ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Hassan Hassan and Micheal Weiss

I was recently travelling to NYC, while I was there I visited Strand, a 90 year old, three story legendary book store in Manhattan. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of books, obviously I was looking for something in history or mystery. So I reached out to the store assistant and asked him if he could suggest me something on the middle east crisis, as I have been wanting to read up on it since a very long time, that is when the gentleman handed me: ISIS, inside the army of terror.

In the beginning of our story Iraq was ruled by Saddam Hussein, a brutal military dictator who ruled with an iron fist and was known for his genocidal tendencies. Anyone who opposed his tyrannical rule was put to death. The Kurds were to him what Jews were to Hitler. Enter USA, after 9/11 the Bush administration got an opportune pretext to invade and destroy the Saddam regime. Saddam was captured and hanged, but the invasion of the great serpent(USA, as referred by Jihadis and all Muslims alike) in Muslims land was a source of great trepidation and opportunity for many Islamic terror groups. One of them was the Jordanian terrorist called Al Zarqawi, also the founding father of the ISIS. Al Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, after his return he was imprisoned by the Jordanian government in 1992. It was during his time in confinement that Zarqawi became radicalized and formed his own coterie to overthrow the Jordanian rulers. We see this as a recurring theme in the book some misguided albeit budding terrorist gets locked up in Jail either by Jordanian, Americans, Egyptians or Iraqis and he comes out as a full blown Jihadist, wiling to even murder fellow believers.

Zarqawi went on to ally with Al Qaeda, he was even declared their Emir in Iraq. A Brutal man who had a known hatred for Shias, targeted them with the same ferocity as was reserved for the Americans. VBIED, was the weapon of choice for Zarqawi's group and they used it devastatingly. Zarqawi was eventually killed in 2006 by the American forces, but the damage had already been done and an organization was already in place. When in 2015 Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi announced the caliphate and then the eventual capture of large swathes of land in both Iraq and Syria many people were left stupefied by the incredible rise of ISIS in a very short span of time, but to observers and SMEs on the Middle East, rise of ISIS was neither quick nor without help.

All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer

What comes to your mind when you think of Iran? Ayatollah Khomeini, fatwa against Salman Rushdie, persecuted parsis or death threats to Israel and America from a horde of raging Muslims.  What about Winston Churchill? American spies? democratically elected secular government headed by a man who reached the same heights in popularity as Mahatma Gandhi. How did Iran go from being a democracy to the sponsor of terror that it is today?

The book tries to answer all these questions. The book starts with a succinct history of Iran formerly known as the Persia in ancient times. Persian empire was one of the greatest that man has ever seen, it was ruled by Zoroastrians, an ancient faith which prospered and thrived around 500 BC. There religion and empire collapsed once the Abrahamic religions started taking over the world.

Iranians or Persians an ancient and erudite race did not accept Islam in its traditional form which was the sunni sect but instead chose to follow the Shia sect, which is a kind of rebel form of Islam. To put things into context 90% of the world's population follows Sunni and only 10% is Shia, with modern day Iran being the beacon of light for Shias across the world.  The author also explains the difference between the two warring sects. So, basically If I understood this correctly, Sunni's after the death of their prophet Mohammed chose to follow his disciples(who become Caliphs, they are like religious kings) and Sunnis chose to follow his cousin, Ali, who for political reasons was over looked and did not became Caliph for a long time. Ali was assassinated, and later his son, Hussein, a rebel, was also killed and his whole family was murdered. Iranians or Persians have a history of standing up to corruption and authority, thus the Sunni attributes of sacrifice and standing up to the powerful and unjust would meant that Shia would fit perfectly with the Persian psyche.