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Three Different Takes on ISIS public relations’—and even more insidiously ‘Politics has to be murky, relying on because MPs, like most people, instinctively compromise and deals, because different and strike up a rapport with outsiders from simi- rival interests, truths and traditions exist lar backgrounds to themselves. It is a point under a common rule,’ she writes. ‘To which merits wider discussion and analysis. renounce politics is to destroy the very thing These anthropologist’s observations are that orders pluralism in non-violent ways enjoyable and insightful: Crewe has a great and keeps despotism at bay.’ eye for humanity and humour, and writes (very) engagingly. But alone they Juliette Jowit writes for The Guardian would not sustain a book, let alone an academic one. As she writes of her experiences, though, Three different takes on ISIS the tone shifts, progressively, from observa- tion to something more heartfelt: a defence Gilbert Achcar of the House of Commons, and of demo- cratic politics itself. Not only does Crewe The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New believe that most MPs belie their (un)popu- Sunni Revolution, by Patrick Cockburn. lar image by being hard-working, sacrificing Verso. 172 pp. £9.99. privacy, family time, respect and (often) Isis: Inside the Army of Terror, by Michael income, to genuinely want to ‘do good’; she Weiss and Hassan Hassan. Regan Arts. 270 also argues that public expectations are pp. £12.99. unreasonable—even dangerous. Politics is by ISIS: The State of Terror, by Jessica Stern and nature about compromise, she observes: J. M. Berger. William Collins. 385 pp. £14.99. indeed, the contradictions necessary to do this are inherent in most if not all of our Most people prefer to keep referring to the lives. So politicians have to at once be con- self-proclaimed Islamic State by the acronym sidering individual constituents, their con- of its previous name: ISIS, the Islamic State stituency as a whole and the national good, in Iraq and Syria (or, more accurately ‘al- as well as special interests and their own Sham’—Greater Syria—approximately translated consciences; they must also be aware of his- by some as ‘the Levant’, with the acronym tory, act in the present and be mindful of the hence turned into ISIL). On this thus-named future consequences of their actions. To ISIS, close to forty books and counting have expect them to follow one path unswerv- been hitherto published in English, of which ingly would be to ask them to betray many the three reviewed here are the best-selling others whom they are elected to serve. A in the UK. good example is individuals and groups lob- Of these, Patrick Cockburn’s was one of bying MPs both ways on voting to legalise the very first books written on ISIS. It came gay marriage, while some also had strong out in 2014 under the title The Jihadis Return. personal views, often informed by their reli- The one reviewed here is an updated edition gion and/or views on individual liberty. with a new title. It recapitulates the views Sometimes Crewe’s defence stretches the that the author developed in his coverage of credulity of even someone like myself, events in Iraq and Syria for The Independent. whose experience has made them so much It is written in a most readable journalistic more respectful of MPs: she quotes a Labour style by an author who is well acquainted backbencher saying that they can ‘say “I with this part of the world, having covered fully support my Leader” to the media and it for many years (especially Iraq). However, then [go] to the tearoom and discuss how to the book contains hardly any references to get rid of him. This is politics.’ To which substantiate its numerous assertions other Crewe adds: ‘This is not just politics: that is than Cockburn’s personal testimony, often how people are.’ Others might argue that quite anecdotal. not all people are hypocritical or deceitful, Yet, what is most questionable about this and at the very least we can expect better of book is its author’s heavy political bias, people we elect to power. But this does not which transpires at the end of the preface detract from her more important concern: when Cockburn quotes Vice-President Joe B OOK R EVIEWS 125 © The Authors 2016. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2016 The Political Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 1 Biden’s statement about the lack of civilians homogeneous category ‘the Sunni’, facing a of the ‘moderate middle’ in the ranks of a no less homogeneous ‘the Shia’. Thus, he Syrian opposition which, so says Biden, is tells us that ‘the Sunni’ are ‘unlikely to be exclusively composed of ‘soldiers’. Biden satisfied’ with regional autonomy and a lar- was trying to justify the Obama administra- ger share of jobs and oil revenues, and tion’s refusal to provide the Syrian opposi- would not be content with less than a ‘full tion with the defensive weapons it requested counterrevolution that aims to take back —primarily anti-aircraft weapons. Patrick power over all of Iraq’. One is left wonder- Cockburn’s immoderate comment on Biden’s ing how an informed author like Cockburn statement is much telling: ‘Seldom have the could attribute the fantasy of an excited real forces at work in creating ISIS and the fringe of Iraqi Arab Sunnis to a whole com- present crisis in Iraq and Syria been so accu- munity. The fact is, however, that he seems rately described.’ to have taken that fantasy for a fait accompli Any reader familiar with the region would since he asserts that, after ISIS’s offensive in know what to expect from the book hencefor- Iraq, the Shia leaders have ‘not grasped that ward. Indeed, a few pages later Cockburn their domination over the Iraqi state... was cites an anonymous ‘intelligence officer from finished’ and that ‘only a Shia rump was a neighbouring country’ (obviously Iraq, left’—an astonishing overstatement indeed. whose Iran-dominated government backs Patrick Cockburn’s pro-Assad bias is also Syria’s Assad) to the effect that ISIS is pleased blatant in the double standard with which when sophisticated weapons are sent to anti- he judges ‘conspiracy theories’ depending on Assad groups, because it can always get them which side they emanate from. Thus, says by force or cash. In the same spirit, Cockburn he, ‘a conspiracy theory much favoured by explains that he couldn’t fly directly to Bagh- the rest of the Syrian opposition and by dad in the summer of 2014 because, he was Western diplomats, that ISIS and Assad are told, ISIS had obtained shoulder-held anti-air- in league, was shown to be false as ISIS won craft missiles ‘originally supplied to anti- victories on the battlefield’. But Cockburn Assad forces in Syria’—a statement that is does not tell the reader by which logic ISIS’s doubly untrue as, first, no such weapons victories on the Syrian battlefield were in were supplied to anti-Assad forces in Syria and by themselves a refutation of the claim and, second, the most sophisticated weapons by the Syrian opposition and Western diplo- on which ISIS managed to lay its hands are mats that the Assad regime had favoured actually those supplied by the US to the Iraqi ISIS’s establishment and expansion in Syria army, which abandoned them ignominiously in order to weaken and discredit the Syrian in its debacle during the summer of 2014. insurgency. This erroneous account is matched soon This claim was made in light of the wide- after by a highly disputable assertion: ‘It is spread conviction that Assad’s intelligence the government and media consensus in the services have been manipulating Iraq’s jiha- West that the civil war in Iraq was reignited dists from the time the US occupied that by the sectarian policies of Iraqi Prime Min- country in 2003. In any event, the above- ister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad. In reality it quoted categorical dismissal of that ‘conspir- was the war in Syria that destabilized acy theory’ stands in striking contrast with Iraq...’ This assertion flies in the face of the Cockburn’s indulgence towards another that well-known fact that the vast mass protests is favoured by the opposite side. On the alle- that started in Iraq’s Arab Sunni regions in gation that the resurgence of ISIS was aided 2012 and laid the ground for ISIS’s subse- by Turkish military intelligence, which he quent expansion in those same regions were attributes again to ‘one senior Iraqi source’, not about Syria in the least, but about Al- Cockburn has this to say: ‘This might be dis- Maliki’s sectarian drive, which had swung missed as one more Middle East conspiracy into high gear as soon as the last American theory, but a feature of jihadist movements combat troops left Iraq. is the ease with which they can be manipu- The truth is that Cockburn can barely lated by foreign intelligence services.’ In conceal his contempt for Iraq’s Arab Sunnis, sum, the ease with which ISIS can be manip- whom he often lumps together in a ulated by intelligence services only applies 126 B OOK R EVIEWS The Political Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 1 © The Authors 2016. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2016 to Turkish services in Cockburn’s view, not the knee-jerk ‘anti-imperialist’ circles who to the Syrian ones. reject any form of intervention by Western Cockburn’s contempt for Iraq’s Arab Sun- powers in any situation as a matter of reli- nis is matched by his dislike of the other gious taboo, and who abundantly quote component of what he calls ‘the new Sunni Cockburn on Syria, the Independent’s reporter revolution’, namely the Syrian opposition.
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