U-turn on Kuwaiti conscription 19, October 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Kuwait.Tags: GCC military force, Kuwait conscription, Kuwait draft, Kuwaiti army
trackback
Kuwait’s mooted plan to bring back conscription for Kuwait males is to be abandoned. The plan suggested in July was to provide some kind of cohesion in what some feared was an ever more fractured and privileged society. Additionally, it was hoped that some kind of army training would counter the trend of increasingly ‘feminine’ males in Kuwait: a clear threat to something or other.
Yet Army chiefs have said that they would prefer instead to maintain a volunteer force and eschew the
onerous burden of [training] tens of thousands of young Kuwaiti men
This comes as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about the work-ethic in GCC national armies which is generally abysmal. Additionally, a conscript army would exacerbate a problem rife throughout all GCC armies: yes, they have the latest and often best equipment (planes, boats etc) but (surprisingly) often they cannot use them and can certainly not repair them.
One Western Commander noted that one GCC Navy (that shall remain nameless) bought an advanced coastal patrolling ship but stubbornly refused to take it out at night. Firstly, because they were afraid that they wouldn’t be able to find their way back to port in the dark and secondly because the Captain of the boat (or whatever he’s called) had to “get milk for his wife every morning.”
The Gulf blog 
Comments»
No comments yet — be the first.