, which became the standard excuse of all concerned not to take any decision at all. There was an element of disingenuousness in this posturing. For, despite the commissions worth Rs 64 crore distributed to the still unnamed beneficiaries, the Swedish gun served this country superbly during the Kargil war. Ironically, it was at the peak of this fight that the Army discovered to its dismay that it was running out of ammunition because of the obsession of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to blacklist all suppliers it suspected or disliked.  Ultimately, we had to buy the ammunition from South Africa at thrice the normal price.  Even this made no difference to the civilian bureaucracy in the MoD and its political bosses.   Indecision remained the ruling doctrine of both.  Sadly, A. K. Antony, a very fine man with an enviable reputation for personal probity, who has been the longest-serving Defence Minister so far, became the biggest hurdle to decision-making.  By doing nothing he was sure of retaining his image as "St. Antony".   BUT how  "St. Antony".   WAS HE BETTER THAN  HAV NATHHA SINGH who like his Defence Minister had decided to do nothing and in his village people   today  address  him as "SANT NATHHA JI "   ( http://bcvasundhra.blogspot.in/2014/11/my-name-is-sep-sipahi-bhoop-singh.html )  Against this bleak backdrop it is greatly to be welcomed that within a few days after his appointment as Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has ended the paralysis over the procurement of artillery guns by clearing the decks for acquiring 814 long-range mounted artillery guns to fill a serious gap in its equipment and, therefore, in its overall capability.   The cost will be Rs 15,570 crore. The deal was approved after a serious consideration at a Defence Acquisition Council meeting that Mr Parrikar presided over for the first time.   He also said that the DAC should meet oftener than it has done so far even if its agenda is rather short. My first thought on hearing this was that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have handed over the Defence Ministry to the former Goa Chief Minister while forming his Cabinet on May 26.    Mr Parrikar has laid down that that the acquisition of artillery guns — like all future procurements — will take place within the framework of the Prime Minister’s “Make-in-India” concept.     While the Army will buy 100 guns off the shelf of the foreign vendor, the remaining 714 will be manufactured here. Global tenders will be floated soon, and the Indian manufacturer will have to "tie up" with the selected foreign vendor for building the gun.   Several Indian companies such as the Tatas, Larsen & Toubro and Kalyani, as well as the public sector Ordnance Factory Board have already produced prototypes of 155mm, 52 calibre guns. They are all likely to take part in the bid.     So far, so good. But the real point is that the defenders of the country's freedom and frontiers will be greatly handicapped in discharging their duty until the makers of policy on national security attend to the fundamental task of reforming the higher management of the defence system.    Civilian control over the military is, of course, the basic principle in every democracy. Indeed, even in China the doctrine of the  “Party controlling the Gun”  has prevailed since the time of Mao Zedong. The present Chinese President, Xi Jinping, has reinforced it.   





Bu But in a democracy like India

         the civilian supremacy does not,



           and  must not,mean the






      supremacy of civil servants




 It is long overdue that the Indian armed forces — absolutely apolitical, unlike the armies of some of our neighbours
— should be liberated from the stranglehold of the generalist babus of the MoD.



In recent years when a service chief informally and politely told the then Prime Minister that he and his two opposite numbers regretted that they were not asked to be present at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the reply he got was:

: “Well, you were represented by the Defence secretary”!


This pattern has to end.


One thing that the Modi government does not need to do is to appoint a commission or committee to suggest what to do. There is a heap of sensible reports on the subject that are gathering dust.



The report of the Kargil Committee — headed by this country's strategic guru K. Subrhamanyam — had, among other things, made a strong case of having a Chief of Defence Staff.



The Atal Behari Vajpayee government took it seriously. A Group of Ministers, chaired by L. K. Advani, endorsed the suggestion. At the last minute, while accepting all the GoM's recommendations, Atalji held over the one on the CDS.


He made no secret of the fact that he had consulted former President R. Venkataraman and former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, both of whom had been defence ministers in Congress governments.



 Seven years later, the Manmohan Singh government appointed the Naresh Chandra Task Force on revamping the entire external and internal security setup. Realising that there still was much resistance to having a CDS, it suggested a step in the right direction: the appointment of a permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee with a fixed tenure of two years.



This was a vast improvement over the existing arrangement under which the most senior of the three chiefs acts as chairman of the CSC also until his retirement. He neither has enough time for inter-Services matters because he has to run his own service too, nor a long enough tenure. In one case it lasted precisely 30 days.



The permanent chief, according to the Task Force, would not interfere with the operational matters but handle all inter-Service issues, including determination of priority in the matter of acquisition of weapons and equipment. Most importantly, the permanent chairman would be able to supervise the Strategic Command more effectively than has been happening since 1998. Over to Mr. Parrikar.       



     MR PARIKAR ON HINDSIGHT IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR PERFORMANCE TILL DATE IS NO BETTER THAN SAINT ANTONY. ST ANTONY NEVER PROMISED ANY THING BECAUSE HIS MOUTH WAS ALWAYS SHUT. ALAS MR PARIKAR YOUR MOUTH IS NOT SHUT BUT EVERY TIME YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH IT IS ONLY TO ANNOUNANCE THAT YOU HAVE SHIFTED THE GOAL POST OR  YOU  HAVE EVEN CHANGED THE SCORE BOARD ( DATED   27 NOV  2015 )




















   

FIGHTING AT SIACHEN HEIGHTS

http://www.thewhy.com/indian-army-fighting-siachan-heights/







             FIGHTING AT SIACHAN HEIGHTS

WE GUARD THE BORDERS SO THAT OUR COUNTRYMEN  CAN SLEEP IN PEACE AT NIGHT AND ENJOY THE BLISS OF THE DAY.  

 

Dear Friend, Things You Should Know About India’s Soldiers Defending Siachen The highest combat zone on planet earth, Siachen glacier is one place where fewer soldiers have died on the line duty due to enemy fire than because of the harsh weather conditions.             For Indian forces deployed in Siachen, it is less of a challenge to watch out for the frail Pakistani forces but to just stay atop this 76 kilometers long glacier at 5, 400 meters altitude (nearly twice the altitude of Ladakh and Kargil) in itself means you have to defy all of your physical, mental and spiritual limits.     You have to be a super soldier, a hero.     And that’s what each one of our soldiers out there at Siachen glacier and on posts at even greater heights really is!     1. In Siachen, you are at the risk of getting a deadly frostbite if your bare skin touches steel (gun trigger, for example) for just over fifteen seconds.       Merely touching the trigger or gun barrel with bare hands can be a mistake big enough to result in loss of toes or fingers. For those who don’t know about frostbite – it’s a condition resulting from abrupt exposure to extreme cold that can leave amputation of fingers or toes as the only alternative. In extreme cases, these organs may just fall off.     2. Mountain climbers climb when the weather is at its best; soldiers serve in these treacherous terrains all year round.     Minus 60 degrees temperature and over 5,000 meters altitude; low atmospheric pressure and oxygen, well, you keep asking for more of it. There’s 10% of the amount of oxygen available in Siachen than it is in plains. It’s the weather of the kind that us mortals aren’t simply designed to bear. Not for long and not without the great risk of losing eyes, hands or legs. But these men – they do it, every day.     Because every inch of this land belongs to India and they shall not cede it to some untrustworthy neighbors who no longer have a higher ground in Siachen.         3. The human body just cannot acclimatize over 5,400 meters When you stay at that altitude for long, you lose your weight, don’t feel like eating, sleep disorders come around in no time and memory loss – that’s a common occurrence. Put simply, the body begins to deteriorate. That’s what happens at Siachen.         Yes, it is tough. But we cannot climb down because we cannot let the Pakistani Army climb up and take high ground.       4. Speech blurring is as obvious as toothpaste freezing in the tube It’s fiercer than heaviest of gunfire any day. But our soldiers have taken up the challenge nonetheless.     5. Snowstorms in Siachen can last 3 weeks. Winds here can cross the 100 mph limit in no time. The temperature can drop well below minus 60 degrees.     6. Yearly snowfall in Siachen can be well over 3 dozen feet     When snow storms come around, at least two to three soldiers have to keep using shovels (in snow storm). Else, the military post would become a history; in no time.     7. The 7th Pay commission may consider the unique challenges faced by the army jawans who man the territory all through the year.       They should.         The forward areas in Jammu and Kashmir including Siachen were visited by the 7th Pay Commission in October, 2014. 8. Soldiers find ways to entertain themselves when they can.     We are, after all, a cricket crazy nation.       9. Fresh food – that’s rare. Very rare. At Siachen, an orange or an apple can freeze to the hardness of a cricket ball in no time. Rations come out of tin cans.           10. Army pilots literally push their helicopters well beyond their optimal performance, every day!     They drop supplies at forward posts located at an altitude of more than 20 thousand feet.             Army pilots usually have less than a minute for dropping off the supplies at forward posts. Pakistani army is merely few hundred meters away and so the choppers must fly off before the enemy guns open up.     11. In the last 30 years, 846 soldiers have sacrificed their lives at Siachen.       In case of Siachen, 846 Indian soldiers have died in Siachen since 1984 due to extreme climate and beyond-imagination terrain conditions are treated as battle causalities and rightly so.                     846 Indian soldiers have died in Siachen since 1984 This includes deaths due to the extreme climate and terrain conditions, which causes more casualties in that sector than battle. Hypoxia, ... View on www.bu... Preview by Yahoo                   In last three years alone, 50 Indian soldiers have died in Siachen. These causalities as per the information made available by Defense Minister in Lok Sabha, were due to the very nature of the place our forces are serving. These soldiers sacrificed their lives on the line of duty while combating the floods, avalanches and floods in Siachen.       The Body of Havaldar Gaya Prasad from 15 Rajput Battalion serving in Siachen was found after 18 long years.     12. A War Memorial at the Bank of Nubra River has the names of Indian soldiers who laid their lives in Siachen.     13. Local saying: “The land is so barren and the passes so high that only the best of friends and fiercest of enemies come by.’     14. In Siachen, the Indian Army spends as much as 80% of its time preparing soldiers of deployment. 15. “We do the difficult as a routine. The impossible may take a little longer”   — So reads a plaque at the headquarters of the Indian Army formation responsible for security of the Siachen sector in Jammu and Kashmir.       846 Indian soldiers have died in Siachen since 1984 http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/846-indian-soldiers-have-died-in-siachen-since-1984-112082802005_1.html For the first time ever, the government has announced the number of Indian soldiers who have laid down their lives in the Siachen sector, ever since the Indian Army made its first headlong rush to secure that strategic area in the summer of 1984. Defence Minister A K Antony, in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, on Monday stated, “A total of 846 armed forces personnel have made supreme sacrifices on the Siachen glaciers since 1984.” This includes deaths due to the extreme climate and terrain conditions, which causes more casualties in that sector than battle. Hypoxia, high altitude pulmonary edema (or “altitude sickness” in mountaineering lexicon), avalanches and crevasses have taken a heavy toll on Indian lives. Early in this high-altitude war, New Delhi decided not to differentiate between those who died in combat and those who were swept to their deaths in an avalanche. “(Environment-related) death during the course of duty on Siachen glaciers is treated as a ‘battle casualty’ and enhanced compensation is paid to the next of the kin,” Antony told the Lok Sabha on Monday. “Operation Meghdoot”, the military nickname for operations in Siachen, began on April 13, 1984, when the Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopters airlifted a platoon of hardy hillmen from the Kumaon Regiment onto the Saltoro Ridge, which overlooks the Siachen Glacier from the west. Building up quickly, more Indian troops moved onto the three main passes on the Saltoro Ridge — Bilafond La; Sia La; and Gyong La. According to Lt Gen (Retd) V R Raghavan, a respected authority on Siachen, the Pakistan Army had planned a similar operation to occupy the Saltoro Ridge that summer. But they arrived on the Saltoro a month after the Indians, only to find most of the key heights on the ridge already occupied. For years, Pakistan has mounted bloody, but eventually fruitless, attacks to get atop the Saltoro Ridge. But the Indian army still controls all of Siachen, its tributary glaciers, and all the key passes and heights of the Saltoro Ridge. Shut out even from a view of the Siachen Glacier, Pakistani troops suffer a severe tactical disadvantage all along the 109-kilometre-long Actual Ground Position Line, as the frontline in that sector is called. “Forced to fight uphill, Pakistan is believed to have suffered the lion’s share of battle casualties on the Saltoro. Indian troops, who hold higher positions with more difficult access, were estimated to have initially suffered more environment-related deaths, before better equipment, procedures and training brought casualties down to a trickle since the mid-1990s. On April 7 this year, an avalanche that slammed into Pakistani headquarters at Gyari swept away more than 130 soldiers. The next day, Pakistan’s President Zardari asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to cooperate in demilitarising Siachen. New Delhi, however, is sticking to its demand for authentication of ground positions on the Saltoro Ridge before any demilitarisation could be continued. The Indian Army says without authentication on signed map sheets, its hard-won high ground on the Saltoro Ridge could be occupied by Pakistan with impunity. As a result, the 13th round of Siachen talks between the two countries’ defence secretaries was adjourned without any headway towards settling the Siachen dispute. No dates have yet been fixed for the next round of discussions.

 

The Italian Fire Tenders

           

                           The Italian Fire Tenders

One dark night in a small town of Roselle Park, New Jersey a fire started inside the local sausage factory. In a blink the building was engulfed in flames. The alarm went out to all the fire departments for miles around. When the first fire fighters appeared on the scene, the sausage company president rushed to the fire chief and said, 'All of our secret sausage recipes are in the vault in the center of the plant. They have to be saved, so I will donate $50,000 to the fire company that brings them out and delivers them to me.' But the roaring flames held the firefighters off. Soon more fire departments had to be called in because the situation became desperate. As the firemen arrived, the president announced that the offer to extricate the secret recipes was now $100,000! Suddenly from up the road, a lone siren was heard as another fire truck came into sight. It was the fire engine of the nearby Peterstown section of Elizabeth, NJ. This fire department was composed mainly of Italian firefighters over the age of 65. To everyone's amazement, the little run-down fire engine, operated by these Italian firefighters, passed fire engines parked outside the plant, and drove straight into the middle of the inferno! Outside, the other firemen watched in amazement as the Italian old timers jumped off and began to fight the fire as if they were fighting to save their own lives. Within a short time, the old timers had extinguished the fire and saved the secret recipes. The grateful sausage company president joyfully announced that for such a superhuman accomplishment he was raising the reward to $200,000, and walked over to personally thank each of the brave elderly Italian firefighters. A TV news crew rushed in after capturing the event on film. The 'on camera' reporter asked the Italian fire chief, 'What are you going to do with all that money?' 'Wella,' said Chief Pasquale De Luccinelli, the 70-year-old fire chief, 'de fursta tinga we gonna do isza fixa de brakes on dat Bloody  truck!'

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142379/nick-danforth/the-myth-of-the-caliphate

                                   The Myth of the Caliphate

                     The Political History of an Idea

                                         By
                               Nick Danforth  





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A caliphate (in Arabic: خلافة‎ khilāfa, meaning "succession") is a form of Islamic political-religious leadership which centers around the caliph—i.e. "successor"—to Muhammad. The succession of Muslim empires that have existed in the Muslim world are usually described as "caliphates".

Caliphate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate

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The Caliph (Arabic: خليفة‎ ḫalīfah/khalīfah) is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. Wikipedia

Explore: Caliph, Ummah

In the 9th century, the Abbasids created an army loyal only to their caliphate, composed of non-Arab origin people, known as Mamluks. Wikipedia

Explore: Abbasid Caliphate

Hizb ut-Tahrir states its aim as unification of all Muslim nations over time in a unitary Islamic state or caliphate, headed by an elected caliph. Wikipedia

Explore: Hizb ut-Tahrir, Caliph

  More about Caliphate

Related topics

The Caliph (Arabic: خليفة‎ ḫalīfah/khalīfah) is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. Wikipedia

Explore: Caliph, Ummah

In the 9th century, the Abbasids created an army loyal only to their caliphate, composed of non-Arab origin people, known as Mamluks. Wikipedia

Explore: Abbasid Caliphate

Hizb ut-Tahrir states its aim as unification of all Muslim nations over time in a unitary Islamic state or caliphate, headed by an elected caliph. Wikipedia

Explore: Hizb ut-Tahrir, Caliph

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November 19, 2014

                     

Abdulhamid II, who would become one of the last Ottoman sultans and caliphs, as a prince in 1867.

(W.&D. DOWNEY / Jebulon)  

           
In 1924, Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk officially abolished the Ottoman caliphate. Today, most Western discussions of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the extremist group that has declared a caliphate across much of Iraq and Syria, begin by referencing this event as if it were a profound turning point in Islamic history. Some contemporary Islamists think of it this way, too: there’s a reason, for example, that Lion Cub, the Muslim Brotherhood’s children’s publication, once awarded the “Jewish” “traitor” Ataturk multiple first prizes in its “Know the Enemies of Your Religion” contest.



Even if today’s Islamists reference the Ottomans, though, most of them are much more focused on trying to re-create earlier caliphates: the era of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, who ruled immediately after Muhammad’s death in the seventh century, for example, or the Abbasid caliphate, which existed in one form or another from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries (before being officially abolished by the Mongols). By conflating the nineteenth-century Ottoman royal family with these caliphs from a millennium ago or more, Western pundits and nostalgic Muslim thinkers alike have built up a narrative of the caliphate as an enduring institution, central to Islam and Islamic thought between the seventh and twentieth centuries. In fact, the caliphate is a political or religious idea whose relevance has waxed and waned according to circumstance.



The caliphate’s more recent history under the Ottomans shows why the institution might be better thought of as a political fantasy—a blank slate just as nebulous as the “dictatorship of the proletariat”—that contemporary Islamists are largely making up as they go along. (If it weren’t, ISIS could not so readily use the same term to describe their rogue and bloody statelet that Muslim British businessmen use to articulate the idea of an elected and democratic leader for the Islamic world.) What’s more, the story of the Ottoman caliphate also suggests that in trying to realize almost any version of this fantasy, contemporary Islamists may well confront the same contradictions that bedeviled the Ottomans a century ago.



OTTOMAN REBRANDING

When the Ottoman Empire conquered Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula in 1517, Sultan Selim the Grim officially claimed the title of caliph for himself and his heirs. In addition to taking control of the cities of Mecca and Medina, Selim bolstered his claim by bringing a collection of the Prophet’s garments and beard hairs back to Istanbul.


Centuries after the fact, the Ottomans decided that they needed to make the whole process look a little more respectable, so royal historians began to assert that the final heir to the Abbasid caliphate, living in exile in Cairo centuries after losing his throne, had voluntarily bestowed his title on Selim. More practically, the Ottomans buttressed their claim to Islamic leadership by serving as guardians of the hajj and sending an elaborately decorated gilt mantle to cover the Kaaba each year.


To put the title grab in perspective, when the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II conquered the Byzantine capital of Constantinople 64 years before Selim conquered Egypt, he had claimed the title Caesar of Rome for his descendants. To the extent that being caliph had any more purchase than being Caesar for the Ottomans in the late nineteenth century, it was largely the result of a political campaign on the part of Sultan Abdulhamid II to rally anticolonial sentiment around the Ottoman state and to boost his own domestic legitimacy. His techniques included seeking to have his name read out at Friday prayers and distributing Korans around the Muslim world from Africa to Indonesia.


There is no doubt that many Muslims, faced with the triumph of European colonialism in their own countries, did come to admire the idea of a pious and powerful leader like the Ottoman sultan defying Western imperialism on behalf of the entire Muslim world. Certainly, British and French officials expressed increasing fear about his potential power over Muslim colonial subjects in North Africa and India. Although he was eager to try to leverage such fears, however, even Abdulhamid had his misgivings about how much real influence his efforts won him in such far-flung locales.



One thing that particularly worried him was the fact that not everyone accepted his claims on the caliphate. Separate from those who rallied around Abdulhamid out of religious solidarity were others, motived by Arab nationalism or dissatisfaction with Abdulhamid’s tyranny, who questioned the religious foundation of his rule. Such thinkers, including at some points Rashid   Rida,  justified the creation of a different, Arab caliphate by quoting Muhammad as saying that the true caliph needed to be a descendant of the Prophet’s Quraysh tribe. (The Ottomans, it seems, accepted the validity of this quote but had their own interpretation of it, in which the Prophet actually meant that the caliph didn’t need to be a descendant of the Quraysh tribe.)




But in either case, the violent politics of the early twentieth century quickly outmatched theology. Despite his best efforts as defender of the faith, Abdulhamid kept losing territory and political power to Christian imperialist forces. That helped the secular leaders of the Young Turk movement, such as Enver Pasha, sideline the sultan and take power for themselves on the eve of World War I. When the Ottoman Empire then enjoyed some military success, belatedly holding its own in the Second Balkan War, Enver became an inspiration to the Muslim world. Indeed, the list of babies reportedly named after him at the time includes Enver Hoxha, the future leader of Albania, and Anwar al-Sadat, the future leader of Egypt.



ARAB HEIR


Of course, Enver’s own star faded, too, with the Ottoman defeat at the end of World War I. Ataturk quickly emerged as a new hero by leading a successful campaign to drive French, Italian, British, and Greek armies out of Ottoman Anatolia. Quickly, some of the same politically attuned Muslims who had supported Abdulhamid’s anti-imperial caliphate found even more to admire in Ataturk's armed defiance of European might. In Palestine, for example, Muslims who had once turned to the Ottoman caliph for protection against Zionist settlers and British occupiers began to cheer Ataturk, leading one suspicious British officer to worry that the Turkish figure had become “a new savior of Islam.”



At the same time, the decline of Ottoman power before, during, and after World War I loaned increasing credence to the idea of a new, non-Ottoman caliph in the Arab world. But it was never entirely clear just who that Arab caliph would be. The result was that when Ataturk finally abolished the institution of the caliphate in 1924, there was no clear or coherent outcry from the Muslim world as a whole. Many Muslims, particularly those in India for whom pan-Islamic symbols such as the caliph were an important part of anticolonialism, protested. Others were more interested in maneuvering to claim the title for themselves.


Most famous was Husayn ibn Ali, sherif of Mecca, who is known to Lawrence of Arabia fans for his leading role in the Arab Revolt. As the local leader with control of Mecca and Medina—and a supposedly clear line of descent from the Prophet’s tribe—Husayn believed that after driving the Ottomans out of the Middle East, he could become an Arab king, with all the religious and temporal powers of the caliph. In pursuit of this goal, when Ataturk exiled the Ottoman sultan, Husayn invited him to Mecca. (The exiled monarch soon decided he preferred the Italian Riviera.)



Several years later, Husayn’s son Abdullah—founder of the Jordanian monarchy—would declare that, in ending the caliphate, Turks had “rendered the greatest possible service to the Arabs,” for which he felt like “sending a telegram thanking Mustafa Kemal.” Of course, Husayn’s plans didn't come off exactly as expected. Despite getting British backing for his scheme early in the war, he famously fell afoul of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The French drove his son out of Syria, and before long, the Saudis drove him out of the Arabian Peninsula. By the time Husayn officially declared himself caliph, supposedly at the insistence of a select group of Muslim leaders, his power had dwindled to the point where the declaration seemed like an act of pure desperation.



The Egyptian monarchy, meanwhile, had a claim of its own to advance. Despite being closely aligned with the British and descended from Circassian Albanian ancestors with no tie to the Prophet’s family, King Fuad covertly put forward his case to succeed the Ottomans. In the words of one Islamic scholar, Egypt was better suited to the caliphate than, say, a desert nomad like Husayn “because she took the lead in religious education and had a vast number of highly educated and intelligent Muslims.” King Idris I of Libya  also seemed to consider making a bid for the title but, like Fuad, ultimately decided he had too little support to do so officially.



Saudi Arabia’s King Saud, despite eventually seizing the Holy Land from Husayn, was one of the few leaders who never put forward a claim to the caliphate, although the idea was certainly discussed. Saud was aligned with the Wahhabi movement, which arose as a rebellion against the supposed decadence of the Ottoman government in the eighteenth century. Ironically, although his opposition to the Ottoman-style caliph was shared by other Arabs, his particular brand of religiosity was too radical for him to ever think he had much chance of becoming caliph himself.


In the end, though, the unseemliness of such political wrangling was just one of the factors that helped put the caliphate discussion to rest for the next several decades. Many Muslims had responded to its abolition by redoubling their efforts to build secular constitutional governments in their own countries. Indeed, some of the strongest opposition to the Egyptian king’s caliphal aspirations came from Egyptian liberals who opposed any moves that would increase the monarchy’s power. Egyptian scholar Ali Abd al-Raziq, in his famously controversial criticism of the very idea of a caliphate, even went so far as to claim

that the Koran contains “no reference to the caliphate that Muslims have been calling for.”


This was also the period where a number of thinkers, secularists and religious Muslims alike, began discussing the possibility that the caliph should be a purely religious figure, like an “Islamic pope,” unencumbered by any temporal power.





A HOPE AND A PRAYER

It would be a mistake to think that twenty-first-century Islamist movements trying to revive the caliphate are doing so in the name of a clear, well-defined Islamic mandate. Rather, they are just other players in a centuries-long debate about a concept that has only occasionally taken on widespread relevance in the Islamic world.


The legacy of earlier rounds of this argument can still be felt today. It is no surprise that, as a historical inspiration, the Ottoman caliphate holds most sway among Turkish Islamists, whose nostalgia owes far more to the way Turkish nationalists have glorified the empire than it does to the piety of the sultans. Conversely, the religious legacy of Abd al-Wahhab’s eighteenth-century critique of the Ottoman state, combined with the political legacy of more recent anti-Ottoman Arab nationalism, gives plenty of non-Turkish Islamists ample reason to prefer the precedent of an Arab caliphate.



By treating the Ottoman caliphate as the final historical reference point for what current Islamists aspire to, Western pundits conflate the contemporary dream of a powerful, universally respected Muslim leader with the late Ottoman sultan's failed dream of becoming such a figure himself. The circumstances uniting these dreams—and the appeal of strong religious power in the face of Western political, military, and economic power—may be the same. But so are the challenges. Contemporary claimants to the title of caliph may quickly find themselves in the same boat as Ottoman caliphs. Political or military success, rather than history or theology, can bring short-lived legitimacy, but failure in these realms will bring other contenders for power.