Patrick Cockburn

"The idea of direct invasion is the greatest threat to Saddam. It avoids the problems of securing local allies, inside and outside Iraq, which bedevil any indirect approach to get rid of him. But it has one immense disadvantage from the US point of view ... if the US invades Iraq to install its own government it will be taking direct physical control of an area containing more than half the world's oil reserves. It will look like the founding of a new American empire based on physical force and will be deeply resented ... It would outrage the Arabs at a moment when the Israel-Palestine conflict is in a particularly bloody phase. America could find that it has overplayed its hand, just as Saddam did when he invaded Kuwait twelve years ago."-From the new PrologueAt the outset of the 1991 Gulf War, US leaders resolved the 'Iraqis will pay the price', so long as Saddam Hussein remained in power. This book makes chillingly clear just how terrible that price has been. Eleven years ago Saddam was caught by surprise; his preparations since September 11 show that lessons have been learnt. In a substantial new prologue the authors analyse these preparations and the terrifying consequences of a military invasion of Iraq.

Radical journalist Claud Cockburn fought successfully against the political and media establishment, writing for publications as varied as The Times and Private Eye. To Graham Greene, he was the greatest journalist of the twentieth century. Born in China in 1904 and educated alongside Evelyn Waugh, Cockburn launched into a stellar career as a Times correspondent, first in Berlin, then New York, interviewing Al Capone in Chicago, and finally Washington. He resigned in 1932 to start The Week, an anti-Nazi and anti-establishment newsletter with an influence out of all proportion to its circulation. British officials were horrified by the scoops he published. These included stories on the political influence of German appeasers - the Cliveden Set - in the British elite and the previously suppressed news of Edward VIII's abdication. Cockburn wrote dispatches while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. In Spain, he helped W. H. Auden and clashed with George Orwell. Claud's private life, too, was eventful. He was married three times, once to Jean Ross, the model for Christopher Isherwood's Sally Bowles. Patrick Cockburn, himself an international journalist, chronicles his father Claud's lifelong dedication to a guerrilla campaign against the powerful on behalf of the powerless. It is a biography for today's age, in which journalism is frequently suppressed, overshadowed, undervalued, and corrupted

Radical journalist Claud Cockburn fought successfully against the political and media establishment, writing for publications as varied as The Times and Private Eye. To Graham Greene, he was the greatest journalist of the twentieth century.Born in China in 1904 and educated alongside Evelyn Waugh, Cockburn launched into a stellar career as a Times correspondent, first in Berlin, then New York, interviewing Al Capone in Chicago, and finally Washington. He resigned in 1932 to start The Week, an anti-Nazi and anti-establishment newsletter with an influence out of all proportion to its circulation. British officials were horrified by the scoops he published. These included stories on the political influence of German appeasers - the Cliveden Set - in the British elite and the previously suppressed news of Edward VIII's abdication.Cockburn wrote dispatches while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. In Spain, he helped W. H. Auden and clashed with George Orwell. Claud's private life, too, was eventful. He was married three times, once to Jean Ross, the model for Christopher Isherwood's Sally Bowles.Patrick Cockburn, himself an international journalist, chronicles his father Claud's lifelong dedication to a guerrilla campaign against the powerful on behalf of the powerless. It is a biography for today's age, in which journalism is frequently suppressed, overshadowed, undervalued, and corrupted

In this expanded edition of a widely praised book, now available for the first time in North America, the renowned journalist Patrick Cockburn looks at his experience of contracting polio as a child in the context of a new pandemic, that of COVID-19. The parallels between what happened 65 years ago and today’s crisis are both striking and salutary. Cockburn was just six when he woke up one day in the summer of 1956 with a headache and a sore throat. His parents, Claud and Patricia, had recently returned to Ireland, to their house in East Cork, careless of the fact that polio had broken out in Cork City. Patrick caught the disease and was taken to the fever hospital. The virus attacks the nerves of the brain and the spinal cord, leading to paralysis of the muscles. Patrick could no longer walk. The Broken Boy is at once a memoir of Patrick Cockburn’s own experience of polio, a portrait of his parents, both prominent radicals, and the story of the Cork epidemic, the last great polio epidemic in the world.

In this urgent and timely book, Patrick Cockburn writes the first draft of the history of the current crisis in the Middle East.Here he charts the period from the recapture of Mosul in 2017 to Turkey's attack on Kurdish territory in November 2019, and recounts the new phase in the wars of disintegration that have plagued the region, leading to the assassination of Iranian General Sulemani.Cockburn offers panoramic on-the-ground analysis as well as a lifetime's study of the region. As author of The Rise of Islamic State, and the Age of Jihad, he has proved to be leading, critical commentator of US intervention and the chaos it has wrecked/ And here he shows how, since Trump entered the White House promising an end to the Forever War, peace appears a distant possibility with the continuation of conflict in Syria, Saudi Arabia's violent intervention in the Yemen, the fall of the Kurds, riots in Baghdad, and the continued aggression towards Iran. While ISIS has been defeated, it is not clear whether it has disappeared from the region. Trump's policies has appeared to pour petrol on the flames, emboldening the other superpowers involved in the proxy wars. Following the collapse of the deal with Iran, and the threat of war crimes, is a new balance of power possible?

In this urgent and timely book, Patrick Cockburn writes the first draft of the history of the current crisis in the Middle East.Here he charts the period from the recapture of Mosul in 2017 to Turkey's attack on Kurdish territory in November 2019, and recounts the new phase in the wars of disintegration that have plagued the region, leading to the assassination of Iranian General Sulemani.Cockburn offers panoramic on-the-ground analysis as well as a lifetime's study of the region. As author of The Rise of Islamic State, and the Age of Jihad, he has proved to be leading, critical commentator of US intervention and the chaos it has wrecked/ And here he shows how, since Trump entered the White House promising an end to the Forever War, peace appears a distant possibility with the continuation of conflict in Syria, Saudi Arabia's violent intervention in the Yemen, the fall of the Kurds, riots in Baghdad, and the continued aggression towards Iran. While ISIS has been defeated, it is not clear whether it has disappeared from the region. Trump's policies has appeared to pour petrol on the flames, emboldening the other superpowers involved in the proxy wars. Following the collapse of the deal with Iran, and the threat of war crimes, is a new balance of power possible?

Though capable of staging spectacular attacks like 9/11, jihadist organizations were not a significant force on the ground when they first became notorious in the shape of al-Qa'ida at the turn of century. //Today, that's changed. Exploiting the missteps of the West's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, as well as its misjudgments in relation to Syria and the uprisings of the Arab Spring, jihadist organizations, of which ISIS is the most important, are swiftly expanding. They now control a geographical territory greater in size than Britain or Michigan, stretching from the Sunni heartlands in the north and west of Iraq through a broad swath of north-east Syria. On the back of their capture of Mosul and much of northern Iraq in June 2014, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been declared the head of a new caliphate that demands the allegiance of all Muslims. The secular, democratic politics that were supposedly at the fore of the Arab Spring have been buried by the return of the jihadis writing with customary calmness and clarity, and drawing on unrivaled experience as a reporter in the region, Cockburn analyzes the unfolding of one of the West's greatest foreign policy debacles and the rise of the new jihadis.//Patrick Cockburn is currently a Middle East correspondent for the Independent. His book on Iraq's recent history, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, was a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Awards. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, and the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009. He was named Foreign Commentator of the Year by the Comment Awards in 2013.

Cockburn was the first Western journalist to warn of the dangers posed by Islamic State. His originality and breadth of vision make The Age of Jihad the most in-depth analysis of the regional crisis in the Middle East to date.2001 heralded a new age of disintegration in the Middle East. This has had a murderous impact on the people who live there but also the world beyond. Beginning with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Cockburn explores the vast geopolitical struggle that is the Sunni-Shia conflict, a clash that shapes the war on terror, western military interventions, the evolution of the insurgency, the civil wars in Yemen, Libya and Syria, the Arab Spring, the fall of regional dictators, and the rise of Islamic State.

Middle East conflict and the Arab Spring: Gain insight and learn from two of the most acclaimed experts on the Middle East In December 2010, the “Tunisian Revolution” touched off a wave of protests, riots, revolutions and civil wars throughout the Middle East. Initially the world hoped for positive change – democracy, free elections, and human rights. But, by 2012 the Arab Spring had morphed into “Arab Winter” bringing death, destruction, and despair. The Independent’s Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn, two of the most acclaimed Middle East correspondents of our generation, examine the events of this regional tsunami that threatens to have an impact on our world for years to come.

The Age of Jihad charts the turmoil of today's Middle East and the devastating role the West has played in the region from 2001 to the present. Beginning with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Cockburn explores the vast geopolitical struggle that is the Sunni-Shia conflict, a clash that shapes the war on terror, western military interventions, the evolution of the insurgency, the civil wars in Yemen, Libya and Syria, the Arab Spring, the fall of regional dictators, and the rise of Islamic State. As Cockburn shows in arresting detail, Islamic State did not explode into existence in Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring, as conventional wisdom would have it. The organization gestated over several years in occupied Iraq, before growing to the point where it can threaten the stability of the whole region. Cockburn was the first Western journalist to warn of the dangers posed by Islamic State. His originality and breadth of vision make The Age of Jihad the most in-depth analysis of the regional crisis in the Middle East to date.

In Patrick Cockburn on Iraq: The West Shakes Up The Middle East, The Independent continues its series of History As It Happened books. Over the past 15 years the US and its allies should have had the greatest interest in maintaining a Middle East status quo. But, as Cockburn details in a series of insightful articles published in The Independent, the West has been the most radical instrument of change in the Middle East.

In ISIS: Battling the Menace, Patrick Cockburn provides unique insights into the Islamic State scourge. He traces the origin of ISIS, confronts the horror of its methods, and details its threat to the Middle East and the world at large through a series of his articles published by The Independent.

This remarkable anthology chronicles more than three years of spiralling violence and despair in Syria: atrocity heaped upon atrocity, misery upon misery, and all - so far - to no avail. No faction is without blood on its hands; no crime, from torture to poison gas, has been deemed taboo. The dead are too numerous to count. As for the living, close to 3 million refugees have fled Syria, with millions more internally displaced. How did we come to this? There is no better way to answer this question than to revisit The Independent's published accounts of the unfolding tragedy. Spearheaded by peerless and profoundly experienced correspondents such as Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Kim Sengupta, our coverage has led the world in its fearlessness and insight. Syria's tragedy is not yet over.

Born of the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars, the Islamic State astonished the world in 2014 by creating a powerful new force in the Middle East. By combining religious fanaticism and military prowess, the new self-declared caliphate poses a threat to the political status quo of the whole region.In The Rise of Islamic State, Patrick Cockburn describes the conflicts behind a dramatic unraveling of US foreign policy. He shows how the West created the conditions for ISIS's explosive success by stoking the war in Syria. The West-the US and NATO in particular-underestimated the militants' potential until it was too late and failed to act against jihadi sponsors in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan.

Now in paperback, the exceptionally well-reviewed, "intimate and authoritative...outstanding double memoir" (The New York Times Book Review) about schizophrenia written by an eminent journalist and his son. On a cold February day two months after his twentieth birthday, Henry Cockburn waded into an estuary outside Brighton, England and nearly drowned. Voices, he said, had urged him to do it. Nearly halfway around the world in Afghanistan, journalist Patrick Cockburn learned his son had been admitted to a hospital. Ten days later, Henry was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Narrated by Patrick and Henry, this is the haunting, extraordinary story of the eight years he spent almost entirely in hospitals--and his family's steadfast response to a bewildering condition. Combining Patrick's frank reporting of his son's transformation from art student to mental patient with Henry's raw, eerily beautiful description of hearing trees and bushes speaking to him, voices compelling him to wander the countryside, the loneliness of life within hospital walls, and finally, his steps towards recovery, Henry's Demons is one of the most profoundly moving and revealing accounts of mental illness ever written.

Time magazine listed him as one of its "100 People Who Shape Our World." Newsweek featured him on its cover under the headline "How Al-Sadr May Control U.S. Fate in Iraq." Paul Bremer denounced him as a "Bolshevik Islamist" and ordered that he be captured "dead or alive." Who is Muqtada al-Sadr, and why is he so vital to the future of Iraq and, arguably, the entire Middle East? In this compellingly readable account, prize-winning journalist Patrick Cockburn tells the story of Muqtada's rise to become the leader of Iraq's poor Shi'ites and the resistance to the occupation. Cockburn looks at the killings by Saddam's executioners and hit men of the young cleric's father, two brothers, and father-in-law; his leadership of the seventy-thousand-strong Mehdi Army; the fierce rivalries between him and other Shia religious leaders; his complex relationship with the Iraqi government; and his frequent confrontations with the American military, including battles that took place in Najaf in 2004. The portrait that emerges is of a complex man and a sophisticated politician, who engages with religious and nationalist aspirations in a manner unlike any other Iraqi leader. Cockburn, who was among the very few Western journalists to remain in Baghdad during the Gulf War and has been an intrepid reporter of Iraq ever since, draws on his extensive firsthand experience in the country to produce a book that is richly interwoven with the voices of Iraqis themselves. His personal encounters with the Mehdi Army include a tense occasion when he was nearly killed at a roadblock outside the city of Kufa. Though it often reads like an adventure story, Muqtada is also a work of painstaking research and measured analysis that leads to a deeper understanding both of one of the most critical conflicts in the world today and of the man who may well be a decisive voice in determining the future of Iraq when the Americans eventually leave.

In February 2003, Patrick Cockburn secretly crossed the Tigris river from Syria into Iraq just before the US/British invasion, and has covered the war ever since. In The Occupation, he provides a vivid and disturbing picture of a country in turmoil, and the dangers and privations endured by its people.The Occupation explores the mosaic of communities in Iraq, the US and Britain's failure to understand the country they were invading and how this led to fatal mistakes. Cockburn, who has been visiting Iraq since 1978, describes the disintegration of the country under the occupation. Travelling throughout Iraq, from the Kurdish north, to Baghdad, Falluja and Basra, he records the response of the country's population - Shia and Sunni, Arab and Kurd - to the invasion, the growth of the resistance and its transformation into a full-scale uprising. He explains why deepening religious and ethnic divisions drove the country towards civil war.Above all, Cockburn traces how the occupation's failure led to the collapse of the country, and the high price paid by Iraqis. He charts the impact of savage sectarian killings, rampant corruption and economic chaos on everyday life: from the near destruction of Baghdad's al-Mutanabi book market to the failure to supply electricity, water and, ironically, fuel to Iraq's population.The Occupation is a compelling portrait of a ravaged country, and the appalling consequences of imperial arrogance.

At the end of the Gulf War, the White House was confident that Saddam Hussein's days as Iraq's dictator were numbered. His army had been routed, his country had been bombed back into a pre-industrial age, his subjects were in bloody revolt, and his borders were sealed. World leaders waited confidently for the downfall of the pariah of Baghdad. Almost a decade later, they are still waiting. This is the first in-depth account of what went wrong. Drawing on the authors' firsthand experiences on the ground inside Iraq (often under fire) and their interviews with key players--ranging from members of Saddam's own family to senior officials of the CIA--Out of the Ashes tells what happened when the smoke cleared from the battlefields of the Gulf War. This tale of high drama, labyrinthine intrigue, and fatal blunders has been played out amid one of the greatest man-made tragedies of our times-one where, so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power, the Iraqi people will pay the price. Out of the Ashes makes chillingly clear just how terrible that price has been.