Blood Year: Islamic State and the Failures of the War on Terror

We’re now in the fifteenth year since 9/11 and, horrible though it is to contemplate, we may be nowhere close to the end of the War on Terror. For a while, it looked like things were improving: we were getting on top of the threat. But that was before ISIS began crucifying children, before the Taliban swept back out of the mountains to seize the cities, before the bodies of asylum-seekers began washing up on the beaches, before the first Russian cluster bomb fell on a Syrian village, before the first suicide vest exploded in a Paris concert hall.

We have seen a “blood year”—massacres and beheadings, fallen cities, collapsed and collapsing states, the unravelling of a decade of foreign policy and military strategy. We witnessed the rise of ISIS, the splintering of government in Iraq, and a brutal Syrian civil war. What went wrong?

In Blood Year, David Kilcullen calls on twenty-five years’ experience to answer that question. He looks to strategy and history to make sense of the crisis. What are the roots of the global jihad movement? What is ISIS? What threats does it pose for Australia? What does its rise say about the effectiveness of the War on Terror since 9/11, and what does a coherent strategy look like after a disastrous year?

Blood Year is a vivid, urgent account of the War on Terror by a thinker who helped shape its strategy and witnessed its evolution on the ground.

Fighting for Queen and Country: One Man's True Story of Blood and Violence in the Paras and the SAS

'Nigel 'Spud' Ely writes with passion, pace and the knowledge of someone who's seen it and done it; because he has. In every chapter the reader can smell and taste the action. His style is gritty and no-nonsense, indicative of his background in the Parachute Regiment and SAS. His book exude authenticity as he writes from first-hand experience of some of the most ferocious battles of modern British military history.’

Mark Nicol, Military Author

'Spud Ely tells it like it was, from first-hand experience. No glory, just guts. You can almost smell the dirt and the blood. The true gauge of his fast-paced, in-your-face style is that men who have been to the dark places Spud has been to recognise its authenticity.'

The Sun

Spud Ely’s soldering career in the Parachute Regiment, the SAS, as a Military Consultant and as a War Photojournalist has taken him in to some of the most deadly, high-octane, violent battles of the modern era. From the Falklands, to Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq. Spud has been in the thick of the most ferocious and disturbing fighting of modern times.

Much of the combat he was involved in was so brutal and violent that it brought with it terrible and enduring psychological scars for the men on the front line. Since the end of the Falklands War more men have committed suicide that were actually killed in action. Spud has collected shocking testimonials from his fellow Paras and SAS soldiers and, sparing none of the gritty operational details, reveals exactly what these men when through and contributed to some of them taking their own lives.

Ely is renowned as a man who will, quite literally, stop at nothing to get the job done.

Ghost Force: The Secret History of the SAS

Formed in 1941, David Stirling’s SAS had been a highly mobile yet conventional force.

The modern SAS can be traced more directly to the Chindits and Force 136.

Between the onset of peace and persistent opposition in certain circles, in the autumn of 1945 the original SAS was disbanded.

Less than two years later the Malayan Emergency exposed how unprepared the British Army was not only for jungle warfare, but for unconventional warfare in general.

It was a niche that needed filling, and so Mike Calvert – the man who had been forced to preside over the disbandment – was able to breathe life into the Regiment once more.

Able to adapt, improvise and refine their techniques to face the most hostile of environments, the SAS forged a reputation as the world’s premier special forces unit.

In order to fully appreciate the importance of the SAS and its contribution from 1947 to the Gulf War, Ken Connor places the Regiment’s history within the wider, political context.

Compiled from personal experience and the eye-witness accounts, Connor reveals SAS involvement in the Falklands War and the Gulf War and their operations against the IRA in Gibraltar.

First published in 1998, ‘Ghost Force’ remains both thrilling and eye-opening, including a fascinating insight into how Connor felt the SAS should adapt for the twenty-first century.

This is the definitive history of the Regiment written by an ex-SAS soldier of 23 years' experience.

Secret Armies: The full story of the SAS, Delta Force and Spetsnaz

Trained to fight in any climate or terrain.

The best of the best.

Special forces are in the vanguard of modern warfare.

The names of their battlegrounds are familiar.

Vietnam. Mogadishu. Kabul. The Iranian Embassy. Banjul. The Falklands. Grenada.

Surgical strike or counter-terrorist operation, training guerrillas or quashing coups, time has proven that even the smallest number of these highly-trained operatives can achieve what an army cannot.

But not every mission has been successful, and nor has support for them been constant.

These deadly armies lie hidden from public scrutiny.

Who recruits and trains these secret soldiers?

How effective are they?

…and who controls them?

In this chilling analysis James Adams unveils the secret world of the SAS, Delta Force and Spetsnaz.

Adams also reveals the workings of West Germany’s GSG 9, France’s GIGN, Egypt’s Force 777 and Israel’s Unit 269.

Secret Armies is a sobering yet gripping study of special forces and their military and politica role, in an ever-changing world.

Quiet Soldier: On Selection With 21 SAS

At twenty-six, Adam Ballinger had a good degree, a fiancée, and a well-paid job. So what made him risk it all for the gruelling, year-long SAS Selection course, with a better than ninety per cent chance of failing to win the toughest badge in the British Army at the end of it?

Over the months of combat patrols, press-ups, punishing runs and Gas! Gas! Gas!, the ordeals of Long Drag and hostile interrogation, Ballinger learnt that who you think you are and what the Army wants you to be are very different things, and the end product of Selection bears little relation to either.

This vivid, often funny account of the varied characters who commit so much to training for the 'misfits regiment' is remarkable both for its unromantic authenticity, and for its objective attempt to find out why. A question, Ballinger discovered, that few, if any, in the SAS could answer.

Franco's International Brigades: Adventurers, Fascists, and Christian Crusaders in the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War set brother against brother when centuries of grievances erupted into a bloody settling of accounts in 1936. The conflict quickly turned international. The left-wing volunteers who came from around the world to fight for the Spanish government are well known. But Spain also attracted thousands of right-wingers from Europe and beyond, including crusading Catholics, fascist fanatics, and Muslims with a grudge. They played a vital role helping General Francisco Franco and his rebels overthrow Spanish democracy.

These foreign adventurers were on the winning side, but their role has remained strangely hidden until now. Men from Portugal and Morocco signed on for money and adventure. General Eoin O'Duffy organised 700 Irishmen in a modern Crusade; 500 Frenchmen fought in the 'Jeanne D'Arc' unit; and thirty British volunteers, including aristocrats and working-class fascists, also took up arms. Romanian Iron Guard extremists died at Majadahonda and an Indian volunteer fought in the fascist militia. There were Russians, Americans, Finns, Belgians, Greeks, Cubans, and many more. Goose-stepping alongside the volunteers were fascist conscripts from Germany and Italy, in training for the next world war.

It was a vicious conflict. Englishman Peter Kemp fought against British communists in a drive the Mediterranean. After the war he asked a surviving opponent what would have happened if he had been captured - 'We'd have shot you,' came the reply, 'sorry.' - Kemp assured him he would have done the same if the positions had been reversed.