The CIA War in Kurdistan
The Untold Story of the Northern Front in the Iraq War
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The CIA War in Kurdistan
Buy Now for $24.99
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Narrated by:
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Paul Boehmer
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By:
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Sam Faddis
About this listen
In 2002, Sam Faddis was named to head a CIA team that would enter Iraq to facilitate the deployment of follow-on conventional military forces numbering more than 40,000 American soldiers. This force, built around the 4th Infantry Division, would, in partnership with Kurdish forces and with the assistance of Turkey, engage Saddam's army in the North as part of a coming invasion. Faddis expected to be on the ground in Iraq within weeks, the entire campaign likely to be over by summer.
The 4th Infantry Division never arrived, nor did any other conventional forces in substantial number. The Turks not only refused to provide support, they worked overtime to prevent the United States from achieving success. And an Arab army that was to assist US forces fell apart before it ever made it to the field.
Alone, hopelessly outnumbered, short on supplies, and threatened by Iraqi assassination teams and Islamic extremists, Faddis' team, working with Kurdish Peshmerga, miraculously paved the way for a brilliant and largely bloodless victory in the North and the fall of Saddam's Iraq. That victory, handed over to Washington and the Department of Defense on a silver platter, was then squandered. The decisions that followed would lead to catastrophic consequences that continue to this day.
©2020 Sam Faddis (P)2020 TantorThe last chapter was a deep and honest evaluation of the troubles we will all face in the future from an intelligent and uniquely experienced individual.
Insightful
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The CIA War in Kurdistan recounts Sam Faddis’s experience leading a CIA team into northern Iraq in 2002, tasked with preparing the way for more than 40,000 US troops who were meant to partner with Kurdish forces in the north. What followed was a year of collapsing plans: Turkey blocked cooperation, the 4th Infantry Division never arrived, the Arab forces meant to assist dissolved before deployment, and Faddis’s small team found themselves isolated, outnumbered, and navigating Iraqi assassination squads. Working alongside the Kurdish peshmerga, they still managed to pave the way for a largely bloodless victory—one Faddis argues Washington squandered through incompetence, bureaucracy, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the region.
While the premise has enormous potential, the execution falls short. Faddis spends much of the book settling old scores, positioning himself as the lone voice of wisdom in a sea of poor decision-making, and insisting that senior leaders failed simply because they didn’t follow his plan. The tone often drifts into arrogance, with a notable lack of self-awareness. Despite his front-row seat to geopolitics, the reader learns surprisingly little about Kurdistan itself—its people, geography, or strategic complexity. Instead, we hear repeatedly that he and his team “knew better,” while headquarters bungled every opportunity.
The book seems, at times, more aligned with Faddis’s later aborted political ambitions than with offering meaningful insight into the Iraq War or CIA structure. And though his criticisms of national-level incompetence and Pentagon mismanagement are significant—and often convincing—the narrative feels more like personal catharsis than rigorous history.
Still, there are interesting threads: the tension between bureaucracy and field operations, insight into Kurdish motivations, reflections on the refusal of surrender, and commentary on US–Turkey–Kurdish dynamics that remain relevant today. These elements ultimately nudged it to three stars rather than lower.
In the end, this isn’t a broad overview of the war or even of the Kurdistan campaign—it’s one man’s story, told very much through his own lens. Whether you agree with him or not, it opens the door to worthwhile conversations about intelligence work, government dysfunction, and the consequences of strategic blindness.
A Fascinating Mission Undercut by an Overinflated
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narrator doesn't fit the story
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Good account of a critical failure
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