In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq

Rosen minutely charts the course of Iraq's rapidly metastasizing sectarian conflict, which he observed up close from the immediate aftermath of Baghdad's fall in 2003 to the elections of January 2005. A fluent speaker of Iraqi Arabic and a freelance journalist, Rosen gained an impressive measure of access to both the Sunni and Shia resistance, dissidents and ordinary Iraqis, attending sermons at mosques and visiting tribal meeting halls across Iraq—from Baghdad to Tikrit, Najaf and Falluja to Kirkuk. The title is a reference to the Islamic idea that martyrs' souls are flown to heaven in the belly of a green bird, the book serves as a window onto the rhetoric, ambitions, strategies and historical context of the numerous violent groups struggling for power. From interviews with major Shia, Sunni and Kurdish players, Rosen reports that most people primarily want the U.S. out, while newly arrived foreign jihadis, radicalized by the American occupation, are at war with Christians, Jews and Shia Muslims. Despite the book's choppy chronological organization and Rosen's workmanlike prose, the end result represents brave reportage and significantly increases our understanding of what Rosen describes as an already raging civil war. (May 8)