PMCI
BOOK REVIEW
THE CIA WAR IN KURDISTAN:
THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE
NORTHERN FRONT IN THE
IRAQ WAR
Overcoming adversity and seemingly unconquerable odds is
the basis for any great adventure story, but when it’s the life of
your team on the line as well as your own, truly great stories
can emerge, and The CIA War in Kurdistan: The Untold Story of
the Northern Front in the Iraq War is most certainly a great, if
ultimately wasted, example of this.
In 2002, Sam Faddis was named to head a CIA team that would
enter Iraq to facilitate the deployment of follow-on conventional
military forces numbering over 40,000 American soldiers. This
force, built around the 4th Infantry Division, would, in partnership
with Kurdish forces and with the assistance of Turkey, engage
Saddam’s army in the North as part of a coming invasion.
Faddis expected to be on the ground in Iraq within weeks, the
entire campaign likely to be over by summer. Over the course of
the next year, virtually every aspect of that plan for the conduct
of the war in northern Iraq fell apart.
The 4th Infantry Division never arrived, nor did any other
conventional forces in substantial number. The Turks not only
refused to provide support, they worked overtime to prevent the
United States from achieving success. And an Arab army that was
to assist US forces fell apart before it ever made it to the field.
Alone, hopelessly outnumbered, short on supplies, and threatened
by Iraqi assassination teams and Islamic extremists, Faddis’s
team, working with Kurdish peshmerga, miraculously paved
the way for a brilliant and largely bloodless victory in the North
and the fall of Saddam’s Iraq. That victory, handed over to
Washington and the Department of Defense on a silver platter,
was then squandered. The decisions that followed would lead to
catastrophic consequences that continue to this day.
aThis is the story of the brave and effective team of men and
women who overcame massive odds to help end the nightmare
of Saddam’s rule. It is also the story of how incompetence,
bureaucracy, and ignorance threw that success away and
condemned Iraq and the surrounding region to chaos.
BOOK REVIEW
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Casemate (February 20, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1612008348
ISBN-13: 978-1612008349