The Triumph of the Martyrs: A Reporter's Journey into Occupied Iraq

by Nir Rosen

He is one of the few Western journalists to get inside the Sunni insurgency, and his book contains a memorable portrait, among other things, of Fallujah under the chaotic rule of the mujahideen.” The New York Review of Books Represents brave reportage and significantly increases our understanding of what Rosen describes as an already raging civil war.” Publishers Weekly If you want to gain a better understanding and tangible feel, on a pragmatic, smell-of-the-streets level, of the cause-and-effect cycle of coalition actions upon the Iraqi people, then Rosen’s book is a good place to start.” Washington Monthly Journalist Nir Rosen unabashedly chronicles the violent shift of Iraq from the toppled regime symbolized by Saddam’s fallen statue to a country holding its first elections in 2005 while descending into civil war. Fluent in Iraqi-accented Arabic, Rosen moved beyond the Green Zone and infiltrated the inner world of the average Iraqi during his one-and-a-half year stint. He bravely experienced the Iraqis’ plight and articulates in The Triumph of the Martyrs the factors contributing to their suffering, notably the palpable tension between the Iraqis and the Americans and the bitter divisions between the Sunnis and the Shi’as. To give proper voice to these dissensions, Rosen interviewed emerging sect leaders; joined Shi’as on their annual pilgrimage; and spoke with Iraqi civilians about their experiences with American soldiers and why they so vehemently oppose the occupation. Rosen’s risky reportage, however, also brought him to the brink of death, with suspicious Iraqis interrogating him at gunpoint and bombs exploding dangerously close to his living quarters. In his account of the chaotic fledgling republic, Rosen fluidly permeates the boundaries among its warring sides. The Triumph of the Martyrs is the first paperback edition of the book published in hardcover in 2006 as In the Belly of the Green Bird .

Genres: Nonfiction, War, Middle East, History, Politics

273 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2005

About the author

Born 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
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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
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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
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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
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Reviews

[Terry Cornell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best book I've read on the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq from the perspective of Iraqis. In addition to English, Rosen speaks Iraqi Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew. These skills helped him write about and experience the everyday life of average Iraqis. He also interviews and spent time with leadership elements of Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish factions.

Most Iraqis were either happy or ambivalent that Saddam Hussein was overthrown, but looked at Americans as occupiers after a brief amount of time. One of the few things that Imams and other leaders agreed on was that Americans must leave. Many Imams spread the belief that Israelis and Jews worked with America to occupy Iraq. Frequently US troops seemed to have been mislead to raid homes belonging to peaceful Iraqis, by translators and tipsters that held grudges or were members of different factions often with sad results. The book starts with the famous toppling of Saddam's statue, and ends in 2006 the year following the initial elections for the new government. The only reason I didn't give the book five stars is I disagree with some of Rosen's conclusions. It is still a must read for anyone interested in the people of Iraq, and that point of view.

[Zach Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nir Rosen is lucky to be alive. Travelling through Iraq during a very dangerous time, Rosen risked his life every day. He also got some great firsthand information.

Rosen's book really shows what disarray the country of Iraq is in. It also shows how much most Iraqis dislike Americans. And it is not a hidden, secret hatred, either. To read firsthand accounts of speeches, prayers, and calls to action is mind blowing. Rosen shows us an Iraq that we otherwise couldn't have known existed.

Rosen points out the difference between the Iraqi resistance, that just want the Americans out of Iraq, and the jihadis, that are looking for a final holy war between Muslims and... pretty much anyone who's not Muslim. All this violence adds up to a hard time for any Westerner in Iraq. It even makes it dangerous for Iraqis to walk the street as hundreds are killed each week in car bombings and shootings.

The Iraq Rosen portrays in this book is very different than the Iraq that you hear about on the news. We might hear about occasional bombings, but I don't think we realize how bad the situation is over there. I don't know what the solution is, and Rosen doesn't offer one; he objectively displays the information he gathered. But this information seems to point towards an inevitable civil war.

Anyone that is interested in reading about what life in Iraq was like between April 2003 and the elections in January 2005 should pick this book up. The afterword goes into late 2005, and gives you an idea of more recent developments. I didn't have any knowledge of Iraq going into this book and now I want to know more. This is the kind of news that we should be given on a day-to-day basis. Rosen covers the good and the bad in equal parts, and really shows us the opinions of different sects of Iraqis. This only serves to highlight how different they truly are, and how those differences could be leading Iraq to a Civil War.

[Elliott Bignell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nir Rosen is a speaker of Iraqi-accented Arabic and a reporter of manifest courage and integrity. As such, he managed to gain access to some of the most dangerous places and the most menacing people in post-Rape Iraq. This is his account of the occupation as he felt the Iraqis to gave seen it and as translated from their accounts.

No-one will be surprised to hear that those who "planned" this abortion of an invasion got it badly wrong. No WMDs, a protracted and costly civil war, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians due to collapsed infrastructure, water and medical services, the descent of Iraq from pan-Arab solidarity to sectarian blood-letting and now the rise of Daesh - it could hardly have turned out worse, although there are some indications of the country now coming back together to face down the jihadis, even as Syria and Europe reel from their empowerment. Interestingly, however, Rosen indicates that there was a genuine window of goodwill-time which could have led to a smooth transition of power. Many influential Iraqis were prepared to accept the foreign intervention as long as it delivered on the promise to topple the dictator and then get out of the way.

The coalition missed this window, and compounded it with some appalling errors of judgement. Not understanding how the native culture interprets the concept of "occupation" - essentially what Crusaders and illegal Israeli settlers do - the Americans effectively called themselves Crusaders in front of the Arabs they hoped to win over. Then, rather than holding back and letting Arabs govern Arab affairs, heavily-armoured Crusader knights went around kicking down doors, tramping around mosques in boots, shouting at Arabic-speakers in some incomprehensible Indo-European gibberish language and generally humiliating people at every turn. They also marginalised some of the most respected religious and political figures, demolished many of the institutions best able to keep order and played into the hands of crude jihadist provocations designed to make it look like the various factions were being disenfranchised.

The result was that after a grace period of various sectarian leaders asserting that there were no Shi'a, Sunni or Kurd but only Iraqis, rebellion against the occupation was ignited and the factions ended up spiralling into violence regardless.

Rosen is obviously repressing a simmering rage as he describes this process, and I cannot say that I blame him. Almost nobody from the West went and spoke to Iraq's key citizens in the way Rosen did and asked them what they actually want. If someone had, if someone had treated the Iraqis as a liberated people rather than a collection of terrorist suspects, the invasion could actually have had a relatively quick and easy ending. The invasion itself can never be justified, but something good could have been salvaged. An opportunity was missed, and as usual those who were responsible for creating the conflict were not those who bled.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosen was reporting unembedded from Iraq from 2003 to 2005. One of his main endeavors in this book, first published in 2006, was to chronicle what he already described as civil war in Iraq, during a time when most of the mainstream US rhetoric was still disingenuously about "preventing civil war," ignoring the ethnic cleansing underway throughout the country. His account of the growing resistance and mounting Sunni-Shia tension during this time is fascinating to read years later, though in times strange in that he necessarily spends a great deal of time describing the support for the resistance and opposition to the occupation among everyday people, a fact taken for granted now; I had forgotten how long the idea that the US would be and had been welcome as liberators lingered. He has an excellent and gripping breakdown of resistance, insurgency, and jihadist movements. This made his book a bit of a shock to me; few of the other books I've read on Iraq spend much time on the makeup and aims of the Iraqi resistance, since so many of its main elements--Sadr's Mahdi Army, and particularly al-Qaeda in Iraq--have no points of sympathy or commonality with left-wing US politics (or right-wing US politics, for that matter) other than a desire for US withdrawal. Rosen's portraits of fundamentalist sheikhs gaining influence, the militias sweeping Iraq, the random, ceaseless violence, the widespread anti-Semitic rhetoric, the growing anti-democratic movements, make very uneasy reading--in whose hands, one keeps wondering, will Iraq end up? Rosen's account is of a country he believes "has been killed, never to rise again."

[Andreas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Iraq is in turmoil! The incompetent handling of the war by the US administration has left the country in the shambles described by the author on page 220:

"Police, soldiers and officials working for or with the new government continued to be assassinated. No one was safe anywhere. The Americans controlled only the spaces where they had soldiers, effectively only the Green Zone and the military bases scattered throughout the country. Otherwise Iraq belonged to militias, the resistance, terrorists, any man with a gun. The roads leading to Baghdad were a terror zone. The streest of Baghdad were war zones. Two years after the conquest of Iraq, after so many turning points, Iraqis continued to live in a republic of fear".

Nir Rosen is an American journalist of Iraqi descent who in 2003, at the tender age of twenty-six, ventured back to the country to take a look at how ordinary Iraqis felt about the "liberation" of their country. In short, Rosen paints a grim picture. Even more disturbing is that there's no immediate solution to be seen either. Whatever Iraqi nationalism existed at one point has now evaporated and been replaced by vehement sectarianism, anti-Westernism and militancy, a cocktail that is sending the country headfirst down a horrible spiral towards civil war.

A must-read for anyone who wants to make an attempt at understanding the greatest humanitarian and political disaster of our generation.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

(7/10) Nir Rosen offers a journalistic look at the causes of the civil war in Iraq, and in particular the political rhetoric of the various opposing factions. This is something that hasn't been paid too much attention to in the Western media, which just assumed it was those crazy sectarian brown people at it again, so it's refreshing to see an in-depth (if a bit condescending) look at the word on the street. Rosen sets out to describe the everyday Iraqi's experience of the war, and he doesn't really accomplish that, instead offering mostly quotes and summaries of the platforms of radical sesctarian parties, which sort of obscures the desperate conditions which would have given these parties support. But it does provide a valuable light that differentiates between a people that are often lumped together, and that's always valuable.

[Armour Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly interesting read, though not for the "We should stay in Iraq forever because they love us so much" crowd... If you believe that party line, you should read this book. It will really change your mind about what's going on over there. And not from a geo-political strategic standpoint; but from what the average-everyday Iraqi thinks about HMMWV's rolling down his neighborhood street. There are times when it is a bit hard to follow, as the author uses so many names, but generally he does a good job of re-explaining who people are.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting Iraqi on the ground eye view of the war. Rosen goes to a lot of mosques for the Friday sermons. He talks to a lot of sheiks and imams and leaders of insurgency/resistance. I would have liked a more coherent narrative.

[Jason Burkhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever wonder about why Sunnis and Shiites are fighting with each other in Iraq? This book gives you some clues. Much to learn and think about - you will be left wondering why you ever believed the US would win a quick, easy, and popular (with the civilian population) war.

[Walt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much shorter and easier to follow than his previous book, Aftermath. Much-needed insight. What have we wrought?