Brian M Downing
Kenneth M Pollack – Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019)
Shortly after ISIL routed the Iraqi army in 2014, I was told that Iraqi tanks had several reverse gears and one forward gear. The latter was in case of attack from the rear. I’d heard the same joke after the Six-Day War, though it was Egyptian tanks then. Humor aside, Arab armies simply don’t perform well. Numerous wars from 1948 to the present show that.
Kenneth Pollack, a former intelligence analyst and now a think tanker, searches for the reasons why. Despite the daunting challenges of so complex an undertaking and potential criticisms from captious sensibilities of our day, he does a remarkable job. After going through a litany of failures and problems since 1948, he presents explanations.
Soviet-Russian influences
One argument points to reliance on stultifying doctrines and advisors from Moscow. Arab generals internalized basic principles at the expense of innovation and adaptation to specific situations before them.
Pollack doesn’t find this persuasive. Egyptian and Iraqi armies retained British doctrines yet fared poorly. By the time of the First Gulf War (1991), the Egyptians had long been using American doctrines. Nonetheless, they did not adapt to tactical problems, communication was poor, combined-arms efforts faltered, and maintenance was disappointing.
The author makes interesting use of numerous non-Arab armies in his arguments. N Korea and Cuba used Soviet doctrines and did reasonably well. So, other explanations need to be considered.
Politicization
Many armies suffer from generals involved in politics, politicians controlling military matters and promotions, and focus on internal dangers rather than external ones. Pollack sees politicization as a “pervasive, corrosive feature of the Arab military landscape” and offers cases of depoliticization that had some success.
Following the disastrous Six-Day War, Egypt dismissed associates of Nasser and Sadat and replaced them with more professional officers. This led to the well-planned and ably-executed assault across the Suez Canal in 1973 which sent the IDF reeling. Systemic problems persisted though. Local initiative was lacking in the face of IDF counterattacks. Information flow was abysmal. When Israel put armor divisions on the west side of the Canal, the information wasn’t relayed to vulnerable units or Cairo.
No surprise that Saddam Hussein’s army was highly politicized. No surprise it fared poorly after the initial surprise of invading Iran (1980). Professionalization came only with Iranian counterattacks. The general staff was shuffled and operations showed greater creativity. Pollack adds that Iraq benefitted from the advantages of defensive positions, greater foreign support, and use of chemical weapons.
Economic development
Do armies improve as their countries grow in GDP and education? Pollack doesn’t see a great deal of evidence for that. Poor countries with largely illiterate populations such as China and N Korea nonetheless fielded stalwart armies and their humble enlisted personnel ably handled communication gear and maintenance requirements.
Furthermore, Arab armies have demonstrated no greater effectiveness as their countries developed over the last seventy years. Aircraft and armor crews, maintenance, and engineering have shown little improvement despite greater wealth, education, and urbanization.
Arab culture
Pollack summarizes a number of studies on the region’s culture, many written by Arab social scientists, and finds concerning characteristics. He sees them as more significant than imported doctrines, politicization, and economic development.
Conformity and acceptance of authority, from the family father to clan leaders to president or prince, is prevalent. Risks are avoided. Directives and customs thought unwise will nevertheless be followed. Technological abilities and manual skills are not respected. Knowledge is confined to separate spheres and the larger environment of relationships and interdependencies is ignored or only partly understood. This is the weak cultural foundation of regional armies.
Virility and honor are also mainstays, which helps explain cases of extraordinary tenacity and cohesion. They do not however compensate for the problems. Orders are followed without demurral. Maneuvers are scripted, predictable, and ineffectual in combat. Innovation and adaptability come only after defeat and are of limited scope and duration.
Success in war requires integrating many spheres of knowledge and weaponry. Failures will be minimized in reports to superiors regardless of how vital they are. Once pilots lose contact with ground control, either through jamming or equipment failure, they are unable to operate on their own. In one famous air duel between Syrian and Israeli fighters in the early 1980s, Damascus lost 82 planes. The IAF lost none.
An American saying holds that plans change with the first shot. Arab plans are more enduring – but at the expense of adaptiveness, effectiveness, and victory.
Exceptional units
A few effective formations are examined. The Jordanian army in 1948 performed well, though its Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi allies did not. This is attributed to British military trainers and more importantly to a British school system that countered many of the detrimental aspects of regional culture and taught initiative and innovation. Further, bedouin culture is more supportive of adaptability and change than the larger culture around it.
Syrian special forces performed well in the 1980s. This is attributed to rigid selection criteria, rigorous training, and an elite ethos. The same holds for Hisbollah units in Syria today. The author adds that Shiism is more open to individual thought than Sunnism.
The Egyptian assault across the Suez Canal was well planned, the troops ably trained. Almost all of the Bar-Lev Line fell very quickly. Shortly thereafter, problems with adaptability and communication brought ruin.
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Some of Pollack’s arguments may rest on circular reasoning. Changes at the top (S Vietnam in the 1970s, Iraq in the next decade) are followed by better performance, so the new leaders must have been more professional than predecessors. But he notes other variables at work.
S Vietnam’s success against the Easter Offensive rests far more on US airpower relentlessly hammering NVA/VC forces which were highly concentrated – something they’d diligently avoided since the siege of Khe Sanh. Were the generals Saddam promoted in the early 1980s more professional or did they benefit from defensive positions, international support, and chemical weapons?
The importance of Arab culture will lead to claims of ethnocentrism and Orientalism, but not here. Other aspects of the region’s culture might have been explored.
There’s little mention of tribes save for the observation of the bedouins in the Jordanian army. But many armies must try to integrate soldiers from numerous fractious tribes with longstanding suspicions and hostilities toward each other. This weakens if not precludes unit cohesion which combat units are based on. A battalion of mixed tribes is unlikely to perform well. Think of the (non-Arab) Afghan army of today. Nor will a battalion of one tribe do well if it must rely on tactical or logistical assistance from a battalion from a rivalrous tribe.
The view here has been that ISIL units have been successful because their apocalyptic Salafi creed supersedes tribal and ethnic fissures. They are even able to integrate non-Arab Uighurs, Tajiks, and Chechens. The creed also endows commanders with a great deal of charisma and trust, rightly or wrongly. The tenacity and cohesion of ISIL units in Mosul and Raqqa have few parallels in regional armies.
Salafism, or something akin to it, swept through the Egyptian army after the 1967 war. The humiliation was blamed on lack of faith. Greater religion instilled discipline and a thirst to restore honor on the other side of the Canal.
Pollack’s remarkable study has important if sobering implications for the region and states seeking to influence and control it. Arab armies, even lavishly equipped ones such as Saudi Arabia’s, are unlikely to ever constitute effective fighting forces. If they war against a western power, they will lose – probably quickly and badly. If they war on one another, the conflicts will be long, costly, and ruinous.
Accordingly, Arab countries will continue to exert their economic and diplomatic clout to get foreign armies to help with foreign policy objectives. The US and Israel seem willing to oblige, at least for now. Or they will develop elite formations and foreign mercenary units.
The problems of Arab culture Pollack presents are not confined to militaries. Indeed, the author makes plain that the problems pervade society from top to bottom. The lack of initiative and adaptability is found in government and business too. This suggests that Saudi Arabia’s ambitious industrialization program, which seeks to make Riyadh to the Middle East what Beijing is becoming to much of Asia, is unlikely to succeed. Managers will not be as dynamic and creative as western and Chinese counterparts, even if they aren’t beholden to the House of Saud.
Add in growing restiveness in the immense population segment under thirty, and the likelihood of diminishing demand for oil from the Gulf in coming decades, and the future of the Arab world isn’t promising.
See:
“Cohesion and disintegration in the war for Iraq, 2014” Downing Reports 14 Sep 2014.
“Hearts of darkness along the Tigris and Euphrates” Downing Reports 5 Oct 2015.
© 2019 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.