I have always been fascinated by the history of Middle East. I have always found that history had not been very just with Middle East. It has occupied one of the most important positions on the map of the world. A gateway between Europe and Asia. It has been destroyed and rebuilt by Greeks, Persians, Rome, Arabs, Byzantines, Ottomans and then British and French.
Despite being a center for power struggle throughout the history, Middle East has bloomed culturally, economically, technologically for most of the part of the history. It has been a central hub for trade and cultural exchange.
I recently read Arabian Nights, and of course this was a fiction where the cities like Damascus, Baghdad, Mosul has been described as a paradise in desert. How people were so welcoming and warm to Europeans, Indians, Chinese merchants and traveler. Which I felt might be glorified but most probably a close description of middle east of that time.
So, how does a once growing and blooming part of the world has fallen under such disarray? What are the events that caused the rise of the world’s most barbaric extremist group, whose brutality has exceeded the most infamous and their parent al-Qaeda?
So after a lot of research I picked this book to just have a glance over the history of ISIS. And now here is the review of Joby Warrick‘s book Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS.
The first thing I want to talk about is the narration. Joby’s narration has made the experience of reading his book like reading or watching a thriller may be like Body of Lies or American Sniper. It’s fast paced, engrossing, riveting and is like an edge-of-the-seat drama. Sometimes the non-linear narration adds to the excitement. His introduction of the Godfather of ISIS Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or other characters like Robert Ford or Baghdadi is as dramatic as it can get in a book. He has brilliantly retold some of the events that occurred in Iraq, Jordan and Syria. Some of the beheading and killings by ISIS is just bone-chilling and scary. I want to give full points to Joby for his writing style. It is never boring and made me discuss these events with my friends after I read them.
So one thing that will always be a subject of debate is, is this book biased? Or how true is it? What I felt, Joby was quite critical of the way Bush administration and CIA handled the situation in Iraq. Time and again he pointed several strategical mistakes made by the white house, be it wrongfully associating Saddam’s government with terrorists to have an excuse to attack on Iraq, making Zarqawi an overnight star, that he wasn’t, neglecting Jordan’s king’s advice or the way US military treated Iraqi prisoners and local people. He has tried to put forward a lot of perspective during the conflicts, be it Iran’s involvement, or how local Sunni tribes reacted to the rise of Sunni extremist, involvement of other Arab countries. I am no expert on Iraq-Iran conflict or Iraq-US conflict or Afghanistan-Russia-USA-Pakistan conflict, but a couple of things I wanted to read more about was how the Iraq-US conflict started, was the Oil trade the reason of the tension between two countries., how countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan involved in the proxy war in Afghanistan and Iraq? I would have felt more satisfied if I had gotten the answer to these questions. Though he has wonderfully explained how the extremists has used Islam and Quran as a tool to justify their heinous acts.
One last thing I want to talk about is the takeaways. Again reading this book has not made me any expert on this matter. But now I have some information to think about and to discuss. Now I am no longer ignorant about a part of the world which has been there since beginning of human civilization. I have found a new respect for King Abdullah-II of Jordan and their secret intelligence agency Mukhbarabat. Jordan is caught up in the uprising of this tyranny because of it’s progressive and western outlook and their foreign policy specially with Israel and their position on the map. But the way so far the authority has been strongly against any kind of terrorism and radical Islamist is quite appreciable. The conflict in Syria and Iraq doesn’t seem to be getting resolved any time soon. And how the few radicals and extremists have tainted the whole community is really shameful.
I know the most of the Muslims don’t agree with what has happened in Iraq and Syria and rest of the Middle East. And they want stability and peace in their region as much as anyone else. But they need to understand no religion is perfect. It might be relevant when it was founded but it needs to evolve with time. This applies to all the religions not just Islam.
And these radical groups do not represent Islam, this we all need to understand.
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