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Summary and Analysis of
Black Flags
The Rise of ISIS
Based on the Book by Joby Warrick
The summary and analysis in this ebook are meant to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction. This ebook is not intended as a substitute for the work that it summarizes and analyzes, and it is not authorized, approved, licensed, or endorsed by the works author or publisher. Worth Books makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this ebook.
Contents
Context
Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick, was published in 2015, as the Islamic State continued its expansion in Iraq and Syria, with local governments unable to contain it and the United States unwilling to intervene militarily. Despite the existential threat posed by ISIS and the widely broadcast beheadings of American journalists and other captives, Washington refused to make a commitment to another war in the Middle East.
However, the events of 2015 showed that ISISs ambitions were not limited to carving out a caliphate from the fractious territories of Iraq and Syria. The two major terrorist attacks in Paris that year, and the ones that followed in Belgium and Germany, made clear that ISIS had goals beyond Iraq and the Levant: It was now appealing to disaffected Muslims around the world to become volunteers in a worldwide jihad , with brutality and suicide as its weapons and innocent civilians as its enemy.
Other authors, notably Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower , have explained the historical origins of Islamic fundamentalism in great detail. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the godfather of the Islamic State, was portrayed in depth by French journalist Jean-Charles Brisard in his 2005 biography Al-Zarqawi: The New Face of al-Qaeda. However, no writer has described the evolution of ISIS, or the missteps by US intelligence that contributed to it, in such fascinating detail as Warrick. For this reason, Black Flags is essential reading for understanding the global terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State.
Overview
In Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Joby Warrick has written a compelling and authoritative account of the birth of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a story that combines the quick pace and mounting suspense of a thriller with the deep knowledge and analysis of first-rate journalism. More than just a recounting of headline events, Black Flags is a study of the personalities and the context that engendered ISISin the authors words, the first terrorist organization that is a de facto stateand of the men and women who have sought to contain it.
Drawing on extensive interviews with US intelligence and military officials, and counterterrorism experts in Jordan, Warrick tells how the jihadists who fought alongside the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s metamorphosed into an Islamic army that would eventually eclipse al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization that inspired it.
Black Flags focuses largely on the violent career of one man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, tracing his progression from Jordanian street tough to jihadist volunteer in Afghanistan to the brutally violent leader of the insurgency against US forces in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was mistakenly identified by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in 2003 as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. This error instantly made him an international terrorist celebrity, a role he eagerly assumed, mounting a campaign of violence aimed at defeating the US forces, and creating violent havoc between Iraqs Shiite majority and his coreligionists, the Sunnis. Al-Zarqawi was finally killed in a US airstrike in 2006, thanks to key information provided by counterterrorism experts in Jordan, where he had provoked popular outrage with a hotel bombing that killed 60 civilians.
ISISs current leader is a diametrically opposed personalityAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a bookish, bespectacled cleric who was arrested by the Americans in 2003, but later released as a prisoner of little importance. Despite having almost no combat experience, he transformed a demoralized terrorist group into a cohesive army whose goal was not to overthrow governments, but to take control of towns and cities where they would impose Sharia law. The self-ordained caliph of the Islamic State, al-Baghdadi took his predecessors brutal tactics to new heights, using social media to disseminate beheadings of civilian captives, including US journalists and aid workers. These gruesome displays, along with ISISs rapid battlefield gains, have terrorized its enemies and turned the Islamic State into the largest global terrorist threat today.
Apart from explaining the jihadist mindset, the book also offers valuable insights into how the United States repeated misjudgments and reluctance to confront ISIS on the battlefield has contributed to its growth. For anyone seeking to understand how ISIS appeared, full-blown and unstoppable, on the world stage, Black Flags is essential reading.
Summary
Prologue
Amman, Jordan, February 3, 2015
Black Flags opens with the February 2015 execution of Sajida al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman sentenced to death in Jordan for her botched part in a terrorist attack a decade earlier. The attack had been ordered by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the forerunner of the Islamic State. ISIS in Syria had just executed a Jordanian pilot who had flown bombing missions over their territory, and Jordans King Abdullah ordered Rishawis death in retaliation.
At the time, King Abdullah was in Washington, pleading with President Barack Obama for more weapons to fight ISIS, which was already making spectacular battlefield gains. But the White House, disheartened by years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, refused to comply.
Book I: The Rise of Zarqawi
What kind of person can command with only his eyes?
Zarqawi began his ascent to notoriety as a drunkard and common thug well known to police in his native Jordan. A period of fighting in Afghanistan and a couple of jail terms converted him into a battle-hardened religious fanatic and a leader famed for his raw courage. Imprisoned again at the al-Jafr maximum-security facility in Jordan, he controlled his followers with iron discipline. Despite his ruthless and violent character, Zarqawi displayed an almost motherly concern for his followers when they were sick or injured. Likewise, he was very attached to his mother and two sisters, to whom he wrote affectionate letters.
Within this prison cult, Zarqawi was second-in-command to Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, an Islamic cleric renowned for inflammatory writings that reviled corrupting Western influences on the Islamic faith and justified the murder of all non-Muslims.
