In Strange Company: An American Soldier with Multinational Forces in the Middle East and Iraq

The decision to not deploy reoriented, trained Iraqi divisions and other allied forces in numbers significant enough to adequately stabilize the situation in Iraq in 2003–04 resulted in significant shortages of manpower and equipment that eventually led to a less-than-satisfactory ending to the campaign, and significantly challenged the entire Coalition effort in the first year of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The roles and missions assumed by allies were vitally important in the under-resourced effort to bring order to the chaos of Iraq but would remain relatively unheralded throughout most of the campaign. Colonel Tiso’s account of this time offers unique insights into the challenges of planning the Iraqi campaign and the intricacies and challenges of multinational service through the lens of his assignments as a war planner at U.S. Central Command, Senior Military Adviser of the Arab Peninsula Shield Force and the Polish-led Multinational Division (Central-South), and Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (C-3) of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team tasked to develop the New Iraqi Army. His observations cast significant light on the missions these units undertook and the challenges they confronted. His firsthand account of operational planning for war in Iraq captures the concerns of the military planners and senior commanders to liberate and stabilize the country, enabling the reader to better understand the challenges of operational war planning, coalition warfare, the difficulty of stabilizing Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, the development of the New Iraqi Army, and ultimately a deeper understanding of America’s “long war” in Iraq.