War in the Age of Trump: The Defeat of ISIS, the Fall of the Kurds, the Conflict with Iran

by Patrick Cockburn

Overview

Is the fall of ISIS the end of the perpetual war in the Middle East?

In this urgent and timely book, Patrick Cockburn writes the first draft of the history of the current crisis in the Middle East. Here he charts the period from the recapture of Mosul in 2017 to Turkey’s attack on Kurdish territory in November 2019, and recounts the new phase in the wars of disintegration that have plagued the region. The ground battle with the caliphate is perhaps over, but was this the end of the conflict that has scarred these nations for decades?

Cockburn offers panoramic on-the-ground analysis as well as a lifetime’s study of the region. And here he shows how peace appears a distant possibility with the continuation of conflict in Syria, Saudi Arabia’s violent intervention in the Yemen, riots in Baghdad and Tehran. At the same time, the rising aggression between Israel and Iran, the raising of stakes between the US, Russia and Turkey, shows that this remains the theatre of the proxy wars of the world’s superpowers. Has Trump abandoned the area for good, leaving a vacuum for others—Putin, Erdogan, Mohammed Bin Saud—to fill? He also looks at what might happen to the Islamic State: will it disappear now that it has lost its territory or emerge in a new form and with renewed violence?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839760426
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	531 KB

About the Author

Patrick Cockburn is a Middle East correspondent for the Independent and has worked previously for the Financial Times. His work on the crisis in the Middle East include the National Book Circle Awards-shortlisted The Occupation and Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (with Andrew Cockburn), The best-selling The Rise of the Islamic State and The Age of Jihad. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, and the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009. More recently he has been awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year in British Journalism Award 2014, and Foreign Reporter of the Year in Press Awards 2014.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

Introduction 3

1 The Assassination 5

2 America's On/Off Retreat 13

3 The Death of al-Baghdadi 19

4 Could Isis Have Won? Could It Return? 29

5 2016: Three States on the Edge of Disaster 35

Part I An Isolationist in the American Tradition 43

November 2016-June 2019 47

Part II The Battle For Mosul 75

October 2016-August 2017 79

Part III The Iraqi Kurds: An Unnecessary Defeat 115

September-November 2017 119

Part IV Winners and Losers in the Syrian War 137

October 2016-May 2017 141

Part V The Siege of Raqqa 173

June 2017-March 2018 177

Part VI Two Last Stands: Afrin and Eastern Ghouta Equal Misery, Unequal Coverage 191

February-April 2018 195

Part VII Behind Enemy Lies: War Reporting in the Age of Fake Facts 221

April 2018-August 2019 227

Part VIII Iraq at the End of War 247

November 2017-September 2019 253

Part IX Turkey Invades Rojava 275

October 2019 279

Part X An Uprising in Iraq 291

October-November 2019 295

Afterword. The Peace of the Grave: The Cemeteries of Iraq 305

Acknowledgements 313

Editorial Reviews

07/13/2020

Cockburn (The Age of Jihad), a foreign correspondent for the Independent, delivers a nuanced, deeply informed account of recent events in the Middle East. Chronicling the period from the 2016–2017 Battle of Mosul to the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, Cockburn details tensions between Iran and the U.S., fallout from Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and the “rise and fall of de facto Kurdish states in Iraq and Syria,” among other inflection points. Though careful to note that the forces reshaping the Middle East are larger than any one U.S. president, Cockburn faults the Trump administration for changing policies on a whim, believing in “self-serving conspiracy theories,” and being “peculiarly ill-equipped” to deal with the complexities of the region. He also notes parallels between Trump and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, including “manic sensitivity to criticism,” and takes the White House to task for failing to stop “the ethnic cleansing of Kurds by Turkey” after U.S. troops withdrew from northeastern Syria. Balancing on-the-ground reporting with big-picture analysis, Cockburn writes with deep empathy for the people whose lives have been reshaped by these events. Readers with a deep interest in the Middle East will appreciate this incisive look behind the headlines. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Must-read.”
—TomDispatch

“Cockburn makes a powerful denunciation of double standards in western media.”
—Irish Times

“Eminently readable … One of the region’s most distinguished western observers … Soaked in blood, sectarian strife and fanaticism, mired in Great Power hypocrisy and betrayal, this may not be everyone’s idea of feelgood lockdown literature but for anyone interested in the Middle East it is essential reading.”
—Justin Marozzi, Sunday Times

From the Publisher

2020-05-26
The award-winning British journalist analyzes and criticizes Donald Trump’s handling of wars in the Middle East and Asia.

Independent Middle East correspondent Cockburn opens as he closes, with an account of the assassination of Iranian military strategist and supposed terrorist Qasem Soleimani, which was followed by a declaration that the Islamic State had been defeated and by the abandonment of America’s Kurdish allies in Syria. The author considers Soleimani less a threat than the administration believed, though his killing provided a convenient martyr around whom Iran could plant a flag. There’s a schizophrenia at play here; writes Cockburn, “the US has always been keen to hide the degree to which it has been Iran’s de facto partner, as well as its rival, ever since Saddam Hussein…invaded Kuwait in 1990.” Many of Trump’s moves seem calculated to improve Iran’s standing in the region: “It does not take very much to destabilize Iraq and the signs are that Trump does not care if he does.” IS seems to be flourishing, mounting attacks on peace demonstrators in Turkey, blowing up a Moscow-bound airliner, attacking a mosque in Egypt, and detonating a suicide bomb beside a Pakistani polling place—“not to mention,” adds Cockburn, “the eight killed in the UK in 2017 after a van drove into pedestrians on London Bridge.” Cockburn gives Trump some credit for attempting to project American power less with military strength than with “commercial and economic” blandishments. He further reserves some of his critical asperity for journalists who are too willing to accept party lines, though he allows that a reporter in the field lacks the clout of the suits back home: “Usually, it is…the home office or media herd instinct that decides the story of the day.” Even so, his own reporting on the ground, interwoven into his narrative, proves the power of a well-informed and serious pen.

A well-placed critique of both an inept presidency and an uncritical media.

Kirkus Reviews