184 ISLAM AT WAR
Brigade moved in to engage the Israelis. The Israelis quickly battered it
into a hasty withdrawal.
In these two instances, the Iraqi 3rd and Jordanian 40th advanced with-
out reconnaissance to probe for Israeli forces and blundered into forces
ready to deal with them. They led with their chins and took a terrible
pounding. In addition, the two advances were totally uncoordinated. Once
again, the Arab failure to cooperate activities between the various armies
cost them heavily. In subsequent actions, this failure to coordinate and
communicate saw the Jordanians advancing without promised Iraqi sup-
port, or the Iraqi artillery bombarding Jordanian forces. On more than one
occasion, Syrian aircraft shot down Iraqi aircraft. The Arabs suffered all
the problems of coalition warfare and more.
When the cease-fire went into effect on October 22, the Syrians had
lost 1,150 tanks, the Iraqis 100, and the Jordanians 50. The Israelis re-
covered 867 Syrian tanks from the battlefield and found many of them in
good running order. The Syrians lost 370 prisoners and 3,500 killed. By
contrast, the Israelis lost 250 tanks, 772 killed, 2,453 wounded, and 65
prisoners, including pilots.
On a military level, the Arab planning for the 1973 attack was sound
and realistic. Detailed operational planning had been undertaken from
1970 to 1973 and supported with practical and intensive training by the
Soviets and by the injection of professionalism into the Arab officer corps.
Egyptian Generals Ahmed Ismail Ali, Said el Shazli, and Abdul Ghani el
Gamsay, and the Syrian general staff and Generals Mustafa Tlas and Yusuf
Shakur were schooled in the scientific, but rigid Soviet methods of war
as well. Despite this training, or perhaps because of it, the Arab strategic
plans erred on the side of caution and rigidity. The problems of profes-
sionalism had been addressed, but the Arab officer corps still lacked the
innovation and spontaneity that takes a technically competent army to the
next level. A few exceptions to this occurred, and the Egyptian and Syrian
commando and paratroop formations displayed real daring in the missions
assigned to them. Overall, the Arab troops fought competently in the face
of concentrated Israeli armored attacks, while inflicting heavy casualties
on the enemy.
However, the Arabs failed in two important areas. Unlike their Israeli
counterparts, the Arab commanders, for the most part, failed to dominate
the battlefield by their physical and moral presence in the firing line or
with their forward troops. Aside from some exceptions, overall the criti-
cism stands. In one instance the Egyptian 25th Armored Brigade advanced
into prepared killing ground and was utterly destroyed. Of the ninety-six
T-62 tanks that went into the battle, only ten escaped. All armored per-