Aftermath

In April 2009 nine houses in Dora belonging to Shiites were blown up. One belonged to Ra’fat’s brother. “It’s wrong to stay here, they blew up his house,” he told me. “We are not comfortable emotionally,” Ra’fat’s mother told me. Now they were trying to sell their house and move back to I’ilam. “Most of the neighborhood is gone,” Ra’fat said. “People only come back to sell homes.” I asked if relations could go back to the way they were. “Impossible!” they said. Ra’fat and Maher laughed at the notion. “This was the prettiest area of Dora, people knew each other,” Maher said. “We could enter each other’s homes like family.” I asked them how people could turn on one another like that. They blamed the Al Qaeda men who were mostly from the rural areas adjacent to Dora. “They wanted Dora for themselves,” they said. “It was criminally motivated.” Both Ra’fat and Maher agreed that there was still a lot of hatred.

A NEWSWEEK ISSUE in March 2010 declared U.S. victory in Iraq. But for Iraqis there was no victory. Since the occupation began in 2003, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed. Many more had been injured. There were millions of widows and orphans. Millions had fled their homes. Tens of thousands of Iraqi men had spent years in American prisons. The new Iraqi state was among the most corrupt in the world. It was often brutal. It failed to provide adequate services to its people, millions of whom were barely able to survive. Iraqis were traumatized. This upheaval did not spare Iraq’s neighbors, either. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees languished in exile. Sectarianism increased in the region. Weapons, tactics, and veterans of the jihad made their way into neighboring countries. And now the American “victory” in Iraq was being imposed on the people of Afghanistan.

Seven years after the disastrous American invasion, the cruelest irony in Iraq is that, in a perverse way, the neoconservative dream of creating a moderate, democratic ally in the region to counterbalance Iran and Saudi Arabia had come to fruition. But even if violence in Iraq continues to decline and the government becomes a model of democracy, Iraq will never be a model to be emulated by its neighbors. People in the region remember, even if those in the West have forgotten, the seven years of chaos, violence, and terror, and to them this is what Iraq symbolizes. Thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other failed U.S. policies in the Middle East, the U.S. had lost most of its influence on Arab people, if not the Muslim world—even if it could still exert pressure on Arab regimes. At first some Arab elites thought they could benefit from Bush and the neoconservatives, but now reformists and the elite want nothing to do with the U.S., which can only harm their credibility. Every day there are assassinations with silenced pistols and the small magnetic car bombs known as sticky bombs; every day men still disappear and secret prisons are still discovered. In Sunni villages Awakening men are being found beheaded. And although some militiamen have been absorbed into the security forces, others have turned to a life of crime, and brazen daylight robberies are common. But despite this, the worst might be over for Iraqis. On my trips to Iraq in years past, I had made a habit of scanning the walls of Baghdad neighborhoods for bits of sectarian graffiti, spray- painted slogans that were pro-Mahdi Army, pro-Saddam, anti-Shiite, or pro-insurgency. This time, however, there were almost none to be found. The exhortations to sectarian struggle had been replaced with the enthusiasms of youthful football fans: now the walls say, “Long Live Barcelona.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not be possible without the strong support of the New York University Center on Law and Security. I am very grateful to its generous director, Karen Greenberg, as well as Steve Holmes and David, Nicole, Jeff, Fransesca, Sarvenaz, and the rest of the family I have made there. They have given me a place to feel at home, the freedom to do my work, and the confidence of knowing I have their backing. My editor at Nation Books, Carl Bromley, was supernaturally patient with me and believed in my vision. Without him it would not have come to reality. Thanks to Mark Sorkin for his excellent copy editing and suggestions. I am also very grateful to my agent, Denise Shannon, for her enthusiasm and support.

I also acknowledge the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute—particularly Joe Conason and Esther Kaplan—who have supported my work.

Many Iraqis welcomed me as a brother into their families. Meitham, Ali, Osama, Abbas, Hassanein, Aws, Wisam, the Hamdi family, Omar Salih, Omer Awchi, Rana al-Aiouby, and others made this book possible, and took great risks to care for me and share their lives with me. In Lebanon my close friends Mohamad Ali Nayel, Naim Assaker, Bissane el Cheikh, Amer Mohsen, Michel Samaha, and Patrick Haenni taught me all I needed to know. Thanks also to Ambassador Imad Moustapha, Toufic Alloush, Mirvat Abu Khalil, Seyid Nawaf al-Musawi, Haj Osama Hamdan, Wisam, Hamelkart Ataya, Mansour Aziz, Walid Abou Khashbee, Abdo Saad, Omar Nashabi, the brave members of Samidoun, Rami Kanan, Sharif Bibi, and Najat Sharafeddine.

Jon Sawyer and Nathalie Applewhite of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting supported my work in Afghanistan. Deb Chasman and Josh Cohen at the Boston Review gave me the opportunity and the space to write important chapter-length articles. Likewise, Monika Bauerlein of Mother Jones. Betsy Reed gave this manuscript a vigorous read, which I thank her for. I owe a big debt to Jonathan Shainin, my good friend who runs the best weekend review section in the English language at the National in Abu Dhabi.

Ghaith Abdul Ahad, Hannah Allam, Tom Bigley, Leila Fadel, Seymour Hersh, Bob Bateman, and Andrew Exum are friends and colleagues who helped, advised, challenged, and inspired me. In Afghanistan, Shahir and Melek gave me friendship, help, and also saved my life. Thanks to Qais for helping out with that too. Thanks to Aziz Hakimi, Aners Fange, Andrew Wilder and Peter Jouvenal, Fazel Rabie Haqbeen, Mullah Tariq Osman, Josh Foust, Professor Tom Johnson, Tom Stanworth, John Moore, Matt Bruggmann, Steve Clemons, As’ad Abu Khalil, Kristele Younes, Peter Bergen, Elizabeth Campbell, Joel Charney, Scott Armstrong, the Theros family, Ahmad, Marika, Nick, the Zivkovic family, the Lombardi family, and my editor at Rolling Stone, Eric Bates.

Numerous Iraqis, Lebanese, Egyptians, Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians, as well as American soldiers, officers, and officials, trusted me with their knowledge and experience anonymously—I thank them all.

Lastly, to my parents, my brothers, my wife, Tiffany, and Dakota (for not totally destroying my laptop while I wrote this book), I love you and I thank you.

A NOTE ON SOURCES

In writing this book I relied on very few secondary sources; the bulk of it is based on the seven years I have spent reporting in the Muslim world, from Somalia to Afghanistan. I cannot thank the many hundreds of people who welcomed me, helped me, educated me, and shared pieces of their lives with me, but it is thanks to their trust and generosity that this book is possible. I tried to avoid senior officials on any side to avoid propaganda and simplistic generalizations, and instead I tried to find out what was really transpiring myself. I was helped by local and international academics, journalists, historians, soldiers, policemen, militiamen, and aid workers. My colleagues at the Warlord Loop listserv were very helpful and stimulating. When it comes to secondary sources, I did, however, learn a lot from Military Review and the Small Wars Journal, which informed my thinking for the chapters on the surge in Iraq and Afghanistan. Articles in McClatchy’s, the Washington Post, and even some in the New York Times were also important. The reports of the International Crisis Group are essential for background, as are the articles in the Middle East Research and Information Project (merip.org) and the Middle East Journal.

INDEX