THE RISE OF THE ISLAMIC STATE: ISIS AND THE NEW SUNNI REVOLUTION
Patrick Cockburn
LeftWord, New Delhi, 2015
132 pages; Rs 250
The Islamic State of Iraq and (Greater) Syria, known across the world by its iconic abbreviation, Isis, thrust itself into global consciousness with the dramatic capture of the city of Mosul in June 2014, defeating an army of several thousand personnel, who fled in disarray, abandoning their weapons, uniforms, treasury and, above all, their responsibility to protect the civilian population of over a million. From Mosul, Isis forces swept across northern and western Iraq and then penetrated Syria, extinguishing the 90-year-old international border and capturing large parts of Syrian territory along the border with Turkey. The Kurds were challenged with the capture of Sinjar, after which their capital Arbil was threatened, while the much-vaunted peshmerga scurried to defend their homeland.
At the end of June another dramatic development occurred: the leader of Isis emerged from the shadows to announce his name, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, his familial link with Prophet Mohammed, and that he was now the caliph of the newly established "Islamic State". By November 2014, the Islamic State occupied territory across the Levant, with a population of eight million people, encompassing the fertile river valley of the Euphrates and the oil-producing areas and refineries of north Iraq around Mosul.
Thus, within a few months of its dramatic advent, a ragtag jihadi militia had under its control a nascent state with its capital in the Syrian town of Raqqa, a leadership hierarchy, a powerful army, weaponry in huge quantities, substantial financial resources, a formidable media set-up, and a bureaucracy to provide administration, civic services and stern justice to suppress dissent and, where necessary, punish misconduct. Politically and militarily, it is the central role player in Iraq, Syria and more recently Libya and possibly Yemen, all the Arab territories experiencing civil conflict today.
This is the story that the distinguished journalist Patrick Cockburn has put together in a handbook of a little over a hundred pages. The scope is ambitious. Sadly, each chapter is just a few pages long so that in no case is there any justice done to the themes promised by the chapter titles. More seriously, the "book" misses out entirely on what should have been an essential part of a work on a subject of contemporary importance - historical background and analyses of crucial events.
The writer is at his best when he discusses, all too briefly, media manipulation and the use of social media by various sides in the conflict. He quotes a jihadi website saying: "Half of jihad is media", and notes how the Islamic State is using various forms of social media both to broadcast its violence to its enemies and at the same time to allure young people across the world to its holy mission. It has been remarkably successful in both: its large-scale killings of soldiers, and religious and ethnic minorities have intimidated its enemies and the beheadings of western hostages have brought the United States back to war in West Asia, while its messages on social media have attracted thousands of young men and women to its cadres from the Arab world and even from Europe.
For the rest, the pamphlet says very little that is new or interesting: while discussing the rise of Isis, Mr Cockburn fails to look at the rise of Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq and how the "Al Qaeda in Iraq" evolved into Isis. He does not mention the speculation that perhaps Mr Al Baghdadi was associated with Mr Al-Zarqawi in the war in Afghanistan in the 1990s and obtained from Mr Zarqawi his fierce anti-Shia mindset and the desire to distance himself from Al-Qaeda, which became his fiercely held position after the death of Osama bin Laden. In fact, Mr Cockburn entirely fails to discuss the ongoing competition between Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which will define jihadi politics in the coming years.
Again, he does not do justice to the complex history relating to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq in the Anbar province at the end of the last decade. For instance, he does not mention that Sunnis in Anbar fully backed the United States and the Iraqi government against the jihadis in 2007-09 (the Sahwa movement), and later, at prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's behest, fought the Shia militia in south Iraq; nor does he discuss how later a variety of disgruntled Sunnis, tribal leaders, Sufis and Baathists, coalesced around the Islamic State of Iraq to oppose the sectarian policies of Mr Al-Maliki, which the Americans, anxious to leave the country in 2011, did nothing to correct. In fact, given the subtitle of the book, Mr Cockburn should have discussed the original sin: the US focus on empowering the Iraqi Shia as the avowed justification for the invasion of Iraq.
A number of major themes are briefly touched upon in the text, but none of them is examined with the required completeness and depth. We will have to wait for another effort to do justice to these important developments.
The reviewer is a former diplomat
