The CIA’s Secret Victory in Iraq
The CIA’s Secret Victory in Iraq
by William Doyle
Download the Full Article: The CIA’s Secret Victory in Iraq
Editor’s Note: This essay is based on research conducted from the author’s recently released book, A Soldier’s Dream: Captain Travis Patriquin and the Awakening of Iraq.
The success of the bin Laden raid represents an exceedingly rare public triumph for the CIA, but the agency had a mostly unknown contribution to another recent American success that holds major significance for America’s position in the Middle East — its role in incubating and launching the Awakening of Iraq.
Interviews with government officials and U.S. military documents consulted during the research for my book reveal a vital supporting role played by the CIA at several crucial moments in the birth of the Awakening. The CIA, it turns out, was a midwife to the Awakening.
The Iraq War began turning around in large part in Anbar Province in 2006, when the previously obscure Sheik Sattar abu Risha, a suspected gangster, declared war on the existentially brutal local rule of al Qaeda in Iraq. He was given crucial help by a young Army Special Forces and Afghan combat veteran named Captain Travis Patriquin, an Arabic-speaking, Koran-studying tribal affairs expert, and his army and marine colleagues based in the provincial capital of Ramadi. Patriquin’s charismatic personality was a key to his effectiveness with Sattar and his fellow sheiks. “My God,” one Iraqi told me, “there is no one who made a deeper connection with the Iraqi people than Travis. They adored him.”
Download the Full Article: The CIA’s Secret Victory in Iraq
William Doyle is a New York based writer and also author of Inside the Oval Office: the White House Tapes and An American Insurrection: James Meredith and the Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962.
