The book's subtitle is "ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution". The further into this book you read, the more you realize how fitting a subtitle that is. For ISIS is Sunni Islam, and they hate adherents to Shia Islam. And vice versa. When you heard about sectarian violence in Iraq that followed President Obama's pullback of U.S. troops around 2009, Sunni-Shia relations went completely off the rails.
Remember, too: back in 2014, al-Qaeda felt that ISIS was too extreme for even them and so severed ties with them.
Besides this sectarian violence you have many other jihadist groups operating in the area. Groups Cockburn brings into the discussion here include the Kurds; the Free Syrian Army, consisting early on of defectors from the Syrian military; al-Qaeda; Jabhat al-Nusra (JAN), a splinter group of ISIS but now affiliated with al-Qaeda; Islamic Front; Cechen rebels; Morrocon jihadists; the Salafist Ahrar ash-Sham, backed by Qatar and Turkey; Army of Islam, "created by Saudi Arabia as a jihadi counterbalance to JAN"; and Hezbollah, among others. Google "list of armed groups in Syrian Civil War" and you'll find a list of ~100 different groups.
Eye-opening and spine-chilling information abounds. Cockburn, an Irish journalist, is a correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent (among others), so his writing is crisp and engaging:
"Jihadi groups ideologically close to al-Qaeda have been relabeled as moderate if their actions are deemed supportive of U.S. policy aims" (p. 52).
"Al-Qaeda is an idea rather than an organization, and this has long been the case" (p. 54).
"An exit of senior Saudis, including bin Laden relatives, from the US was facilitated by the US government in the days after 9/11. Most significant, twenty-eight pages of the 9/11 Commission Report about the relationship between the attackers and Saudi Arabia were cut and never published, despite a promise by President Obama to do so, on the grounds of national security" (p.57).
"The US response to the attacks of 9/11 in 2001 targeted the wrong countries when Afghanistan and Iraq were identified as the hostile states whose governments needed to be overthrown. Meanwhile, the two countries most involved in supporting al-Qaeda and favoring the ideology behind the attacks, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, were largely ignored and given a free pass" (p. 138).
And on and on.
Other gems include:
--Pakistani military intelligence training the Taliban
--Rampant corruption in the Iraqi state (before and after the 2003 American-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein)
--Rampant corruption in the Iraqi military, leading to easy jihadi takeovers of major Iraqi cities
--The year-long "Breaking the Walls" campaign to free other jihadi prisoners (estimates up to 1,500 prisoners freed)
--Misperceptions, naivete, and "simple-minded delusions" in the West regarding the "Arab Spring" uprisings in 2011
--A government in present-day Baghdad "that is as sectarian, corrupt, and dysfunctional as Saddam's ever was"
--The disintegration of Iraq into separate Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia regions
--Turkey's preference for ISIS over its Kurdish population
Interestingly, Cockburn does not address the serious cultural issues that complicate this picture even more. I mention them here as additional background:
1. Child marriages in Iraq. A 2013 report by the Population Reference Bureau states that 25% of women aged 20 to 24 were married before their 18th birthday (6% before 15).
2. Status of women in Iraq. That same 2013 PRB report states: "In Iraq, for example, a third of men believe that a father has the right to marry off his daughter before the legal age of 18; and more than half believe that a husband has the right to beat his wife if she disobeys."
3. Consanguineous marriage in Iraq. In 2006, the Christian Science Monitor reported that half of all marriages in Iraq are between first or second cousins. Perils of inbreeding are too numerous to list here.
These cultural issues are rarely discussed, I imagine, because they seem so unsolvable. But not addressing them now is not a solution and, in my opinion, complicates present-day policies and relations even more.
Back to Cockburn's book: Highly recommended as background information, but this is a very fluid situation. I wish I'd read this little book when it first appeared back in February 2015. Since then much has changed, most notably Russia overtly entering the fray with airstrikes targeting ISIS, starting in September 2015. Still, I can recommend this brief book as a solid introduction to the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
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Top reviews from other countries
JWH
Highly Recommended Reading for the Recent Origins of the ISIS Crisis
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2015Mr. C. J. Cooper
A great starter on ISIS
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2015autodidact
Essential Reading to Help Understand the Middle East Conflicts
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The friend of my friend is my enemy - who is also my friend because they are the enemy of another enemy......
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