List of Maps
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Before the Fall: The military experience of the US and its allies
before 9/11
2 Strategic Shock and Response: Afghanistan from 9/11 to Operation
Anaconda
3 Economy of Force: Stabilizing Afghanistan 2002–05
4 Operation Cobra II: The invasion of Iraq
5 Descent into Chaos: Iraq 2003–04
6 ‘As the Iraqis stand up we will stand down’: The Transition
Strategy 2004–06
7 The Iraq Surge: Regaining the initiative
8 Learning under Fire: The struggle to adapt
9 The Battles for Basra: Britain’ s near-defeat in southern
Iraq
10 Endgame in Iraq: Success turns to failure
11 The Enemy Gets a Vote: Afghanistan 2006–09
12 The Afghan Surge: 2009–12
13 The Failure of the Transition to Afghan Security Leadership
14 COVID-19: A dark postscript
15 Bloody Lessons
Glossary
Recommended Reading
Endnotes
Index
Written by the author of the official British military analysis of the Iraq campaigns, Blood, Metal and Dust is the first authoritative military history of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to tell the detailed story of what happened on the ground.
As Senior Fellow for Land Warfare for the International Institute
for Strategic Studies, Ben Barry has written extensively for IISS
publications including Survival, its journal, and Strategic Survey,
its annual assessment of world affairs. He is one of the authors of
the annual Military Balance, an authoritative assessment of global
military affairs, and his publications with Military Balance
include ‘Combat and Capability: Military Trends since 9/11’, a
concise analysis of the decade of military conflict from 2001 to
2011, published in 2012.
Before leaving the British Army in October 2010, he wrote A Cold
War: Front-line Operations in Bosnia 1995–1996 describing his
battalion’s operational tour under both UN and NATO flags in the
mid-1990s. The book was shortlisted for the British Army Book of
the Year 2009 award. His final appointment was leading the British
Army’s analysis of the lessons of the Iraq campaign, which informs
Blood, Metal and Dust.
At one level Blood, Metal and Dust is a clear, dispassionate and
succinct military history of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. But it is much more important than that. As the US and
UK turn their backs too quickly on both wars, they are in danger of
disregarding the lessons and so failing to profit from their
experiences. This book puts that right. Ben Barry is forthright in
his criticisms and depressingly correct in his conclusions. Blood,
Metal and Dust is essential reading.
*Sir Hew Strachan FBA FRSE, Professor of International Relations at
the University of St Andrews and former Chichele Professor of the
History of War at All Souls College, Oxford.*
With a soldier’s eye for telling operational details, Ben Barry
offers an authoritative, compelling and inevitably bleak account of
the American and British campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
*Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King’s
College London*
Blood, Metal and Dust is a seminal work that exploits newly
available archival material to produce a riveting account of the
allies’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Armed with a keen scholarly
eye and long military experience, Ben Barry dissects key decision
points and pitched battles ranging from Tora Bora, Operation Medusa
and Wanat in Afghanistan to the US Marines’ Anbar campaign,
Operation Viking Hammer in Kurdistan, and the Sadr City battle of
2008. His unsparing judgments should inform future war planning,
making this book required reading for the policymaker and the
practitioner alike.
*Linda Robinson, Senior International/Defense Researcher, RAND
Corporation and author of 'Tell Me How This Ends'*
The telling of this particular audit of war is accomplished with
precision and with dispassionate honesty. This book is required
reading.
*War History Online*
This is without doubt the best military history of the campaigns in
Iraq and Afghanistan I have read to date.
*Wavell Room*
Blood, Metal and Dust is an essential, landmark work.
*The RUSI Journal*
Blood, Metal and Dust is the essential account of the 21st-century
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
*Asian Affairs*
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