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

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

       Verso

      UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG

      US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201

       versobooks.com

      Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

      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)

       British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

      Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

       Contents

Preface

INTRODUCTION

1. The Assassination

2. America’s On/Off Retreat

3. The Death of al-Baghdadi

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

November 2016–June 2019

       PART II. THE BATTLE FOR MOSUL

       October 2016–August 2017

       PART III. THE IRAQI KURDS: AN UNNECESSARY DEFEAT

       September–November 2017

       PART IV. WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE SYRIAN WAR

       October 2016–May 2017

       PART V. THE SIEGE OF RAQQA

       June 2017–March 2018

       PART VI. Two Last Stands: Afrin and Eastern GHOUTA—EQUAL MISERY, UNEQUAL COVERAGE

       February–April 2018

       PART VII. BEHIND ENEMY LIES: WAR REPORTING IN THE AGE OF FAKE FACTS

       April 2018–August 2019

       PART VIII. IRAQ AT THE END OF WAR

       November 2017–September 2019

       PART IX. TURKEY INVADES ROJAVA

       October 2019

       PART X. AN UPRISING IN IRAQ

       October–November 2019

       Afterword. The Peace of the Grave: The Cemeteries of Iraq

       Acknowledgements

PREFACE

      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