Review A Soldier’s Dream, Captain Travis Patriquin and the Awakening of Iraq

Doyle, William, A Soldier’s Dream, Captain Travis Patriquin and the Awakening of Iraq, London: New American Library, 2011

 

A Soldier’s Dream by William Doyle is a celebration of the work of Captain Travis Patriquin with the tribal revolt in Anbar province against Al Qaeda in Iraq which became known as the Awakening. The author was taken in by Patriquin’s story of being a scholar-warrior who embraced the people and culture of Iraq. When you think this will be a great man in history story it switches to the tribes and the sheikhs who fought the insurgency to even things out with Iraqi voices. That’s the main point of the book. The Iraqis started the Awakening and the U.S. and Patriquin were there at the right moment to support them.

 

Captain Patriquin definitely had a unique story. He joined the army right out of high school. Received language training in Arabic and fought in Afghanistan in 2001 before being sent to Iraq. In early 2006 he’d been deployed to Tal Afar where he took part in a successful counterinsurgency campaign where he emersed himself in local officials and notables. He applied those lessons when he arrived in Ramadi, Anbar and tried to learn about the local sheikhs and tribes. That led him to Sheikh Abu Risha who’d grown tired of Al Qaeda in Iraq encroaching on his business and who killed his father and three brothers. Together they started a program to recruit local tribesmen into the Iraqi police and set up police stations in tribal areas. Slowly but surely other tribes joined and Patriquin worked tirelessly to give them as much American support as he could get. It helped that Patriquin knew Arabic and had learned local Iraqi terms and culture. It’s these experience which drew Doyle to Patriquin’s story. He gushes over the captain’s education, his intelligence, and his ability to adapt to situations. The author acknowledges that the Awakening was an Iraqi invention but argues that if Patriquin hadn’t been there at the right moment it might have gone in a different direction. Thus it goes with many books that focus upon individual men and their place in history.

 

Luckily that’s not all to A Soldier’s Dream otherwise it would be very limited in scope. When the Awakening gets going it focuses more upon Abu Risha and other sheikhs that decided to fight the insurgency. Once they were successful they ended up splitting over political power, took over the Anbar government only to be rejected by the people in the next election. Doyle tries to show that Patriquin was important in the development of the Awakening but it was the Iraqis who led the movement and took on the brunt of the fighting against Al Qaeda in Iraq. The book therefore argues that it was a partnership between Iraqis and the U.S. that helped turn around Anbar province. That’s important because most American books on the Iraq war just focus upon the Americans.

 

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