In 1920 our 'Mad Mullah' was Mullah Yussuf Dua Mohammed. Ensconced in British Somaliland, he and his dervishes were the subject of repeated air attacks by an RAF unit. As A.W.B. Simpson writes in one of the early chapters of this sprawling, monumental and sometimes magnificent book, Z Unit was responsible for bombing 'Medishi Jidali, where there was a fort, and for machine-gun attacks on the unfortunate sheep owned by the tribesmen. There is no suggestion of previous warning being given, but it is not clear that any dervishes were actually killed, though the Mullah's clothing was burnt.' This was the start of 'air control', a 'strange form of policing, radically different from normal policing in that no attempt was made to arrest malefactors and bring them to trial. It was not conceived to require special legitimisation at all. Legislation never even mentioned it, nor was it necessarily associated with martial law.'

LRB 29 November 2001 | PDF Download