ISIS

ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, 361 pages

Within the last decade and a half, the Islamic State, known variously as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Daesh, has evolved from the start-up terrorist organization Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ) into the subordinate group Al-Qaeda in Iraq and finally into a quasi-state controlling an area the size of West Virginia and somewhere between 3 and 8 million people with an army possessing highly advanced military equipment.  More notably for those outside ISIS' zone of control, the group has proclaimed itself the restoration of the global caliphate, has received pledges of fealty from other radical groups in Africa, Arabia, Southeast Asia, and the Caucasus, and has shocked the world with slickly produced propaganda videos featuring mass beheadings of non-Muslims and people being burned alive in cages, the execution of homosexuals by throwing them off rooftops and the demolition of cultural antiquities thousands of years old as idolatrous ties to the pagan past.  In the process, despite being denounced by Muslim authorities including even their former sponsors in Al-Qaeda, ISIS has emerged as both a major source of assistance and the premier source of inspiration to Islamic terrorists around the world.

The subtitle of this study of ISIS, Inside the Army of Terror, seems a bit exaggerated - most of the book is a view from outside.  The authors do give a solid history of the development of ISIS, explaining how a Jordanian thug became the seed from which ISIS grew, helpfully irrigated by Al-Qaeda, Iran, and Syria, sprouting in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, fed by defecting Baathist officials and thriving on (wholly justified) Sunni fears of Iran-backed Shiite pogroms in Iraq and Alawite oppression in Syria.  The authors are clear about the barbarism on all sides of the civil wars in the region, of which ISIS' atrocities are the epitome rather than the exception.

There are a few minor problems.  The authors occasionally contradict themselves - discussing the ISIS presence in Libya, they cite the transfer of fighters from the elite Al-Battar battalion as an indicator of the country's importance to ISIS, but later they reveal that the breakup of Al-Battar was due to concerns about the battalion's loyalty.  More disappointingly, they never deal with specifics of ISIS' religious ideology.  Their explanation of the opportunistic reasons for much of ISIS' local support is interesting, especially given what it reveals about the successes and failures of anti-ISIS strategies and the hidden fragility of the caliphate's position.  Yet it is not political opportunism that has drawn tens of thousands of eager recruits from around the world to the Syrian desert, and it is not mere opportunism that has convinced established terrorist groups such as Boko Haram and Abu Sayyaf to pledge their loyalty to these upstarts.  Weiss and Hassan spend time explaining how the ISIS ideology developed, how it is spread, and why it is deceptive, but the book would have benefited greatly from a detailed account of what it is - without it the book falls prey into the postmodern journalistic myopia which reduces everything to power politics.

Winter Is Coming

Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped by Garry Kasparov and Mig Greenguard, 267 pages

Garry Kasparov is indisputably one of the greatest chess players in history - he become the youngest ever World Champion at the age of 22 and held the title for fifteen years, during which he set a record for consecutive tournament victories.  Since his retirement from competitive chess in 2005, he has divided his time between coaching, charitable work with his Kasparov Chess Foundation, and political activism.  It is to the last category that this book belongs.

Much of the book is taken up by an extended expose of Putin's crimes against democracy and peace, his victimization of the Russian people and their neighbors.  This is not an objective report, but a passionate denunciation of what Kasparov describes as a "mafia state", a lawless regime run solely for the benefit of those at the top.  But the real heart of the book is Kasparov's scathing indictment of decades of indifference and enabling by a toothless international community.  In Kasparov's view, this has been caused less by the increasing strength of economic ties due to globalization than by a general deterioration of civilizational confidence throughout the West.  

Kasparov's case is thoroughly convincing even if his presentation is disorganized, jumping around chronologically in a manner that is sometimes confusing, but held together by his personal experience and passion.  Unfortunately, in the final chapter, when the time comes to present a positive program for change, all he can muster is empty cliches about the importance of education, a fizzle of an end to an explosive book.

Forty Days of Musa Dagh

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel, 817 pages

This is Franz Werfel's fictionalization of the true story of a community of Armenians who, facing deportation and almost certain death, fortified a mountain called Musa Dagh and resisted the Turks for 53 days.  The shortening of the siege to the more evocative forty days is only one of many liberties Werfel takes with history, most notably the transformation of the actual leader of the resistance into a fictional character.

Werfel (best known as the author of The Song of Bernadette) intended neither a history text nor a Tom Clancy-style military thriller, though it is easy to imagine either treatment of this story being effective.  Rather, the author slowly develops themes of loyalty, sacrifice, love, honor, jealousy, pride, hope, and faith, centered around the protagonist, Gabriel Bagradian, a wealthy Armenian recently returned to his people after long years abroad, his French wife Juliette, and their son Stephan, who simultaneously struggles to find his place both as a man and as an Armenian.

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a long, slow novel.  Rather than providing a hollow sense of closure when even victory is a kind of defeat, the novel concludes with an anti-climax.  Instead of fast-paced action, Werfel delivers genuine surprises.  

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason K Stearns, 337 pages

The wars that have raged in and around the Congo since the mid-'90s have sometimes been described as the African equivalent of a World War, but Stearns finds a closer parallel in the Thirty Years War.  Like their seventeenth century European cousin, the First and Second Congo Wars featured a disunited giant nation being fought over by its smaller neighbors, with shifting alliances and a galaxy of minor players, each with its own agenda, all of which seemed to be fighting to mutual exhaustion.  This helps explain why the Congo has received so little media attention as compared to Rwanda or Darfur, where the situation was much clearer, although the casualties were an order of magnitude smaller.

Stearns navigates the confused tangle of factions and personalities with ease.  Even better is his rare gift for personalization - the journalistic human interest angles flow organically into the historical narrative, and shed actual light on events, whether making concrete the reality of the human tragedy or exploring the psychology of genocidaires.  The ending seems shockingly abrupt, but this is no doubt true to life, still, more material on the ongoing post-war conflicts would not have been out of place.

Sub-Saharan Africa has, for a long time, been an easy place to ignore.  That time may be ending.  That time should be ending.  Stearns' book is a good place to start paying attention.