The Occupation War And Resistance In Iraq Deals on Patrick Cockburn

The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq

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Editorial Reviews

A compelling, masterly portrait of a country revaged by foreign occupation.

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.

Customer Reviews

Required reading for US Department of Defense, State and Congress

Reviewed by MS, 2008-12-04

Along with "The Ugly American," this should be required reading for anyone in DoD, State and Congress. It's dense, hard-hitting and powerful. If you want to understand why the Iraqi insurgency exploded in the summer of 2003 and then continued to grow, read this book. Some vignettes in this book are also in Mr. Cockburn's other book about Muqtada al Sadr, but it doesn't detract from it's quality. You read it and just shake your head in disbelief and the lost opportunities.

But like his other book about Muqtada, it's clear Mr. Cockburn is no fan of the Bush Administration. Although this book is more measured, particularly through the first 3/4's of the book, by the end he's practically histrionic in his anti-Bush/Neo-con rants - which detract from the book. I get he has seen up close the impacts of American and British policies, and has lost friends because of them, but if he wants to truly do great work that will be accepted by a more general centrist audience, he's got to tone down the biases.

Still, the book is full of great and insightful information about Iraq. Worth the read.

Anecdotal, but a compelling depiction nonetheless

Reviewed by Timothy Byrne, 2008-04-21

The danger and confusion of Iraq probably make anything other than an anecdotal account of the occupation impossible. So perhaps this sort of is book is the best we can hope for. The book succeeds in presenting bits and pieces of narratives of the Iraqi situation directly contradicting the US Aministration's spin. For example while the administration has claimed that the resistance is largely a matter of a small number of Baath loyalists and foriegn sponsored paramilitary groups, Cockburn show the extent to which the resistance permeates most strata of Iraqi society. The book also presents wide ranging points of view of Iraqis to help the reader form an impression of what the Iraqi take on their political situation is.
The book is lacking in two ways. First, it could have benefited from an editor. It reapeats itself in a few places, and there are a few awkward back references here and there that could have been clearer. Second, the genre of the book - a book of anectodes and bits of interviews with little analysis - makes it of limited value. While it's certainly worthwhile to hear the various points of view voiced in the book, it's not clear that they represnet a dominant, average, or even significant viewpoint in Iraq.
Overall it's a valuable book, but more as a prelude to serious study of the situation than as a resource to be relied on.

Outstanding

Reviewed by Seybold, 2008-04-15

Excellent review of events in Iraq from the invasion through 2006, by a journalist who knows Iraq like few others. He reviews not just the key political events, but the practical impact on the daily lives of Iraqis.

His continuing reports in the Independent and Counterpunch are second to none.

Resist War

Reviewed by J. McCarthy, 2008-04-07

The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq

I thought this book lived up to all the reviews I had read about it in various magazines.

For anyone who is interested in facts, not fiction, about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, this book will more than suffice. It is filled with relevant, and verifiable facts, and if you believe, as I do (and have from the very beginning) that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a mistake, this will just add fuel to your fire.

Outstanding journalism

Reviewed by Chris, 2008-03-21

This is a really first rate piece of journalism and beautifully written. Cockburn, like very few Western journalists, gets out into life as it truly is for ordinary Iraqis, not as it is portrayed from the Green Zone or sycophantic pro-American exiles that haven't lived in Iraq in decades. It is hard to find a better antidote than this book to the criminal lying of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gates, Rice, McCain, etc. that security is decent in most parts of Iraq, freedom is expanding, etc.

One measure of the U.S. occupation is what the Iraqi people think about it, though to mainstream liberal critics of the war such opinions are irrelevant compared to the seeking of a more competent imperial strategy for Iraq. Cockburn notes that in Spring 2007, a USA Today/BBC/ABC/ARD poll found that 78 percent of Iraqis opposed the presence of U.S. troops, up from 51 percent three years earlier, while 51 percent thought attacks on U.S. troops were legitimate, up from 17 percent three years earlier. Only 34 percent thought that the Iraqi government was independent of U.S. control. By 2007, only a small number of Iraqis could receive electricity more than a few hours a day or clean drinking water. The electricity problem had been particularly evident since the first days of the occupation, Cockburn notes, particularly during the torridly hot Iraqi summers. W/o refrigeration power food rotted and air conditioners and medical equipment could not work. Cockburn compares the American inability to resume essential services very unfavorably to the Soviet occupation of Berlin in 1945 and even Saddam's restoration of electricity supply after the U.S. bombed civilian infrastructure in 1991

. The "conservatives" (statist reactionaries) running our government have shown no concern whatever for how the money of the U.S. taxpayer has been thrown around in Iraq. Little records have been kept. Cockburn notes that Stuart Bowen, U.S. inspector general for Iraq, stated that close to nine billion went unaccounted for under the Bremer administration. At least 2 billion was stolen during the Iyad Allawi, including money for arms purchases, which government ministers probably used for themselves and patronage. Corruption has also been rife in the carrying out of contracts by U.S. companies. Cockburn gives an example of an American company that was supposed to rebuild the civilian security system at Baghdad airport but seemed to simply take the money and do nothing. He notes the case of a British security man who reported that the local office of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the parties in the governing Shiite coalition, was siphoning petrol from a local refinery for sale on the black market. SCIRI complained to the British and the security man was dismissed

Then there is the heavy handedness of U.S. troops of which Cockburn certainly does not give some of the worst examples available. He describes an old man nearly beaten to death, famers killed when they went to remove flares in their fields U.S. soldiers had put there, a man shot dead on the roof of his house when he went to fix his TV antenna, the brother of a pro-American tribal leader in Saddam's region of Tikrit shot dead when he opened his front door to US troops, etc. There have been cases, Cockburn notes, of U.S. soldiers roughing up Iraqis at checkpoints or even shooting them dead when the civilians did not understand the orders being screamed at them in English. One particular vivid case Cockburn gives is based on interviews with people in villages fifty or sixty miles north of Baghdad whose orchards, the source of livelihood for many of them, were destroyed in an act of collective punishment by U.S. troops. This punishment was ordered on the ground that the villagers did not tell troops about insurgent activity in the area, though the villagers told Cockburn that the troops did not find any weapons or insurgents.

Cockburn describes in vivid detail how Sunni and Shia cleanse each other from their neighborhoods. The Badr brigades took over the interior ministry in the freedom loving democratically elected government after mid-2005 and proceeded to engage in mass death squad activities against Sunnis. A thousand Sunnis may have been executed in one orgy of killing by the authorities in Najaf after the Al-Askari mosque bombing in February 2006. The ascension of Shiite power and the death squads have encouraged Sunni attachment to the barbaric Zarqawi type insurgents. Cockburn describes how the U.S. was forced away from its plans for "advisory" caucuses of appointed notables to give a façade to its rule and to hold democratic elections under pressure from Ayatollah Sistani. Iranian influence is very large in the country, and particularly in Southern Iraq, always touted, as a model of stability by the U.S. Cockburn notes that Shiite militias are the real rulers in the South and the local authorities often refused any contact with British forces. He notes that a prime example of the U.S. not trusting the Shiites is that the CIA, not the Iraqi government, provides the budget for the Iraqi intelligence service, which contains few Shiite members and whose files the CIA has blocked access to by the government. The author talks to two post-Saddam Iraqi ministers, Mahmud Othman and Ali Allawi, who warn that Iraqi is turning into an oil kleptocracy on the model of Nigeria and that the Iraqi people think their govt. is illegitimate, etc.

I remember most from this book the vividness of its anecdotes.. There is the account of the author's detainment by Mehdi army, the doctor who escaped from a kidnapping only to have the perpetrators released by U.S. officials, the middle class people seeking to leave the country, the fate of the poor squatters in a formerly rich neighborhood of Baghdad. I also admire the author's account of Al-Mutanabi street in Baghdad, once the center of Baghdad's book selling but now taken over by criminal gangs.