Nir Rosen

Nir Rosen (born May 17, 1977 in New York City) is an American journalist and chronicler of the Iraq War, who resides in Lebanon. Rosen writes on current and international affairs. He is a special adviser for NGO Humanitarian Dialogue.

Journalistic and academic work

Nir Rosen was born in New York City and attended the High School of Music And Art. Rosen is known for his writings on the rise of violence in Iraq following the 2003 invasion, which form the basis of his first book, In the Belly of the Green Bird (2006). He spent eight years in Iraq reporting on the Coalition occupation, the relationship between Americans and Iraqis, the development of postwar Iraqi religious and political movements, inter-ethnic and sectarian relations, and the Iraqi civil war.

He has regularly contributed to leading periodicals, such as Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Review, and Harper's. He contributed to the footage of Iraq in Charles Ferguson's documentary No End In Sight and was also interviewed for the film. Rosen has written extensively against the surge in Iraq, notably in a March 2008 article for Rolling Stone.

From 2005 to 2008, Rosen was a fellow at the New America Foundation. In September 2007, he was the C.V. Starr Distinguished Visitor at The American Academy in Berlin. On April 2, 2008, Rosen testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee at their hearings on political prospects in Iraq after the surge.

In 2010 he published his second book, Aftermath. From 2008 to 2011, Rosen was a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, until his resignation in the wake of his controversial statements about Lara Logan's sexual assault in Egypt.

In March 2011, Mary Kaldor, Co-Director at the Center for Global Governance at the London School of Economics had hired Rosen as a research fellow to work on North Africa. This created controversy due to Mary Kaldor's involvement in the LSE Libya Links affair. After two days, Rosen resigned from his position as a fellow at the London School of Economics. An LSE spokesman said, “Nir Rosen today resigned his temporary visiting fellowship at LSE—which was an unpaid position.”

Controversy

In February, 2011 Rosen commented to his Twitter account regarding Lara Logan, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for CBS News, who was beaten and sexually assaulted in the February riots in Egypt. "Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger," wrote Rosen. Rosen suggested that she was trying to outdo Anderson Cooper, who was attacked but not sexually assaulted just days before, and that it would have been humorous had Cooper suffered a similar assault, saying "it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too." Rosen later posted an apology on Twitter and resigned his position as a fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security. Rosen stated that he did not read the CBS News press release to which he had linked, and that at the time of his comments he did not know Logan's assault had been sexual.

Beliefs & views

Rosen believes that Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization, but rather a "widely popular and legitimate political and resistance movement". In April 2008, when asked by then-Senator Joe Biden what could be done to improve the situation in Iraq, Rosen replied, "As a journalist, I’m uncomfortable advising an imperialist power about how to be a more efficient imperialist power. I don’t think we’re there for the interests of the Iraqi people. I don’t think that’s ever been a motivation."

Bibliography

Books

• In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq, New York: Free Press, 2006. ISBN 0-7432-7703-1
  • (as paperback) The Triumph of the Martyrs: A Reporter's Journey into Occupied Iraq, Potomac Books Inc., 2008. ISBN 1-59797-184-7
• Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World, Nation Books, 2010. ISBN 1-56858-401-6

Articles (excerpt)

• "If America Left Iraq: The case for cutting and running" The Atlantic Monthly (December 2005).
• "Anatomy of a Civil War: Iraq's descent into chaos", Boston Review (November/December, 2006)
• "Nir Rosen on Iraq’s descent into civil war: 'This is a U.S. crime'". Socialist Worker (December 8, 2006 | Pages 6 and 7)
• "The Flight from Iraq", New York Times Magazine (May 13, 2007)
• "Riding Shotgun With Our Shadow Army in Iraq", Mother Jones (May/June 2007)
• "Al Qaeda in Lebanon: The Iraq war spreads" Boston Review (January/February 2008)
• "The Myth of the Surge", Rolling Stone (March 2008)
• "How we lost the war we won", Rolling Stone (October 2008)
• "Gaza: the logic of colonial power", The Guardian (December 2008)
• "How Did al-Shabab Emerge from the Chaos of Somalia?", Time (August 20, 2010)
• "Somalia's al-Shabab: A Global or Local Movement?", Time (August 20, 2010)
• "Western Media Fraud In The Middle East", Al Jazeera (May 18, 2011)
• "Yemen's Shia dilemma", Al Jazeera (May 24, 2011)
• "Among the Alawites", London Review of Books (September 27, 2012)

External links

• Nir Rosen's personal blog
• Nir Rosen at the Internet Movie Database
• Nir Rosen on Twitter
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Former Fellow at New America Foundation
• Works by or about Nir Rosen in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• YouTube channel