Few 'Small Wars' in the Middle East

[CrowBat]

With the next volume of the Middle East@War going to the print, it's about the time to announce details of it, too.

This is going to be the - much expected, apparently - 'Iran-Iraq War, Volume 4: The Forgotten Fronts', i.e. the fourth band in this mini-series.

The volume is detailing operations on the central and northern frontlines of the Iran-Iraq War. These frontlines were actually decisive at certain points during this war, but only on something like 'temporary' basis. Therefore, most of foreign observers didn't even pay attention about them, and they received very little coverage even in official publications by both of involved parties. On the contrary, we went to extension to not only describe often complex geo-political backgrounds of these frontlines (mind: 'Kurds'), but can observe up front: to the best of my knowledge, we didn't miss a single operation undertaken by either party in this war, no matter how small.

Contents:
Chapter 1 The Opening Operations
Essentially, this is the summary about the Kurdish uprising of 1979, and the Iranian (foremost: IRGC's) intervention in regards of the same, and then the Iraqi invasion of 1980.

Chapter 2 Private Wars
Although part of a greater struggle, many operations by both sides on the northern and central fronts had the characteristics of private wars. These were fought in a wide range of terrain and, unlike the big battles on the southern front, were characterized by the absence of a continuous line.

Chapter 3 The Central Front 1982-1987
In 1982, the central front - which was quite 'peaceful' already since October 1980, was re-activated by the Iranians who launched the Operation Fatah al-Mobin. This was - by far - the most successful offensive launched by the Iranian military during that war. In turn, it not only emboldened Tehran into launching dozens of such operations for the next five years, but also kept this frontline 'active' throughout this period.

Chapter 4 The Northern Front 1982-1987
Chapter 4 follows with a similar description of - mostly - relatively 'small action' on the northern frontlines in period 1982-1987.

Chapter 5 Iran’s Last Chance
Following the bloody failures around Basra (see Volume 3), and with the passing of Khomeini’s deadline for ‘final victory’ by 31 March 1987, the SDC reconsidered its strategic options. Finally concluding that taking Basra was extremely unlikely, it decided to switch the strategic focus northwards, and press deeper into northern Iraq with Kurdish support. A key factor for this decision was the existence of extensive areas – ‘sanctuaries’ – held by militants of the Kurdish PUK around Suleymaniyah.

Chapter 6 The Kurdish Front 1980-1988
Centrepiece of this chapter are Iranian operations into northern Iraq (Ops Fath-1 up to Fath-10 and Zafar-1 to Zafar-7), and then of Iraqi campaigns code-named Anfal (these went from Anfal-1 to Anfal-8). This was the hardest chapter of this book to write: lots of 'minor operations, small-unit action and similar.

Chapter 7 The Last Battles 1988
In June 1988, following success in the south, Saddam Hussein ordered a major offensive in the north too, with the aim of 'liberating Arab land from Persians', but also with the aim of mauling the Iranian military and rendering it non-operational. Thus came into being the planning for little-known, multi-corps Ops like Tawakkalna ala Allah-3 and -4, run in July 1988. Finally, once Tehran accepted the UN-mediated cease-fire, Saddam 'unleashed' the MEK/MKO (i.e. the 'NLA') into an attack on Kermanshah, in July 1988.

The book is illustrated by no less than 13 maps: point is that most of northern and central battlefields are little known, and require good maps for reader's easier orientation.

In regards of colour profiles, we've got two new artists for 'tanks'. One of them is Peter Penev from Bulgaria who already drew artworks of North-Korean-made Koksan SP-guns for Volume 3, and then continued with preparing 11 additional artworks for this volume. This is his first project of this kind, and his work is simply outstanding - in regards of details and precision in particular. Since we've had enough space, and have presented all the major types in service with both armies to extension in earlier volumes, I've asked him foremost to draw less-well-known heavy vehicles of this war (say, Yugoslav-made M60 APCs, or Brazilian-made EE-9 Cascavels, and then various self-propelled artillery pieces).

Overall, a volume that's nicelly rounding-up this mini-series.

Attached bellow are the final cover and a few 'specimen pages'.

[CrowBat]

Preliminary results of the 'Operation Four Aces 18'.... ;-)OpFourAces18sm.jpg

[CrowBat]

This originally came into being on something like 'popular request' via Facebook - as information for those who might be interested but 'don't know, yet'...

About 8 years ago, Helion & Co Publishing has launched the first of its @War book-series: Africa@War. In 2014, we've followed with the Middle East@War and Asia@War, and since 2016 there is the Latin America@War book-series too.
Since the last year, we're releasing one new volume from one of these four series - a month. Thus, a lot has been published within a relatively short period of time; no surprise, many still do not know how much!

While we're already working on widening the scope of our coverage in the future, here just a 'brief presentation' of diverse of these series as they are right now.

Major topic of all the four @War book-series are what many call 'little known' wars - primarily those since 1945, but often from earlier times too. Actually, we cover very different topics: from specific air forces to specific aircraft types, ground- and naval-forces too, and from coups (or coup-attempts), to battles, or entire campaigns and, indeed, entire wars - and very often some 'big' wars too ('Vietnam' is a good example).

Each volume is about 72 pages (some are slightly thicker), printed in DIN A4 format. Each contains between 30,000 and up to 60,000 words of text, anything between 80 and 120 photographs, up to 21 colour profiles.

Involved authors are some of best and most authoritative in this 'genre': people with dozens of years of research under their belts, best possible connections to necessary sources (including participants but official archives, too), and people with 'what it takes' to push through and get done what is often really highly-problematic piece of work: after all, researching about the conflicts about which we are researching and publishing, is often extremely problematic (and, at least sometimes, even 'dangerous').

For the 'start' I would like to present a 'collage' showing covers of some of latest volumes from the Middle East@War series: provided moderators here don't mind (Moderator adds OK with me), I would like to follow-up with similar presentations of the Africa@War, Asia@War, and Latin America@War series, too.

The Middle East@War book-series was 'launched' with a volume on an ongoing conflict: 'Syrian Conflagration', is covering the military history of the first two years of that war. Meanwhile, we've added plenty of additional titles, as can be seen below. Much more is to follow, including volumes going to unprecedented depths of the Arab-Israeli conflict, of different local military forces, and diverse other wars fought in that part of the world.

(Note #1: the 'covers' presented below are often crops from proof-files, and thus there might be minor differences to what the actual covers of books in question might look like;

Note #2: I've intentionally included only covers of books either published by now, or about to get published within the next 4-6 weeks; there is really a lot more to follow;

Note #3: on the first look, it might appear as if there is 'a lots of Tom Cooper' in this series. If that's making it any better, 'please don't worry': volumes authored by calibres like David Nicolle, Ted Hooton, Sergio Santana and many others are to follow.)