About this item
Counter Jihad is a sweeping account of Americas military campaigns in the Islamic world. Revising our understanding of what was once known as the War on Terror, it provides a retrospective on the extraordinary series of conflicts that saw the United States deploy more than two and a half million men and women to fight in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Brian Glyn Williams traces these unfolding wars from their origins in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan through U.S. Central Commands ongoing campaign to "degrade and destroy" the hybrid terrorist group known as ISIS. Williams takes readers on a journey beginning with the 2001 U.S. overthrow of the Taliban, to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, to the unexpected emergence of the notorious ISIS "Caliphate" in the Iraqi lands that the United States once occupied.Counter Jihad is the first history of Americas military operations against radical Islamists, from the Taliban-controlled Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan, to the Sunni Triangle of Iraq, to ISISs headquarters in the deserts of central Syria, giving both generalists and specialists an overview of events that were followed by millions but understood by few. Williams provides the missing historical context for the rise of the terror group ISIS out of the ashes of Saddam Husseins secular Baathist Iraq, arguing that it is only by carefully exploring the recent past can we understand how this jihadist group came to conquer an area larger than Britain and spread havoc from Syria to Paris to San Bernardino.
About the Author
Professor Brian Glyn Williams has both a scholarly background in Afghanistan and "boots on the ground" credentials in this country of the sort that few academics ensconced in the Ivory Towers possess. He has traveled extensively in Afghanistan tracking suicide bombers for the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center and doing PSYOPs (Psychological Operations) for the U.S. Army's secretive Joint Information Operations Warfare Command. He also has Hollywood links and the character from his book the Last Warlord appears in the upcoming Afghan-based movie "12 Strong, The True Declassified Story of the Horsesoldiers" (Dr. Williams advised A List actor Chris Hemsworth, Thor in the Avengers series, on the movie set in New Mexico) . See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=-Denciie5oAAs for his scholarly credentials, Dr. Williams has a PhD in Central Asian Islamic history and is a full professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (tenure received in 2006, and full professorship 2013) and formerly taught Muslim history at the prestigious University of London. His previous books have been reviewed by the Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal etc., endorsed by former CIA Director General David Petraeus, and one (Predators. The CIA's Drone War on Al Qaeda) was credited by the British rock band Muse in Rolling Stone with inspiring their bestselling, Grammy-winning album "Drones." Previous books have been published by Oxford University Press, Harper Collins, and the military-focused DC-based commercial press Potomac etc. Dr. Williams has testified in terrorism cases at Guantanamo Bay as an expert witness, wrote a manual for the U.S. Army on Afghanistan that was published in a civilian version as Afghanistan Declassified, and recently traveled to the Mosul region in northern Iraq to assist in freeing a Yazidi slave from her ISIS captor.In addition to his fieldwork in the Islamic world which ranges from Bosnia and Kosovo to the remote tribal zones of Pakistan and the Himalayan warzone of Kashmir, Dr. Williams has trained U.S. Marines deploying to Afghanistan on tribal history and has lectured at Special Operations Command, MacDill Airbase, and U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command and worked for the Directorate of National Intelligence on chemical and biological terror threats to the U.S. Professor Williams has also spent time in the Soviet Union and speaks Russian and Turkish.For more on Professor Williams, including his CV, articles for Huffington Post, links to previous books on espionage, warfare and terrorism, and photos taken in Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan, visit his website via this live link: www.brianglynwilliams.com
