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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 explanation and analysis from the perspective of today. Both have their advantages: it is important to know what events looked like when they were still happening, but also to see retrospectively “how things panned out” and what was their true significance. As historians have often said, it is important to remember that past events were once in the future.

I have tried to give a voice to what Syrians, Iraqis, and Kurds felt about events as they unfolded around them. Their instincts, honed by decades of danger to themselves and their families, were often sharper, or at least different from mine. I always try to keep in mind the warning of an Iraqi friend who told me, as we drove through a particularly violent district north of Baghdad, “Take off your seatbelt—no Iraqi ever wears one and it identifies you as a foreigner.”

Canterbury14 January 2019