The Jihadis Return: Isil and the New Sunni Uprising by Patrick Cockburn, review: 'indispensable'

By Peter Oborne

As British politicians take the decision whether to bomb Iraq yet again, Patrick Cockburn has produced the first history of the rise of the Islamic State or Isil.

No one is better equipped for this task. Cockburn, one of our greatest war correspondents, has charted the Iraqi insurrection and the Syrian civil war. His book makes compelling reading. He traces the roots of the Islamic State to the Western invasion of Iraq 11 years ago, when Saddam’s army was disbanded by its American conquerors. With nowhere else to go, some joined forces with al-Qaeda in a brutal rebellion against what they saw as a foreign occupation.

AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) was defeated by General Petraeus’s “surge” of 2008, but this partial victory was not consolidated. When the Americans left Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki led a Shia administration that made no serious attempt to bring the Sunnis into government. The marginalisation of the Sunni tribes might have had limited consequences but for the Syrian insurrection, which started in the summer of 2011. This insurgency was backed by the West, but militants soon took over the fighting, controlling tracts of eastern Syria and western Iraq. National borders were effectively abolished.

In this powerful book, Cockburn shows how a series of errors by the United States and its Western allies created the conditions for the rise of Isil. First, the 2003 invasion of Iraq left behind a disenfranchised and embittered Sunni minority. Second, Western sponsorship of the Syrian insurrection created the perfect playground for Baghdadi’s bloodthirsty warriors. Cockburn shows that Western intelligence agencies were heavily involved at every level. However they appear to have been clueless about what was really happening.

They failed to understand how al-Qaeda mutated post-9/11. The killing of Bin Laden in early 2011 was hailed as a tremendous victory, when in fact it only marked the emergence of a more deadly threat. Western intelligence agencies culpably underestimated the resilience of Assad’s regime, repeatedly predicting that he would fall. The Free Syrian Army, the West’s favoured vehicle, for which President Obama has just approved more funding, proved to be nothing more than a chimera. The West has also chosen its allies badly.

The two countries most closely involved in the attack on the Twin Towers were Saudi Arabia, which provided most of the hijackers, and Pakistan, sponsor of the Taliban. President Bush refused to take meaningful action against either state. Cockburn shows that Saudi financing played a large role in the creation of Isil. Only now, far too late, have the Saudis woken up to the monster they created. It was not until February that King Abdullah tried to stop Saudi citizens from travelling to fight in Syria. Over time the most important target of Isil will turn out to be Saudi Arabia itself.

This short book does not suggest any solutions. Perhaps there aren’t any. Western interventions in the past few years – such as Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2010 – have been disastrous.

But it is indispensable for anybody wishing to understand a terrifying new phenomenon which is already showing signs of inspiring emulators from North Africa to Pakistan.