"Lawrence's detractors, then and now, still argue that this was merely a "pinprick" in "a sideshow of a sideshow" compared with the western front, but it in fact was a modest first effort at a new kind of warfare-- in which an organized, modern, occupying army was forced to deal with small but lethal attacks by an enemy who appeared suddenly out of nowhere, struck hard, and vanished again; in which the ambush, the roadside or railway "improvised explosive device," the grenade thrown onto a busy cafe terrace, the destruction of rolling stock, even the "suicide bombers", would take the place of battle; and in which it was almost impossible to distinguish enemy combatants from the surroundings civilian population."