Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness by Kenneth M. Pollack is an outstanding book by an author who has spent thirty years examining various Arab militaries. Pollack is a former CIA analyst who has written one of the great books in the study of both the modern Middle East and modern warfare.
Despite the fact that the Middle East has seen more conventional warfare than any other region of the world since 1945, the region’s military history reflects the poor performance of Arab armies in these conflicts. Arab historians have often taken different views to explain the relative failure of Arab militaries to achieve their military objectives in the 20th century.
“Some did notably better than others, whether the Jordanians in 1948, the Egyptians in 1973, the Iraqis in 1988, Hizballah in 2006, or ISIS/ Da’ish in 2014. These are critically important. For any explanation to be worthwhile, these outliers need to be exceptions that prove the rule, rather than exceptions that it just can’t explain.”
He also dismisses theories that economic underdevelopment and reliance on the Soviet system were the primary factors. As a counter example he looks at the Korean War. Here Communist Chinese forces overcame a lack of familiarity with modern technology to conduct maneuver warfare against an array of United Nations forces.
In Ethiopia and again in Angola, the Cuban military was able to achieve feats of arms against often better equipped and motivated forces. This was even more true in Angola where Cuban forces thousands of miles from home fought against highly trained South African forces along with their UNITA allies.
Many Arab military armies have been deployed as “palace guards” — meant to protect regimes against internal threats rather than external enemies. Pollack again dismisses this as an important factor in underperformance. In fact, he suggests this Praetorian characterization is often overstated.
Nor was underperformance related to a lack of courage. “Indeed, what is truly noteworthy about Iraqi performance in the Gulf War is not that 200,000–400,000 deserted or surrendered to coalition ground forces, but that after 39 days of constant air attack, the destruction of their logistical distribution network, their lack of commitment to the cause, and their clear inferiority to Coalition forces, another 100,000–200,000 Iraqi troops actually stood their ground,” he says on page 41.
The performance of Arab armies examined largely focuses outside the Francophone Arab countries, and the author has little to say about the recent Saudi, Sudanese and UAE efforts in Yemen or elsewhere. Indeed, the admission of Sudan is quite curious because the country has been continuously at war almost since independence. While the book largely overlooks Arab counter-insurgency efforts (with the exception of Egypt in Yemen) this alone is not a sufficient excuse to not include Sudan. Sudanese forces fought in multiple Arab-Israeli Wars as well. Discussion of Arab navies is also missing from this book, which looks at the operations armies and air forces exclusively.
The book contains a number of useful case studies such as the performance of Syrian units during the 1982 Arab invasion of Lebanon in which the Israeli army became the first force to conquer the capital of an independent Arab state in centuries. The author provides detailed analysis of even obscure conflicts such as Libya’s so-called “Toyota Wars” in Chad. The author heaps praise on the Chadians for fighting a flexible, raid-centric type of warfare that succeeded in driving back the Libyan incursion, but it is unclear what role the French (and the CIA) played in Chad behind the scenes. But there is no doubting Chadian military prowess; indeed even today the Chadian armed forces are considered one of the most capable in Africa.
After much throat-clearing the author finally argues that it is culture which has led to the underperformance of Arab militaries. Arab culture does not reward innovative thinking and initiative taking by junior officers. For example, in 1973 a Syrian armored column in the Golan Heights achieved a critical breakthrough. Yet, a mere 10 minutes from their objective, a strategic bridge, the force went into night lagger in observance of their orders. There is no “strategic corporal” in Arab armies, Pollack suggests, considering the big picture. Creative tactical thinking is not rewarded in Arab armies.
In set piece actions where rehearsals can be conducted such as the 1973 Egyptian offensive across the Suez Canal, the Arab militaries perform well. Given logistical task and engineering ones are two areas where if anything Arab armies have overperformed historically. Egypt in 1973 is one example of this. Another example is the Egyptian intervention in Yemen often called “Nasser’s Vietnam War.” In fact, while Egyptian troops performed miserably in a tactical sense, they did achieve their overall strategic objective, albeit at a high cost to the Egyptian regime. This is the exact opposite of LBJ’s Vietnam War.
Libya, as the author points out, was able to field an expeditionary force across the Sahara during its wars with Chad and in Uganda. As an aside when Libya deployed trainers to Grenada in 1983 it was only the second time in history when an Arabic-speaking force was deployed to the Western Hemisphere, the first being the deployment of a Sudanese force as part of Emperor Maximillian’s invasion of Mexico in the 19th century.
There is no doubt that a hierarchical and paternalistic culture has a role. Good leadership can likely have some impact here. Jordan’s Arab Legion when led by British officers until the mid-1950s, performed much better than other Arab forces as Pollack points out. Having visited some of the Ogaden battlefields, his characterizations seem largely accurate. The Cubans were also supported by a Yemeni tank unit as well.
However, in the Ogaden, in Angola, and in the Korean War it is worth noting that Soviet advisors and leadership played a role in battlefield outcomes. In Angola it is important to recall that until as late as 1989, Soviet officers were still deployed down to at least the battalion level in that conflict.
The role of the Soviet military in providing support and leadership to Egypt in particular during the 1973 war is also worth noting. In 2013, this author had the opportunity to interview Vafa Gulzade. The “Henry Kissinger” of the Caucasus was during the October War a Soviet translator and diplomat. He confided the fate of the surrounded Egyptian 3rd Corps during that conflict was of much concern to the embassy because “This was a large part of the Egyptian Army we had no contact with; We [the Soviets] could not advise them.”
Pollack’s theory may prove controversial to some, but there is no doubt this book, along with his previous work “Arabs at War”, is one of the definitive accounts of late 20th century Arab military performance. He is in full command of his data and able to weave it together in a book that is well worth a read.
