Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saedi (Arabic: عبد الوهاب الساعديالفريق الركن) is the Deputy Commander of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Command. Since 2008, Al-Saedi has been a key leader in the war against Iraqi-based terrorist groups. He was the Operations Commander of Iraqi military forces from 2014 through 2015, overseeing critical Iraqi victories in the battle for Baiji oil fields and the Second Battle of Tikrit. In 2016, al-Saedi led the operation to liberate the city of Fallujah from ISIS forces. Subsequently, in 2017, he led Iraqi Counter-Terrorism forces successful effort to defeat ISIS in Mosul. Al-Saedi has never lost battle that he commanded.
From 2006 - 2008 Gen. Al-Saedi was a professor and the Director of the Ground Forces Wing in the Iraqi Staff College. He graduated from Iraq’s War College in 2006. Previously, from 2004 – 2006, Al-Saedi served as the Director of Planning in Iraq’s Ministry of Defense.
Al-Saedi has been wounded four times during the war against ISIS, and has survived numerous assassination attempts. He is well-respected and very popular among the Iraqi people for his role in defeating ISIS.
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Peter Bergen is a print and television journalist, documentary producer, think tank executive, professor, and the author of five books, three of which were New York Times bestsellers and four of which were named among the non-fiction books of the year by the Washington Post. The books have been translated into twenty-one languages and have been turned into four documentaries, two of which were nominated for Emmys and one of which won an Emmy. He is Vice President for Global Studies and Fellows and the Director of the International Security Program and the Future of War program at New America in Washington D.C.; Professor of Practice at the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University where he is the co-director of the Center on the Future of War; CNN’s national security analyst and a fellow at Fordham University’s Center on National Security.
Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field, and has testified before multiple congressional committees about Afghanistan, Pakistan, ISIS, al-Qaeda, drones and other national security issues. He is a member of the Aspen Homeland Security Group and writes a weekly column for CNN.com. Bergen is the chairman of the board of the Global Special Operations Foundation, which is a non-profit advocating for the interests of special operations forces. He is also on the board of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which advocates for Americans who are being held hostage and for journalists in conflict zones.
He has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Bergen’s most recent book, United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists,was published in 2016. Director Greg Barker adapted the book for the HBO film Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma. His previous book, a 2012 New York Times bestseller, was Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad. The book was translated into nine languages and HBO produced a documentary based upon it. The film, for which Bergen was the executive producer, was in the Sundance Film 2013 competition and it won the Emmy for best documentary in 2013. The Washington Post, named Manhunt one of the best non-fiction books of 2012 and The Guardian named it one of the key books on Islamist extremism. The Sunday Times (UK) named it the best current affairs book of 2012 and The Times (UK) named it one of the best non-fiction books of 2012. The book was awarded the Overseas Press Club Cornelius Ryan award for best non-fiction book of 2012 on international affairs. Bergen was awarded the Stephen Ambrose History Award in 2014.
His 2011 New York Times bestseller, was The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda.” Longest War won the Gold Prize for best book on the Middle East of 2011 from the Washington Institute. Newsweek and the Guardian named Longest War as one of the key books about terrorism of the past decade. And Amazon, Kirkus, and Foreign Policy named Longest War as one of the best books of 2011.
Together with his wife Tresha Mabile he produced “American War Generals” a film for National Geographic Television that aired in 2014. They also produced “Legion of Brothers” for CNN Films, which was in the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in the summer of 2017. The film was nominated for an Emmy for best Political/Government documentary in 2018.
He was a contributing editor at The New Republic for many years where he wrote several cover stories and he was the editor of the South Asia Channel and the South Asia Daily, online publications of Foreign Policy magazine from 2009 to 2016. He was a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law & Security between 2003 and 2011.
In 1997, as a producer for CNN, Bergen produced bin Laden’s first television interview, in which he declared war against the United States for the first time to a Western audience.
Bergen has a degree in Modern History from New College, Oxford University. He won an Open Scholarship when he went up to New College in 1981. Before that he attended Ampleforth. He was born in Minneapolis in 1962 and was raised in London. He is married to the documentary director/producer Tresha Mabile. They have a son and a daughter.
