The Way of the Commandos

My latest story, the cover piece of this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, focuses on the Special Police Commandos in Iraq. They are the Iraqi government’s most elite counter-insurgency force, effective and brutal at their job. Many of them are Sunni, and many of them were in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards. Now they are America’s best hope for defeating the insurgency.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.