Brian Glyn Williams

Professor Brian Glyn Williams is author of seven books on warfare, terrorism, ethnic groups, and genocide in Islamic Eurasia.[3] His best selling book, The Last Warlord: The Life and Legend of Dostum, the Afghan Warrior Who Led US Special Forces to Topple the Taliban Regime, provided much of the material for the Hollywood blockbuster movie, 12 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers.[4][5] Dr. Williams wrote about his experiences advising on the remote movie set of this movie, which stars Hollywood A-list actor Chris Hemsworth, for History News Network in a photo essay titled "12 Strong: The Inside Story of the Making of a (Refreshingly Accurate) Hollywood War Epic".[6] He also posted exclusive photographs on the movie set on his website.[7] Dr. Williams wrote about his12 Strong movie set advising in the Huffington Post "The Hammer and the Horse. Chris Hemsworth (a.k.a Thor from the Avengers), the CIA, Afghanistan’s Most Feared Warlord, and the Green Berets Unite for one Epic Hollywood Movie.”[8]

Brian Glyn Williams based The Last Warlord on his summers spent living in Northern Afghanistan with the anti-Taliban warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum.[4] Dr. Williams also extensively interviewed members of the elite Green Beret Special Forces, including team leader Captain Mark Nutsch, as well as Air Force Combat Controller ground spotters, and CIA operatives who rode on horseback with Dostum against the Taliban.[9] To gain the enemy's perspectives on this surprisingly successful unconventional warfare victory, Williams also extensively interviewed Taliban prisoners of war.[9]

Williams has written widely about his experiences living with this powerful ethnic leader, who went on to subsequently become Afghan Vice President and Marshall of Afghanistan’s Military Forces.[4] His articles on his experiences living with the warlord Dostum have appeared in such venues as, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Huffington Post, Jamestown’s Militant Leadership Monitor, Central Eurasian Studies, and Foreign Policy.[10][11][9][12] He has also been interviewed extensively on television about his book, The Last Warlord, and its role in providing the indigenous Afghan Uzbek perspective on the joint US-Uzbek Horse Campaign that overthrew the Taliban in the fall of 2001.[13]

Dr. Williams has also been interviewed on the radio about his bringing Afghan authenticity to the New Mexico movie set for 12 Strong,[14] and his University of Wisconsin alma mater published an article on his dangerous expeditions to the deserts of Northern Afghanistan to interview General Dostum and his field-commanders, titled the "Warlords Biographer".[15][16]

Professor Williams’ book, Predators: The CIA’s Drone War on Al Qaeda, was credited, in Rolling Stone Magazine by the British rock band MUSE, with inspiring their Grammy winning best selling album titled Drones.[17][18] This theme album explores many of the topics described by Williams in his field research-based history of the CIA’s drone blitz on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s remote tribal zones on the Afghan frontier.[18] Williams was subsequently interviewed by the Boston Globe on his role in inspiring an album that went to number one in Britain, America, Japan, and other countries. Dr. Williams' book Predators was also positively reviewed by the Boston Globe.[19][20]

Dr. Williams is also author of Counter Jihad: America’s Military Experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.[21] This work was endorsed by the former Director of the CIA, head of Central Command, and four-star general, head of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, David Petraeus, as "A superb chronicle of the campaigns to counter Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and their affiliates—by a student of, and participant in, those campaigns."[21] Counter Jihad was also adopted in various military curriculum after it received positive reviews in the US Army’s Magazine “Parameters”, US Air Force institute, US Army Military Review, New York Journal of Books, Journal of Military History, and Mid East Studies Association.[22][23][24][25][26]

Prior to this, Dr. Williams published Afghanistan Declassified: A Guide to America’s Longest War.[27] This history is a civilian version of a book by Williams, "who extensively worked for the US Army’s secretive Joint Information Operations Warfare Command based at Lackland Airbase, Texas" written for this elite Army unit, this book was endorsed by the former US Ambassador to Afghanistan.[27][28][29]

Afghanistan Declassified also received endorsements from Richard Clarke, former US Chief Counter Terrorism Advisor under President George W. Bush, and from best-selling author CNN Analyst, Peter Bergen.[27] This book is based on Dr. William’s extensive work for the US Military, the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, and various Washington DC-based think tanks from 2003 to 2011 in Afghanistan and Pakistan.[28][29]

Brian Glyn Williams is also author of Inferno in Chechnya. The Russian-Chechen Wars, The Al Qaeda Myth, and the Boston Marathon Bombings. This work was favorably reviewed in the Times of London.[30]

Dr. Williams' most recent book was published in 2016 with Oxford University Press, and is titled The Crimean Tatars: From Soviet Genocide to Putin’s Conquest.[31] This work is based on Dr. Williams' fieldwork with the both the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Uzbekistan and Crimean Tatars who returned to their homeland. The Crimean Tatars was favorably reviewed in the University of London's Slavic and East European Review, as well as in Open Democracy.[32][33] Dr. Williams has spoken on this topic in as such venues as Harvard University’s Ukrainian Center, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in Washington DC.[34][35]

Dr. Williams has also published extensively on his field research among the long-persecuted Crimean Tatars in such scholarly journals as Central Asian Survey, Central Eurasian Studies, Oxford University Press Blog, Huffington Post, and Muslim Minority Review.[36][37][38][39][40]

Dr. Williams, who began teaching at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on September 5, 2001, after leaving his previous post at the University of London, began utilizing his background in the previously arcane area of Central Asian ethnic, military, terrorism, and warfare, to provide often missing historical context for America’s 2001 War in Afghanistan against the Taliban regime and its Arab Al Qaeda guests.[41][42]

At this time, Dr. Williams was also vocal in criticizing the George W. Bush administration’s manufactured evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.[43] Williams was also vocal in the media criticizing the Bush administration and neocons' public relations propaganda campaign designed to link the secular Socialist Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein to the Saudi fundamentalist terrorist group Al Qaeda which, by 2002, had been decimated by the US invasion of its Afghan sanctuary and forced into hiding in the remote Pashtun tribal zones of Northwestern Pakistan.[44]

At this time, Dr. Williams began to be widely interviewed, and published opinion editorials in such venues as, South Coast Today of Southern Massachusetts, The Huffington Post, where he published more than 40 op-eds, and the Washington DC-based magazine read by all Capitol Hill Congressmen and Senators, The Hill.[45][46][47]

Op-eds published by Dr. Williams on The Hill include:[46]

• “Remembering 9/11: How the suicide attacks led to two vastly different wars”[48]
• “Should We Worry about ISIS Threats to Attack US, British cities?”[49]
• “ISIS Fighters Have Reverted to 'Shadow Warriors' Fighting an Endless War”[50]
• “The Turkish President’s Epic Distortion of Facts on Syria”`[51]
• “Syrians Need Not Apply”[52]

Professor Williams’ op-eds in the Huffington Post covered an array of issues related to warfare, human rights, ethnic minorities, genocide, US foreign policy, counter terrorism in American and Islamic Eurasia, and North Africa.[45]

Such op-eds include:

• "Retribution Breeds Retribution. Putin’s Syria Policy And The Killing Of The Russian Ambassador To Turkey"[53]
• “Journey to Kurdistan, Realm of the Endangered Yazidi Pagans and Female anti-ISIS Peshmerga Fighters”[54]
• “The Taliban Conquer Their First City. Why Should You Care?”[55]
• "5 Things You Should Know About the CIA’s ‘Robotic’ Drone Assassination Campaign"[56]
• "The Killing of an American Hostage by a Drone in Pakistan. Is the CIA's Assassination Campaign out of Control?"[57]
• "Defending the Predator. The Argument for the Killer Drone"[58]
• "Send in the Air Force Combat Controllers and Green Berets to Destroy ISIS"[59]
• "Abu Khattala: The Career and Arrest of the Jihadi Behind the Benghazi Attack"[60]
• "An Attempt to Get in the Mind of America's Last Prisoner of War"[61]
• "The Lost Children of Alexander the Great: A Journey to the Pagan Kalash People of Pakistan"[62]
• "The Dark Secret Behind the Sochi Olympics: Russia’s Efforts to Hide a Tsarist-Era Genocide"[63]
• "Reevaluating the Usefulness of Predator Drone Strikes: A Bostonian Perspective"[64]
• "Report from Turkey: Enjoying the Med Beaches While the Rest of the Mid East Burns"[65]
• "The Brides of Allah: The Terror Threat of Black-Widow Suicide Bombers to the Winter Olympics"[66]

Dr. Williams has also published in The Conversation including such articles as:[67]

• "Despite defeats, the Islamic State remains unbroken and defiant around the world"[68]

Dr. Williams also published In The Daily Beast.

• "ISIS Gloats About U.S. Pandemic and Protests"[69]

Brian Glyn Williams’ op-eds have also been featured in such mainstream media outlets as the LA Times where he called on President Barak Obama to insert Air Force Combat Controller ground spotters into the front lines to call in decision airstrikes on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2015.[70]

He also published extensive op-ed in Newsweek titled “Eight Good Reasons We All, Including Trump, Should Fear Putin”.[71] Professor Williams has also been interviewed on CNN as a terrorism expert commenting on Islam terrorist threats to the Sochi Olympics held in Russia, and also interviewed on the terrorist attacks on the US Consulate in Benghazi Libya.[72][73]

Dr. Williams has also been a frequent commentator on National Public Radio (NPR) speaking about:

• "Intel: Al-Qaida Down, Taliban Rising"[74]
• "Witness Reacts to Hamdan Verdict"[75]
• "Local Professor Helps Rescue A Young Girl From ISIS"[76]
• "U.S. Reassesses Taliban Role In Fight Against Al-Qaida"[77]
• "Will Obama Sign Off On New Afghan Strategy?"[78]

In addition, his research has appeared in the media. Time Magazine published an article on his declassified research for the CIA Counter Terrorism Center titled “The Worlds Worst Suicide Bombers?”.[79]

• New York Times. “Suspects With Foot in 2 Worlds, Perhaps Echoing Plots of Past”[80]
• New York Times. “Accused of Rape and Torture, Exiled Afghan Vice President Returns”[81]
• Associated Press. “Stepped up violence alternately claimed by IS and Taliban”[82]
• The Atlantic. “How Anti-American Are Most Chechens? Not very”[83]
• The Guardian. “Drone strikes: a scandal … or just a sideshow?”[84]
• Vanity Fair. "Al Qaeda's Migrant Martyrs"[85]
• Reuters. "Bin Laden's Driver Lacked Terror Resume: Witness"[86]
• History News Network. “The Historian Who Went to Work for the CIA to Combat Terrorism”[87]
• University of Wisconsin Alumni Magazine. “The Warlord’s Biographer”[16]
• Middle East Policy. "Mullah Omar's Missiles. A Field Report on Suicide Bombers in Afghanistan.[88]

Dr. Williams has worked extensively with the US military and Intelligence Communities.[67] His work in this field actually began in 1999 when he was teaching at the University of London. At that time he was asked to consult and advise Britain’s New Scotland Yard. From 1999 to 2001 he advised Scotland Yard on Chechen terrorism, and the potential threats from the little-understood Al Qaeda network based in Afghanistan.[16]

After moving to the United States on the week of 9/11, then Assistant Professor Williams found his expertise in ethnic groups, warfare, and terrorism in Islamic Central Asia, to be in demand by the US Army, Marines, Air Force, CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and the Directorate of National Intelligence. The History News Network published an extensive interview with Dr. Williams on his journey from learning Russian while living in the Soviet Union during the Cold War to working for the CIA and US military in the Afghan theater of operations titled "The Historian Who Went to Work for the CIA to Combat Terrorism."[87]

Beginning in 2003, Williams began working for the US Army’s ultra-secret Joint Information Operations Warfare Command, based at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. There he engaged in classified work for four years as a Subject Matter Expert.[28][29] Professor Williams’ work with this Afghanistan-focused team ultimately brought him to work in Afghanistan for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.[87] He has written about his mission in a declassified civilian version of his field report for the Washington DC-based Middle East Policy Council. His article was titled "Mullah Omar's Missiles: A field Report on Suicide Bombers in Afghanistan".[88] His dangerous fieldwork involved tracking the movements of Taliban and Al Qaeda suicide bomber networks terrorizing the dangerous Pashtun lands of Southeastern Afghanistan.[87]

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and best-selling author of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll, dedicated a chapter to his best-selling book Directorate S titled “The Suicide Detectives” to Williams’ field work for the CIA that helped them master the terrorist killing patterns.[89]

Dr. Williams also worked in 2009, for the Directorate of National Intelligence on terrorist chemical and biological threats to the US homeland. In addition, Dr. Williams lectured at Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa Florida, at Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Air Force Base, Florida, at CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, and the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.[90]

Professor Williams also trained US Marines deploying to fight in Afghanistan during the General Petraeus and General McChrystal troop surge.[90] In this context, Dr. Williams was dispatched to ISAF Headquarters 'NATO’s International Security and Assistance Force' in Kabul, Afghanistan, to serve as a subject matter expert for General Stanley McChrystal’s Information Operations Team operating in war-torn Eastern Afghanistan.[87] He worked for this team during rescue operations designed to free captured US soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by the Taliban.[91]

Dr. Williams developed particularly close ties with the US Army’s elite Green Beret community, who he extensively interviewed for his book, The Last Warlord.[9] In this context, he partook in a dedication ceremony honoring the Horse-Mounted Special Forces of Afghanistan, who rode with Uzbek ethnic commander General Dostum, against the Taliban. This ceremony took place at the foot of the statue located beneath the new World Trade Center in September 2016.[92][93]

Dr. Williams has extensive photographs, on his website, capturing life at the Forward Operations Base in Afghanistan, where he worked in the summer of 2009, and of the heavily guarded dedication ceremony overseen by General John Mulholland, General John Keane, and Green Beret Captain Mark Nutsch.[93][29]

While working for the US Army’s Information Operations Warfare Command, Dr. Williams was hired to write a field manual for US Intelligence Officers explaining the Afghan theater of operations.[94] US Military had had no field manual for Afghanistan prior to this. Working under a tight time frame based on the Obama troop surge, Williams wrote an eight-chapter manual, and attached DVD set, titled Afghanistan 101. This manual was also made accessible online to all US troops and gave an overview of Afghan history, terrain, ethnic groups, politics, and an overview of the war since the US toppling the Taliban regime in 2001.[94]

In 2018 and 2019, Dr. Williams also lectured at National Security Agency Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.[67]

On his website, Dr. Williams features awards and commendations from several of the military units he worked for in Afghanistan and various bases.[29]

Dr. Williams also testified in the first Military Tribunal held by the US since the 1945-49 German Nuremberg Trials. In a widely covered case, he testified for the defense in the case of “Donald Rumsfeld vs. Salim Hamdan”, Osama Bin Laden’s driver.[95] Williams testified on the stand for two days in the Guantanamo Bay trial that was the Bush Administration's first effort to convict a member of Al Qaeda in 2007.[96] Dr. Williams completed his testimony via video from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey.I[97] In this case, that formed the basis for a best-selling book, purchased by George Clooney for a movie.[95] Williams testified that Bin Laden’s driver was not part of Al Qaeda’s hierarchy, and had nothing to do with 9/11.[98]

Against tremendous odds, Hamdan won the case before an all-military jury in 2007. Dr. Williams was interviewed by many global media outlets including NPR, on his role in convincing the jury alongside Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, “The planner of 9/11 who was a prisoner at Gitmo”.[99]

Dr Williams also testified in the Canadian Supreme Court in the case of Mohamed Harkat.[100]

Dr. Williams was also interviewed by Kevin Maurer, the best-selling author of No Easy Day, “on the killing of Osama Bin Laden by a Navy Seal” about his work in a Forward Operations Base, in an article for the Washington Post in 2019.[101]

Dr. Williams began teaching courses on the history of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, the Medieval Muslim World, and Mongol world empire at the University London’s prestigious school of Oriental and African Studies in 1999.[16]

Having taught graduates and undergraduates in this University that specialized on the realms of the British Empire in Africa and Asia, Williams moved to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in September 2001.[16] There he taught classes based on field research on such topics as a History of the Russian Chechen Wars, a History of America’s War in Afghanistan, Islamic Terrorism from the Hashishan “Medieval Assassins” to ISIS, a History of the Russian Empire, a History of the Balkan Wars, a History of The War in Iraq, a History of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, a History of the Ancient World, and a History of Central Asia from the Mongols to the Post-Soviet Era.[102]

In many ways, 9/11 mainstreamed aspects of Dr. Williams’ previously arcane research topics and popularized his classes.[42] Dr. Williams’ classes, which are infused with his personal experiences, and guest lecturers, are typically overfilled.[41]

On the popular student rating website ratemyprofessor.com, students rate him higher than average due to the field research experience he brings to bear in his classes.[103]

In addition to his courses, which average 100 students per semester, Dr. Williams has been active since 9/11 in educating the wider community on what was once known as “The War on Terror.”[104] For example, from 2017-2019, Dr. Williams did a book signing and lecture tour with his publicist Julie Romei to several libraries, and bookstores, for his book The Last Warlord.[95][105]

Professor Williams has also spoken to local churches, schools, book clubs, veteran’s groups, women’s groups, and to local media. He has, for example, published over 70 interviews, or op-eds in the most widely distributed, South Massachusetts, newspaper, South Coast Today.[47] In addition, Dr. Williams has been most active educating and interacting with UMass Dartmouth alumni and campus groups.[106]

Professor Brian Glyn Williams talks about the book he wrote, the events that inspired it, and bringing authenticity to the movie 12 Strong.[6]

Dr. William’s was also chosen to represent the University for Comcast "NewsMakers" Series and did an extensive interview on the role of his fieldwork in war zones in enlivening his courses.[104]

Dr. Williams research and his teaching on Islamic Eurasia was also featured in a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recruitment online video.[107] His work on a History of ISIS with a former student, who currently works for a US State Department, was also featured in a University recruitment video.[108]

Dr. Williams has also spoken extensively on his research on warfare and terrorism to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth community. For an example, he gave a talk alongside the former Afghan Ambassador and Vice President son on the role of his book, The Last Warlord, in the movie 12 Strong.[5]

In recognition of his outstanding scholarship, in 2007, Dr. Williams was nominated University of Massachusetts Dartmouth “Scholar of the Year.”[67]

As an undergraduate, Brian Glyn Williams attended Stetson University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1988.[16] In 1990, he earned a Masters in Central Eurasian Studies from Indiana University, and in 1992, he earned a Masters in Russian History also from Indiana University.[16]

He received his PhD in Middle Eastern and Islamic Central Asian History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999.[16] While doing his PhD research, Dr. Williams lived in and carried out extensive field work in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Ukraine. His experiences included collecting stories in Uzbekistan from Crimean Tartar survivors of the Surgun.[31]

He also lived for most of 1995 in Kazakhstan, and visited Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Azerbaijan.[109] An expert on history of the Middle East, he has written a number of books on Afghanistan, the War on Terror and General Rashid Dostum.[27][21][17][4] His articles have been published by the Jamestown Foundation.[110]

As an expert in the country, he teaches courses on Afghanistan at UMass Dartmouth.[2] Upon graduation, with his PHD, he taught from 1991 to 2001, at the University of London's prestigious School of Oriental and Asian Studies⁠—there, his courses focused on Ottoman, Mongol, and Medieval Islamic History.[16]

University of Wisconsin. Madison. WI.

• PhD, May 1999. Middle Eastern and Islamic Central Asian History.[1]

Indiana University. Bloomington. IN.

• Masters Degree. Spring 1992. Russian and East European History.[1]
• Masters Degree. Spring 1990. Department of Central Eurasian Studies. Ottoman Language and Turkic History.[1]

Stetson University. Deland FL.

• Bachelor of Arts. Spring 1988. Department of History. (Russian Studies and Art Minors).[1]