Customer Reviews

Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq

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The author is a soldier/scholar who is now back in the US teaching college, after a tour of duty in Iraq's Tell Afar as an Army reservist specifically trained in counterinsurgency. The Iraq situation seemed an amorphous mess to me before I read this book; after reading it I understood better the groups involved and their motivation. The author is quite candid in his views, praising some officers and decision-makers he came across, while subjecting others to whithering criticism. There are some other good books about the initial invasion phase of the war, but this is the best book so far about the insurgency phase that still continues. An excellent book for those who want to understand the current challenges facing the US in Iraq.

Ahmed Hashim has produced an excellent overview of the insurgency in Iraq. Hashim views the insurgency as a largely Sunni phenomenon and devotes a majority of the book to detailing the Sunni insurgents' means, motives and opportunities.

With shorter overviews of the Shia and Kurdish insurgency, plus a review of Coalition counterinsurgency policy to late 2005, Hashim has produced a good review of what went wrong for the American's in Iraq prior to 2007.

I purchased this book in order to get a better perspective on the way the Americans conducted themselves during the first years of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The author did a great job in both laying out what we did well and what we didn't do so well. Being a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom I (March 2003 - April 2004), I understood and experienced a lot of the same issues that were brought up by the author - i.e. the lack of cultural awareness training prior to invading, the struggles the CPA had in first forming. I now have a better grasp on what happened when we first invaded, which gives me a better understanding of how to deal with Iraqis today.

Although the author's predictions on whether or not the Iraqis will be able to form an independent and strong nation-state is a little too much on the bleak side for me, he reflects the views that the world had at that time period when the sectarian strife was growing exponentially.

Overall, great book detailing the war during the pre-surge period. The author's extensive interaction with the local nationals is above reproach and gives the reader an excellent window into how the Iraqis reacted to the American invasion and the consequences of those actions.

This work has proved invaluable in resourcing a thesis paper, by being one of the best-sourced works in the category of Iraq literature. However, I would class this work as an essential tool for anyone searching for an understanding of the conflict in Iraq primarily because of Hashim's narrative ability. What is by any measure an academically hefty title is not bound by inaccessibility; wether it be through a constant provision of first-hand accounts of motives and actions by Iraqis themselves or an insistence to maintain a hounding sense of focus in the narrative, Hashim provides a unrelenting and encompassing look into the origins of the greatest problem in current American foreign policy.

Hands down, the best analysis of the Iraqi insurgency situation in Iraq, circa 2005. I've read many books on the subject, and have been getting tired of the "personal opinion = fact" journalist coverage of the war.

Ahmed Hashim, an Arab American working for the Military, provides a thorough analysis of the situation. His analysis, insight, knowledge and overall understanding of the "high level picture" is impressive, and useful. He provides a picture of the occupation, and insurgency that I haven't found elsewhere, and creates dialogue in areas, up till now, unseen.

The book is also a good reference guide (albeit getting dated by 2007), on the various organizations, political groups and insurgency groups operating in Iraq.

My only knock on the book, was the American military "cheerleading". It wasn't required, and only detracts from the book. Some chapters are slightly disjointed, but overall it's still a great read.

A chrystal clear insight in an extremely complicated subject. It is, however, hard to follow some of the reasoning, and the back-history could have been more thoroughly documentede. Otherwise, a very engaging, satisfying and fascinating depicture of a chaotic movement and its counter-force.

The Iraqi insurgency continues to bedevil U.S. plans for a new Iraq. Hashim, a professor at the Naval War College, seeks to address three interrelated issues: who the insurgents are, how they are organized, and what tactics they use. He also seeks to analyze the popular mood in Iraq and trace the development of U.S. policy.
He is at his best as a chronicler of groups, tracing their evolution and charting their organization, and in identifying key insurgents and their supporters. As an analyst, though, Hashim falls short: he writes that many Sunni Arabs saw themselves as targets of the invasion but initially took a wait-and-see attitude before joining the insurgency. While he notes that Sunni clerics rallied opposition from the mosques, he misses the forcible eviction of moderate Sunni clerics by Islamist gangs, who installed handpicked replacements.
As Hashim chronicles the growth of the insurgency in response to the mistakes of the "occupation authorities," he makes mistakes. For example, he cites strong distrust of the U.N. in Fallujah, but Sunni Arab leaders led the call for U.N. involvement. He downplays Iranian and Syrian involvement, stating that "The insurgency has few sources of external state support," suggesting that the Bush administration fingered these two states for political reasons. But his analyses offer little support for such statements. He does a better job demonstrating that foreign jihadists are a minority within the insurgency, but sometimes quality counts more than quantity; foreigners are far more likely to be suicide bombers than Iraqis.
Other problems: Hashim does not discuss the issue of pre-invasion subsidies from Baghdad to Sunni tribal leaders, some of whom refused to rise up. Nor, in addressing the growth of insurgency in relation to U.S. "mistakes," does he address the myriad documents that chronicled insurgency and terror as a predetermined plan. And while it is fashionable to blame de-Baathification for the insurgency, a strict examination of the numbers rather demonstrates a strong correlation between re-Baathification and insurgent violence.
Hashim writes venomously about former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz for downplaying the insurgency's popular support, but Wolfowitz was speaking of the larger Iraqi population and not just the narrow Sunni slice that Hashim examines. (Does Hashim's anger derive from disappointment that Wolfowitz declined to hire him?) Hashim also cherry-picks secondary sources in ways that undercut accuracy, quoting New York University professor Noah Feldman as an authority on events occurring in 2004, long after Feldman had left his Coalition Provisional Authority employment of less than one month in Iraq. Elsewhere, he brings out the "neoconservative" bogeyman without citation as an inaccurate straw man. He also cites dubious press accounts, themselves based on anonymous and agenda-ridden sources arguing that "Israeli generals" visited the Pentagon's Special Plans Office to urge evisceration of Iraq's army. This reviewer was in that office and no Israeli general ever visited.
Hashim's study is thick with detail but his style undercuts his narrative. His use of the first person gives an arrogant tone to the narrative, transforming his study into a lecture. Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq won plaudits in popular press precisely because Hashim pressed the right populist buttons. It is this pandering, though, that ultimately detracts from his study's utility to serious policy practitioners.

Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2007

although the book has many interesting anecdotes it is shocking in its bias in favor Sunni insurgents. Hashim spends chapter after chapter about the "suffering of Sunnis" for the two years they have lost power, but makes no mention of the massacres of Kurds and Shias, and their decades of suffering. I thought the book has nothing new to add but to make the case of the Sunnis. It serves as a good statement of Sunni and insurgent view but no a level-headed analysis.