Arab Military Research Articles

Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness

Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness

The Arab Military and American Foreign Policy

A review of "Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness" by Kenneth M. Pollack

Review of: K. Pollack. Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness

The review analyzes the recent book written by an American military expert and political scientist Kenneth Pollack and entitled Armies of the Sand: Past, Present and Future of the Effectiveness of Arab Armies. The author of the monograph has been studying Arab armies and Middle East conflicts for more than 30 years and had previously published several papers that consider the military organization of different countries in the region. In this book, Pollak seeks to summarize long-standing discussions that consider the reasons for the low military effectiveness of the Arab armies after the Second World War. The author consistently examines four principal arguments that seek to explain the reasons for the failures of the Arab armies on the battlefield (the influence of the Soviet military doctrine, politicization, the level of socio-economic development, culture). For each of the hypotheses, Pollack selects the most representative examples from the history of military operations carried out by the Arab armies after 1945. In doing so the researcher tries to prove or disprove the hypotheses. To better substantiate his conclusions Pollack also examines whether non-Arab armies that presumably faced the same difficulties as the Arab ones also performed poorly on the battlefield. The author concludes that Arab culture has been the most influential factor that prevented Arab armies from winning wars.

The formation of military intelligence in the United Arab Emirates: 1965–1974

ABSTRACT There are few comprehensive histories of Arab military intelligence services, and almost nothing on those in the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. This paper begins to fill this gap by providing a detailed history of the early years of military intelligence within what is today probably the most capable Arab military – the Armed Forces of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It describes military intelligence developments between 1965 and 1974 within the Abu Dhabi Defence Force, which was the direct predecessor of the present-day UAE Armed Forces. It concludes with the formation of the entity which is now known as the Directorate of Military Intelligence. The paper is based on archival documents and interviews with those who served in Abu Dhabi’s military intelligence.

Forecasting violent events in the Middle East and North Africa using the Hidden Markov Model and regularized autoregressive models

This paper focuses on forecasting Military Action-type events by both state and non-state actors. Here we demonstrate that the dynamics of these types of events can be adequately described by a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) where the hidden states correspond to different operational regimes of an actor, and observations correspond to event frequency—and the HMM effectively predicts events with different lead times. We also demonstrate that one can enrich statistical time series-based methods that work only on historical data by exploiting predictive signals in real-time external data streams. We demonstrate the superior predictive power of the proposed models with evaluation of recent data capturing activities over two groups, ISIS and the Syrian Arab Military, two countries, Syria and Iraq, and two cities, Aleppo and Mosul. We also present an approach to converting predictions of the proposed models to real-world warnings.

Hero of the crossing: how Anwar Sadat and the 1973 War changed the world

Its various names—the Yom Kippur War, the October War, the Ramadan War and the 1973 War—reveal that the Arab–Israeli war of October 1973 had and continues to have different meaning and symbolism for the belligerent sides. For the Israelis, the war represents a national trauma that will be forever ingrained in the collective psyche, but for the Arabs, and particularly the Egyptians, the war represented a victory. The myth of total Israeli military superiority, largely reinforced by the Six-Day War, was smashed and the Arab forces managed to penetrate Israel's territory, both in the north and south of the country. For the Egyptians, the war would also lead to both a return of the Sinai and a certain restoration of Arab military, political and national pride. Thomas W. Lippman very ably reveals the contours of President Anwar Sadat, a central character to this period of Middle Eastern statecraft, who took on the Arab world in his quest for peace with Israel and challenged the superpowers' assumptions about policy-making, both domestically and on the world stage. Lippman asserts that by 1975 Sadat's aims were becoming clear: restore Egyptian national pride, sign a peace deal with Israel and forge an alliance with the United States after the failure of former President Gamal Abdel Nasser's Soviet alignment. With these three aims, Sadat was to carve himself a political niche surpassing regional boundaries, which would, in due course, release the extremist forces that killed him.

The Arab Military Force in Palestine Prior to the Invasion of the Arab Armies, 1945–1948

The article examines the size, structure, composition and modi operandi of the Arab military forces which fought the Jews in the 1948 war, before the invasion of the Arab regular armies, based first and foremost on the Arab sources themselves. An attempt is made to assess the substantial reasons behind the Arab defeat in the first ‘civil war’ phase of the campaign, including a comparison of the number of combatants, which also explains the outcome.

The Arab League and Military Operations: Prospects and Challenges in Syria

The humanitarian crisis in Syria has triggered diverse questions on the role of the international community and regional actors – in particular the Arab League – to assume their responsibility in matters of peace and security. Military interventions in past conflicts show proof that the Arab League has the military and doctrinal capacity to justify and accommodate their deployment in its member states and to contribute to international peace and security as envisaged under the UN Charter. A blueprint on future operationalization of military operations under its flag examines the relevant laws which they have to respect.

The Arab Military in the Arab Spring: Agent of Continuity of Change? A Comparative Analysis of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria

The Arab Military in the Arab Spring: Agent of Continuity of Change? A Comparative Analysis of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria

Arabs at war: military effectiveness, 1948-1991

MILITARY AFFAIRS Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991, by Kenneth M. Pollack. Lincoln, NE and London, UK: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. xv + 583 pages. Maps. Tables. Notes to p. 653. Sel bibl. to p. 675. Index to p. 698. $69.95. Ken Pollack, the author of the widely quoted book, The Threatening Storm: A Case for Invading Iraq (New York: Bantam Books, 2002), has also produced a much-- needed analysis of Arab military capabilities. In Arabs at War, which is an expansion of Pollack's unpublished 1996 doctoral thesis at MIT, the author lays out a conceptual framework to analyze the performance of six Arab countries from the War of Liberation with Israel in 1948 through the liberation of Kuwait by the US-led coalition in 1991. But, instead of analyzing military effectiveness, the book turns into an expose of Arab military ineffectiveness. Pollack lists ten categories to frame his analysis of why the Arab militaries have been generally ineffective for over 40 years. The categories include: unit cohesion; generalship; tactical leadership; information management; technical skills and weapons handling; logistics; maintenance; morale, training; and, finally, cowardice. The performance of the Egyptian and Iraqi Armed Forces constitute the longest chapters in the book, since they were involved in the majority of fighting during the period that Pollack reviews. Syrian, Jordanian, and Libyan military actions are analyzed in progressively shorter chapters, while Saudi Armed Forces' actions during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 are covered in just over 20 pages. Over 35 maps are scattered throughout the text, illustrating the battles and forces involved in major campaigns or key military engagements. These maps help orient the reader to the situation on the ground, though additional maps would have helped the reader through this voluminous work, as very few tables were used. In each chapter, Pollack summarizes his view of the strengths and weaknesses of the six armed forces that engaged in combat with other Arab countries, Israel, Iran, or the United States. Pollack then draws together the key points from his analysis of each of the six armed forces into his final chapter, Conclusions and Lessons. Here, he explains why the Arab armies performed so poorly in combat during the latter half of the 201 Century - certainly not for a lack of money spent on their armed forces or on expensive arms purchases from the United States, from other Western countries, or from the Soviet Bloc. …

Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991

List of Tables List of Maps Preface Acknowledgments Understanding Modern Arab Military Effectiveness 1. Egypt 2. Iraq 3. Jordan 4. Libya 5. Saudi Arabia 6. Syria Conclusions and Lessons Notes Selected Bibliography Index

The Arab Military Option

The Arab Military Option

The Arab Military Elite

The field of modern civil-military relations is not a totally fresh one, still unexplored. Kurt Lang's 1969 bibliography on military sociology lists over one thousand items—books, articles, and unpublished material—and this catalogue includes only the material available in English. His section on civil-military relations lists some 250 items,1an impressive accumulation in a supposedly new field.

Arab League

Plans by Arab League officials to establish an Arab government over the whole of Palestine culminated in an announcement on September 20, 1948, of the formation of such a government at Gaza, to be headed by Premier Ahmed Hilmi Pasha, Arab Military Governor of Jerusalem. King Abdullah of Transjordan promply served notice that he would bar it from the Holy Land as it amounted to recognition of partition, which the Arabs had opposed. A meeting of Palestine Arab leaders at Jericho proclaimed King Abdullah of Transjordan as King of “all Palestine” on November 28 and on December 7 the cabinet of Transjordan gave its consent that King Abdullah accept the crown of a united Palestine and Transjordan. On December 14 the Palestinian Arabs told the Arab League that they would support the Jericho decision in spite of the fact that the League was using all means of pressure to persuade King Abdullah to renounce the plan and even was considering expelling Transjordan from the League. On December 21 Abdullah's appointment of a new Mufti of Jerusalem to replace Haj Aminal-Husseini constituted a direct challenge to the Arab League which declared that it would continue to support the all Palestine government proclaimed at Gaza and that it was up to the Palestinian people to decide their own future.