Why Middle East armies (except one) perform so poorly, without ethnic or religious...

[sarahtasher]

..slurs.

It's the understatement of the century that, as the recent events proved abundantly, that the armies of the Middle East, except the Israeli one, perform very poorly on the battlefield. The Syrian and Iraqi woes against ISIS are not an anomaly.

(Let's be blunt here, I mean ''Arab'' armies, in the broad sense of the term. That excludes Turkey and Iran)

Why the armies of Iraq, of Libya, of Egypt and of Syria, nations that prepared extensively for war with abyssal results, have been so poor ? (Those nations are the ones who been at war extensively-Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco are not exactly in this case. The Gulf States never fought a war without considerable Western help prior to the rather discutable Yemen campaign. Jordan, that said, fought many wars and while it was never an overwhelming success, it did not ended in abject disasters either)

Using books on the matter, like Pollack and avoiding platitudes, why they perform so poorly, knowing very well that it's easier to say why than to act on it ?

As this is a long winded matter, I will make several posts, starting first by what are non-dominant factors, AKA things that explain some gnarly defeats but not other defeats, or are even points of relative correct performance.

A)Operational planning
B)Morale
C)Quality of equipment

A)Contrary to common conception, most Arab generals of the highest level are at least competent, if we exclude lunatics that promote themselves Supreme Marshals and shoot their own subordinates when they feel grouchy the morning. Mind you, it does not mean a stunning performance, but a correct one. There are numerous grievous mistakes, but usually speaking, when the political leadership let the military plan, they make plans that are a bit crude but quite functional. The leadership might orders criminally stupid moves or wars, but when profesional (read, not the brothers-in-law) generals are allowed to plan, that planning part is usually well done. For instance, granted, it was not exactly complicated, but the Iraqi and Lybian military planned very well the invasions of Kuwait and Chad.

Even elements mocked by armchair generals, such as the defence of Kuwait by the Iraqi army, are not because of the general staffs incompetence. It's easy for a pundit to say that the Iraqi army should have fought with mobile defence-that kind of warfare was wholly impossible with the Iraqi army-static defence was the only thing that could be done with the Iraqi army and the generals did a basic but effective planning about it-Iraqi sandbagging and digging was not enough against Coalition airpower, but it did protected ground assets to a commendable degree.

B)(As a general disclaimer, concepts like cowardice are often used with abandon by armchair generals. All armies have ethos that basically state that they should fight to the death and die laughing. Short of the IJA (who, as you might notice, lost the war, and badly), no one actually does that all the time-including the poster boys of death before dishonor, the Spartans, who did surrender when their situation was hopeless at Sphacteria. Closer to modern times, it’s easy to mock French or Italian armies for surrendering easily…except that when you look closer, you realize that more often than not, soldiers surrendered when surrounded and cut out of supplies)

Contrary to a perceived opinion, in many cases, Arab units stand their ground and fought in conditions that would have made NATO units melt away-there was of course numerous cases of units fleeing in panic at the first contact, but quite often those units were made of hastily conscripted people (such as Khadaffi Islamic Legion in Uganda) The issue is that units fighting much harder, sometimes to the death, did not fought much better. One Republican Guard Iraqi unit fought to the last AFV the United States in the Gulf War : they did not inflicted much more losses than the Shia conscript unit next to them that crumbled at the first push. IE, very high morale units (like the Republican Guard), while quite willing to fight to the death, did not saw their competence magically raised. As another example, when Saddam attacked Khafij in Saudi Arabia, two echelons of Gulf troops counter-attacked Iraqi forces : the regulars forces progressed with what can be charitably qualified as ''caution'', while the national guard (of Saudia Arabia) attacked with an indiscutable enthusiasm-yet both attacks failed miserably against an ennemy only able of static defence (and who was conveniently attacked head-on..)

C)While Russia often try to save face by claiming that the material it send to the Arab states was the quite insultingly named ''monkey version'' (AKA, dumbed down version compared to the supposedly real gear kept for the Warsaw Pact), the matter is irrelevant, for that prior to the mid seventies, they fought an enemy who was usually not fitted with top of the line material either-WW2 surplus tanks, or cheap export French planes for Israel up to 1967 for instance. Saddam's forces might have been equipped with Chinese knock-off of Soviet tanks, but they were facing Iranians that were running out of tanks at all. In fact, many times Arabs forces had way superior equipment than their ennemies-like Khadaffi in Chad, who might have sent only obsolete T-series tanks, but was faced by Chadians using technicals and obsolete redeye missiles.

[Xeones]

I'm pretty sure the Kurds are performing quite well against ISIS.

[sarahtasher]

That Kurds are ''Arabs'' is debatable, but the point is well taken-Arab armies performed usually very miserably too against insurgents. Egypt in Yemen for instance, or Iraq against the same Kurds-they won, sure, but only by overwhelming firepower (and poison gas).

[vastx]

I think the bulk of results come about from the wars involving Israel. And Israel had one big thing going for it during those wars. It's survival. I can imagine what was and is drilled into the minds of Israelis.

[sarahtasher]

I think the bulk of results come about from the wars involving Israel. And Israel had one big thing going for it during those wars. It's survival. I can imagine what was and is drilled into the minds of Israelis.

For that matter, a war against Israel should come with more motivated troops (it does not, and usually, as said in the OP, high morale or no it does not work very well). But Iraqi forces fared very badly against Iranians, Syrians against Jordanians, Lybians against Chadians...

[Kuntantee]

They perform poorly because they have little to no military tradition and organization. Israel is an exception because they are heavily supported by West in all terms, from tech to training. Turkey allows Israel to use her air space to train. There are further training exchange going on between these two countries. Israel is getting all the valuable help in terms of military. Turkey and Iran has their own military traditions aging quite back. They had their states and military up and running ages ago. They were always organized. And then you have rest of the ME which were either part of Ottoman Empire or were Colonized. You can't develop a military tradition when you are colonized, or subject to another.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm pretty sure the Kurds are performing quite well against ISIS.

Kurds getting equipment/air support from US as well as Russia. It is expected for any group of fighters to win with air support against terrorists who have no air support, are poorly trained and probably equipped much worse compared to Kurds.

[apples]

you literally cannot compare one army to another

each conflict is different for radically different reasons

from the orginal taliban all the way to ISIS

[Stelio Kontos]

The problem of Arab armies is not a new one, just read what Ibn Khaldun writes about them in the 15th century. He didn't have a great deal of respect for Arab fighting tradition, and he was Arab himself.

[Kuntantee]

The problem of Arab armies is not a new one, just read what Ibn Khaldun writes about them in the 15th century. He didn't have a great deal of respect for Arab fighting tradition, and he was Arab himself.

Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha states similar stuff about Arabs (of Northern Africa, 16th Century) in his memorials.

[Stelio Kontos]

Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha states similar stuff about Arabs (of Northern Africa, 16th Century) in his memorials.

I'm trying to find the source, but I also recall an earlier Arab or Persian scholar who wrote similar about Arab warfare. Essentially that they're raiders and irregulars, preferring to hit soft targets and melt back into the desert before proper soldiers can catch them.

[sarahtasher]

Uh, Egypt have Western material since the Yom Kippur war.

[Deleted]

Egypt - Army focused on internal matters.
Iran - Decent Army and decent proxies. Doing the hardwork in Syria.
Turkey - Well funded decent modernish army.
Iraq - Ghost Army, corruption meant that generals quickly learnt they could say they could say they had battalions of hundreds of men when the real size was under 50 and get paid for the hundreds, they then pocketed the difference. Useless army.
Saudi Arabia - All the gear no idea. Relies heavily on allies for everything, general point of the army is focused on internal affairs.
Yemen - lol wut army
Syria - Battlehardened and blooded now. Not a great army, relies on allies.
United Arab Emirates - lol whut
Israel - 2nd best army in arab world. no stomach for taking losses. But very good since they are at defacto war permanently.
Jordan - Decent army, decent equipment, do alot of work for the UN.
Palestine - pretty awful probably one of the worst.
Lebanon - Lets count Hezbollah here, aka the best army in the arab world. Battlehardened and blooded in Syria currently. Incredibly decent ground force, destroyed the CIA station in Beruit and at worst 'drew' with the IDF. (beat them on the ground, they pulled out and bombed Hez to fuck).
Oman - no idea
Kuwait - saddams still laughing.
Qatar - no idea
Bahrain - no idea

[PACOX]

Wait what?

I think you're confusing insurgents/untrained radicals with actual armies.

[sarahtasher]

Without going there, the Hezbollah is hardly an army-it's one thing to hold South Lebanon, it's another thing to wage modern war.

[Kalis]

Cyprus National Guard is widely acknowledged as the best Middle Eastern army.

All they lack is numbers, money for equipment and quality training.

But nobody can compare to their mastery of smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.

[starlord]

why bother spending the time and money to outfit and train a standing army when you can just send insurgents and/or catspaw rebels.

[sarahtasher]

The most universal factor (not afflicting as much Jordan, this said) remains, after more than seventy years, the very poor handling of tactical units.

Saying that junior officers and NCOs must take intiative sounds like a platitude-but despite numerous efforts, it's almost never done in the various Arab armies. Combined arm manoeuvres, let alone air-group cooperation, remains far fetched goals. The only way it can be implemented is essentially by script-moderately successive operations (such as the crossing of the canal of Suez or the Iraqi offensives against Iran) have to be ''scripted'' : that is, the role of every unit, down to the squad have to be written down by the general staff

Which is both incredibly time consuming for the general staff and a disaster in the making because hundreds of pages of instructions can't cover every possibilty except for a very short time.

[ParanoiD84]

Yeah it's a pretty big joke, just look at the afgan and iraqi army, low morale and corruption and even with outside troops training them they still suck.

[Easo]

Lack of everything imaginable, except equipment (though also not always, but lot of countries were or are relatively well armed) - training and morale mostly. Add religion to the mix and it all goes south during the first losses.

[Kellhound]

Post WWII they have suffered from (depending on the country and era) using Soviet tactics and equipment, not having good esprit de corps, lack of people willing/able to maintain the equipment, lack of proper military traditions, political concerns exceeding military concerns with the officer corps, despot leaders that lacked good military common sense, and quite a bit more....