Joby WarrickRecensioni

Fascinating. Close to a 5 star book for me.

A book well worth reading. Before there was ISIS or ISIL, there was a street thug serving in a Jordanian prison providing muscle for an Islamic theologian. The bulk of this book is about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the Jordanian general intelligence service, or Mukhabarat. The author's writing style gives a definite suspense thriller tone to the book. It's been quite some time since I have felt so compelled to keep reading page after page of a book. As those who know the built in news spoilers for this book, Zarqawi, after a series of actions and adjustments, meets his end. There is then a shift as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi assumes command of Zarqawi's followers, finds a new marketing package, so to speak, and the more familiar ISIS labeling takes over. What had been mostly President Bush's problem now was more President Obama's. The tone of the book perhaps loses some of its narrative tension at this point, as more reporting is taken up about the adjustments in the group while keeping the basic thrust of the group's founder. At this point, I should mention that the original book was published in 2015, but a newer version was released with a new Afterword a year later, which is worth reading. Having said that, more spoiler news about the "end" of Baghdadi comes after publication. About half way through my reading of this book, the third leader of what we now know as ISIS, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, also found his end. It's a bit amazing that history so recently written could already have a very readable book seem out-of-date so quickly. And that is my primary reason for not rating this book higher. It is informative and stimulating all the same. I would happily welcome an update from the author.

I cant say I loved it, but it was engrossing and informative. The US GOVT clearly made serious mistakes dealing with Zarqawi. Unfortunately a rabid dog cannot be brought to heel; it must be put down. The US let him run wild for far too long. Compelling read.

In 2009 Jordanian intelligence, the Mukhabarat, arrested, then seemingly recruited, a young medical doctor of Palestinian descent, Humam al-Balawi. Balawi was a widely known radical Islamic blogger, although not by his true name. Nearly a year later, after teasing the Jordanians and the CIA into thinking he was going to provide information on high-level al-Qaeda officials, Balawi blew himself up, along with seven CIA operatives at his initial meeting at the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan.

Joby Warrick documents the operation that led to the disaster from the beginning to the post-mortems and investigations. An investigative commission called it a failure of imagination. The agency was used to being led on, scammed and lied to, but never imagined that a potential informer would do this.

Also noted, in the epilogue, is the tracking and killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011; the result of a decade of work, some of it performed by the officers who died at Khost. This is a well-written, edited and researched book that flows from beginning to end.½

A disturbing story of how an al-Qaeda double agent gained the trust of the CIA, only to become a suicide bomber and kill a number of agents in a regional headquarters in Afghanistan. It's an unfortunate and disturbing story, in which the CIA's eagerness to obtain inside information led to some shortcuts and oversights in security, with such unfortunate results.

Listening to this as an audiobook vs. reading the text may have made the book a little more difficult to understand, with a variety of Arabic sounding names blending and merging. As a result, I ended up repeating several sections to fully comprehend who was who, and who was being betrayed, which detracted somewhat from my enjoyment of the book.

This is not a personally reflective book on how ISIS came to be, but more a factual one, as reported by a "western" journalist. With that in the bag, I think the book is notable for its critique directed towards the USA and other countries as well, and makes valid points.

Rami Khouri, noted journalist with deep insight into ISIS, calls them a Salafist takfiri extremist group. Salafist refers to a muslim who wants to go back to the old, literal way of Islam, takfiri refers to a Sunni way of pointing out apostasy where they see it, and extremist as in, yeah, being extreme. And that's what ISIS is. I define this to point out that ISIS is neither a common-day group nor one that has been welcomed much, anywhere; one could compare ISIS with the German terrorist group named RAF: while some people liked them just because they were against oppressors, most people firmly denounced them following their bombings, et cetera.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is by many considered to be the modern father of ISIS, active before ISIS - also known as IS, ISIL and Daesh -started. Was he a mastermind to begin with? People that I usually speak with neither know much of ISIS nor more of them other than their extreme videos that they have heard of. Here's a quote on Zarqawi from the book:

Such hallmarks, like the voice on the audio recording, unmistakably belonged to Zarqawi, a man the Mukhabarat knew exceptionally well. He was, at the time of the bombing, the head of a particularly vicious terrorist network called al-Qaeda in Iraq. But the Jordanians had known him back in the days when he was Ahmad the hoodlum, a high school dropout with a reputation as a heavy drinker and a brawler. They had watched him wander off to Afghanistan in the late 1980s to fight the communists, then return as a battle-hardened religious fanatic. After a first try at terrorism, he had vanished into one of Jordan’s darkest prisons. This time he emerged as a battle-hardened religious fanatic who also happened to excel as a leader of men.

ISIS is, naturally, not alone in this sense. For example, Putin is a former cocaine addict and Obama is - by US definitions - one of the most fervent terrorist leaders of all time, as his drone-driven global assassination program is, by far, the world's greatest terrorist campaign.

The book does well with examining differences between ISIS and other groups, for example al-Qaeda:

Osama bin Laden had sought to liberate Muslim nations gradually from corrupting Western influences so they could someday unify as a single Islamic theocracy, or caliphate. Zarqawi, by contrast, insisted that he would create his caliphate immediately—right now. He would seek to usher in God’s kingdom on Earth through acts of unthinkable savagery, believing, correctly, that theatrical displays of extreme violence would attract the most hardened jihadists to his cause and frighten everyone else into submission.

It's interesting to see how the book handles Obama's (and previous American presidents') views on ISIS and other terrorist organisations, as the USA deems Saudi Arabia to be one of their closest allies. "During previous visits, President Obama had declined Jordan’s requests for laser-guided munitions and other advanced hardware that could take out ISIS’s trucks and tanks." Also, on how Obama met with the ruler of Jordan: "Inside the Oval Office, Obama offered condolences to the pilot’s family and thanked the king for Jordan’s contributions to the military campaign against ISIS. The administration was doing all it could to be supportive, the president assured the monarch. “No, sir, you are not,” Abdullah said, firmly."

The book basically treats the spawning of ISIS quite well, I think. Most international scholars agree that ISIS came about through the so-called anti-terrorist campaigns, notably the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and also recognise them as terror-generating campaigns at the same time. As Janine di Giovanni notes in her excellent 2016 book named "The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches From Syria", the way the "allied" forces have left places like Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq merely strengthens the extremist groups that are against the allied, which makes for a perfect growing ground for them.

Before the foundation of ISIS, however, Zarqawi built his own vicious army based on little else than hate and principles, wanting to build a caliphate at once, not seldom resulting in tragicomedy:

Their efforts at jihad in Jordan had been anything but glorious. The leaders of Maqdisi’s small band had been arrested before they could carry out their first operation, a planned attack on an Israeli border post. The other groups’ targets had consisted of small-time symbols of Western corruption, from liquor stores to video shops and pornographic movie houses. One of the early attempts at a bombing had been a spectacular failure: A member of the group had volunteered to plant explosives inside a local adult cinema called the Salwa. After a few minutes in the theater, the would-be assailant had become so engrossed in the film that he forgot about his bomb. As he sat, glued to the screen, the device detonated under his feet. No patrons were hurt, but the bomber lost both his legs. Six years later, the double-amputee was among Sabha’s charges at al-Jafr Prison. The doctor had noticed him on his first visit, propped up on his bunk, his pant legs neatly pinned at the knee.

I think the book suffers some due to it being quite black-and-white, and to me, it seems the author hasn't performed any in-depth interviews with people. There are a bunch of detailed descriptions on what goes down in quite a few of the infamous ISIS execution videos, and only where famous western (mainly American) persons are featured.

There are quotes from high-ranking American military officers, but severely lacking of interviews with people on the ground, notably civilians who have lived through it all.

Still, the style of writing is simple and allows for a not-too-gung-ho run-through of events.

How did Zarqawi gain global notoriety? The US gave it to him:

The world’s introduction to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi came on February 5, 2003, in the sixty-first minute of Colin Powell’s speech to the UN Security Council making the case for war against Iraq. It began with a declarative sentence that, like many others in the seventy-five-minute presentation, was technically true but widely off the mark. “Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants,” Powell began, just before Zarqawi’s bearded image appeared on a large screen behind the council’s circular table. Nada Bakos, watching on a TV monitor at work, heard the line and cringed. Yes, Zarqawi lived in the remote mountains of northeastern Iraq—in an area off limits to Iraq’s military. To suggest that Saddam Hussein was providing sanctuary to him was contrary to everything that Bakos, the Zarqawi expert, knew to be true. It was like claiming that America’s twenty-second president, Grover Cleveland, had “harbored” Geronimo, the famed Apache chieftain of the frontier West who attacked settlers and Blue Coats from his base along the U.S.-Mexican border.

[...]

“Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates,” Powell said. “Again, these protests are not credible. We know of Zarqawi’s activities in Baghdad.” The assertions were coming faster than Bakos could mentally counter them. It was becoming painful. This was not how intelligence analysis was supposed to work. When Cheney had made similar claims on Sunday talk shows, Bakos often found herself yelling at the television screen, as though she were contesting a referee’s blown call in a football game. Now Powell, like Cheney, was “asserting to the public as fact something that we found to be anything but,” she later said. Ultimately, the speech would tarnish Powell’s reputation and further undermine the credibility of the Bush administration with key allies, particularly after claims that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction turned out to be false.

[...]

It was one of the great ironies of the age, Abu Hanieh said. In deciding to use the unsung Zarqawi as an excuse for launching a new front in the war against terrorism, the White House had managed to launch the career of one of the century’s great terrorists.

There's a good bit in the book on how come the USA took quite some time to act, when George W. Bush was in charge:

“There was a firestorm,” recalled Richer, who retired from the agency in 2005. “The CIA is saying that an insurgency is developing, and now the White House is pissed off.” In effect, he said, two versions of reality were colliding in Iraq: the one witnessed by the agency’s spies, and another that sought to reinforce the message communicated so dramatically by Bush in May on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. “The problem for the White House,” Richer said, “was that the president had just landed on a ship to say that we had won.”

The situation on the CIA and military side of things, for the Americans, was dire:

If Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could have dictated a U.S. strategy for Iraq that suited his own designs for building a terrorist network, he could hardly have come up with one that surpassed what the Americans themselves put in place over the spring and summer of 2003. Countless articles and books have documented the Bush administration’s missteps, from the refusal to halt massive looting after the invasion to the wholesale dismantling of the Iraqi military and security structure by Bremer’s CPA. But no Americans appreciated the magnitude of the blunders more than the intelligence officers and U.S. diplomats in Iraq who were watching Zarqawi’s organization gain momentum. Years later, CIA officials who were brought into the final planning for the March 2003 invasion expressed astonishment at the lack of forethought on how the country would be managed after Saddam Hussein’s deposal. Junior officers were pressed into service at the eleventh hour to draft papers on possible risks U.S. soldiers could face in attempting to preserve order in occupied Iraq. But by then it was already too late to affect the outcome. “Right before the invasion, I asked the Pentagon, ‘Is anyone writing policy on force protection?’ The answer was no, so I said I’d do it,” said one former CIA analyst who was enlisted to help. “I was doing military analysis because they had literally no one doing it on the inside.”

There's remarkable information describing how takfiri took over places and tried to apply their way of life:

Shopkeepers who tried to stay open found themselves subjected to arbitrary and occasionally bizarre regulations. In some neighborhoods, grocers were threatened with punishment if they displayed cucumbers and tomatoes in the same stall. The jihadists maintained that the vegetables resembled male and female body parts and should not be permitted to mingle.

After a while, most muslims from the Islamic world came together to denounce the takfiris:

It was the first time scholars and religious leaders from across the Islamic world had come together to denounce takfiri ideology collectively, in a consensus statement considered legally binding for observant Muslims. No one expected an immediate halt to the bloodshed in Iraq, and, indeed, the killings continued as before. Yet Abdullah, reflecting on the effort afterward, said there had been no choice but to speak out. Even though Zarqawi might be fighting Americans and Shiites, his chief targets were ultimately the minds of young Muslims he hoped to win to his cause. Each bombing shown on the nightly news, each grotesque video uploaded to the Internet, brought Zarqawi closer to his goal. And until now, the rest of the Muslim world had offered nothing substantial in reply. “The ability of a few extremists to influence perceptions through acts of barbarity places greater responsibility on the moderates, of all religions, to speak up,” the king said. “If the majority remains silent, the extremists will dominate the debate.”

The book naturally reaches beyond Zarqawi, and into the formation of ISIS, into 2015. The author thinks that the collapse of Syria sparked the resurgence of the takfiris that formed ISIS:

The group was nearly broke. It had lost its sanctuary and freedom of movement, so essential for communication, training, and resupply. And it was selling an ideology that the Muslim world seemed no longer to care for. Five years after Zarqawi’s death, the Islamic State of Iraq had become the thing that terrorist organizations fear even more than their own annihilation. It had become irrelevant.

The jihadists’ new chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was a man of soaring ambitions, but in late 2011, well into his second year as leader, his boasts were as empty as the group’s coffers. The Islamic State of Iraq lacked resources, fighters, and sanctuary. And, perhaps most critically, it lacked a cause—a single big idea with which it could rally its depleted forces and draw other Muslims into the fold. Soon, within the chaos of revolutionary Syria, it would find all four.

On April 9, 2013, Baghdadi posted a twenty-one-minute audio message on Islamist Web sites, announcing a major corporate restructuring. Officially banished, Baghdadi said, was the group known as the al-Nusra Front. In its place was a newly merged organization that Baghdadi called the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. The latter word, roughly synonymous with the English term “Levant,” referred to the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, from southern Turkey through present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel. English-speakers would know the new organization as ISIL, or ISIS.

Even though Baghdadi obviously learned from many of the mistakes made by Zarqawi, what squelched support for ISIS to a large extent - notably when al-Quaeda denounced them in 2014 - he did not learn that while extreme violence lures some people to their fray, it repels most.

All in all, this book is well-written and a good way to learn of ISIS. It's bloody, but then, this is to be expected when dealing with ISIS on any level.

It was exactly what I was hoping for, a clear map through the history that made ISIS what it is today, I feel like I have a basic understanding of what they want and how they operate now, as to not be throughly confused when I read the news, and also the basis to be able to read more in depth about certain people or topics related to this without getting super lost.

It was at no point boring and accessible even if you seriously have no idea about Muslim history at all.

10/10 would recommend.

Who made ISIS? The US did. Very informative. Reads like a thriller. That has a terrible ending for all involved.

My familiarity with ISIS, like other terrorist organizations, is not deep enough for me to disagree with experts. On the other hand, I had enough to read this book first to get me back to the sights of the wounded and dead that I saw as a result of the injustices of this mortal terrorist group.

Another reading of the book puts you into an atmosphere of tension that seems to mention the rise of ISIS, taking into account historical mistakes made by international and local factors and the actions of the authorities to encourage or prevent the spread of the organization.

The plot breaks the story of ISIS in a way that explains the factors well. Zarqawi's release from prison in Jordan, turning the terrorist famous and the organization sprouting on the ruins of Iraq. The book also did not spare the United States and the superpowers by not planning for Iraq "the day after the war and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein."

The book is written very well. Almost like a stress novel with real characters. The writer was able to concentrate on a limited number of characters and made it easier to read and understand the situation.
At the end of the book, I left with some open questions, but I think that as far as the Middle East and ISIS, in particular, there is no commentator or person on the universe today to answer them.

recommended!

It was exactly what I was hoping for, a clear map through the history that made ISIS what it is today, I feel like I have a basic understanding of what they want and how they operate now, as to not be throughly confused when I read the news, and also the basis to be able to read more in depth about certain people or topics related to this without getting super lost.

It was at no point boring and accessible even if you seriously have no idea about Muslim history at all.

10/10 would recommend.

The author effectively illuminates the cast of Jihadist warrior-prophets at the heart of ISIS, and how the US is unable to grapple with the situation. The book ends with mainstream scholars in Cairo calling for change in the Muslim religion itself, to preclude killing in the name of Allah. Budding terrorists will not feel abashed by scholarly censure, but it takes my breath away to see an ancient religion at this remarkable crossroads.

On December 30, 2009, a large group of CIA terrorist hunters at their base in Khost, Afghanistan, were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician and double agent who had infiltrated Al-Qaeda’s inner circle. He had been providing them with amazing information on Al-Qaeda’s activities and they were counting on him to lead them to Osama bin Laden, America’s number one enemy, who had been hiding in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area for an extended period of time. His arrival had been postponed and delayed for several days and his arrival that day, his thirty second birthday, was much later than anticipated. But, when they received word that he was finally there, they gathered outside to give him a greeting which they believed his actions warranted. In order to protect his identity, he was accompanied by minimal staff and was rushed through the gates without being searched or inspected.
Big mistake. As soon as he exited the car, he set off a suicide bomb, killing himself, seven operatives and injuring most of the other people waiting to meet him. It was the agency’s highest loss of life in decades.
THE TRIPLE AGENT flows like a well-written thriller. In it, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Joby Warrick details Balawi’s life, his family, his motivations, his actions as well as the providing similar details about the Americans and Jordanians involved in his career as an agent.
Background: In 2000, the CIA and FBI had missed or mishandled warnings which might have prevented the attacks on 9/11. In early 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden had identified all-Qaeda as America’s worst enemy and told President Bush that the US must fight it on its home turf inside Pakistan. Pakistan, an American ally, opposed missile strikes on its own soil and said they exacerbated the problem by radicalizing ordinary Pakistanis to join the extremists. Besides, “Al-Qaeda is not very strong, but you’ve made it into a ten-foot-tall giant....How can a handful of core al-Qaeda leaders seriously threaten the greatest empire in the world?”
Eventually, George W. Bush allowed gave the CIA the green light.
The US had been struggling to improve its antiterrorism program since 9/11. When Barack Obama became President, he promised to redraw the country’s counterterrorism priorities, starting with renewed commitment to capturing bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Aawahiri. We relied a lot on the cooperation of Jordan which had a program in place to identify and train spies. Because of Obama’s request to advance the program, Jordan rushed to find new informants omitting many of the vetting steps they had previously used. US agents and officers were also advanced without as much training as had been required previously. As one person observed,” “Americans are in too much of a hurry. Always, they want everything to happen right now.”
Al-Balawi was one of the new recruits. He was not reviews by the US. His reports were spectacular. So much so that some counterintelligence officers told CIA investigators they found his behaviour suspicious. Events in Pakistan were coming together too quickly, too easily. Tragically, their concerns never reached the CIA Base Chief, Jennifer Matthews.
The results were predicable.
THE TRIPLE AGENT is very thorough. It reads like a diary, heavy on details and facts. At the beginning, it includes a list of the principal characters in The White House, CIA headquarters, Amman, Jordan, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan. The notes at the end are expanded. There was room for examining the veracity of some of the motivational factors but the author seems to have merely repeated how the speaker saw them. E.g,, Jordanian intelligence department captain Ali Bin Zeid says he was sitting on porch overlooking Dead Sea, “gazed at the fertile plains to the north and west, lands that had once belonged to the Arabs.” Before the Jews moved into the area, the land was desolate. It wasn’t until the swamps were drained and mosquitos eradicated that there were any fertile plains.
He also presents the Palestinian view about the Gaza war, blasting Israel without mentioning the actions of Hamas that led to the battle

Joby Warrick's Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS makes a complicated mess easier to understand. Readable and accessible to anyone with an interest in how we ended up with ISIS, his Pulitzer prize winning narrative of the rise of the terrorist cum state of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq is a must-read.

If there's anything I know about the politics of the Middle East, it's that it's bloody, and it almost always has been (go check out Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem: A Biography for a fascinating, if relatively brief, history of that piece of the Middle East). After centuries--nay, millennia--of war between various international interlopers, small-time despots, and religious zealots, recent years have seen the rise of ISIS, something more than just another political movement in the vein of the Palestinian Liberation Organization or a terrorist organization like Al Qaeda.

No, ISIS is something else, something more dangerous, a boogeyman that is every bit as malignant for the chaos it breeds as for the violence it intentionally perpetuates.

That ISIS holds itself out as a state, controls territory, and was born of the mistakes during the early days of the invasion of Iraq only complicates the world's response. More clearly, it complicates the United States' response. On the heels of an invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, American response is handicapped. But perhaps that is another story.

This story, though, is not about the impact those invasions have had on America's influence on the world. Rather, this is a narrative about the individuals that turned the quagmire of Iraq into the quagmire of ISIS. Primarily, it's the story of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who rose from street thug to a terrorist mastermind who turned the Iraq insurgency against the US into a Shia-Sunni civil war. Although he ostensibly gave his due respects to bin Laden as the senior leader, al-Zarqawi eventually competed with Osama bin Laden for the top place on the US Most Wanted list and became known for his brutality and ability to turn terrorism into propaganda. Even after his kill by US Special Forces in 2006, al-Zarqawi continued to influence others. The chaos in the Syrian civil war gave space to his followers, and as the country digressed into deeper instability gave breathing room to extremists seeking their own Islamic-based state. Al Qaeda in Iraq soon becomes the Islamic State in Iraq, controlling massive assets of oil and the innocent people caught up in the crossfire.

Joby Warrick's narrative is fascinating, carefully told to build a story accessible to the lay reader and more informed alike. Warrick never lets the story lag or falter with the minutia of Middle East politics. He builds his characters with portraits that are descriptive and clear and brings life to a story that is for most Americans no more than fear inducing headlines. It makes for good reading, and it left me feeling like I understood what had happened and where ISIS had come from. I don't know that it makes solutions any more obvious than before, but it does help to explain why solutions for stopping ISIS, or for bringing peace to the Middle East, are not easy. Warrick's writing, however, makes the story seem effortless, and an easy choice for winning a Pulitzer.

A wonderfully well researched book about the infancy, growth and maturity of ISIS. The two major players are Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (early period) and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (recent years). These men are masters of violence and for running their organizations in areas of the middle east that are outside government control in countries like Syria and Iraq. Before reading this book I was somewhat knowledgeable about ISIS. But, this book is a wealth of information and I feel much better informed including America's missteps over the years. A must read for a true grasp of terrorism.

In 1999, a very dangerous man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was released from prison unintentionally when Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners. When he was released, he began a crusade to rid the Middle East of Western influence using terrorism and media manipulation. His type of terrorism went beyond mass killings using bombs. He beheaded people on camera and broadcast it to the world.

The reasons Zarqawi became who he was are complex. He was born in Jordan to a large family. When he was a young man, he went to Afghanistan to fight. This is where his religious education began after meeting Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a militant cleric. When he returned to Jordan, he was profoundly disappointed to learn that Jordan was in peace negotiations with Israel. He began connecting with others who held similar views, and they formed a group bent on terrorism. He was imprisoned in 1994.

While in prison, he was a man of influence. He worked with Maqdisi to convert others to their cause. When they were released, they were ready for a fight. Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan where he met Osama bin Laden. They deeply disliked each other, but bin Laden was persuaded to give Zarqawi some funds for his cause. Zarqawi began building an army.

Zarqawi’s forces did not join with al-Qaeda until the invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. forces in 2001. Soon he left Afghanistan and entered Iran where he continued to expand his enterprise. Only three months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Zarqawi moved there where he continued his attacks as well as video recording murders of civilians.

Zarqawi also had many enemies in the Islamic world who upbraided his tactics as well as his ideology. Unfortunately, he was a master at recruiting men, often uneducated and poor, into his service. He died in an airstrike in 2006, but his movement lived on.

The group that was left became ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, eventually led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. ISIS began a campaign of driving government forces out of Iraqi cities and taking over. When civil war broke out in Syria, Baghdadi made his move by sending troops into Syria to recruit fighters and establish cells full of people who wanted to see Bashar al-Assad removed from power.

As I write, the Middle East remains in a struggle to stabilize. Who will be victorious remains to be seen, but I find it difficult to believe that those bent on terror and hatred will win in the end. Or perhaps there is no end and all is cyclical and all we have left is to wait it out.

It cannot be understated that the rise of ISIS is also intensely tied to actions of Western governments, particularly the United States. The U.S. and other Western nations have long histories with the Middle East and have contributed much to the weaponization of groups over the years. That paired with inconsistent follow through in helping to establish governments that can withstand invasions from militant armies have led to the current situation.

I learned a tremendous amount of information from reading this book. Failing to understand fully and take into account differing world views and conflicting agendas causes angst the world over. Civil discord cannot be ignored and a hard look at the reasons for discord cannot be neglected. ISIS is just the newest kid on the block in a long human history of groups vying for control.

Another excellent historical book by Joby Warrick. The author meticulously researched how ISIS had it's beginnings and takes us forward to a year or two ago. There is plenty of material here to attach blame to many different people. It is not a hit piece on George W. Bush, on Barack Obama or others. What I found interesting was how Jordan's King Hussein was spot on in his predictions of what could happen in the Middle East if things weren't "handled" properly.

Of course, hind sight is always 20/20. It is simple enough, with sufficient research to point out that if people or governments had taken a different action, current events might be different, for better or worse. But, what the author did not do (and you can certainly have differing opinions on whether authors should or should not do this in non-fiction), is include a lot of the context of the events occurring during the time that ISIS arose. Missing is the context that we were under massive terrorist threats after 9/11. Tremendous fear existed that we were targeted for massive terrorism in the homeland.

What the US and other governments did in the Middle East after 9/11 can easily be compared to what Roosevelt did with interning US citizens of Japanese descent in America after Pearl Harbor. If you speak with people that lived through December 7, 1941, many will still insist that in the context of the period, Roosevelt's action was completely appropriate, despite no evidence it was necessary. And through hindsight, we now know it was a horrible thing to do, although we will never know if there were saboteurs living in America and if Roosevelt's actions prevented them from carrying out plans.

So I feel a little more context here on the environment of the times would have been helpful to understand the mindset of many in the US. There are many folks that now claim the Iraq war is the cause of all our current problems and resulted in the rise of ISIS, but yet they were totally on board with it at the time.

Too often historic events occur because of faulty information, a refusal to see what is in front of your eyes, or some kind of "shock to the system" which creates a sense of urgency to do something. Looking back and having the benefit of being able to see the totality of the events from multiple angles allows us to "see" how things went wrong, if they did. Context is so important in interpreting history.

This is a well written and persuasive book. Yet, it suffers from a lack of depth. Because it is done in a journalistic rather than academic style, this is mostly a surface treatment. When the author cites a fascinating connection or insight, there is no exploration, no footnote. What you see is what you get. And that's a good deal. Here is the timeline of ISIS--from its conception to the current day. One definite plus is the author's Jordanian contacts; the material about Amman adds a whole new dimension to the story. This is a fine starting point for an investigation of ISIS and the Jihadi mind, as well as an overview of the stresses found in the Middle East.

Listening to this book over a period of time caused me to lose some of the story line especially regarding the many Arab individuals with similar names. Obviously, the author has done much research and the story of the rise of radical Islam is both intriguing and frightening. There are no solutions to this problem and it's not going away any time soon.

5371 Black Flags The Rise of ISIS, by Joby Warrick (read 3 May 2016) (Pulitzer Nonfiction prize in 2016) (re-read 21 Apr 2018) This book is in three parts, entitled (1) The Rise of Zarqawi, (2) Iraq,and (3) ISIS. Thus only the last part is about ISIS . The earlier parts tell of the war in Iraq and leave this reader appalled anew as to the stupidity of our invading Iraq in 2003. How much better we would be if that had never occurred! It stirred up the whole mess we have been dealing with since. One has to admire the people who have had to deal with the situation caused by the Iraq War. But reading the book is discouraging as it is hard to see how we can ever be unentangled from the mess in the Middle East. But I do conclude that it was wise to not get involved deeper than we did in Syria--making me glad that McCain lost in 2008--if he had won I suppose we would have gotten involved in the civil war in Syria, and have helped people who are connected to or sympathetic to ISIS.½

Just a fabulous read...this non-fiction book takes you into the background of how CIA agents work in the world of counter terrorism, while at the same time telling the story behind the suicide bombing of 7 CIA agents and others in Khost, Afghanistan. I usually have several items in process of reading - magazines, newspapers, other books...but had to put aside those other items at times to continue to read this. It reads very well - and its relative brevity as a non-fiction book is a plus. It sticks to the primary story line without adding in minute details about the people involved - something that many non-fiction writers find themselves doing. I still enjoy non-fiction - but this book stands out as one of the best I've read over the past 5 years or so.

Interesting and worth reading. The author seems very credible and is a Washington Post reporter on the Middle East, national security, intelligence, etc. I often wondered how the author got so many details from super secretive groups (CIA, al-Qaeda, etc) or people who are now dead. This is a surprisingly complete story for such a recent and secret event. This isn't a fast-paced, sexy spy thriller. This is about people (on both sides) trying to figure out how to claim slow progress on the uncertain, dark, and tense battlefield of terrorism. The whole time their minds are also on their careers, their families, and the risks.

I think I would have preferred if the author hadn't given away the end of the story in the title and in the first chapter. Spy stories can be fun because of mystery and misdirection, but the author didn't really play with this or keep me guessing much. The end of the book seemed like a tribute to the Americans, which is probably appropriate but not very interesting reading to me.

I sort of wish I understood the motives of the bad guys better. The book didn't explain the attraction or justification for terrorism in the minds of its characters who were doctors or scholars, and I couldn't understand how they could get to that point. Maybe explaining Islamic or political rational for terrorism is a hot potato, and maybe that's a whole different book, but I felt like I didn't understand anyone's motivation.

I also didn't get a flavor for whether the overall work against terrorism was constructive or impossible. Is it a war that can ever be won by American or its allies? Maybe the author doesn't really know. Maybe none of us do. In the end it struck me that killing Americans was revenge for fallen terrorist comrades, and then killing bin Laden was revenge for fallen American comrades.

This was an interesting look at the Black Water tragedy. It gave a solid picture of the lives sacrificed in an attempt to take out #3 on the CIA most wanted list but was pithy.

This was an interesting look at the Black Water tragedy. It gave a solid picture of the lives sacrificed in an attempt to take out #3 on the CIA most wanted list but was pithy.

Didnt realize that the attack discusssed in this book is the same attack as was dramatized in Zero Dark Thirty. Well paced, quick read. Good background on the characters. Read like a spy thirrler.

Excellent and very readable history of Isis and the people who created and lead it.