Beyond Trending: What is war of attrition? 

Attrition warfare 

The war of attrition is a military strategy where a warring side seeks to exhaust its opponent’s resources, personnel, and morale (will to fight) until the capacity to fight collapses. The strategy involves a large amount of equipment, soldiers, and supplies to maintain sustained pressure on the enemy. 

The term attrition originates from the Latin word attritionem, meaning “a rubbing against”. In other words, the term attrition means rubbing or wearing something away. In attrition warfare, a warring side with greater resources seeks to wear down its opponent’s resources to the point of collapse. 

The strategy has been used since ancient times, and is often compared with the tactic of maneuver warfare, where the focus is on strategic positioning to disrupt an opponent’s forces without direct confrontation, or if a fight occurs, the attrition is one-sided. The strategies are closely interlinked.

According to Nicholas Murray, an expert on military history, the word attrition is synonymous with World War I on the Western and Italian fronts. The stalemate caused by the developments of trench warfare pushed the warring sides to rely on overwhelming forces. Since Allied Powers outnumbered the Central Powers in men, resources, and industrial capacity, the war of attrition favoured them.

War of attrition in West Asia 

A major war of attrition was fought in West Asia between Egypt and Israel from 1969 to 1970 over control of the Sinai Peninsula, a large desert area between the two countries. The war was rooted in the unresolved land disputes from the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel captured territories from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

Following the Six-Day War, Israel attempted to fortify its positions along the Suez Canal (which lay between Israel and Egypt) in a defence line called the “Bar-Lev line” after the then Chief of Staff. Opposing Israel’s attempt to make it permanently entrenched in Sinai, Egypt launched the war of attrition in early 1969.  

Ahmed S Khalidi, in an article “The War of Attrition” published in Journal of Palestine Studies, explains how Egypt’s strategy sought to wear down the Israeli military and economy. The step-by-step military strategy expanded from artillery bombardment against Israeli defenses along the Suez Canal to limited crossing, extensive operations across the Canal, and the final full-scale crossing operation.

In the ongoing Iran war, Tehran’s objective seems to ensure survival rather than victory in conventional sense. Given the military, intelligence and technological superiority of the US and Israel, “Iran’s approach appears to rest on a belief that it can absorb punishment longer than its adversaries are willing to sustain pain and costs”, argues Amir Azimi in the BBC. 

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