ISIS A History By Fawaz A. Gerges (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. 384 pages.)

Abstract

Fawaz Gerges identifies four factors which were crucial to the Islamic State’s
(IS) expansion across Iraq and Syria in his well-researched and insightful
account of the history of the group and its individual members. He writes
that IS itself can and should be considered the direct progeny of al-Qaeda
in Iraq (AQI), which is clear for those who trace the organization’s lineage,
and argues that the fragmentation of Iraq after the 2003 invasion allowed
the group to flourish (first as AQI and then as IS). The other two factors
he identifies are concerned with other countries: Gerges contends that the
group would not have been able to carry out its headline-grabbing military
conquests without the safe refuge afforded by the collapse of Syria, and that
the military gains it made in part due to said collapse could not have been
tenable were it not for the derailment of the Arab Spring revolutions during
the first few years of the decade ...