The Frailty of Arab Armies

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Whoever listens to official Arab media might think the Arab armies are perpetually mobilized, barely achieving one victory before moving on to achieve yet another great victory.

Whoever listens to or watches military action films might think these armies spend their time training on every type of weapon, the latest included, always vigilant in devising military tactics to deliver swift, decisive blows to enemy formations.

Arab rulers deceived us, before the June 1967 defeat, into believing the Arab armies were ready to pounce on the Zionist entity, eliminate it, and put an end to its existence, and Arabs lived, as a result of Arab media manipulation, celebratory days on the assumption that Israel was drawing its last breath, that Palestine would be liberated, and that Palestinian refugees would return to their homes with honor. The Arab illusion did not last long, and the entire nation, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, was suddenly struck by a bitter, crushing defeat whose disgrace has no equal in the history of wars.

The scene is no different now, in these very moments when wars rage in a number of Arab countries. Whoever listens to or watches official Arab media, Syrian, Iraqi, and Saudi media especially, falls into the same triumphalist illusion the nation fell into decades ago. Illusory victories are achieved, while the fighting and bloodshed continue, with no stability in sight.

And if all these victories were truly being achieved, how does the fighting continue, perhaps more fiercely than before? Now unofficial, non-independent media rush to the rescue of this side or that, without concern for the risks of forgery and falsification to the Arab nation as a whole. Arabs are now under the weight of both official and unofficial media lies. And let us not forget that hypocritical writers and thinkers wage this battle too, alongside corrupt clerics who turn people away from the path of God.

The Iraqi Army

Years have passed since the American occupation of Iraq, and the Iraqi army still cannot get its affairs in order, still cannot impose stability on this great oil-rich country. Corruption has settled over the land of the Two Rivers, and from it flared the media of filthy sectarianism and confessionalism, crafted by Arab rulers in cooperation with the United States.

Instead of Iraqis busying themselves with building their nation, they turned their gaze toward the engines of strife and internal infighting, and surrendered to notions of ethnic supremacy and the monopolization of paradise by sects that have torn Iraqis apart and threaten the unity of the homeland. As for the Iraqi army, it has remained dependent on arms exporters or military benefactors from East and West. No military institution with a clear national doctrine, or a fighting doctrine serving the interest of defending the nation, has ever been established in Iraq.

The army has remained weak and vulnerable to targeting by fighting groups funded and armed from outside Iraq, fighting in the name of God and the Islamic message. And despite the Iraqi army’s constant announcements of tactical and strategic military achievements against these groups, it is clear that these groups only grow in numbers, armament, and funding.

Recently, the Iraqi army fled before ISIS fighters, who managed to seize control of a third of Iraq within two days, and its flight differed from the flight of the Arab armies in 1967 in only one respect: Iraq’s soldiers fled to save themselves, only to die by execution at the hands of ISIS. So how could a large ISIS force, reinforced with lethal war equipment, move without the Iraqi army knowing what was happening under its own feet? The army was caught by surprise by the attack, and it is clear Iraqi intelligence is even more disappointing and feeble than the army itself. Where were the Iraqi intelligence forces, and what use are they if they knew nothing of this massive violation of Iraqi territory?

The Syrian Army

If there is a clear deficiency in the Arab armies, the Syrian army reflects the clearest form of this deficiency. The first question that arises: how could armed groups dig tunnels over time and smuggle huge quantities of weapons into Syrian territory without the knowledge of Syrian intelligence and the Syrian army? The ease with which armed groups have operated in Syria, from the very start, reflects the fragility of Syrian security and the army, and how easily they can be penetrated. And if armed groups are capable of penetrating the Syrian state’s security, how much more capable is Israel of doing the same?

The Syrian army, which is supposed to be a national army ready to defend the Arab nation, cannot easily liberate a small village — it must continue bombarding it for several days before gaining control, and even then without firmly securing its new positions. It loses, in many cases, what it has gained. There are cities and villages the Syrian army has been unable to control throughout the years of fighting, still standing firm against it, such as Douma, Zamalka, Daraya, and Raqqa.

The recent battles in Bosra al-Sham, Idlib, and Jisr al-Shughour indicated the frailty of the Syrian army and the inability of the political, security, and military leaderships to provide the requirements for military accomplishments. Armed groups are still able, to this day, to enter Syria and bring in heavy weapons, while the army is unable to control the borders and the security forces are unable to monitor and gather sufficient information about infiltrators and smuggled weapons.

The reason is clear: ordinary people are not concerned with supporting the security and military forces, and often help the armed groups in their fighting instead.

The Saudi Army

It has now become clear to the world that there is a myth called the “Saudi army,” because this army does not yet deserve the title of an army, despite the billions of dollars spent arming it. This army was previously defeated by the Houthis, and now does not dare to fight, believing that an air war alone will defeat the Yemenis. It is clear the Saudi army is not qualified to fight and possesses no fighting doctrine whatsoever, and has no desire to hold its ground on the battlefield.

It is an army that tries to fight with the blood of others — Egyptians, Pakistanis, and Turks. It searches for mercenaries to manufacture a false history for itself in its fighting against Yemenis, and it seems the states that gambled on providing mercenaries did not fully respond to the lure of Saudi money, so it continued its aerial bombardment without achieving any accomplishment, becoming Israel’s partner at the global level in destroying Arab infrastructure.

Corrupt clerics have not held back from continuing to pump out self-serving fatwas to gather support for the war, and hypocritical, lying writers have not stopped dressing up the atrocities of Saudi aerial bombardment. As for Saudi media, and the Arab media outlets aligned with it, they have not stopped tracking the “great victories” achieved by the Saudi air force.

Perhaps the international and Arab piling-on against Iraq and Syria offers some excuse for the Syrian and Iraqi armies, but what excuse does the Saudi army have, backed as it is by great powers, the United States foremost among them?

Excess in Military Statements

Following the pattern of the Arab wars against Israel, Arab leaders — political, security, and military — do not hesitate to issue resounding military statements about accomplishments on the ground. They exaggerate greatly in their statements, deceiving people into believing victory is near, indeed already in hand. If we look at the Iraqi army’s statements over the years, one would expect that every single member of al-Qaeda and ISIS has already been killed. According to the military statements, the Iraqi army possesses not just bullets but reapers of souls and spirits, inflicting intensive killing on members of the armed groups.

Accordingly, there should be no al-Qaeda or ISIS left in Iraq at all, and the question remains: who, then, are those actually fighting on the ground? Are they Martian ghosts arrived from space, or were the statements, even partially, nothing but lies?

The matter is no different for the Syrian army, which kills members of the armed groups en masse. According to its own statements, the Syrian army has eliminated every last gunman, and Syria now enjoys calm and stability. This is contradicted by reality: the destruction of Syria continues unabated, and people remain displaced, scattered across the corners of the earth.

The Saudi statements are no different from the others, and it seems Asiri has a green light to achieve whatever field accomplishments he sees fit.

Lies drape the Saudi army’s statements, while the world’s television screens carry the real images of the systematic destruction Saudi Arabia is inflicting on Yemen.

The Failure of the Arab Security Apparatuses

It seems the Arab security apparatuses are even more of a failure than the armies, because they are incapable of gathering precise information about the nation’s enemies and the dangers threatening it. Arab intellectuals and thinkers have long written about how these apparatuses’ actual tasks involve pursuing Arab citizens, not the enemies of the Arabs. These apparatuses were established to defend the political regimes, not the Arab homeland and its wealth and resources. The Arab security apparatuses have busied themselves terrorizing the Arab citizen so the political regime can feel reassured of its own continuation, and the result has been a squandering of the nation’s security.

This is what has enabled Israel and its allies to penetrate the Arab ranks at both the popular and official levels, gathering the greatest possible amount of information that has qualified them to achieve easy victories over the Arabs. We Arabs are penetrated at the security level, and Israel can easily meddle in Arab security through its influential agents spread across the length of Arab geography.

Because of the crimes of the Arab security apparatuses — Syrian, Iraqi, and Saudi specifically — against the Arab citizen, this citizen has decided not to be a pillar of the state, since doing so would mean supporting criminal rulers, and has come to prefer standing with the external enemy against the internal enemy who wrongs him, humiliates him, terrorizes him, pursues him over his daily bread, and strips him of his dignity and his right to life. The Arab regimes have committed crimes against the peoples, and the result is hatred and animosity destroying the social fabric. Let no oppressor blame the peoples, for he himself is the corrupt renegade who prepared the fertile ground for internal infighting and bloodshed, and opened the door for external enemies to intervene and pour oil on the fire.

The Wars of the Despots

The Arab soldier used to flee the battlefield because he knew he would die for a tyrannical, oppressive ruler conspiring against the nation’s interests, and he flees now because he knows the war is a war in defense of despotism or religious backwardness. Arab soldiers do not die for an Arab cause, but for scum mired in depravity, filth, and bloodshed.

And if the regimes show a great lack of sense of responsibility, those fighting in the name of Islam are no less criminal, and no less reckless with the nation’s fate.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “وهن الجيوش العربية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.