What do you think?
Rate this book
Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World
Nir Rosen's Aftermath , an extraordinary feat of reporting, follows the contagious spread of radicalism and sectarian violence that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing civil war have unleashed in the Muslim world.
Rosen -- who the Weekly Standard once bitterly complained has "great access to the Baathists and jihadists who make up the Iraqi insurgency" -- has spent nearly a decade among warriors and militants who have been challenging American power in the Muslim world. In Aftermath , he tells their story, showing the other side of the U.S. war on terror, traveling from the battle-scarred streets of Baghdad to the alleys, villages, refugee camps, mosques, and killing grounds of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and finally Afghanistan, where Rosen has a terrifying encounter with the Taliban as their "guest," and witnesses the new Obama surge fizzling in southern Afghanistan.
Rosen was one of the few Westerners to venture inside the mosques of Baghdad to witness the first stirrings of sectarian hatred in the months after the U.S. invasion. He shows how weapons, tactics, and sectarian ideas from the civil war in Iraq penetrated neighboring countries and threatened their stability, especially Lebanon and Jordan, where new jihadist groups mushroomed. Moreover, he shows that the spread of violence at the street level is often the consequence of specific policies hatched in Washington, D.C. Rosen offers a seminal and provocative account of the surge, told from the perspective of U.S. troops on the ground, the Iraqi security forces, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents that were both allies and adversaries. He also tells the story of what happened to these militias once they outlived their usefulness to the Americans.
Aftermath is both a unique personal history and an unsparing account of what America has wrought in Iraq and the region. The result is a hair- raising, 360-degree view of the modern battlefield its consequent humanitarian catastrophe, and the reality of counterinsurgency.
Rosen -- who the Weekly Standard once bitterly complained has "great access to the Baathists and jihadists who make up the Iraqi insurgency" -- has spent nearly a decade among warriors and militants who have been challenging American power in the Muslim world. In Aftermath , he tells their story, showing the other side of the U.S. war on terror, traveling from the battle-scarred streets of Baghdad to the alleys, villages, refugee camps, mosques, and killing grounds of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and finally Afghanistan, where Rosen has a terrifying encounter with the Taliban as their "guest," and witnesses the new Obama surge fizzling in southern Afghanistan.
Rosen was one of the few Westerners to venture inside the mosques of Baghdad to witness the first stirrings of sectarian hatred in the months after the U.S. invasion. He shows how weapons, tactics, and sectarian ideas from the civil war in Iraq penetrated neighboring countries and threatened their stability, especially Lebanon and Jordan, where new jihadist groups mushroomed. Moreover, he shows that the spread of violence at the street level is often the consequence of specific policies hatched in Washington, D.C. Rosen offers a seminal and provocative account of the surge, told from the perspective of U.S. troops on the ground, the Iraqi security forces, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents that were both allies and adversaries. He also tells the story of what happened to these militias once they outlived their usefulness to the Americans.
Aftermath is both a unique personal history and an unsparing account of what America has wrought in Iraq and the region. The result is a hair- raising, 360-degree view of the modern battlefield its consequent humanitarian catastrophe, and the reality of counterinsurgency.
587 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
15 people are currently reading
473 people want to read
About the author
Nir Rosen
7 books9 followersBorn and raised in New York City, Nir Rosen is a freelance journalist, photographer, and filmmaker whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Time, Harpers Magazine, The New Republic, Washington Post, Salon, and Rolling Stone. He has spent over three years working in occupied Iraq and four months in Afghanistan; he has also worked in Somalia, the Congo, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, and Lebanon.\r
\r
Rosen has written extensively on American policy toward Afghanistan and Iraq, the relationship between Americans and Iraqis, the development of postwar Iraqi religious and political movements, interethnic and sectarian relations, and the Iraqi civil war. His reporting and research have also focused on the origins and development of Islamist resistance, insurgency, and terrorist organizations. Rosen has covered the elections in Afghanistan and the differences between the American presence in Afghanistan and Iraq as well. The original edition of his book on postwar Iraq, In the Belly of the Green Bird, was published by Free Press in 2006. \r
\r
Rosen serves as a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. He has filmed for several documentaries including the critically acclaimed and Academy Award-nominated No End in Sight, in which he also appeared and served as a location producer. Rosen is a frequent guest on CNN, CNN International, Al Jazeera International and various other television and radio shows. He recently returned from three months in Baghdad where he filmed a documentary for British Channel 4.\r
\r
In addition to English, Rosen speaks Arabic, Serbo Croatian, and Hebrew. He currently lives with his wife and son in Beirut. His work can be found at www.nirrosen.com. \r
"
\r
Rosen has written extensively on American policy toward Afghanistan and Iraq, the relationship between Americans and Iraqis, the development of postwar Iraqi religious and political movements, interethnic and sectarian relations, and the Iraqi civil war. His reporting and research have also focused on the origins and development of Islamist resistance, insurgency, and terrorist organizations. Rosen has covered the elections in Afghanistan and the differences between the American presence in Afghanistan and Iraq as well. The original edition of his book on postwar Iraq, In the Belly of the Green Bird, was published by Free Press in 2006. \r
\r
Rosen serves as a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. He has filmed for several documentaries including the critically acclaimed and Academy Award-nominated No End in Sight, in which he also appeared and served as a location producer. Rosen is a frequent guest on CNN, CNN International, Al Jazeera International and various other television and radio shows. He recently returned from three months in Baghdad where he filmed a documentary for British Channel 4.\r
\r
In addition to English, Rosen speaks Arabic, Serbo Croatian, and Hebrew. He currently lives with his wife and son in Beirut. His work can be found at www.nirrosen.com. \r
"
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 26, 2010
I purchased this book after listening to the author's interview on Democracy Now recently. Between what I heard there and the glowing endorsements from Noam Chomsky and Andrew Bacevich, both of whom I have immense respect for, I had incredibly high expectations for this book. Nothing could have prepared me for the utter holocaust of writing that is Aftermath. I only made it 25% of the way through before I was overwhelmed with intellectual pain and had to give up on it. I am a very patient and tenacious individual, and I almost never bail out on a book I start no matter how bad it is, but I simply could not read it.
Aftermath seems like it could have been written by a strobe light. It is a constant stream of moments, illuminated with far too much intensity, appearing in disjointed sequence that confuse and overwhelm the reader. It almost seems like he published his field notes from his time as a journalist in the middle east, with absolutely no editing whatsoever.
After a long and meandering introduction to the first part of the book about the descent of Iraq into sectarian violence, Rosen states that despite conventional wisdom that sectarian strife has a long history in Iraq and has always been there, the civil war that eventually occurred subsequent to the occupation was entirely the fault of the US. He then utterly fails to demonstrate that in any cohesive way. He strings together seemingly random incidences of violence between sects, with almost no mention of the US. The writing style organizes information into small to medium sized paragraphs, each dealing with some specific moment or event, which may or may not be at all related to the paragraphs before and after it, and which have no transition or flow. There is no sense of narrative whatsoever. There is very little analysis or commentary, just a mind dump of information. There seems to have been little thought into considering what information is relevant to what the author is trying to say at any given time (if the author even knows what he is trying to say at any given time), and there is vast amounts of superfluous text.
If the information is coherent and interesting, I don't mind a boring book at all. However, the presence of vast amounts of irrelevant information (describing people's mustaches, passing comments about his friends that are not important in relation to the event he is describing, and other such frivolous details) makes it a chore to get to the interesting information. Given the disjointed structure I mentioned earlier, it's difficult to keep interesting information in context. The author constantly skips around geographical areas and does not keep a clear chronology. He often includes large portions of people's speech without putting it in context. After reading a section about events and speech towards the end of the sectarian violence in Iraq, he suddenly, with no preface, included a long speech about Muslim unity and predictions that there will be no civil war. This is confusing, given the previous discussion of violence, but a page or so later, you realize that he was quoting something someone said years earlier, without making that clear.
With his tendency to skip around with no transition or flow, it's very difficult to pick out the occasional insight or interesting informative text and incorporate it into some kind of coherent thesis.
Beyond the content, the style of the book was eminently unreadable. His tone was dominated by plain, short, repetitive sentences like "We saw Muqtada Speak. He said ____. We got in the car and drove to Baghdad. There was an Iraqi Police Checkpoint. There had been a Sunni attack". There were occasional variations in syntax, but some paragraphs read like that for some time, and I found it exceptionally dry, on top of all the other problems I've described.
Frankly, I am quite shocked at the poor quality of this book. It makes me question whether anyone who endorsed it actually read it. I simply can't understand how Rosen, a well regarded journalist with excellent credentials, could write anything so atrocious. I purchased this book on kindle, and perhaps the kindle version is an unedited manuscript or something? I'm also rather incensed that the kindle version cost twice as much as normal kindle books. I don't mind paying extra for quality writing, but overcharging me for such drivel is insulting. After forcing myself to read 25% of this book, my brain felt dirty and violated. I rarely drink, but I found myself needing to cleanse my mind of this atrocity with copious quantities of toxic chemicals.
Aftermath seems like it could have been written by a strobe light. It is a constant stream of moments, illuminated with far too much intensity, appearing in disjointed sequence that confuse and overwhelm the reader. It almost seems like he published his field notes from his time as a journalist in the middle east, with absolutely no editing whatsoever.
After a long and meandering introduction to the first part of the book about the descent of Iraq into sectarian violence, Rosen states that despite conventional wisdom that sectarian strife has a long history in Iraq and has always been there, the civil war that eventually occurred subsequent to the occupation was entirely the fault of the US. He then utterly fails to demonstrate that in any cohesive way. He strings together seemingly random incidences of violence between sects, with almost no mention of the US. The writing style organizes information into small to medium sized paragraphs, each dealing with some specific moment or event, which may or may not be at all related to the paragraphs before and after it, and which have no transition or flow. There is no sense of narrative whatsoever. There is very little analysis or commentary, just a mind dump of information. There seems to have been little thought into considering what information is relevant to what the author is trying to say at any given time (if the author even knows what he is trying to say at any given time), and there is vast amounts of superfluous text.
If the information is coherent and interesting, I don't mind a boring book at all. However, the presence of vast amounts of irrelevant information (describing people's mustaches, passing comments about his friends that are not important in relation to the event he is describing, and other such frivolous details) makes it a chore to get to the interesting information. Given the disjointed structure I mentioned earlier, it's difficult to keep interesting information in context. The author constantly skips around geographical areas and does not keep a clear chronology. He often includes large portions of people's speech without putting it in context. After reading a section about events and speech towards the end of the sectarian violence in Iraq, he suddenly, with no preface, included a long speech about Muslim unity and predictions that there will be no civil war. This is confusing, given the previous discussion of violence, but a page or so later, you realize that he was quoting something someone said years earlier, without making that clear.
With his tendency to skip around with no transition or flow, it's very difficult to pick out the occasional insight or interesting informative text and incorporate it into some kind of coherent thesis.
Beyond the content, the style of the book was eminently unreadable. His tone was dominated by plain, short, repetitive sentences like "We saw Muqtada Speak. He said ____. We got in the car and drove to Baghdad. There was an Iraqi Police Checkpoint. There had been a Sunni attack". There were occasional variations in syntax, but some paragraphs read like that for some time, and I found it exceptionally dry, on top of all the other problems I've described.
Frankly, I am quite shocked at the poor quality of this book. It makes me question whether anyone who endorsed it actually read it. I simply can't understand how Rosen, a well regarded journalist with excellent credentials, could write anything so atrocious. I purchased this book on kindle, and perhaps the kindle version is an unedited manuscript or something? I'm also rather incensed that the kindle version cost twice as much as normal kindle books. I don't mind paying extra for quality writing, but overcharging me for such drivel is insulting. After forcing myself to read 25% of this book, my brain felt dirty and violated. I rarely drink, but I found myself needing to cleanse my mind of this atrocity with copious quantities of toxic chemicals.
March 9, 2013
"Tough read, but worth it."
In 50 years, I fully expect this book will be used to teach the history of this conflict. It is a masterwork that portrays the conflict from all sides, including that of the innocent bystanders in many countries besides just Iraq. I'm deliberately avoiding talking directly about the specific conflicts in this review, but suffice to say it's very uncomfortable reading. (Not due to writing style as one of the other reviewers stated, but due to the sheer brutality of what went on and the sense of being unable to stop what you can see coming as you read.)
This is not an easy book to read, but for anyone who want to begin to understand the current politics (especially in light of the Tunisian revolt!), this is a must read. Before you even finish it, you'll start to understand the context events are viewed in by the people in these areas, which is critical to understanding what matters and which way events are going to swing. With the recent return of Al-Sadr to Iraq, Hizbollah pulling out of the Lebanese government, the Algerian and Egyptian riots, the now fall of the Tunisian government, it is *extremely* important to know both what is going on and why it is happening.
In 50 years, I fully expect this book will be used to teach the history of this conflict. It is a masterwork that portrays the conflict from all sides, including that of the innocent bystanders in many countries besides just Iraq. I'm deliberately avoiding talking directly about the specific conflicts in this review, but suffice to say it's very uncomfortable reading. (Not due to writing style as one of the other reviewers stated, but due to the sheer brutality of what went on and the sense of being unable to stop what you can see coming as you read.)
This is not an easy book to read, but for anyone who want to begin to understand the current politics (especially in light of the Tunisian revolt!), this is a must read. Before you even finish it, you'll start to understand the context events are viewed in by the people in these areas, which is critical to understanding what matters and which way events are going to swing. With the recent return of Al-Sadr to Iraq, Hizbollah pulling out of the Lebanese government, the Algerian and Egyptian riots, the now fall of the Tunisian government, it is *extremely* important to know both what is going on and why it is happening.
July 8, 2025
In the aftermath of the United States engaging in acts of war against the Iranian nation, reading this book is extremely important. Those of us that follow these things remember how the administration of George W. Bush justified their invasion of Iraq on massive falsehoods regarding terrorism, supposed weapons of mass destruction and the vague concept of bringing freedom and democracy to the Arab nations.
Rosen does a superb job in explaining how the invasion of Iraq simply split open all of the underlying hostilities between the Sunni and Shiite populations of Iraq as well as the aspirations of the Kurds for their own nation. Rosen begins with a historical recapitulation of the religious differences between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam. The mechanisms whereby the British Empire carved Iraq out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire are also explained along with how this created ethnic conflicts that the British used to maintain their control of Iraq.
Rosen clearly has a very deep understanding of the ethnic undercurrents of Iraq and how they led to the extremely brutal civil conflict that the American forces and their allies tried to tamp down. This book is a demonstration of how ignorant of the American body politic is of the internal structure of other nations.
The war in Afghanistan is also covered, but not to the amount of ink expended on Iraq. Clearly, Rosen is also very knowledgeable about this country as well. Once again there is a demonstration of how ignorant the American body politic is about Afghanistan. The rather ignominious departure of the American military was predictable, given how the Afghans were able to deal with their British and Soviet invaders.
It is not possible for me to understate the significance of this book as the United States continues to engage in acts of war against the Muslim world. None of the recent US military interventions in Muslim countries have had an outcome anywhere near what the stated intentions were.
Rosen does a superb job in explaining how the invasion of Iraq simply split open all of the underlying hostilities between the Sunni and Shiite populations of Iraq as well as the aspirations of the Kurds for their own nation. Rosen begins with a historical recapitulation of the religious differences between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam. The mechanisms whereby the British Empire carved Iraq out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire are also explained along with how this created ethnic conflicts that the British used to maintain their control of Iraq.
Rosen clearly has a very deep understanding of the ethnic undercurrents of Iraq and how they led to the extremely brutal civil conflict that the American forces and their allies tried to tamp down. This book is a demonstration of how ignorant of the American body politic is of the internal structure of other nations.
The war in Afghanistan is also covered, but not to the amount of ink expended on Iraq. Clearly, Rosen is also very knowledgeable about this country as well. Once again there is a demonstration of how ignorant the American body politic is about Afghanistan. The rather ignominious departure of the American military was predictable, given how the Afghans were able to deal with their British and Soviet invaders.
It is not possible for me to understate the significance of this book as the United States continues to engage in acts of war against the Muslim world. None of the recent US military interventions in Muslim countries have had an outcome anywhere near what the stated intentions were.
August 31, 2023
A book that I frequently start to re-read every now and again, but have a hard time finishing again when re-reading all of the violence and bloodshed that followed the US involvement in the Middle East. So many stories of frustration and horrible conditions for everyone involved.
It's a tough read, but one that I think anyone in the US should read through to appreciate the effects and importance of having your voice in who is in power.
It's a tough read, but one that I think anyone in the US should read through to appreciate the effects and importance of having your voice in who is in power.
June 12, 2017
Required reading for anyone who wants to come to work in this region (preferably before you get on the plane). I wish someone had told me to read Aftermath back when it was published in 2010, but it's perhaps even more relevant today.
August 16, 2014
The author blames the United States for the bloodshed and violence in Iraq following its invasion during its war on terror. He says that the US is responsible for the resulting civil war in the Muslim world and does not paint a very flattering picture of America. A definite pro-Muslim view is expressed.
Want to read
January 16, 2011read excerpts and listened to him recently speaking @ Rice University...I think it is a must read for all who want to understand both sides..and not simply take the word of officialdom simply for granted)....
Read
May 11, 2014Torn between 1 star & 5 star rating. Will have to think about this one.
August 24, 2014
If you are interested in what is now happening in Iraq (2014), I can't imagine a more prescient book.
November 2, 2014
Extremely detailed, sometimes hard to keep track of - Iraq revealed in a way that most of us would like to forget.
January 4, 2011
kind of a long read, but overall it was well worth it...
Want to read
February 20, 2011epub bookfinder
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews