Why Arabs lose wars.

[Artemas Ward]

It's mostly cultural.

ARABIC-SPEAKING ARMIES have been generally ineffective in the modern era. Egyptian regular forces did poorly against Yemeni irregulars in the 1960s. Syrians could only impose their will in Lebanon during the mid-1970s by the use of overwhelming weaponry and numbers. Iraqis showed ineptness against an Iranian military ripped apart by revolutionary turmoil in the 1980s and could not win a three-decades-long war against the Kurds. The Arab military performance on both sides of the 1990 Kuwait war was mediocre. And the Arabs have done poorly in nearly all the military confrontations with Israel. Why this unimpressive record? There are many factors — economic, ideological, technical — but perhaps the most important has to do with culture and certain societal attributes which inhibit Arabs from producing an effective military force.


False starts

Including culture in strategic assessments has a poor legacy, for it has often been spun from an ugly brew of ignorance, wishful thinking, and mythology. Thus, the U.S. Army in the 1930s evaluated the Japanese national character as lacking originality and drew the unwarranted conclusion that that country would be permanently disadvantaged in technology. Hitler dismissed the United States as a mongrel society and consequently underestimated the impact of America’s entry into the war. American strategists assumed that the pain threshold of the North Vietnamese approximated our own and that the air bombardment of the North would bring it to its knees. Three days of aerial attacks were thought to be all the Serbs could withstand; in fact, seventy-eight days were needed.
As these examples suggest, when culture is considered in calculating the relative strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces, it tends to lead to wild distortions, especially when it is a matter of understanding why states unprepared for war enter into combat flushed with confidence. The temptation is to impute cultural attributes to the enemy state that negate its superior numbers or weaponry. Or the opposite: to view the potential enemy through the prism of one’s own cultural norms.

It is particularly dangerous to make facile assumptions about abilities in warfare based on past performance, for societies evolve and so does the military subculture with it. The dismal French performance in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war led the German high command to an overly optimistic assessment prior to World War I. Then tenacity and courage of French soldiers in World War I lead everyone from Winston Churchill to the German high command vastly to overestimate the French army’s fighting abilities. Israeli generals underestimated the Egyptian army of 1973 based on Egypt’s hapless performance in the 1967 war.

Culture is difficult to pin down. It is not synonymous with an individual’s race nor ethnic identity. The history of warfare makes a mockery of attempts to assign rigid cultural attributes to individuals — as the military histories of the Ottoman and Roman empires illustrate. In both cases it was training, discipline, esprit, and élan which made the difference, not the individual soldiers’ origin. The highly disciplined and effective Roman legions, for example, recruited from throughout the Roman Empire, and the elite Ottoman Janissaries (slave soldiers) were Christians forcibly recruited as boys from the Balkans.


The role of culture
These problems notwithstanding, culture does need to be taken into account. Indeed, awareness of prior mistakes should make it possible to assess the role of cultural factors in warfare. John Keegan, the eminent historian of warfare, argues that culture is a prime determinant of the nature of warfare. In contrast to the usual manner of European warfare, which he terms “face to face,” Keegan depicts the early Arab armies in the Islamic era as masters of evasion, delay, and indirection. Examining Arab warfare in this century leads to the conclusion that the Arabs remain more successful in insurgent, or political, warfare — what T. E. Lawrence termed “winning wars without battles.” Even the much-lauded Egyptian crossing of the Suez in 1973 at its core entailed a masterful deception plan. It may well be that these seemingly permanent attributes result from a culture that engenders subtlety, indirection, and dissimulation in personal relationships.

Along these lines, Kenneth Pollock concludes his exhaustive study of Arab military effectiveness by noting that “certain patterns of behavior fostered by the dominant Arab culture were the most important factors contributing to the limited military effectiveness of Arab armies and air forces from 1945 to 1991.” These attributes included over-centralization, discouraging initiative, lack of flexibility, manipulation of information, and the discouragement of leadership at the junior officer level. The barrage of criticism leveled at Samuel Huntington’s notion of a “clash of civilizations” in no way lessens the vital point he made — that however much the grouping of peoples by religion and culture rather than political or economic divisions offends academics who propound a world defined by class, race, and gender, it is a reality, one not diminished by modern communications.

But how does one integrate the study of culture into military training? At present, it has hardly any role. Paul M. Belbutowski, a scholar and former member of the U.S. Delta Force, succinctly stated a deficiency in our own military education system: “Culture, comprised of all that is vague and intangible, is not generally integrated into strategic planning except at the most superficial level.” And yet it is precisely “all that is vague and intangible” that defines low-intensity conflicts. The Vietnamese communists did not fight the war the United States had trained for, nor did the Chechens and Afghans fight the war the Russians prepared for. This entails far more than simply retooling weaponry and retraining soldiers. It requires an understanding of the cultural mythology, history, attitude toward time, etc.; and it demands a more substantial investment in time and money than a bureaucratic organization is likely to authorize.
Mindful of walking through a minefield of past errors and present cultural sensibilities, I offer some assessments of the role of culture in the military training of Arabic-speaking officers. I confine myself principally to training for two reasons:

• First, I observed much training but only one combat campaign (the Jordanian Army against the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1970).

• Secondly, armies fight as they train. Troops are conditioned by peacetime habits, policies, and procedures; they do not undergo a sudden metamorphosis that transforms civilians in uniform into warriors. General George Patton was fond of relating the story about Julius Caesar, who “in the winter time. . . so trained his legions in all that became soldiers and so habituated them to the proper performance of their duties, that when in the spring he committed them to battle against the Gauls, it was not necessary to give them orders, for they knew what to do and how to do it.”

Information as power
In every society information is a means of making a living or wielding power, but Arabs husband information and hold it especially tightly. U.S. trainers have often been surprised over the years by the fact that information provided to key personnel does not get much further than them. Having learned to perform some complicated procedure, an Arab technician knows that he is invaluable so long as he is the only one in a unit to have that knowledge; once he dispenses it to others he no longer is the only font of knowledge and his power dissipates. This explains the commonplace hoarding of manuals, books, training pamphlets, and other training or logistics literature.

On one occasion, an American mobile training team working with armor in Egypt at long last received the operators’ manuals that had laboriously been translated into Arabic. The American trainers took the newly minted manuals straight to the tank park and distributed them to the tank crews. Right behind them, the company commander, a graduate of the armor school at Fort Knox and specialized courses at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds ordnance school, promptly collected the manuals from those crews. Questioned why he did this, the commander said that there was no point in giving them to the drivers because enlisted men could not read. In point of fact, he did not want enlisted men to have an independent source of knowledge. Being the only person who could explain the fire control instrumentation or bore sight artillery weapons brought prestige and attention.

In military terms this means that very little cross-training is accomplished and that, for instance in a tank crew, the gunners, loaders and drivers might be proficient in their jobs but are not prepared to fill in should one become a casualty. Not understanding one another’s jobs also inhibits a smoothly functioning crew. At a higher level it means that there is no depth in technical proficiency.



Continued...

A rather interesting article i came across, after having been inspired by O'Ballance's Gulf War, on the Iran-Iraq War.

Apparently "arabs just don't do maintenance" is a gross generalization.

Thoughts?

[Forgetful]

Okay upon reading what of the article that was here I conclude one thing so far.

The Arabs have a corrupt and power hungry leadership. Withholding manuels when their tank crews need them...that is going to get them fucked in the ass royally.

Will post more later.

Okay. I am not in the military. I am not a qualified 'expert' about the military. All I can say to my credit, is that I've read a couple of books about the military and I think tanks are shiny. That said, I have a few thoughts on Arab military; its a fucking Corporation.

Everyone has to comply with workplace organization, and there is a lot backstabbin' going to get 'promoted' or to have 'power'. Even more than that, to be promoted and to have power, they have to have 'face'. Their sense of PRIDE and REPUTATION is more IMPORTANT than having the ability to go and kick ass. More important than the ability to keep fighting and win wars.

This is just plain ridiculous

[Bryan]

If the enlisted can't read that's going to fuck you over big time. Was that commander serious or just using that as an excuse?

[dylanredefined]

Heard it before knowledge is power to a lot of them and should not be shared.With the technology of modern warfare
unless you have people prepared to embrace this your going to lose.They got
a lot better as the insurgency went on in Iraq,but,started out with a lot who evidently didn't have a clue considering the country had been at war for years
you would expect higher skill levels.

[Torr Samaho]

some arabs i know are such hotheads it's barely possible to talk rationally with them. they feel insulted by trivial or imaginary things and pay more attention to these than to the actual problem. perhaps it's hard to grasp because i'm quite the opposite of this, but if a discussion is won by the one who can shout loudest there'S something fundamentally wrong.

[SGTschlock]

All of which has led American trainers to develop a rule of thumb: a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army has as much authority as a colonel in an Arab army.

This is indeed a very major problem.

[Raghar]

a graduate of the armor school at Fort Knox

That says a lot. The person was a result of US education.

[Ralson]

Originally Posted by Bryan

If the enlisted can't read that's going to fuck you over big time. Was that commander serious or just using that as an excuse?

The article says it was just an excuse, right there. Google says the egyptian literacy rate is 71%, which isn't good, but is more than sufficient to have a completely literate military. (Assuming this isn't a gigantic change from when the story took place.)

[Artemas Ward]

I doubt that the Egyptian literacy level increased drastically over the past 10 years (article written in '99).

The problem seems to be that most of the arab countries are more concerned with preventing internal instability than with actually winning wars. I imagine part of this is the naturally hostile terrain that they must fight in; large scale offensive operations have historically been difficult, and as such the number one threat to the state is not other states, but internal dissent. The old maxim of "divide and rule" appears to still hold considerable sway.

The article also makes the point that the arab education style is that of rote memorization, which gives them an excellent memory, but limits their flexibility and perhaps creativity.
This education style is also prevalent in the less affluent countries (generally), but also the east asian nations in particular. I wonder how that effects their military competency?

[Admiral Vice]

Originally Posted by Raghar

That says a lot. The person was a result of US education.

You're retarded. I honestly have come to believe that you are actually retarded. And not even functionaly retarded but Down's Syndrome, tongue haning out, shitting your pants retarded.

[Ralson]

Originally Posted by Admiral Vice

You're retarded. I honestly have come to believe that you are actually retarded. And not even functionaly retarded but Down's Syndrome, tongue haning out, shitting your pants retarded.

I've had him on my ignore list for quite some time.

Not that it really helps that much, since people keep replying to him.

[Twisted Mentat]

Originally Posted by Raghar

That says a lot. The person was a result of US education.

Raghar, drop the blatent flamebaiting.

[Forgetful]

Originally Posted by Twisted Mentat

Raghar, drop the blatent flamebaiting.

And on that note, are there similar articles talking about the deficiencies of other major armies?

Also, does the above article mean that something like the MEC of Battlefield 2 is highly unlikely to form?

[Imperator Pax]

... interesting

[CommanderRazor]

Originally Posted by Raghar

That says a lot. The person was a result of US education.

Actually, smartass, since I've been assigned to 1/16 Cav, the unit that provides the gear and bodies for the armor officer training here at Fort Knox, for the past going on 2 years I can tell you that's not the case.

While I make fun of our own butterbars plenty, I can say that they do at least learn some important things before being heaped upon FORSCOM units. They basically get it drilled into their heads that intel, coordination of assets, effective but flexible planning, and a number of other essentials are indeed essential. Their main problem is that they tend to get rushed through shit too quick and tend to rely on what the book says too much because that's how 2/16 Cav (the squadron that provides the training cadre NCOs) is ordered to teach them.

You see, when it comes to foreign students from places like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, etc. things get different. A seldom known issue is that if an Arab junior officer gets sent to the US Armor School BOLC II/III, or any other similar officers' training course, and they get flunked and sent back home under such conditions...well, in the past it has indeed resulted in said students getting killed for 'shaming their family' or some such, particularly since most of those foreign students are officers because of their family connections rather than anything like actual education or having otherwise earned the chance.
So, now, we basically can't flunk them. The course for them is considered to be more familiarization than actual testing and evaluation. In essence, the thing is mostly political. It looks nice to those various nations as stupid as that sounds, so our wonderful and wise civilian leadership in the DoD and elsewhere oblige them.

Hells, I remember having to drive around a humvee where the gunner up top was an Iraqi lieutenant that spoke barely any English (enough for simple communication). Once the US butterbars dismounted to conduct a recon of a heavily wooded hill, the Iraqi was the only one left on the truck with me, and then some OPFOR tanks came around and I had to didee-moa our asses out of there. The Iraqi kept fumbling with the radio handset (it has ONE button you push to talk and he couldn't get that right consistently) and he couldn't communicate anything worth the designation because he couldn't understand the combat lingo coming over the net. As such I ended up coordinating my movement with the rest of the platoon's movements while driving like a bat out of hell through muddy hills galore while trying to evade fucking tanks. Fun op that was, all because that Iraqi LT wasn't worth a shit in the hatch.

Also, on average the Arab students tend to be nasty fuckers. Leaving their trash all over inside the vehicles, around the outside of the vehicles, just leaving their MRE stuff wherever they happened to be eating, tossing cigarette butts wherever they please, and that's just the polite stuff. They do tend to have this attitude of "Eh, fuck it.", almost a lazy version of "In'shalla."

[Forgetful]

Damn...it sounds like the Arabs are stuck in a military microcosm of WWI style officer-ship instead of meritocracy.

Razor I think the military needs to evaluate and put the Turbans through basic training and then Officer.

Of course if we do things properly and we ever need to invade those nations we'd be screwed...

[CommanderRazor]

Originally Posted by Forgetful

Razor I think the military needs to evaluate and put the Turbans through basic training and then Officer.

First off, friendly warning about the remark. Arab is fine, Hadj works if you're regarding 'the enemy', and all that crap, but calling them 'Turbans' is only two-steps away from the classic 'sand ni@#er'.

Secondly, BOLC = Basic Officers' Leadership Course, pronounced as 'Bo-lik'. It goes in phases; I, II, and III. They're supposed to be combining II and III so that there's only BOLC I and BOLC II, though. Either way, BOLC I basically is 'Basic for Officers'. Less brute force Drill Sergeant-derived screaming and punishments for stupid stuff just to push you and your platoonmates, more mental pressure to make them memorize and regurgitate a veritable plethora of officer duty related crap while still learning the basic stuff like getting in further physical shape, team, squad, and platoon basic tactics, etc.

BOLC II/III is where they actually learn their intended branch role. Obviously the majority of BOLC students we get here at Knox would be Armor Branch 2LTs, since this is the US Armor School. We also train up all Marine Corps tankers as well. Granted their enlisted guys have their own small section of Knox to themselves (though on paper still under the auspices of the Army's 3/81 Armor last I checked) for training up their prospective tanker privates, but MC tankers still attend Army Master Gunners' Course the same as an Army tanker would. So yeah, US tankers all come from the same source regardless of service.

So, that said, the foreign students DO attend BOLC II/III, and I'm fairly sure they attend BOLC I (not certain so I'll check some time).

Of course if we do things properly and we ever need to invade those nations we'd be screwed...

Not really. Most of their problems go faaaaaaaar beyond simple training deficiencies.

[CnB]

Originally Posted by CommanderRazor

First off, friendly warning about the remark. Arab is fine, Hadj works if you're regarding 'the enemy', and all that crap, but calling them 'Turbans' is only two-steps away from the classic 'sand ni@#er'.

Towel-head being one step away?

[Aratech]

Originally Posted by Forgetful

Of course if we do things properly and we ever need to invade those nations we'd be screwed...

Which makes you wonder if that's not the reasoning of certain higher ups....

[CommanderRazor]

Originally Posted by CnB

Towel-head being one step away?

More or less, yeah.

[Artemas Ward]

Originally Posted by Forgetful

And on that note, are there similar articles talking about the deficiencies of other major armies?

Also, does the above article mean that something like the MEC of Battlefield 2 is highly unlikely to form?

There may be similar articles, but likely on other third-world or "pupil" countries. At least from an objective stance. There are certainly articles written from within militaries on whats wrong with the officers or doctrine of today, but I seriously doubt we are going to find many on the cultural quirks of first world armies.

On the battlefield thing: The Jordanian Arab Legion, which was officered by brits, was probably the most effective fighting force during the 1947/48 Arab-Israeli War. Furthermore, the first part of the 1973 war went extremely well for the arabs. I believe that the article mentions company sized units being perfectly competent, but that level of effectiveness drasticly dropping at the higher levels. The big problems in that regard is professionalism and unity of command. In many arab countries, the officers are officers due to their stratified society. The article also points out that many of the junior officers are smart, flexible and competent, but lack authority and political survivability due to the institutional culture.
Not an easy problem to fix anyway.

Damn...it sounds like the Arabs are stuck in a military microcosm of WWI style officer-ship instead of meritocracy.

Arab (and most third-world) leadership makes WWI european officers look like fucking Rommels and Guderians. You aren't going back far enough. Try British leadership during the Crimean War. Although even that isn't fair, because the brits fixed most of the problems that came to light either during or after the war.

On the arab students as trained by foreign militaries, yeah the mess and shit is expected to be cleaned up by enlisted.

I think that overall one of their major problems is a lack of nationalism, as weird as that sounds. They are only connected to their sect, which most of the arab countries have several of. The turks, as an example, are far more competent than the arabs. And I believe the same can be said of the Iranians, being Persian and not Arab. As an aside, the Iranians problem I believe stems from post-revolutionary fervour, lack of unity of command, and other regime protection doctrine-type stuff.

[Admiral Vice]

Originally Posted by Twisted Mentat

Raghar, drop the blatent flamebaiting.

I don't think he is flamebaiting TM. I think genuinely think he's mentally defficient. I mean look at every thread he ever posts in, regardless of the forrum or topic. His posts are almost always incomprehensible and crazy. I don't get it.

But on topic, there was this thread from a couple months ago that was highly enlightening.

[Senmut]

Originally Posted by Bryan

If the enlisted can't read that's going to fuck you over big time. Was that commander serious or just using that as an excuse?

Either way, it assures that they get their butts kicked, next war. These guys won't be combat-ready soldiers. They'll be cannon fodder.

[Ironanvil1]

How do the limitations imposed by Arab base culture interact with the Jihadist ideologies?

Do they still have the same issues with status and inflexibility or does fighting "for the cause" give them a better focus?

[Forgetful]

Originally Posted by CommanderRazor

First off, friendly warning about the remark. Arab is fine, Hadj works if you're regarding 'the enemy', and all that crap, but calling them 'Turbans' is only two-steps away from the classic 'sand ni@#er'.

Well, after reading the article my attitude towards Middle East militaries are rather less than sympathetic.

But thanks for pulling me back from the path of "HERESY!?".