This is about a half an hour. Pretty interesting observations. Given the experience of several of the members here, I'd bet at least some of the information given is pretty damned familiar.

The article upon which the video is based:

Why Arabs Lose Wars - Middle East Quarterly - Winter 1999 -Volume 6: Number 1

Synopsis and Observations

In the Article: Why Arabs Lose Wars, Norvell B. De Atkine makes a few major points about Arab armies, which it takes arriving at the tenth-or-so paragraph to finally get to. All of the below are exact quotes from the text:

1. 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 Arabs remain more successful in insurgent, or political warfare—what T. E. Lawrence termed "winning wars without battles."

2. The most important factors contributing to the limited military effectiveness of Arab armies and air forces from 1945 to 1991…included over-centralization, discouraging initiative, lack of flexibility, manipulation of information, and the discouragement of leadership at the junior officer level.

3. In every society information is a means of making a living or wielding power, but Arabs husband information and hold it especially tightly.

4. The emphasis on memorization has a price, and that is in diminished ability to reason or engage in analysis based upon general principles. Thinking outside the box is not encouraged; doing so in public can damage a career.

5. Education is in good part sought as a matter of personal prestige, so Arabs in U.S. military schools take pains to ensure that the ranking member, according to military position or social class, scores the highest marks in the class.

6. The idea of taking care of one's men is found only among the most elite units in the Egyptian military.

7. In general, the militaries of the Fertile Crescent enforce discipline by fear.

8. Decisions are made and delivered from on high, with very little lateral communication. This leads to a highly centralized system, with authority hardly ever delegated.

9. Taking responsibility for a policy, operation, status, or training program rarely occurs. U.S. trainers can find it very frustrating when they repeatedly encounter Arab officers placing blame for unsuccessful operations or programs on the U.S. equipment or some other outside source.

10. A lack of cooperation is most apparent in the failure of all Arab armies to succeed at combined arms operations. A regular Jordanian army infantry company, for example, is man-for-man as good as a comparable Israeli company; at battalion level, however, the coordination required for combined arms operations, with artillery, air, and logistics support, is simply absent…The same lack of trust operates at the interstate level, where Arab armies exhibit very little trust of each other, and with good reason.

11. Arab regimes classify virtually everything vaguely military. Information the U.S. military routinely publishes (about promotions, transfers, names of unit commanders, and unit designations) is top secret in Arabic-speaking countries.

By and large, these 11 points strike me as accurate when referring to national armies in Arab countries to this day, with the exception of the first. I would generally be hard-pressed to say that Arab armies try to engage in political warfare and/or avoid direct conflict. Saudi Arabia’s pounding of Yemen is anything but indirect. The one that Atkine surprisingly missed or did not address was nepotism in the ranks. Typically, the individuals at the highest echelons of an Arab army did not get there on merit, but because they were related to or intimately connected to the political leaders. All of this being said, there have been steps in more modernist Arab countries like Jordan to allow information to flow more easily between units and to create increased internal cohesiveness. However, these improvements are few and far between. Coordination between Arab States on military matters is still incredibly frustrating as a number of American generals who have tried to assemble the Arab coalition against Islamic State can attest.

Many of these issues, however, do not apply when talking about the insurgent groups, paramilitaries, and terrorist organizations that are much more effective (for good or ill) than the national armies. Because of their less hierarchical structure, their cross-tribal organization, their meritocratic promotion structure, and their more honest publication of their intents, these behave much more similarly to functional militias as opposed to dysfunctional armies. The most important distinction between armies and these less-standardized fighting groups is the allowance for initiative. Islamic State, for example, because of its more cell-based organization actually allowed its different units to pursue their own local objectives (as long as they fell within the larger acceptable objectives). This provided numerous moments for the militants to demonstrate initiative. Something like this would never have happened in an Arab national army. The word of the general is law.

The hardest things to eradicate, and these crop up in the insurgent groups, paramilitaries, and terrorist organizations as well as the national armies are (1) knowledge hoarding – 3, (2) seeing education as prestigious and, therefore, something that should be restricted to contain the prestige – 5, and (3) failure to take responsibility for failure – 9

I was stationed in Kuwait in 2003; Feb-July at an airbase there.

The thing that surprised me the most was the fact that there were virtually zero actual Kuwaiti people maintaining the aircraft of the Kuwait Air Force, they were all foreign contractors.

Good video, and good analysis. Thank you for posting. Of note, the Taliban is now struggling to manage their forces since they’ve switched away from an initiative type insurgent approach to military force and towards a state-like approach. Probably for all the reason Para outlined that insurgent groups succeed in the Arab world.

One thing to note, I’m curious how much of this phenomenon is Arab language based (since the Taliban are not Arab) or if it might be better to characterize this as a facet of Islamist cultures. Because the observations on Arabs seem to apply across the Muslim world.

Keep in mind the Turks came into the Middle East from central Asia, kicked Arab butt, and took over the territory that the Arabs themselves had taken from the Byzantines earlier (and, yes, then the Byzantines themselves.)

The Turks owned it for centuries, actually until they picked the losing side in WWI and had the land taken from them by the Treaty of Paris and given to Europeans (France and UK).

The Arabs never needed/developed the military skills that would have been necessary to fight and win a war to capture territory from a determined, local modern opponent.

Reason being, the Arabs did not reconquer the Middle East from the Turks; they were handed it back by the French and British ex-colonial powers after insurrections/guerilla/national liberation/insurgencies (pick your favorite term) made holding those territories too annoying/expensive for the distant colonials to keep, by using the tactics described in that article.

Not surprising the Arabian countries are flailing, and failing, at modern war. And given their attitudes and positions, that's probably a good thing.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
The Turks owned it for centuries, actually until they picked the losing side in WWI and had the land taken from them by the Treaty of Paris and given to Europeans (France and UK).

Regardless of WW1's outcome, by the 19th and early 20th century the Ottomans were an incurably broken empire that was in major decline and racked with internal division, economic stagnation, and government corruption and ineptitude, which would have lost the majority of their territory one way or another anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Regardless of WW1's outcome, by the 19th and early 20th century the Ottomans were an incurably broken empire that was in major decline and racked with internal division, economic stagnation, and government corruption and ineptitude, which would have lost the majority of their territory one way or another anyway.

Right.

Point being, as decrepit as they had become, the Ottoman Turks still dominated the locals, who did not have even capability to overcome even the 'sick man of Europe.'

I'm not sure who would have prevailed, absent the Turks going with the Central Powers. Maybe the Russians from the north, or the British pushing east from Egypt and west from India would have wound up splitting it? But whichever empire wound up with it, I very much doubt the Arabs could have wound up with much if anything on their own.