Insurgent Iraq

In “Insurgent Iraq”, Loretta Napoleoni examines the climate in which Iraq’s most notorious insurgent, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, opened a new front in the modern jihad. With the help of George W. Bush’s war, al-Zarqawi was able to do what bin Laden could not: spread the message of jihad into Iraq. Arguing that the American adventure in Iraq resuscitated a network rife with conflict and birthed a new generation of post-Cold War mujahedin, the author presents previously unpublished documents from Afghanistan that reveal bitter disagreement between the Egyptian and the Saudi factions of al-Qaeda prior to 9/11. Within this dispute, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a working-class, uneducated Jordanian, emerged to successfully create his own network of Islamist warriors based in Afghanistan, opening up a new front in the modern jihad in Iraq. In “Insurgent Iraq”, Napoleoni presents a chilling account of the regrouping of terror networks under a new leadership with a new agenda, tracing the ascent of one of the globe’s most enigmatic and deadly figures.