The Northern Front: A Wartime Diary

by Charles Glass, Don McCullin (Photographs), P.J. O'Rourke (Foreword)

This is the Iraq war as it really started, amid lies, confusion and profound distrust between the United States and its Iraqi allies. Charles Glass, who first covered the Kurds in 1974 and was in Iraq for their failed rebellion in 1991, depicts the tense epoch that sowed the seeds of America’s inevitable failure there.

The Northern Front is the dramatic eyewitness account of the machinations of Iraqi leaders – Ahmad Chalabi, Abdel Aziz Hakim, Massoud Barzani and Jelal Talabani – to control the country before their opponents seized the initiative. Glass recounts what went wrong when the US, with Britain in tow, imposed its will on a people unlikely to accept foreign designs for their future. He indicts international media conglomerates that failed to tell the truth when public debate could have prevented the deaths and destruction that came with war.

Charles Glass was Chief Middle East Correspondent of ABC News from 1983 to 1998. In 1987, while writing his book Tribes with Flags, Hizbullah kidnapped him in Lebanon and held him until he escaped two months later. He is the author of Money for Old Rope and The Tribes Triumphant. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books and The Independent.

280 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2006

About the author

Charles Glass is an author, journalist and broadcaster, who specializes in the Middle East. He made headlines when taken hostage for 62 days in Lebanon by Shi’a militants in 1987, while writing a book during his time as ABC’s News chief Middle East correspondent. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, Harper’s, the London Review of Books and The Spectator. He is the author of Syria Burning, Tribes with Flags, Money for Old Rope, The Tribes Triumphant, The Northern Front, Americans in Paris and Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II.

Reviews

[Aya · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book describes the author's life around the time of Iraq war. The author went to several places to cover the 'process'. He met with different people, opposing and totally in favor of the war on Iraq. Mostly there were all Iraqis. The book is somehow boring, it talks about the small details of meeting each one of these, including Al Maliki. However, unfortunately, I was looking for more information on the war on Iraq.