Years after the US invasion of Iraq a loosely organized insurgency continues to target American and Coalition soldiers as well as Iraqi security forces and civilians with devastating results In this sobering account of the ongoing violence Ahmed Hashim a specialist on Middle Eastern strategic issues and on irregular warfare reveals the insurgents behind the widespread revolt their motives and their tactics The insurgency he shows is not a united movement directed by a leadership with a single ideological vision Instead it involves former regime loyalists Iraqis resentful of foreign occupation foreign and domestic Islamist extremists and elements of organized crime These groups have cooperated with one another in the past and coordinated their attacks but the alliance between nationalist Iraqi insurgents on the one hand and religious extremists has frayed considerably
