raharris1973
Well-known member
Why do Greater Mideast soldiers and leaders function and fight so much better in Party/Sect/Militia format than State/Army format?
The combat record Arab armies in the 20th century was consistently poor despite individual instances of bravery, tenacity, and sometimes creativity. Very often forces were panic prone, maintenance of even good and new equipment was poor, and poor leadership and teamwork in particular prevented Arab forces from taking or holding the initiative offensively, or maintaining a dynamic flexible defense.
However, when not serving in the format of an Army under a formal state, the militiamen of the Shiite Party sect Hezbollah, Party of G-d, showed resilience and unkillability and creativity at inflicting casualties on Israel and its collaborators in Lebanon, in doing cross-border attacks, and in performing para-state functions for Shia Lebanese populations and non Shia Lebanese in predominately Shia areas like South Lebanon, Beqaa Valley and East Beirut, often seen as better than the formal state's functioning. The measure of Hezbollah's true comparative success in contrast to Arab state run armies was the Israeli decision in 1999 to unilaterally evacuate its South Lebanon security zone and abandon its South Lebanon Army proxy allies, without any diplomatic process, peace deal, armistice, or even promise to stop attacking from Hezbollah.
Why did Hezbollah, in militia format, have the ability to get concessions by force alone from Israel, that Arab armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt could not get by force alone? The Egyptian Army could arguably be argued to have obtained concessions from Israel, Egypt has Sinai back, but most definitely, the Egyptian military pressure only accomplished this in combination with diplomacy and reciprocal diplomatic concessions on Egypt's part. Hezbollah didn't have to reciprocate squat. The leaders and rank and file personnel in both countries are both Middle Eastern, Arabic speaking, from developing countries with mixed and rising education levels. Though certainly Egypt and Lebanon are different countries. Hezbollah members have the characteristic of being Shiite whereas most troops of Arab frontline states were Sunni. But being Shia by itself is no superpower. The Iraqi Army, a mix of Shia and Sunni, certainly more Sunni at the officer level, got at least somewhat the better of the thoroughly Shia Iranian Army in the Iran-Iraq War, securing territorial gains, albeit by inches, by finishing the war in occupation of the disputed Shatt-al-Arab [Iraq only lost it again to Iran not in combat, but by *forfeiting* it to Iran in the days preceding the Desert Storm ground campaign, to fend off/buy off/prevent an opportunistic Iranian attack].
The example has been repeated since.
The US trained official Iraqi military crumpled before ISIS in 2014. Kurdish militias in the north lost some ground to them too, but not nearly as much. The same recruiting pool of officers and men in Iraq, mainly Shia soldiers and officers, started to do better at stemming ISIS in 2015 and 2016 as explicitly Shia sectarian militias, and sometimes even Sunni 'sidekick' militias to Shia ones, with them getting re-badged as Iraqi Army "Popular Mobilization Forces".
This is not limited to Arabs either. The official Afghan National Army crumpling in 2021 in the face of the Taliban as yet another example.
The combat record Arab armies in the 20th century was consistently poor despite individual instances of bravery, tenacity, and sometimes creativity. Very often forces were panic prone, maintenance of even good and new equipment was poor, and poor leadership and teamwork in particular prevented Arab forces from taking or holding the initiative offensively, or maintaining a dynamic flexible defense.
However, when not serving in the format of an Army under a formal state, the militiamen of the Shiite Party sect Hezbollah, Party of G-d, showed resilience and unkillability and creativity at inflicting casualties on Israel and its collaborators in Lebanon, in doing cross-border attacks, and in performing para-state functions for Shia Lebanese populations and non Shia Lebanese in predominately Shia areas like South Lebanon, Beqaa Valley and East Beirut, often seen as better than the formal state's functioning. The measure of Hezbollah's true comparative success in contrast to Arab state run armies was the Israeli decision in 1999 to unilaterally evacuate its South Lebanon security zone and abandon its South Lebanon Army proxy allies, without any diplomatic process, peace deal, armistice, or even promise to stop attacking from Hezbollah.
Why did Hezbollah, in militia format, have the ability to get concessions by force alone from Israel, that Arab armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt could not get by force alone? The Egyptian Army could arguably be argued to have obtained concessions from Israel, Egypt has Sinai back, but most definitely, the Egyptian military pressure only accomplished this in combination with diplomacy and reciprocal diplomatic concessions on Egypt's part. Hezbollah didn't have to reciprocate squat. The leaders and rank and file personnel in both countries are both Middle Eastern, Arabic speaking, from developing countries with mixed and rising education levels. Though certainly Egypt and Lebanon are different countries. Hezbollah members have the characteristic of being Shiite whereas most troops of Arab frontline states were Sunni. But being Shia by itself is no superpower. The Iraqi Army, a mix of Shia and Sunni, certainly more Sunni at the officer level, got at least somewhat the better of the thoroughly Shia Iranian Army in the Iran-Iraq War, securing territorial gains, albeit by inches, by finishing the war in occupation of the disputed Shatt-al-Arab [Iraq only lost it again to Iran not in combat, but by *forfeiting* it to Iran in the days preceding the Desert Storm ground campaign, to fend off/buy off/prevent an opportunistic Iranian attack].
The example has been repeated since.
The US trained official Iraqi military crumpled before ISIS in 2014. Kurdish militias in the north lost some ground to them too, but not nearly as much. The same recruiting pool of officers and men in Iraq, mainly Shia soldiers and officers, started to do better at stemming ISIS in 2015 and 2016 as explicitly Shia sectarian militias, and sometimes even Sunni 'sidekick' militias to Shia ones, with them getting re-badged as Iraqi Army "Popular Mobilization Forces".
This is not limited to Arabs either. The official Afghan National Army crumpling in 2021 in the face of the Taliban as yet another example.
