War In The Age of Trump. Patrick Cockburn
WAR IN THE AGE OF TRUMP
Patrick Cockburn is currently Middle East correspondent for The Independent and worked previously for the Financial Times. He has written four books on Iraq’s recent history—The Rise of Islamic State, Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq, The Occupation, and Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (with Andrew Cockburn)—as well as a memoir, The Broken Boy and, with his son, a book on schizophrenia, Henry’s Demons, which was shortlisted for a Costa Award. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009, the Foreign Commentator of the Year in 2013, and the Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year in 2014.
WAR IN THE AGE OF TRUMP
The Defeat of Isis, the Fall of the Kurds,the Conflict with Iran
Patrick Cockburn
This edition first published by Verso 2020
© Patrick Cockburn 2020
First published in the United States by OR Books LLC,
New York © Patrick Cockburn 2020
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-040-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-042-6 (US EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-041-9 (UK EBK)
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Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Contents
4. Could Isis Have Won? Could It Return?
5. 2016: Three States on the Edge of Disaster
PART I. AN ISOLATIONIST IN THE AMERICAN TRADITION
PART III. THE IRAQI KURDS: AN UNNECESSARY DEFEAT
PART IV. WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE SYRIAN WAR
PART VI. Two Last Stands: Afrin and Eastern GHOUTA—EQUAL MISERY, UNEQUAL COVERAGE
PART VII. BEHIND ENEMY LIES: WAR REPORTING IN THE AGE OF FAKE FACTS
PART VIII. IRAQ AT THE END OF WAR
PART IX. TURKEY INVADES ROJAVA
Afterword. The Peace of the Grave: The Cemeteries of Iraq
This book covers the critical three years after the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016. Its central themes are the US-Iran confrontation, the defeat of Isis and the fall—some say betrayal—of the Kurds. The election of Trump coincided almost exactly with the start of the nine-month siege of Mosul by the Iraqi army, which was to be the decisive battle in the defeat of Isis. The terminal date of the book is early 2020 with the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by the US in Iraq and the impact of this in Iraq and Iran. This followed closely on Trump’s announcement in the fall of 2020 of US military withdrawal from Syria and opened the door to a Turkish invasion of northern Syria. At the same time, mass street protests in Iraq and Lebanon were beginning to shake the political dominance of Iran and its allies in the Shia heartlands. Much that I wrote during this period concerned the rise and fall of the de facto Kurdish states in Iraq and Syria and the final elimination of the self-declared Isis caliphate, which culminated in death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
As in a previous volume, I look at events from two angles. One is contemporary description using writings and diaries I produced at the time; the other is retrospective