Gruber Media - Author, Writing Coach, Consultant
  • Home
  • Books
  • Writing Coaching
  • The Vision Project
  • About Brian
  • Blog
  • Contact
Home
Books
Writing Coaching
The Vision Project
About Brian
Blog
Contact
Gruber Media - Author, Writing Coach, Consultant
  • Home
  • Books
  • Writing Coaching
  • The Vision Project
  • About Brian
  • Blog
  • Contact
Iraq•popular•War: The Afterparty

On The Road to Mosul: Iraqi Soldiers on The Origins of ISIS

September 26, 2016 by briangruber No Comments
Trying on Kurdish and Arab scarves in chilly Erbil, Iraq with my guide and friend Samir Barznjy

Trying on Kurdish and Arab scarves in chilly Erbil, Iraq with my guide and friend Samir Barznjy

I completed my research for “WAR: The Afterparty” with a trip to Iraq in January. While I found most of my lodging for my round the world journey through Expedia, Airbnb and Lonely Planet, I came across generous Couchsurfing hosts in Afghanistan and Vietnam. And that’s where I encountered Samir Barznjy, a 31-year old surgeon and businessman in Erbil, the Kurdish region of Iraq. He is visiting the U.S. this week and my old cable TV colleagues are hosting him for lodging and meals in Denver. Samir drove me through the region, from Halabja, site of the chemical bombardment n 1988, to the Citadel, the oldest continually occupied habitat in the world and to the ISIS front lines outside of Mosul. In honor of Samir’s visit to the States, and as Iraqi, Kurdish and U.S. forces mass to retake Mosul from ISIS, please enjoy the recounting of our visit to an Iraqi Army base from “WAR: The Afterparty.”

“There Is No State”

ISIS-destroyed the bridge on our right so we went over the Peshmerga-built replacement to get to the army base.

ISIS destroyed the bridge on our right so we went over the Peshmerga-built replacement to get to the army base.

The ride from Erbil to the Iraqi Army base where Fakhradin’s brother serves takes less than an hour. Samir closely controls what sounds float out of the car radio while Fakhradin provides ongoing narration from the rear as we pass each military checkpoint. He points to a small village visible from my right side window. The former residents were no longer interested in being in the middle of periodic skirmishes.

That town is ISIS, abandoned, empty. Twenty days ago, Daesh came through these homes and Peshmerga fought them with the air force, and they retreated.

As we approach the Tigris River’s Greater Zab tributary, separating Erbil’s suburbs from Mosul’s provincial towns, Fakhradin points out a bridge blown up by Daesh and the smaller one which we will cross, built by Peshmerga.

Samir is in a jovial mood. “We are now past the last Peshmerga checkpoint,” he smiles, adding, “We thought we would bring you as a small gift for ISIS.” Funny.

Barznjy, Fakhradin, Gruber, Captain Shamsadin

“This is group number five in Iraqi Army, but they are all Kurdish,” Samir translates as we pass through Army security. Captain Shamsadin, Fakhradin’s brother, greets us in the base parking lot, a collection of buildings spread over a few hundred meters. Fakhradin wears Peshmerga fatigues, the others standard Army issue.

Shamsadin was born in 1979, the year of Saddam Hussein’s ascent to power, and attended the military academy in Kurdistan. After graduation, he joined a Kurdish group in the Iraqi army, becoming Peshmerga when Kurdistan fought for its autonomy from the Iraqi government in 1991. He fought with Peshmerga and U.S. forces in Mosul and Baghdad for the “liberation in 2003.” When the post-Saddam Iraqi Army was formed, he officially rejoined its Kurdish unit.

I confess to Samir that the distinction is confusing. Samir explains,

Iraqi Army Kurds report to Kurdish leaders. And they have told the Iraqi army, you are not permitted to enter Kurdistan. If you do, bad things will happen.

Shamsadin adds, for effect, “We will turn our guns towards the Iraqi army.”

I ask the Captain what was going through his mind when the U.S. invaded Iraq.

In the beginning, most Iraqi people think it will be a good thing for the U.S. to destroy Saddam, the Army and the Ba’athist Party. It was positive for us Kurds, negative for the south and middle of Iraq. Religious men found that some American soldiers had bad attitudes toward the people of Iraq, they used bad language, they hit people, took them away.

Samir adds that there were many reports of sexual harassment by U.S. soldiers, in addition to widely publicized incidents of torture of prisoners by U.S. guards in Iraqi prisons.

Did Shamsadin have mixed feelings fighting with a foreign army against Iraqis?

No, we used to fight Saddam, a dictator who used to oppress my people, destroyed our villages and killed our people with chemical bombardments.

What about the decision to fire the Army and members of the Ba’ath party?

My personal view is that it was a bad thing. Even the military forces did not like Saddam Hussein. When U.S. troops came, they did not fight and handed themselves over to U.S. soldiers. They liked democracy. Why did they send these soldiers home?

We move to Shamsadin’s bedroom to talk further. A uniformed soldier serves tea in a paper cup; it’s very sweet and very hot. A pile of books is stacked by the bed; an automatic weapon leans against the wall. The room sports two portable heaters, one gas-fired, one electric, two metal lockers, a small white fridge and a TV. A rug covers part of the tiled floor. There are two clocks, one wall-mounted, another propped up on the fridge. I’m guessing the green can of Pringles is sour cream and onion. Shamsadin continues.

Chemical bombardment memorial display in Halabja.

Mass graves outside the Halabja memorial for the 5,000 dead and 20,000 injured in the 1988 chemical bombardment.

Most soldiers did not fight America. When they lost connection with high-level officers, they left the military bases and went back home. Only two groups fought: at Baghdad International Airport, relatives of Saddam Hussein. And special forces at Saddam residences. Only these two groups.

To what degree are Islamic State officers, leaders and soldiers connected to that event?

The captain folds his arms. His temperament is serene, polite, even gentle. Everyone I meet on the base seems relaxed and confident.

The number one reason for the creation of a terror group was, in Iraq in 2003, high-level colonels were sent home, lost their jobs and money and lost their dignity, became taxi drivers, sold things on the road. Because of this, they joined the terror groups and many years after that they created Daesh. The number one reason for terrorist group is sending these solders home.

The Iraqi Army base auto repair shop. During the ISIS assault three weeks before, a fighter sprayed graffiti which Samir translates as, "Only for cars of the Islamic State." Most ISIS attackers were later killed by a U.S. airstrike.

The Iraqi Army base auto repair shop. During the ISIS assault three weeks before, a fighter sprayed graffiti which Samir translates as, “Only for cars of the Islamic State.” Most ISIS attackers were later killed by a U.S. airstrike.

In Mosul, most of the wealthy were in the Army. After losing money, job, dignity, they sought an alternative to be back in a higher position. A lot of them went to the military academy, they were military engineers, so they were very experienced.

What was your experience in fighting ISIS in Mosul?

One week before ISIS came to Mosul, we had news that there is a group well-trained in Syria and they wanted to occupy Mosul province. They will come to break out 4,500 terrorists in prisons. They occupied two quarters, I was there fighting. If not for armored vehicles, we would have been killed. These groups, when they came, had new models of HILUX trucks. While Iraqi army had old-fashioned Hummers from the Americans. They’re called Egyptian Hummers. Not good because the weather is too hot for the vehicles. A lot were broken. We were obliged to use these old-fashioned Hummers because they were armored and terrorist groups used bombs. There were 1,500 Daesh fighters. The Iraqi army had much more than that, including army, civil police, anti-terror groups.

Later over shisha and tea, Samir relates the story that Kurdish President Barzani called Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, and told him we must do something to protect Mosul before Daesh attacks it. Barzani was Peshmerga since he was 13 years old, fighting in the mountains with his father (Mullah Mustafa Barzani, founder of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, in 1946). Maliki replied that you have nothing to do with Mosul. Take care of Kurdistan and leave Mosul for us. He called him again, three months later. Same answer.

Why could they not hold Mosul? Conspiracy theories I heard said Maliki ordered his leaders to abandon his troops. Shamsadin says he also wondered, was this Maliki’s order, how to find the exact cause?

When Daesh came to Mosul, they occupied only one or two quarters; then there was a meeting with high level officials in the Iraqi Army and they said at 4 a.m. they will go to attack Daesh and we will take them out. All of a sudden, at 2 a.m., the two most high-level leaders fled Mosul. After that, the low level leaders fled, then the others.

The feast served at the army canteen. Extraordinary hospitality shown a stranger.

Lunch is served at the army canteen for me, Samir and Fakhradin.

This is usual for Iraq. When Saddam Hussein was captured, a lot of small groups were fighting. But when they relayed that he was captured, they left their guns and did nothing. In Mosul, the same thing. Two commanders, left, then the others; one of the groups of the Iraqi army stayed and fought, and were brave, but only one group.

“Those were the Kurdish troops,” Samir interjects.

Fakhradin asks his brother for something. The captain pulls a roller suitcase from under the bed. He pulls out what looks like an ammo clip and gives it to his brother. It turns out to be a mobile device charger which Fakhradin uses to recharge his brother’s phone.

It is also unbelievable and strange for us. We were ready to fight and all of a sudden they fled. We didn’t believe it when we first heard.

In this region there is one group of Iraqi army which is totally Kurdish. Usually, little collaboration, but when Daesh came to Mosul, only this group remained and they joined Peshmerga to fight. Because of this, they can keep the territories (the area between Erbil and Mosul we drove through).

Here on the front line, you see them first hand, you fought them. What is the solution for defeating the Islamic State?

Fakhradin raises the wooden slat blinders and puts aside the yellow daisy curtains, allowing sunlight to stream into the room. The lower left windowpane is cracked. A tree and a sand-colored building are visible, perhaps 50 meters away.

You, as an American, you know better than us, Sunni and Shia will never collaborate with each other. Maybe they talk on TV or in newspapers, but only talk, and nothing will happen in reality. Iraqi people have lost their dignity, this is the main reason Shia and Sunni will never unite. Even if you want to try to keep it united, any simple thing may make it explode, so it will be only temporary.

This civil war that happened in 2007 in the middle and south of Iraq, a lot of people died and were injured and left a lot of scars in their minds and they will never forget this. So they will never unite. A lot of collaboration between great countries against Daesh, but as we know there is only one in reality, Peshmerga, that on the ground in reality fights Daesh. A lot of countries that says we are allies but in reality they don’t fight. Maybe they are helping Daesh in other ways.

If you and Syrian Kurds get all you need, the Islamic State is finished?

With the support of air force, it will be like a piece of cake.

Shamsadin excuses himself to make a phone call. He says the area commander would like to meet me.

The four of us head to lunch in one of the barracks. Plate after plate is put in front of us, chicken, beans in a tomato-base sauce, vegetables, Kurdish flatbread, hot tea and soft drinks. As soon as I polish off one bowl, another is put in front of me. “I can’t . . .” is ignored.

A tour of the base perimeter. It is an Iraqi Army base; all soldiers are Kurdish.

A tour of the front lines

After lunch, Samir and the captain casually mention that it’s time for Friday afternoon prayers and we walk back to Shamsadin’s bedroom/ office/ meeting room. A green prayer mat is unrolled next to the bed, and, one at a time, they perform their prayers. I am curious how comfortable they seem with this Jewish American civilian stranger sitting and watching.

When prayers are completed, we load into a car for a short ride of a few hundred meters to the sandbag and gun-laden line of defense. The constant refrain of Kurds that their weapons are old, that they are under-equipped is plainly true. We tour the bunkers as accounts of a recent attack is related. Shamsadin pointed to places where Daesh fighters penetrated the perimeter, and where U.S. air strikes incinerated 85 of them. A building with a “Motopool” sign in English and Kurdish has Arabic graffiti sprayed across the front wall. Samir translates: “Only For Vehicles of the Islamic State.” Not anymore.

“With binoculars, we can see the Daesh flags there,” Samir translates guidance from a soldier. A small column of white smoke appears, perhaps two kilometers to our right. A second appears, closer, this time 10 o’clock to our left. Samir asks if I know what that is. I have no idea, maybe small fires, maybe even the results of an air strike. “ISIS,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Iraqi Army Major Luqman Chaw Sheen meets us outside of a larger building housing his office. Chaw Sheen translates as “Blue Eyes,” a nickname, not a family name. He is the Commander of the front line base. He is older and more war-weary than his younger charges.

He understands why many Sunnis have embraced Daesh.

If I am a Sunni who doesn’t want Daesh, what do I do? What is my alternative? Daesh is their only answer. The way to destroy or weaken Daesh is for Sunni people to fight them.

A lot of Sunni IDP (internally displaced persons) live in Kurdistan provinces and they fled Daesh. The problem is that when Iraq was ruled by Sunni, they were very bad toward the Shia and Kurds. Now all political rules are under Shia, they have in their mind to get revenge against Sunni. And they will continue to the end.

A lot of former Iraqi officers joined Daesh with a lot of jihadis from Pakistan, Afghanistan. They have been deceived by religion. Seventy percent of Iraqi officers were from Mosul. They are experts in making rockets and bombs. They say you cannot find this experience now in the Iraqi army.

——————

Share:
Reading time: 12 min
Iraq•War: The Afterparty

As Troops Mass In Makhmour, Iraq, An Interview with Mayor Barzan Said Kaka

June 27, 2016 by briangruber No Comments
Brian and Samir

Brian Gruber with surgeon, driver, fixer, friend Samir Barznjy.

Makhmour, briefly overrun by ISIS, is the staging ground for Iraqi Army, Kurdish Peshmerga and U.S. forces in advance of the retaking of Mosul. I spoke with a Peshmerga commander and the former mayor of Makhmour during my visit in January.

From “WAR: The Afterparty,” available now on Amazon here.

—-

Samir takes me back to Amazon, a popular Erbil cafe with rich desserts and wall-to-wall hookah smokers. I generally gag at indoor cigarette smoke, but join him for the occasional round of shisha (fruit-flavored tobacco covered with foil, roasted with charcoal in a glass-bottomed water pipe). A young guy comes around regularly with red-hot coals and tongs to stoke our meter-high hookah. Each smoker has a mouthpiece that comes on and off when the pipe hose is passed. Samir tells me the liquid in the hookah is milk, not water, for a smoother inhale.

 

We are joined after dinner by his cousin, Peshmerga Commander Kurdo Barznjy. He looks more film star than Daesh fighter, with a stylishly-cut gray sport coat, long sleeve black polo shirt, upmarket glasses and a closely-cut head of hair. He says he is 40 but looks younger. He is confident, warm and friendly and in excellent physical condition.

IMG_0002

Refugee from Mosul, a sportswriter, selling produce in front of a camp in Erbil.

The United States spent tens of billions of dollars training and equipping the Iraqi army. That army vastly outnumbered Daesh fighters and had far superior gear. Then why did the Iraqi army collapse during the assault on Mosul, just west of Erbil?

No one in the Iraqi army has sympathy for their country. It’s not “my country.” If you compare with Peshmerga, it’s my country, we shed a lot of blood and have a lot of martyrs. They (Iraqi soldiers) joined to take the money, they had no jobs. And where there is a fight, they fade away. Iraq does not exist anymore. You have an army that is Sunni and Shia and no one has sympathy for the other regions, so why fight?

Samir adds, the Shia-dominated Army is fighting well in Shia territories. “Shia say, why should they fight for the Sunni territories?”

I point out that many countries have armies composed of mixed ethnic groups and he challenges me to name one in the Arab world.

Not in an Arab country, never. Never happen. The reality of the Arabs is they cannot accept each other.

So is the Iraqi army able to defeat Daesh in its borders? Kurdo laughs at me.

Sleep and have nice dreams if you think the Iraqi army will defeat Daesh. If America does not want to deceive itself, they need to separate Shia from Sunni, like you did in Berlin, if you want the Middle East to be safe. In the Arab community, democracy will never succeed. They don’t want to give power away in elections, they need someone like Saddam Hussein, Mubarak, Gaddafi.

Should Sunni provinces be conceded to Daesh? Kurdo believes that Sunnis will not accept Daesh in the long term.

You are deceiving yourself if you think Daesh will then rule the Sunni areas.

What will happen after Sunnis are in control of their land. Will they turn on Daesh?

The Sunni have been oppressed by Shia. When Daesh came, it’s like someone was about to throw you in the sea; you want to grab hold of anything to get out of the water. When they saw Daesh coming, they could be free from Shia militia and the Iraqi army. But most Arab Sunnis want to have a life and many things are not allowed under Daesh control. It’s like living in a jungle, in darkness. It is an unrealistic view to keep Iraq united. One hundred years ago, they made a country by force.

Samir asks if I would like to meet the man sitting at the next table. Barzan Said Kaka is the ex-mayor of Makhmour, a town Daesh occupied for several days in 2015 before being pushed out by Peshmerga. Barzan is dressed in business clothes and is frequently interrupted by his playful children, intrusions which clearly delight him. He slides over to our table, insisting he needs a translator, yet speaks English throughout our encounter.

I was there that night when they came to Makhmour. The Peshmerga was not ready to fight. A Daesh leader called Omar said in an interview that Christians and Jews can stay, but no Kurds. Ideologically, they cannot stay. Christians saw how they killed them so they really cannot stay. A Christian was asked, how many times did you pray, the Christian didn’t know, so they killed him.

Makhmour, Iraq MapOur national way is to live with each other and accept each other. Kurdish people have kept their language and culture. We have very open minds, we have more than 1,000 years living with Christians, Jews, a natural ability to accept democracy. The Arabs destroyed cultures in Egypt, North Africa. We have a great opportunity to build a new history for this area and our nation.

One hundred years ago, (the) Sykes-Picot (agreement) divided this area. Saudi wants to sell its ideas, we want to learn from other ideas. We want to benefit from new technology, not build an empire. Saudis donate money to build mosques, to impose their religion on children, teach them to fight. The West gave the Arab world everything when the Saudis and Yemenis just had donkeys, but now they think they are better than other people. I don’t belong to any religion. I just believe in God. If you don’t understand their “true Islam,” if you don’t agree, then they want you to convert, or pay money, or be killed.

Democracy has to wait for a big revolution inside of Islam, similar to the Christian reformation, when they removed power from the church and gave it back to the people. The idea of America is not your economy. Many people who come to America already have money. It’s freedom and democracy.

Share:
Reading time: 5 min
Afghanistan•Iraq•War: The Afterparty

Islam Is Not The Problem

June 16, 2016 by briangruber No Comments

abu-dhabi-mosque-sheikh-zayed_36868_600x450In my travels through the Greater Middle East for the Afterparty book project, I went out of my way to meet Muslims. I visited mosques in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, met with the leading Afghan Islamic scholar at his mosque in Kabul between afternoon prayers, discussed religion with secular, Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. Interviews with Muslims, from army officers and a hospital CEO to a former mujahedin fighter and a frustrated Afghan housewife, permeate the Afghanistan and Iraq chapters. In the final chapter, I explore the notion of Islam as a violent religion. Here is an excerpt from the closing chapter of “WAR: The Afterparty.”

 

Kabul mosque night

 

 

Islam is not the problem.

Unequivocally, the Muslims I encountered during my trip insisted on the peaceful intentions and practices of their religion, and fiercely insisted that ISIS, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were violators of Islamic tradition. It’s a personal choice to embrace tolerance and non-violence, or to provide a rich education for one’s children, regardless of gender. Hate, anger and domination are part of the human condition, free to breathe inside or outside of religious tradition, tribe or nationality.

If you’re looking for scriptural justification for violence, that’s easy to find.

As the United States prepared to invade and occupy Iraq, I accompanied my ex-wife, Paula, and my daughter to the Auburn Parkside Church of the Nazarene. Andrea, 16, had been “witnessed” to by a friend and so spent some months exploring Parkside’s fundamentalist brand of Christianity. Paula’s Brazilian Presbyterianism preached a less austere but no less faithful practice. Her fiercest complaint was that the music sucked, understandable for a music-obsessed Carioca.

As I fidgeted in my church pew, I was already perplexed by the stated mission of the impending Iraq adventure. Sitting in my car in the parking lot of Jerry’s Deli in Marina Del Rey some days prior, I heard President George W. Bush articulate seven separate reasons as to why we were going to war. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said after the invasion, “The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction.”[i]

Jews have a habit of skipping to the back of the book; Hebrew scripture goes from back to front. Parkside’s pastor focused his sermon on war. He exhorted us to pray for the troops (no prayers for the soon to be slaughtered and displaced Iraqis), imploring the congregation to be “prayer warriors.” To complete the martial framing of the sermon, the reverend quoted from the Book of Joshua. There is a YouTube video with rosy-cheeked pre-teens singing “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho.” A commenter on the video page objected to the warlike implications of the song, and another responded, “God was responsible for blessing the Israelites. They wouldn’t have been successful without God. God loved. The Israelites listened. Joshua led them.” The Israelites circled Jericho, the Lord exhorting His people to blow down the city walls with trumpet blasts and, then . . . what? Skipping ahead of the pastor’s liturgical reading of chapters four and five, here is what the One True God demands of His chosen people in Joshua, Chapter Six.

Verse 20. When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.

Verse 21. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys . . .

Verse 24. Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord’s house . . .

Verse 27. So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.

The choice of scripture, God’s injunction to commit genocide in Jericho, stayed with me through the years of Iraq’s subjugation, humiliation and devastation. As I visited museums and historical landmarks in western Europe on my way to Serbia, I noticed a similar claim of divine providence inspiring the British, French, Belgian, Dutch and German colonial empires. Justification for wanton violence, for the mission civilisatrice, by those chosen as exceptional by providence, whether historical or divine, goes something like this:

God has chosen us,

to bring our superior values, code and way of life,

to inferior races, cultures or political systems,

justifying the overwhelming application of violence,

and the looting of the treasury on behalf of the chosen.

We Americans see others as having diabolical aims, and see our own instincts as noble. In Sven Lundqvist’s travel classic, “Exterminate the Brutes,” he documents the disgust of British colonials at the rapacious behavior of the Spaniards in the Americas. Over 90 percent of the population under Spanish rule was extinguished in a hundred years. But, in bringing Christian civilization to new lands, the outcome was no different in “El Norte.”

In 1492, Columbus arrived in America. The extent of the so-called demographic catastrophe that followed has been estimated differently by different scholars. Certainly it was without equivalent in world history . . .

About five million of the indigenous American population lived in what is now the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, half a million still remained. In 1891, at the time of Wounded Knee — the last great massacre of Indians in the United States — the native population reached rock bottom: a quarter of a million, or five percent of the original number of Indians . . . When the same phenomenon occurred as a result of Anglo-Saxon occupation of North America, other explanations were required. “Where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them by removing or cutting off the Indians, either by Wars one with the other or by some raging, mortal Disease,” Daniel Denton wrote in 1670.[ii]

Abrahamic religions have endorsed wholesale murder in the name of God since Abraham himself nearly slaughtered his son Isaac to slake the divine will. When communism was ‘just cause’ for global power projection and expanded military budgets, we heard little of Muslims as an existential threat due to a millennium-old mandate to convert the world. When the Soviet Union revealed itself to be a crippled economic basket case, politicos and broadcasters replaced the worldwide communist conspiracy with the global plot to create a caliphate and impose Sharia law.

[i] Packer, G. (2005). The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 60.

[ii] Lindqvist, S.& Tate, J. (1997). “Exterminate All the Brutes”: One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide. New York: The New Press.


To support the Afterparty project and to read full chapters, interviews and new book-related content, go to www.patreon.com/briangruber.

Share:
Reading time: 5 min
Iraq•War: The Afterparty

An Afterparty Review From Iraq

June 6, 2016 by briangruber No Comments

Farsi Nadhmi Facebook pageI was delighted to see one of my favorite interview subjects from Iraq, Professor Faris Nadhmi, post favorable comments about “WAR: The Afterparty” on his Facebook page.  I’ve since been contacted and ‘friended’ by a number of his colleagues, sharing thoughts about the book.  I have attached the interview with Farsi as a PDF on the Patreon crowdfunding site. You can download it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/5728981?alert=1

To get the book, go to:

http://www.amazon.com/WAR-Afterparty-Brian-Gruber/dp/1530435404/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461357373&sr=1-1&keywords=war+the+afterparty

Facebook’s translation feature is imperfect, and perhaps someone can provide a more complete rendition, but here are his comments:

“A new book about the sins of the administration of America across the continents, including in Iraq..!

(an interview with the author within the chapter on Iraq)

• Issued before the days of a book in the English language, Who can translate is entitled to: (a world tour in half a century of military interventions in the American).

• The book is an important document on the overall survey of political and social developments that have occurred in a number of countries, including Iraq, in the aftermath of war or the interventions of America.

• The Author is an American journalist left Brian Gruber, who conducted a global tour included a number of countries that have suffered from the military interventions of America, where many survey conducted interviews with political figures and civil intellectual in those countries who lived experiences of war in their countries. Countries:Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, and Afghanistan, India, and China, and Iraq.

• I was among Iraqis who made their perceptions in this book about the role of the post-9 April 2003, and what role played by the occupation in being the authority of the current political Islam

This interview is published within the pages (355-363) from the book.

• The book is available in paper within the site Amazon.com to those wishing to acquire it. It can also be downloaded from the site itself after the inauguration programme of Kindle download and buy the book for a visa card.

————

Patreon is a crowdfunded sight for artists seeking alternative ways to fund creative projects. By becoming a ‘patron,’ you assist in extending the Afterparty project, with the creation of new content and promotion throughout the year. I intend to drive across the United States (and back) during the general election campign to promote the learnings of the project. Your support of a buck or two (or more) for (at most) weekly paid posts helps make that happen. Visit https://www.patreon.com/briangruber for more information or to make a pledge.

————

WAR: The Afterparty is a round-the-world tour through countries that have received American military forces in the pursuit of freedom, democracy, justice, and the free flow of commerce. In Southeast Asia, the Greater Middle East, the Balkans and Central America, author Brian Gruber records oral histories from political and religious leaders, writers, teachers, mothers and combatants who witnessed history from the other end of the gun barrel.

Do we accomplish in war what we say we will? After the party is over, what are war’s real effects?

This is the story of the Afterparty, in the words of those uniquely able to make an assessment.

 

Share:
Reading time: 2 min

Brian Gruber is an author, writing coach, and marketing consultant living on the Thai island of Koh Phangan. He has spent 40 years studying, leading, and founding new media companies and projects.

TELL ME MORE

Follow Me

Recent Posts

Remembering Todd Gitlin

Remembering Todd Gitlin

February 25, 2022
Full House for “Full Moon” Book Launch at Orion

Full House for “Full Moon” Book Launch at Orion

February 16, 2022
My Fifth Book FULL MOON OVER KOH PHANGAN is Published

My Fifth Book FULL MOON OVER KOH PHANGAN is Published

February 14, 2022

Popular Posts

“Surmountable” Kickstarter Campaign is Funded at $15,001 With 83 Backers

“Surmountable” Kickstarter Campaign is Funded at $15,001 With 83 Backers

2018 JazzTimes Readers Poll Names “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s” One of Year’s Top Four Jazz Books

2018 JazzTimes Readers Poll Names “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s” One of Year’s Top Four Jazz Books

On The Road to Mosul: Iraqi Soldiers on The Origins of ISIS

On The Road to Mosul: Iraqi Soldiers on The Origins of ISIS

Search

Categories

  • Afghanistan
  • Billy Cobham
  • Blog
  • Books
  • Cambodia
  • Coaching
  • Conference
  • Full Moon over Koh Phangan
  • Guatemala
  • Interview
  • Iraq
  • Koh Phangan
  • Nicaragua
  • Panama
  • Phangan Forum
  • popular
  • Sand Scribes
  • Surmountable
  • Thailand
  • The Vision Project
  • These Three Things Are True
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Vietnam
  • War: The Afterparty
  • Write Night
  • Writers of Koh Phangan
  • Writing Coaching
  • Writing Workshop

© 2019 copyright Gruber Media | All rights reserved
 

Loading Comments...