From Baghdad to Yemen: Arab Armies Fought Their Brothers for Washington, But Disappeared When Gaza Called.
Look closely at the last four decades of Arab military history and a pattern stares back at you.
When Washington needed ground troops to push Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991, Gulf and Arab states delivered them. Egypt alone reportedly sent well over 20,000 soldiers, some estimates put the figure above 35,000, making it the second largest contingent in the coalition after the US itself.
Morocco, Kuwait, Oman, the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all contributed forces of their own, some numbering in the tens of thousands. Iraq was pushed out of Kuwait. The country never recovered what came after.
When NATO decided Libya needed regime change in 2011, Qatar and the UAE supplied fighter jets. Jordan reportedly joined the air campaign too. Gulf monarchies are widely reported to have helped bankroll the operation itself, effectively paying for the missiles dropped on a fellow Arab state. Libya has not had a functioning unified government since.
When Saudi Arabia launched Operation Decisive Storm against Yemen’s Houthis in 2015, with American and British backing, it mobilised around 150,000 troops and 100 fighter jets of its own. The UAE sent 30 warplanes. Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and Morocco all contributed aircraft, several of which were later withdrawn as the war dragged on.
Sudan reportedly committed thousands of ground troops, a contribution that would later shrink dramatically as the war’s costs mounted. Egypt stayed operationally involved throughout, its navy patrolling the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Yemen remains, by most humanitarian assessments, one of the worst crises on earth.
And in Syria, reporting has long described two coordination centres in Jordan and Turkey, through which Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan and Bahrain allegedly helped arm and fund tens of thousands of fighters, an effort that reportedly wound down once Washington decided it should.
Four Arab and Muslim nations. Four wars against fellow Arab or Muslim nations. Four operations rooms, in some form, ultimately answering to American strategic interests.
Then look at Gaza.
For close to two years now, by most widely reported tallies, well over a hundred thousand Palestinians have been killed or wounded, the majority of them women and children.
And what did the same capitals that mobilised hundreds of thousands of troops against Iraq, that funded airstrikes on Libya, that sent fighter jets over Yemen, do this time? They watched. Crossings stayed shut because Washington had not given the green light. Aid convoys queued at borders while children starved on the other side.
Worse still, reports throughout the war described Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE maintaining land and logistical routes that benefited Israel, even as Yemen’s Houthis tried to choke off Israeli-linked shipping through the Red Sea.
So ask yourself plainly. Who actually commands these armies? Whose green light do they wait for before soldiers move or crossings open?
The answer has never really changed.
It is the same capital that called the Iraq war liberation, the Libya war protection of civilians, the Yemen war restoration of legitimacy, and the Syria war a fight for democracy. The same capital that, when it came to Palestinian lives, offered no order at all, and so its allies offered no action at all.
That silence was not an accident. It was, in every sense that matters, also an order.
