Download or read book Muqtada written by Patrick Cockburn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-04-08 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time magazine listed him as one of its "100 People Who Shape Our World." Newsweek featured him on its cover under the headline "How Al-Sadr May Control U.S. Fate in Iraq." Paul Bremer denounced him as a "Bolshevik Islamist" and ordered that he be captured "dead or alive." Who is Muqtada al-Sadr, and why is he so vital to the future of Iraq and, arguably, the entire Middle East? In this compellingly readable account, prize-winning journalist Patrick Cockburn tells the story of Muqtada's rise to become the leader of Iraq's poor Shi'ites and the resistance to the occupation. Cockburn looks at the killings by Saddam's executioners and hit men of the young cleric's father, two brothers, and father-in-law; his leadership of the seventy-thousand-strong Mehdi Army; the fierce rivalries between him and other Shia religious leaders; his complex relationship with the Iraqi government; and his frequent confrontations with the American military, including battles that took place in Najaf in 2004. The portrait that emerges is of a complex man and a sophisticated politician, who engages with religious and nationalist aspirations in a manner unlike any other Iraqi leader. Cockburn, who was among the very few Western journalists to remain in Baghdad during the Gulf War and has been an intrepid reporter of Iraq ever since, draws on his extensive firsthand experience in the country to produce a book that is richly interwoven with the voices of Iraqis themselves. His personal encounters with the Mehdi Army include a tense occasion when he was nearly killed at a roadblock outside the city of Kufa. Though it often reads like an adventure story, Muqtada is also a work of painstaking research and measured analysis that leads to a deeper understanding both of one of the most critical conflicts in the world today and of the man who may well be a decisive voice in determining the future of Iraq when the Americans eventually leave.
Download or read book Muqtada Al Sadr and the Fall of Iraq written by Patrick Cockburn and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book about Muqtada al Sadr, the most important political figure in post-occupation Iraq. Muqtada has become the kingmaker of Iraq and a force that is indispensable to any Iraqi government: the Mehdi Army, his devoted militia, now rules half of Baghdad. Far from being the 'firebrand cleric' portrayed in the western media, he is an astute and experienced politician who struggles to lead an anarchic mass movement that he only half controls. In a compelling narrative, award-winning war correspondent Patrick Cockburn charts the rise of Muqtada, and has written an essential book for our understanding of Iraq's future. Cockburn has reported from Iraq since 1977, often at great personal risk, and Muqtada al Sadr and the Fall of Iraq combines first hand accounts of his investigations with vivid and dismaying descriptions of the civil war that is tearing the country apart.
Download or read book Muqtada Al Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq written by Patrick Cockburn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-10-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time magazine listed him as one of its "100 People Who Shape Our World." Newsweek featured him on its cover under the headline "How Al-Sadr May Control U.S. Fate in Iraq." Paul Bremer denounced him as a "Bolshevik Islamist" and ordered that he be captured "dead or alive." Who is Muqtada al-Sadr, and why is he so vital to the future of Iraq and, arguably, the entire Middle East? In this compellingly readable account, prize-winning journalist Patrick Cockburn tells the story of Muqtada's rise to become the leader of Iraq's poor Shi'ites and the resistance to the occupation. Cockburn looks at the killings by Saddam's executioners and hit men of the young cleric's father, two brothers, and father-in-law; his leadership of the seventy-thousand-strong Mehdi Army; the fierce rivalries between him and other Shia religious leaders; his complex relationship with the Iraqi government; and his frequent confrontations with the American military, including battles that took place in Najaf in 2004. The portrait that emerges is of a complex man and a sophisticated politician, who engages with religious and nationalist aspirations in a manner unlike any other Iraqi leader. Cockburn, who was among the very few Western journalists to remain in Baghdad during the Gulf War and has been an intrepid reporter of Iraq ever since, draws on his extensive firsthand experience in the country to produce a book that is richly interwoven with the voices of Iraqis themselves. His personal encounters with the Mehdi Army include a tense occasion when he was nearly killed at a roadblock outside the city of Kufa. Though it often reads like an adventure story, Muqtada is also a work of painstaking research and measured analysis that leads to a deeper understanding both of one of the most critical conflicts in the world today and of the man who may well be a decisive voice in determining the future of Iraq when the Americans eventually leave.
Download or read book Muqtada Al Sadr and the Shia Insurgency in Iraq written by Patrick Cockburn and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2009 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait of the formidable Shiite figure who has been predicted to be a future leader in Iraq, this book describes his rise from a resistance fighter, the assassinations of his family members, and his frequent confrontations with the American military.
Download or read book Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East written by Christiane Gruber and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-17 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays examining the role and power of images from a wide variety of media in today’s Middle Eastern societies. This timely book examines the power and role of the image in modern Middle Eastern societies. The essays explore the role and function of image making to highlight the ways in which the images “speak” and what visual languages mean for the construction of Islamic subjectivities, the distribution of power, and the formation of identity and belonging. Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East addresses aspects of the visual in the Islamic world, including the presentation of Islam on television; on the internet and other digital media; in banners, posters, murals, and graffiti; and in the satirical press, cartoons, and children’s books. “This volume takes a new approach to the subject . . . and will be an important contribution to our knowledge in this area. . . . It is comprehensive and well-structured with fascinating material and analysis.” —Peter Chelkowski, New York University “An innovative volume analyzing and instantiating the visual culture of a variety of Muslim societies [which] constitutes a substantially new object of study in the regional literature and one that creates productive links with history, anthropology, political science, art history, media studies, and urban studies, as well as area studies and Islamic studies.” —Walter Armbrust, University of Oxford
Download or read book Hunting Muqtada written by Harold M. North and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2009-03-27 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In late 2003, five Military Intelligence Soldiers were tasked to track the radical firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. These Army Reservists followed his moves through the streets and back alleys of Kufa and Najaf, they reported the activities of and the growing influence of his Mahdi Army as they slowly but deliberately encroached on the local governments for control of the prized Imam Ali shrine, and the millions of dollars worth of gold and currency that laid therein. Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez personally followed the progress of this small group of Soldiers, looking for clues of Sadrs intentions and how it would affect the Coalition and the rest of Iraq. For the next six months, debates raged from the Green Zone to the corridors of the Pentagon, and even to the Oval Office of the White House: what should be done with Muqtada al-Sadr? Now for the first time, the ground truth is revealed about how America let Iraqs most dangerous man raise an army, fight the Coalitiontwiceand then slip through their fingers to escape to Iran, where he is being groomed to become Iraqs next Ayatollah and awaits the time to return and claim Iraq for Iran.
Download or read book The Making of Foreign Policy in Iraq written by Zana Gulmohamad and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is foreign policy made in Iraq? Based on dozens of interviews with senior officials and politicians, this book provides a clear analysis of the development of domestic Iraqi politics since 2003. Zana Gulmohamad explains how the federal government of Iraq and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have functioned and worked together since toppling Saddam to reveal in granular detail the complexity of their foreign policy making. The book shows that the ruling elites and political factions in Baghdad and in the capital of the Kurdistan Region, Erbil, create foreign policies according to their agendas. The formulation and implementation of the two governments' foreign policies is to a great extent uncoordinated. Yet Zana Gulmohamad places this incoherent model of foreign policy making in the context of the country's fragmented political and social context and explains how Iraq's neighbouring countries - Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Syria before the civil war - have each influenced its internal affairs. The book is the first study dedicated to the contemporary dynamics of the Iraqi state - outside the usual focus on the “great powers” - and it explains exactly how Iraqi foreign policy is managed alongside the country's economic and security interests.
Download or read book What Kind of Liberation written by Nadje Sadig Al-Ali and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There is something to learn, literally, on every page here."--Cynthia Enloe, from the foreword "This is a fluent and highly informed account of the women of Iraq during a time of ever increasing political turmoil, economic disaster and foreign invasion. It gives a fascinating insight into the way Iraqi society really works and is far superior in quality to most of what has been written about Iraq in war and peace."--Patrick Cockburn, author of Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq
Download or read book Aftermath written by Nir Rosen and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the effects of the Iraq War on the Middle East as a whole, looking at refugees displaced by the violence; the radicalization of the Sunni Muslims of Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere; and more. By the author of In the Belly of the Green Bird.
Download or read book My Year in Iraq written by L. Paul Bremer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-01-09 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "BAGHDAD WAS BURNING." With these words, Ambassador L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer begins his gripping memoir of fourteen danger-filled months as America's proconsul in Iraq. My Year in Iraq is the only senior insider's perspective on the crucial period following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. In vivid, dramatic detail, Bremer reveals the previously hidden struggles among Iraqi politicians and America's leaders, taking us from the ancient lanes in the holy city of Najaf to the White House Situation Room and the Pentagon E-Ring. His memoir carries the reader behind closed doors in Baghdad during hammer-and-tongs negotiations with emerging Iraqi leaders as they struggle to forge the democratic institutions vital to Iraq's future of hope. He describes his private meetings with President Bush and his admiration for the president's firm wartime leadership. And we witness heated sessions among members of America's National Security Council -- George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice -- as Bremer labors to realize the vision he and President Bush share of a free and democratic New Iraq. He admires the selfless and courageous work of thousands of American servicemen and -women and civilians in Iraq. The flames Bremer describes on arriving in Baghdad were from fires started by looters. One of his first acts was to request an additional 4,000 Military Police to help restore order in the streets. For most of the next year, as the insurgency spread, Bremer resisted efforts by generals and senior Defense Department civilians to reduce American troop strength prematurely, replacing our forces with ill-trained, poorly led Iraqi police and soldiers. And he lays to rest the myth that the Coalition disbanded Saddam's army, a force comprised of Shiite draftees who had deserted and refused to serve under their former Sunni officers. Bremer also describes his frustration with intelligence operations that concentrated on the search for weapons of mass destruction while the insurgency gathered strength. Bremer faced daunting problems working with Iraq's traumatized and divided population to find a path to a responsible and representative government. The Shia Arabs, the country's long-repressed majority, deeply distrusted the Sunni Arab minority who had held power for centuries and had controlled the detested Baath Party. Iraq's non-Arab Kurds teetered on the brink of secession when Bremer arrived. He had to find Sunnis willing to participate in the new political order. Some in the U.S. government pushed for what Bremer would come to call a cut-and-run policy that would have quickly delivered governance of Iraq to a handful of unrepresentative anti-Saddam exiles. Bremer vigorously resisted this ill-conceived course. He takes the reader inside marathon negotiations as he and his team shepherded Iraq's new leaders to write an interim constitution with guarantees for individual and minority rights unprecedented in the region. My Year in Iraq is required reading for all those interested in the real story of how America responded to its gravest recent overseas crisis.
Download or read book Terrorism Research Analysis Project TRAP A Collection of Thoughts Ideas Perspectives Volume I written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Post Saddam Iraq written by Amnon Cohen and published by Apollo Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-Saddam Iraq comprehensively describes and analyzes the major developments in Iraq, from the US-led invasion up to 2010. The internal political scene - developing along ethnic-sectarian and religious lines (Shi'is and Sunnis, Kurds and Arabs) - is discussed in the context of a re-emerging Iraqi national identity. Findings and analyses are based on a systematic study of the Iraqi and Middle Eastern local media, which provides the perspective as to what is taking place in the internal political and social dialogue. Other major developments are also addressed, including women's rights and economic trends. Post-Saddam Iraq offers an important, international dimension to Iraq's post-war development through discussion of: a) the central role played by the Iranian regime and its deep and multi-faceted involvement in the Iraqi internal scene; b) the ambivalent relations with Turkey, which concurrently serves as the main terrestrial channel of trade and economic ties with the world (oil, financial investments); and c) Iraq's marginal position in the affairs of the Arab world. The political and constitutional developments within Iraq are discussed up to the most recent events in late 2010. Nine months after the general elections, a political tug-of-war between the major protagonists has not reached a conclusion, with the intensive involvement of the US behind the scenes attempting to reach an "inclusive" solution. It remains to be seen whether the former centralist policies of the prime minister-to-be will prevail in a state which is gradually disposing of the US military presence, assuming command over its unsolved problems of security and daily life, as well as of its future stability.
Download or read book Fiasco written by Thomas E. Ricks and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-07-25 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • One of the Washington Post Book World's 10 Best Books of the Year • Time's 10 Best Books of the Year • USA Today's Nonfiction Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book "Staggeringly vivid and persuasive . . . absolutely essential reading." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "The best account yet of the entire war." —Vanity Fair The definitive account of the American military's tragic experience in Iraq Fiasco is a masterful reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq through mid-2006, now with a postscript on recent developments. Ricks draws on the exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American personnel, including more than one hundred senior officers, and access to more than 30,000 pages of official documents, many of them never before made public. Tragically, it is an undeniable account—explosive, shocking, and authoritative—of unsurpassed tactical success combined with unsurpassed strategic failure that indicts some of America's most powerful and honored civilian and military leaders.
Download or read book Operations and Reconstruction Efforts in Iraq written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 1072 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nonstate Warfare written by Stephen Biddle and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fallacy of guerilla warfare -- Materially optimal behavior -- Politically achievable behavior -- Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon Campaign -- The Jaish al Mahdi in Iraq, 2003-2008 -- The Somali National Alliance in Somalia, 1992-1994 -- The ZNG, HV, and SVK in the Croatian Wars of Independence, 1991-1995 -- The Vietcong in the Second Indochina War, 1965-1968 -- Conclusion and implications.
Download or read book Khomeini S Warriors written by Mehran Riazaty and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2016-05-11 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes Ayatollah Khomeinis ideology, Irans official and unofficial armed forces, and its allies throughout the world and provides photographs of the regimes predominant actors. Since 1892, the Shia clergy has played a major role in Iran, such as the tobacco boycott, which led to the withdrawal of the concession given by the Shah to British citizens, Irans Constitutional Revolution of 1906, as well as organizing opposition to the Shahs policies in the 1979 revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini was a lecturer at Hawza Ilmiyya (Shia seminary of traditional Islamic school of higher learning) of Najaf and Qom for decades before he came on to the Iranian political scene. In 1977, Khomeini assumed the mantle of leadership within the Islamist opposition after the death of Ali Shariati, a leftist intellectual and one of the most influential Iranian Muslim thinkers of his generation. In 1930, Shariati contributed a new line of thinking in Iran, through his reinterpretation of jihad and shahadat (martyrdom), which was presented in his view of an authentic Islam. Shariatis new authentic Islam centered on a reinterpretation of the story of Karbala, where Imam Hussein was martyred in a battle, refusing to pledge allegiance to Yazid, the Umayyad caliph. Shariati borrowed the Christian concept of martyrdom from the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus as the basis of his new Islamic philosophy. Shariati wrote that when faced with the possibility of ones own death, one must adopt an attitude of freedom-toward-death and thereby experience authentic living. In 1978, Ayatollah Khomeinis reinterpretation of Shia rituals removed the borders between the audience and the actors, turning the entire country into a stage for his casting. He imbued the old passion of the story of Karbala with a new passionate hatred for the Shahs unjust rule in Iran, as well as Israels and the United Statess influences within the world. Khomeinis memory of Dr. Mohammed Mosaddegh, whose government was toppled by the CIA in 1953, returning the Shah to Iran, resulted in the rise of various political groups such as nationalists, liberals, secularists, and Marxists. These groups were essential in assisting Khomeinis overthrow of the Shah, though they were soon stomped out by the creation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in May 1979 in order to protect Khomeinis unique brand of a Shia Islamic Revolution. The Iran-Iraq War initiated the rapid expansion of the IRGCs size and capabilities. In September 1980, the IRGC had only 30,000 men in lightly armed units. Prior to the war, the IRGC personnel were very young in age and had little to no military experience. By the summer of 1981, the IRGC had organized basic training centers with experienced commanders and a select group of regular officers. They also had 50,000 members, and its strength would jump to 100,000 in 1983 and 250,000 in 1985. In order to meet all its manpower needs on the Iraq war front, the IRGC then turned to its volunteer militia, the Basij. The Basij members provided more troops than the IRGC could arm. The average Basij member came from Irans rural areas and can be described as poor, uneducated, and ranged in age from twelve to thirty years old. Like the IRGC, the Basij members are motivated by both religion and ideology. After the Iran-Iraq War, the IRGC focused on external threats as the Basij increased its involvement in domestic affairs. In past years, the Basij militia has been active in controlling public gatherings and disrupting demonstrations by civil or student activists.
Download or read book Muqtada written by Patrick Cockburn and published by Tantor Media Incorporated. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the bravest and most experienced correspondents in the Middle East, this is the first biography of the formidable Shiite resistance leader destined to shape the future of post-occupation Iraq. Unabridged. 8 CDs.
