In 2008, Kilcullen was Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. In 2007 he was senior counter-insurgency advisor to General David Petraeus, commanding Multinational Force Iraq. He was part of the small team that designed the Surge, then spent his tour in Iraq directing counter-insurgency programs and providing hands-on advice to military, diplomatic, aid and intelligence agencies. In 2005-6 he was chief counter-terrorism strategist at the U.S. State Department, working in the Middle ...
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In 2008, Kilcullen was Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. In 2007 he was senior counter-insurgency advisor to General David Petraeus, commanding Multinational Force Iraq. He was part of the small team that designed the Surge, then spent his tour in Iraq directing counter-insurgency programs and providing hands-on advice to military, diplomatic, aid and intelligence agencies. In 2005-6 he was chief counter-terrorism strategist at the U.S. State Department, working in the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia, including several operational activities in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Agencies. He helped design and implement the Regional Strategic Initiative, the policy that drives United States counter-terrorism diplomacy worldwide. A former Australian infantry officer with 22 years' service, including operational deployments in East Timor, Bougainville and the Middle East, Dr. Kilcullen has served in Australia's Office of National Assessments and on the writing team for Australia's 2004 "Terrorism White Paper". From 2004 to 2005 he was seconded to the Pentagon in Washington D.C. where he wrote the counterterrorism strategy for the 2006 "U. S. Quadrennial Defense Review". His doctoral dissertation, on insurgency in traditional societies, drew on extended residential fieldwork with guerrillas and terrorists in Indonesia during the 1990s. He is fluent in Indonesian, partially fluent in Arabic and French, is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (elected 1996) and holds several honors and decorations, including the United States Army Superior Civilian Service Medal, for exceptionally meritorious service to the United States as Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor, Multi-National Force-Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the first such award to a foreign national serving in combat alongside U.S. Forces. His bestselling book, "The Accidental Guerrilla", published in spring 2009, analyses the complex interplay between local guerrillas and global terrorists in contemporary war zones from Africa to Southeast Asia. David Kilcullen is one of the world's foremost experts on guerrilla warfare. His vision of war has been enormously influential, through his service as senior counterinsurgency adviser to General David Petraeus during the Surge in Iraq, as special adviser to the United States Secretary of State, and as a current adviser to the United States, British, Australian and other allied governments. This brief book distills that vision in an easily readable and practical format, through a completely revised and updated edition of his 2006 cult classic "The Twenty-Eight Articles", a field practitioner's guide to the fundamentals of counterinsurgency, which has become the essential handbook for generations of allied military officers and civilian officials in Iraq and Afghanistan, has become part of the course of instruction at military academies and counterinsurgency schools worldwide, and has been translated into Arabic and Spanish. This edition presents a fully updated and expanded version, including a new introduction, annotated tactical case studies, and an appendix on the key principles of the hugely successful Surge campaign of 2007 in Iraq. Issued as a rugged, pocket-sized field handbook, this modern classic will be an indispensable aid to a new generation of field officers, as well as a concise and accessible primer for students and the general reader.
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