An excellent book about the US invasion of Iraq, told from the Iraqi people's point of view. The book is divided into sections detailing life in Baghdad, largely, before the invasion, during the invasion, the aftermath of the invasion, and the insurgency.

This book is a prime example of what excellent journalism can be.

So often, the greater part of our nation sees its conflicts through information that focuses on positive results rather than the actual and current state-of-affairs. The Stars and Stripes fly in front of doorways; we’re captivated by red-tinted aerial images with crosshairs lined up on buildings that disappear in silent symmetrical clouds of dust; and if troops are lost in the conflict, then they certainly died in an effort to keep America free.

The choice to use our armed forces to enact US policy, however, is far more septic. To begin, our own perceptions of our involvement can be disturbed by the realities of war. Our personal justifications for our nation’s actions must be balanced against the lives of our sons, the extreme costs of deployment, and, at times, changes in reasoning. But more than those things, our justifications should also include a real concern for those that will have to live through our decision to wage war.

In my observations of the invasion of Iraq, this real concern was minimized and avoided. Very little attention was given to what our flag would mean to a country of people that have lived through centuries of repeated occupations. Very few among us thought about the plight of the people that lived next door to the buildings that evaporated on our TV screens. And discussions regarding the scores of Iraqis that died for every reported American death seldom occurred.

Night Draws Near covers this neglected concern. Anthony Shadid roamed independently through Iraq, completely detached from US forces, and interviewed those that were subjected to the American invasion and occupation. His reports are non-biased and are certainly not aimed at providing positive outlooks. He searched out and interviewed all factions of the population including religious zealots, tribal leaders, Muslim clerics, and the newly-coined Iraqi security forces. Shadid also interviewed a wide cross-section of the Iraqi population, from the wealthy to the poor, from professionals to laborers and to the unemployed. The contents of his interviews are not surprising and in fact, they reveal realities that could have been avoided if we, as a nation, had formulated a meaningful plan for peace following our invasion of this ancient land.

A Must Read

For anyone interested in the Iraqi war and its' continuing aftermath.

This book is particularly gripping because the author focuses on the impact the last few years (2005) have had on the people of Iraq and the city of Baghdad. He examines the war from the lens of Iraq, not that of Washington.

The dichotomy of this war - Washington vis-a-vis Iraq - is exposed. The war is at the same time a liberation and an occupation. The effects of that occupation are detailed by Shadid: foreign tanks moving past homes, informers betraying fellow Iraqis (and suffering the consequences).

The people of Iraq cannot understand the efficiency of a superpower that can take out their leader in a mere 3 weeks, but is so inefficient as to be unable to keep the electricity running or clean the water after years of occupation. It is blatantly obvious that the directors of the invasion were looking at Iraq from a Western point of view. Did they not realize that a people who were subjugated under a repressive dictatorship for 30 years, who underwent an imposed eight year war with Iran and; for the ten years prior to the invasion, endured sanctions and isolation from the outside world - would probably be unsympathetic to the words "democracy" and "liberation."

Shadid describes how fundamentalist Islam has moved into this vacuum and is warping young minds in Iraq. Shiite and Sunni clerics alike are preaching hatred of America and Israel and finding a receptive audience. They are equating martyrdom with the ultimate religious experience. There is no solution proposed - only the purity of a religion over other ways of living. It is frightening - over 70 years ago Adolf Hitler knew the value of hatred in uniting and motivating a confused people. He preached a similar message - espousing racial purity and intolerance of non-Germanic cultures.

Where is Iraq heading under this occupation? Are its' potential leaders already killed by suicide bombers? Or are they sequestered comfortably in exile never to return (and given the current conditions this is very understandable)?

As the author would say it is all very ghamidha - ambigious.

This book is an amazing piece of reporting on the lives of many Iraqi people before and in the wake of the United States invasion in 2003. The author engaged with many men and women of many backgrounds, aided by his Arabic background and command of the language. His empathic and vivid descriptions of their fears, hopes and, ultimately, frustrations with the American incursion are unique among everything that I have previously read about these events. He focuses on both Sunni & Shia groups, and for the first time I was able to get a grasp on the differences between these two sects within Iraq. Unfortunately, he did not present much about any other ethnic/religious groups within the country.

It is a great loss that he died a few years ago when he was only 42.

Following a visit to Iraq last month I’ve wanted to learn more about the country and its people . There’s more than enough about the war from an American/ soldier perspective so this was a welcome alternative.
I can’t say I understand much more except that war is seldom an answer - particularly if there are no good post war reconstruction plans & the aggressor is so convinced of their own superiority & so unable to have empathy or appreciation of the culture they are opressing.

I'm about one-third through this book and feel compelled to start writing about it. This is the story of the war in Iraq and its aftermath from the point of view of the people of Iraq, on the ground, innocent, and helpless. The late Anthony Shadid "embedded" himself, not in the military ranks, but among the helpless people of Baghdad as the war began and throughout its aftermath. He skillfully embued his story through the stories of ordinary, and some extraordinary, Iraqis who lived through the calamity of war. For example, a fourteen-year-old girl kept a diary starting around the beginning of the war and it is through some quotations from that diary that Shadid explained the mindset of this child and of the people of Baghdad. It would be poignant were it not that THIS WAS A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL LIVING THROUGH THE HELL OF WAR!

Some of you who will read this know that I enjoy reading stories of World War II. Having been born eleven years after that war ended, I was enough removed from it, yet strongly influenced by veteran and historian's accountings, to relish the bravery of soldiers and to appreciate the importance of responding to tyrants early. Reading Night Draws Near broadens my understanding of war and its effects on ordinary people. It's not that I was naive. It is that, given a choice whether or not to invade Iraq, the US used its best marketing of the American people to accomplish only one goal -- the removal of a tyrant. It completely and utterly failed to consider the millions of people on the ground in Iraq and how to reconstruct that country! As an engineer used to thinking problems through, risk assessment and planning, I have to wonder who had the ear of the President at that time. It certainly does not seem like it was anyone who understood Iraqi culture and was serious about rebuilding the country.

Now, having finished the book, I can only recommend this as an example of the highest level of journalism. Shadid was able to take a complex, unpredictable situation and environment and explain it beautifully, but tragically, through the lens of the people of Baghdad and its environs. An incredible book.

Confined to the green zone, a small secure space in Baghdad, american military personnel carry out their uncertain mission. America invaded the country with an ignorance of its culture and its people. Once the invasion was launched, america blew the chance to actually help the Iraqi people and restore peace in the country.

This a memoir of an American journalist who went to Iraq a few months before the 2003 US invasion, and stayed for the year that followed. He interviewed and formed relationships with people all over the country-- of every sect and class, and his anecdotes really help to humanize the conflict.

This book is definitely one of the best I have read on Iraq. It really did explain the American failure in Iraq like no other did to me.

[Updated 16 Feb: I just learned that Anthony Shadid passed away in Syria today, from an asthma attack caused by an allergy to the horses he used to smuggle himself across the border from Turkey. This man was one of the greatest journalists of our time. His craft was not just based on complete fearlessness and ability to maneuver himself anywhere, but also his focused attention to diverse and silenced sources, centering the narratives of women, youth, the poor, and others typically left out of the histories written by the dominant. What Shadid wrote was a much more real picture of any situation because he drew from multiple perspectives, respecting and elevating complex truths. He died with a story of Syria in him. This is such a loss on so many levels.]


When I first started reading books about the Iraq War, I had some specific questions. Who are the "insurgents"? Why are they bombing civilians and not so much US troops? What happened in Fallujah? Who is Sadr and what does he stand for? What does this war feel like to be living through it, not as a soldier but for the people who live in Iraq?

Shadid answered these questions, about Iraq and in a larger way for war in general. He pressed hard off the accepted path for Americans in Iraq, unembedded and free-moving before, during, and after the invasion. Shadid made a point to speak with Iraqis, and the whole book bursts with the direct quotes of Iraqi people, Iraqi experiences and interpretations in their own words. The scope of Shadid's informants is unbelievable. He spoke with rich doctors in Baghdad and mothers in the slum outskirts of the city. He interviewed the families of dead insurgents, Muqtada al-Sadr himself, and religious people on pilgrimage-- before and directly after bombings of Shi'ite holy sites. He quotes at length from the diary of a 14 year old girl. He even quotes the graffitti spraypainted on walls around the city, acknowledging the weight of these messages as a guage of popular sentiment.

All the while Shadid is contextualizing these words with his own experiences of Iraq. Shadid is an American journalist with Arab heritage who has become fluent in Arabic. His English flowers with the Arabic he is translating. Arabic is known for it's descriptive beauty, and this book-- ostensibly a simple history written by a journalist-- reads like a peice of literature. His detailed descriptions of people and places become poignant metaphors for the larger scenes he describes. In one scene he captures the horror and humanity of a suicide bombing in a piece of brain that had been respectfully scooped into a bowl and left there, because the bowl is less unclean then the ground. In another, he describes an ad for US-sponsored Iraqi TV, which reads, "Expect more to come," hanging over a bombed out building in Baghdad.

This is what has happened in Iraq for the Iraqis. There is no unified insurgency, but thousands of people whose lives are unsatisfying, violent, and unstable. The insurgents are Shi'ites looking for power and Sunnis trying to regain it. They are poor people who support grassroots movements which first supply food and necessities and second ask them to fight, and they are religious intellectuals who oppose secular rule. Not all of them are morally against America, but they all share a common sense that the US has utterly failed them and will only be worse and mroe cruel as time goes on.

Fuck, right?
This book was good.

I didn't know anything about Iraq or the US' history with it coming into this book, so I learned a great deal from it. Reading opinions from Iraqis in Iraq really added to the depth of this novel. Other reviews of this book have given me some more context to what lead up to the 2003 US invasion (and occupation) of Iraq. It feels wrong to give a rating to a nonfiction book about events that large groups of people went through, but I didn't. Who am I to assign a numerical value to the story of Iraq's people through my own country's infliction? Anyways, there were several quotes from this book that I wrote down and taught me new ideas. Informational to say the least, simultaneously non-exhaustive. The ending about the first election held in half a century was a nice way to end the book, but it doesn't downplay the horrors faced by the people of Baghdad, Thuluyah, Heet, etc at the hands of many.

A light extinguished way too soon.