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Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq
Ahmed S. Hashim
In place of sensational headlines, official triumphalism, and hand-wringing, Insurgency and Counter-insurgency in Iraq offers a clear-eyed analysis of the increasingly complex violence that threatens the very future of Iraq.
Cornell University Press
April 2006
482 pages ISBN: 0801444527 Trade Size
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Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction Political
More than two years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a
loosely organized insurgency continues to target American
and Coalition soldiers, as well as Iraqi security forces and
civilians, with devastating results. In this sobering
account of the ongoing violence, Ahmed Hashim, a specialist
on Middle Eastern strategic issues and on irregular warfare,
reveals the insurgents behind the widespread revolt, their
motives, and their tactics. The insurgency, he shows, is not
a united movement directed by a leadership with a single
ideological vision. Instead, it involves former regime
loyalists, Iraqis resentful of foreign occupation, foreign
and domestic Islamist extremists, and elements of organized
crime. These groups have cooperated with one another in the
past and coordinated their attacks; but the alliance between
nationalist Iraqi insurgents on the one hand and religious
extremists has frayed considerably. The U.S.-led offensive
to retake Fallujah in November 2004 and the success of the
elections for the Iraqi National Assembly in January 2005
have led more "mainstream" insurgent groups to begin
thinking of reinforcing the political arm of their
opposition movement and to seek political guarantees for the
Sunni Arab community in the new Iraq. Hashim begins by placing the Iraqi revolt in its historical
context. He next profiles the various insurgent groups,
detailing their origins, aims, and operational and tactical
modi operandi. He concludes with an unusually candid
assessment of the successes and failures of the Coalition's
counter-insurgency campaign. Looking ahead, Hashim warns
that ethnic and sectarian groups may soon be pitted against
one another in what will be a fiercely contested fight over
who gets what in the new Iraq. Evidence that such a conflict
is already developing does not augur well for Iraq's future
stability. Both Iraq and the United States must work hard to
ensure that slow but steady success over the insurgency is
not overshadowed by growing ethno-sectarian animosities as
various groups fight one another for the biggest slice of
the political and economic pie.
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