Andrew Exum

Andrew Exum is a former US Army officer, an American scholar of the Middle East, a Fellow of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. He also participated in General Stanley McChrystal's review of the American strategy in Afghanistan.

Life
After graduating from The McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee (1996) and the University of Pennsylvania (2000), where he was a columnist for the Daily Pennsylvanian and a member of the Sphinx Senior Society, Exum, a US Army officer, led a platoon of light infantry in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequently led a platoon of Army Rangers as a part of special operations task forces in Kuwait and Afghanistan with the rank of Captain. He is a veteran of Operation Anaconda. He earned a Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut. In 2006-2007, Exum was a Soref fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was awarded a doctorate from the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy calls Exum, “one of the sharpest Middle East analysts around.”

While still on active duty, but “laid up with a non-combat knee injury,” Exum wrote his first book, This Man's Army: A Soldier's Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism.

On May 30, 2008, Exum revealed himself to be the founder of the blog Abu Muqawama (Arabic,     أبوالمقاومة  for "father or expert of the Resistance"). This blog, "dedicated to following issues related to contemporary insurgencies," was followed by many notable students and practitioners of counterinsurgency in the military, academia and the media. It has also been referred to as Small Wars Journal's "rogue cousin" partially due to the large overlap in topics and participants, and due to its ability to initiate discussion about topics that are not yet appropriate for the more professional forum. At the time of the revelation, Exum also announced he was leaving the blog to pursue his research. Partly due to the unexpected perceived value generated by such an unofficial forum, Exum subsequently returned to the blog and continues to post under the pseudonym Abu Muqawama. The blog is now hosted by CNAS.

Books

 * This Man's Army: A Soldier's Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism