One of my library booksale finds this summer was Arabs at War by Kenneth Pollack. This massive book is 583 pages of text and another 70 pages of notes. This is a Council on Foreign Relations book published by University of Nebraska in 2002. It covers the time period 1948-1991.

The introductory chapter is “Understanding Modern Arab Military Effectiveness.” Pollack has chapters on Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya Saudi Arabia, and Syria.The is an end chapter of conclusions and lessons.

If you want detailed accounts on the various Arab-Israeli wars, this is your book. There is lots of detail of how battles unfolded. Libya’s adventures in Uganda and Chad, Egypt in North Yemen, Iraq fighting the Kurds are also covered.

Pollack gives a history of the various Arab armies with their origins often as British or French constabularies that expanded. Jordan had the best army in the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948. It lost cohesiveness after the British officers were sent home in 1956 and the Jordanian Army was vastly expanded. I did not know that Nasser hired 50 German offices who had served in the Wehrmacht in WW2 as consultants in the 50s. Egypt and Iraq’s relationship with the Soviet Union were both more tulmultuous than I had known.

The Arabs were good with logistics, horrible with maintenance. They were good as engineers, their artillery was inaccurate. They have had some good generals and strategic plans. The Arabs were bad at dealing with changes in a plan. The Arabs were addicted to frontal attacks and slow to adapt to changes unlike the Israelis. They simply were not nimble on the battlefield. The Iranians were far more aggressive if under equipped and inflicted some devastating defeats on the Iraqis in 1981-82.

I would be curious to see a follow up examining Arab irregulars and light infantry such as Hezballah in Lebanon. I can remember watching the PBS series on the Cold War. One portion covered the South Africans facing off against the Cubans in Angola. Fidel Castro told the Soviets that the Cubans knew how to fight an African war. It dawned on me later the Cubans fought better as more mobile light infantry in smaller units than the Soviets using heavy divisions. It might be a similar situation with the Arabs who don’t adapt well to Western heavy mechanized battles but might do better. There were tribesmen in Chad using Toyota pick up trucks mounted with machine guns, recoiless rifles, rock launchers who would swarm the Libyans picking off outpost after outpost.

This is a great book covering in great detail post WW2 warfare in one of the worlds perennial hot spots.