a recent London Times article:37
The fact is that for many years past Turkey has almost invariably been at war in some part or other of Arabia.... At the present moment Turkey is actually conducting three separate small campaigns within Arabia or upon its borders, and a fourth series of minor operations in Mesopotamia. The last-named movement is against the Kurdish tribes of the Mosul district.... Another, and more important, advance is against the truculent Muntefik Arabs of the Euphrates delta.... The fourth, and by far the largest, campaign is the unending warfare in the province of Yemen, north of Aden, where the Turks have been fighting intermittently for more than a decade. The peoples of Arabia are also indulging in conflict on their own account. The interminable feud between the rival potentates of Nedjd, Ibn Saud of Riadh and Ibn Rashid of Hail, has broken out afresh, and the tribes of the coastal province of El Katar are supposed to have plunged into the fray. The Muntefik Arabs, not content with worrying the Turks, are harrying the territories of Sheikh Murbarak of Koweit. In the far south the Sultan of Shehr and Mokalla, a feudatory of the British Government, is conducting a tiny war against a hostile tribe in the mysterious Hadramaut. In the west the Beduin are spasmodically menacing certain sections of the Hedjaz Railway, which they very much dislike.... Ten years ago the Ibn Rashids were nominally masters of a great deal of Arabia, and grew so aggressive that they tried to seize Koweit. The fiery old Sheikh of Koweit marched against them, and alternately won and lost. He had his revenge. He sent an audacious scion of the Ibn Sauds to the old Wahabi capital of Riadh, and by a remarkable stratagem the youth captured the stronghold with only fifty men. The rival parties have been fighting at intervals ever since.