Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World [Hardcover]

Nir Rosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2010

Nir Rosen’s Aftermath, an extraordinary feat of reporting, follows the contagious spread of radicalism and sectarian violence that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing civil war have unleashed in the Muslim world.

 

Rosen—who the Weekly Standard once bitterly complained has “great access to the Baathists and jihadists who make up the Iraqi insurgency”— has spent nearly a decade among warriors and militants who have been challenging American power in the Muslim world. In Aftermath, he tells their story, showing the other side of the U.S. war on terror, traveling from the battle-scarred streets of Baghdad to the alleys, villages, refugee camps, mosques, and killing grounds of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and finally Afghanistan, where Rosen has a terrifying encounter with the Taliban as their “guest,” and witnesses the new Obama surge fizzling in southern Afghanistan.

Rosen was one of the few Westerners to venture inside the mosques of Baghdad to witness the first stirrings of sectarian hatred in the months after the U.S. invasion. He shows how weapons, tactics, and sectarian ideas from the civil war in Iraq penetrated neighboring countries and threatened their stability, especially Lebanon and Jordan, where new jihadist groups mushroomed. Moreover, he shows that the spread of violence at the street level is often the consequence of specific policies hatched in Washington, D.C. Rosen offers a seminal and provocative account of the surge, told from the perspective of U.S. troops on the ground, the Iraqi security forces, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents that were both allies and adversaries. He also tells the story of what happened to these militias once they outlived their usefulness to the Americans.

Aftermath is both a unique personal history and an unsparing account of what America has wrought in Iraq and the region. The result is a hair- raising, 360-degree view of the modern battlefield its consequent humanitarian catastrophe, and the reality of counterinsurgency.

 

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This could not be a more timely or trenchant examination of the repercussions of the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Journalist Rosen has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s, among other publications, and authored In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq (2006). His on-the-ground experience in the Middle East has given him the extensive contact network and deep knowledge—advantages that have evaded many, stymied by the great dangers and logistical nightmares of reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan. This work is based on seven years of reporting focused on how U.S. involvement in Iraq set off a continuing chain of unintended consequences, especially the spread of radicalism and violence in the Middle East. Rosen offers a balanced answer to the abiding question of whether our involvement was worth it. Many of his points have been made by others, but Rosen’s accounts of his own reactions to what he’s witnessed and how he tracked down his stories are absolutely spellbinding. --Connie Fletcher

Review

THOMAS E. RICKS, author of Fiasco and The Gamble
“If you think you understand the war in Iraq, or just think you should try to, read this book. This is a deep dive through the last seven years of America’s foray into the Middle East. No one will agree with everything here, but anyone interested in what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan will benefit from reading it.”

ANDREW J. BACEVICH, author of Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War
“For Americans, the story of U.S. military involvement in the Islamic world centers on ‘us’ not ‘them,’ with Afghans and Iraqis cast as victims or bystanders. In this brilliantly reported and deeply humane book, Nir Rosen demolishes this self-serving picture, depicting the relationship between the occupied and the occupiers in all its nuanced complexity.”

Reza Aslan, author of No god but God and Beyond Fundamentalism
"A searing, first-hand account of the consequences of America's "war on terrorism" by one of the most respected voices on the Middle East. Honest, fearless, devastating. No one but Nir Rosen could have written this book."

NOAM CHOMSKY
“It is a painful experience to read Nir Rosen’s highly informed account of the destruction of Iraq and the spread of the plague of sectarian violence incited by the invasion to Lebanon and beyond. The image this meticulously detailed rendition brings to mind is of a brutal ignoramus wielding a sledgehammer to smash a complex structure he does not understand, with unpredictable but predictably awful consequences. Amazingly, Rosen finds rays of hope in the ruins. No less compelling, and distressing, is his vivid account of his experiences in Taliban-controlled territory. An indispensable contribution to the understanding of great contemporary tragedies.”

Parag Khanna, author of The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century
"The world would be a more dangerous place without Nir Rosen's Aftermath. His bracing recounting of the invasion of Iraq and subsequent insurgency, and blunt dissection of the myths surrounding the surge are an essential antidote to the complacency that has set in as America exits Iraq--and which could lead to similar debacles in the future."

Pat Lang 
“Aftermath is a masterwork, the product of a life devoted to a relentless pursuit of the knowledge and understanding of strange men who walk in nearly unimaginable paths across the far places of the world.” 

Chris Hedges, Author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and Empire of Illusion
“Nir Rosen has almost single handedly rescued the name of journalism in the Middle East from a class of reporters who function as courtiers and propagandists for the military and our political elite. Rosen's fierce independence and honesty, as well as an ability to see the wars we are fighting from all sides, make his book exceptional for its nuance, complexity and insight into our bloody march through the Muslim world.”

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 16 and up
  
• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books; 1St Edition edition (October 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568584016
• ISBN-13: 978-1568584010
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #154,001 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bemused by the One Star Review, December 10, 2010

By 

Aaron - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World (Hardcover)

I do not feel myself qualified to write an exacting review of Aftermath, but I simply had to post a small piece in counter-distinction to the only other available customer review, which I found vapid and deliberately misleading.

Aftermath is absolutely essential reading for anyone curious about the history and current affairs of geopolitical activity in the Middle East. Rosen writes in a style which I found perfectly suited to both the material and its urgency. There is simply no better single source of information on this topic.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The account that's been missing, January 22, 2011

By 

Josh (Hays, KS) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World (Hardcover)

One reviewer criticized this book because it is full of stories of individuals and moves from person to person...

That is exactly why this book is important. Think back on how we learned about the war in the news. Looking back through old issues of magazines like Time, the early part of the war was portrayed like a football play book with arrows and circles for the "game plan." Eventually, there was talk of ethnic groups, but hardly anything in depth.

I used to have much more naive ideas about the war and enlisted in the army when I was younger. When I deployed in the surge in 2007, we still had a very shallow understanding that 'if we only try harder, we'll beat the insurgents.' While in Iraq, I read an article that Rosen wrote called "The Myth of the Surge" and it was a rare piece that actually understood what was going on on the ground. My own unit had been negotiating with former enemies and Rosen explains why certain groups resisted and why others didn't and why some ended up working together with us.

The want for a simple narrative of good guys vs. bad guys is exactly what caused so many of these problems to begin with! Slapping easy labels on things helped the public to digest the war (and seemed to help justify it in the minds of those who planned it), but as we all learned, it wasn't that simple.

It is because the war in Iraq and its effects on the surrounding region are so complex that a book like this--that goes in depth about the broad array of different responses--is of such importance. If we truly want to learn why the war played out the way it did, we need to discard the simplistic understanding of it that made it such a mess. If you are prepared for the complex details and nuances of all the different factions and how various groups reacted to various decisions and events, than this book is certainly worth your time!

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, March 30, 2011

By 

Dienne (Cicero, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World (Hardcover)

I will start off by agreeing, reluctantly but whole-heartedly, with the criticism of Rosen's writing made in the review by Z. Cohen. This has got to be one of the most tedious books I have ever slogged through. It's roughly equivalent to reading a 560 page newspaper article. There is little flow between sections - we often jump abruptly to a whole new topic. There doesn't seem to be much order to the presentation - entire paragraphs could be put in an entirely different order and it would make little if any difference. Much of the text is basically a series of long quotes (not blocked, even when the quote comprises an entire paragraph or more), which read the way people talk and, hence, are difficult to follow. In fact, I have to admit that, try as I might, I couldn't force my way through the whole thing. I skipped the entire section on Afghanistan and only skimmed the final chapter.

Nonetheless, I believe the book deserves more than one star. I think Rosen is a consummate reporter. He interviewed hundreds of people for the book - Sunnis, Shiites, clerics, militiamen, militia leaders, government officials, American soldiers and officers, humanitarian workers, and simply ordinary Iraqis (and Syrians, Lebanese, etc.). He's not afraid to go where the story takes him and he put himself at great risk to cover events that few other English-speaking journalists were covering. Because of this work, we Americans have a perspective from the ground which we might otherwise not have if we rely solely on administration reports and embedded reporters.

But on the other hand, a 560 page book needs to have a focus, more of a point and needs to ultimately have an opinion. Rosen could have interviewed hundreds of Americans, from Main Street to Wall Street, regarding the economic melt-down, but without a focus and a point to make, it would just be a lot of random people's opinions wrapped up into one big package. That's essentially what "Aftermath" is, only regarding the Iraqi view of the Iraq war.

Furthermore, if Rosen's point was to increase sympathy for the Iraqis, he failed with me, at least as far as sympathy for Iraqi men. I do have sympathy for innocent women and children caught up in the testosterone-laden mess. But nearly every man that Rosen interviewed seems to be more part of the problem than the solution. Nearly everyone denies that sectarianism was a problem before the Americans came, and they all deny that they personally support sectarianism. But as Rosen gives them more rope to hang themselves, they nearly all eventually espouse anger, hatred and a desire for "revenge" against members of other sects, ethnicities, religions, etc. Some Lebanese Sunni protesters sum it up nicely on page 393: "We don't want sectarianism, but God is with the Sunnis!" Nearly every person Rosen interviews is focused on getting revenge for past injustices, real or perceived, some dating all the way back to the murder of Hussein, rather than focusing on how to move forward and build a new country.

I will give Rosen kudos for exposing how little the American forces and leadership knew about Iraq, its population and its culture at the time of invasion, how long it took them to start caring enough to start learning, and how inadequate their efforts were. Time after time the Americans, intentionally or unintentionally, ignite sectarian firestorms by favoring one group over another or pitting groups against each other. It took American forces far too long to recognize that they had stumbled into the midst of a civil war (which they themselves had helped to launch through the removal of Saddam Hussein and subsequent actions such as radical de-Baathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi army). Even once they realized and, much later, admitted, to the "sectarian strife", they didn't know what to do about it. There were perhaps hundreds of different militias, large and small, organized or not, all claiming to be fighting to "protect" Iraq and/or its people, but each in their own way involved in escalating the violence, murder and chaos.

One opinion that Rosen does express, repeatedly, is that America can't simply wash its hands of Iraq and pretend that it has nothing to do with us, as we have done in Rwanda and Sudan, for instance. I don't disagree with Rosen, but he needs to take this idea further. Having broken it, and therefore bought it, what do we do with it now? I agree that it probably would have been better had we never invaded or occupied Iraq, but that ship has long sailed. Rosen has very mixed feelings about the surge (as do most analysts and experts), but he doesn't explore what specifically he agrees or disagrees with or what he would suggest doing differently.

Reading this book was a lot like reading raw field notes for an anthropological study - valuable in its own right, of course, but difficult to make much sense of without an overarching framework. This work is valuable for posterity and historical reference, but it won't do much to inform the opinion of average citizens or guide policy decisions.