Fighting Ghosts and Chasing the Wind: The Hero of Tal Afar - Paperback

by Najim Al-Jubouri (Author), Craig Lancto (Author)

This is a book about Iraq: Iraqi people, Iraqi culture, and the ravages visited upon them. It is a book about turning enmity to friendship, and destruction to reconstruction. It is about turning defeat to victory... and it is about an Iraqi patriot forced into exile. It is unique because its central figure is an Iraqi general officer, now the governor of Nineveh Province, who served simultaneously as mayor and police chief of Tal Afar, the second largest city in Nineveh province, a city of a quarter million residents that al Qaeda operatives controlled and used as a center of operations. President George W. Bush called him "a courageous Iraqi man," and U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter called him "a hero to the people of Tal Afar and Iraq." It also is unique in that the same Iraqi officer forged close personal and professional relationships with American forces to clear, hold, and build the city of Tal Afar so effectively that it became the paradigm for pursuing terrorists in Anbar Province and throughout Iraq. The story begins in 1991, when Col. H.R. McMaster led US Forces into Iraq, as Iraqi Air Defense Lieutenant Najim al Jubouri was struggling to survive in al Basra. It ends after MG McMaster helps his close friend MG al Jubouri and his family to find refuge from al Qaeda after that organization targeted him and his family for assassination. It is a long, symmetrical journey as recounted by a proud Iraqi officer who learned the value of allying himself with Allied Forces for the sake of his country."A lesson for the Americans was that human casualties were not collateral damage. They were loved ones-fathers, mothers, sons, and brothers-killed, injured, or disfigured, by the war that no one wanted, waged between the Americans and Iraq... or, as often, between and among Iraqis." MG (ret.) and Nineveh governor, Najim Abed al Jabouri.