Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq
"Another embed at Tal Afar was Ahmed S. Hashim, an academic who has taught at the US Navy War College and served three tours advising the US command in Iraq. His analysis of the battle from the front line in Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq diverges sharply from the official line given by Time and similar publications, and by the BBC, and illustrates the deadly game of war and truth now being played in Iraq, with the latter usually coming off worse."—Robert Fox, Times Literary Supplement, 16 December 2005"Ahmed Hashim is well-placed to study the Iraqi insurgents and their opponents. An American of Turkish-Eygptian origin, he is a professor at the Naval War College and was an advisor to the American authorities following Saddam Hussein's fall, both in Baghdad and in hotbeds of violence such as Tel Afar, near the Syrian border. His bleak appraisal may well be the most detailed analysis yet of the insurgency and America's efforts to squash it."—The Economist, 4 February 2006"Hashim has written a much-needed assessment of the Iraqi insurgency. . . . His interviews and experience there, combined with his use of primary sources, have resulted in a compelling account of the socioeconomic factors that spur the insurgency as well as the problems, both political and strategic, that have fed its growth and hampered U.S. counterinsurgency efforts. Hashim has succeeded in putting together an analysis of the violent situation in Iraq that avoids ideological posturing."—John Russell, Library Journal, June 15, 2006