Impossible Victory: How Iraq Defeated ISIS - Hardcover

Haider Al-Abadi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1785907352 ISBN 13: 9781785907357

Publisher: Biteback Publishing, 2022

Synopsis

“A remarkable inside story of the war from the perspective of the Iraqi Commander-in-Chief. Fascinating, very readable, and recommended.” – Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor

“Impossible Victory is the definitive memoir of Iraq’s effort to save its people and many other would-be victims from the most destructive terrorist organisation in history.” – Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, former US national security advisor and author of Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World

“This book … casts a historical light on a decisive era.” – Jean-Yves Le Drian, French minister for Europe and foreign affairs

***

By 2014, the world had grown weary of Iraq and its troubles. The Americans had all but gone and the media had turned its gaze towards Syria, but Iraq’s problems were far from over. That same year, ISIS put Iraq back on the map as they crossed the border from Syria and rampaged through the country, kidnapping, raping and killing, all in the name of enforcing their murderous interpretation of Sharia law.

Terror had arrived and was taking the region in its grip. Saddam Hussein, the occupation, sectarian war, corruption and political instability had collectively laid the groundwork for further violence, and Iraqis were about to see the worst of it.

It was against this backdrop that Haider al-Abadi became Prime Minister. What would likely be the most formidable task of his life lay ahead of him: to help unify his homeland’s fractured military and politics and, slowly, to turn the tide on ISIS, ultimately achieving what once seemed an impossible victory.

This is the definitive and fascinating true story of how the people of Iraq took on and eventually defeated ISIS, told by the country’s former Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Haider al-Abadi was born in Baghdad in 1952 into a professional, middle-class family. He lived in exile in the United Kingdom for twenty-seven years due to his involvement with the political opposition to Saddam Hussein. During his exile, Dr Abadi founded his own company specialising in rapid transit systems. He also led the Islamic Dawa Party in the UK and was a member of the party’s leadership worldwide.

In 2003, he returned to Iraq to join the new government, occupying the positions of minister of communications, advisor to the Prime Minister, chair of the Parliamentary Finance and Economic Committees and Deputy Speaker of Parliament between the years 2006 and 2014. In 2014, Dr Abadi became the Prime Minister of Iraq and led the country’s successful military campaign against the so-called Islamic State (Daesh) as Commander-in-Chief.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

My story starts with an action-movie cliché. The last opening credit is just fading out, and an explosion rips across the screen. Pan out to an apocalyptic scene in a film-set Baghdad – minarets and fighter planes and tanks and blood and dust – and just as it reaches its terrifying crescendo – the main character gasps awake in his darkened room. It was all a dream…

This is how it was on the morning of 12 June 1966 when I awoke. The day on which the story of my life started, and the day which consigned me to the fate of opening this memoir of war with the most implausible of true stories.

It is not often that one remembers a dream, not least after five decades of a life where the drama of reality has more than eclipsed that dream for vividness, emotion and – admittedly – fear. And this is not the metaphorical ‘dream’ of a politician or orator. This is the dream of a fourteen-year-old boy which, due to the remarkable circumstances that followed, is still etched in the memory of his 69-year-old self today.

As I was asleep that night in 1966, I dreamed that my home city of Baghdad was under attack. Fighter planes bombed and strafed the prominent buildings which featured starkly in my youthful mind – the Presidential Palace, the fancy hotels with the swimming pools, the imposing government buildings. Tanks screeched and machine guns clattered and soldiers in green barked orders and fired their rifles. I woke, presumably a little shaken – almost certainly not with a gasp and dripping in sweat like the movies – but nonetheless eager to share the drama with my brothers and sisters. I charged down the stairs of my family home in Karrada, a middle-class district of Baghdad located on a small peninsula around which the river Tigris flows in a deep curve, cutting through the heart of the city. My mother listened from the kitchen where she was preparing breakfast as I regaled my siblings with tales of fighter jets and gunfire.

Later that day, my father and I drove through our neighbourhood in his green Volkswagen. All was peaceful as we crossed the 14 July Bridge and headed in the direction of the Presidential Palace, located on the edge of the river in what is now Baghdad’s ‘Green Zone’. In residence at that time was President Abdul Rahman Arif, the third President of the Iraqi Republic, which had been established after a revolution had overthrown the British-installed Hashemite monarchy in 1958. His palace really was in a green zone: there were wide open spaces, parks, even a public swimming pool. No soldiers guarded the area, which was not particularly exclusive and certainly not dangerous. It was open to the public and was a popular spot for family outings and friendly football matches. I played there myself as a child with my friends, we formed a team and with youthful bravado called ourselves ‘The Bullets’ due to our dazzling speed.

My father and I parked up and headed for the swimming pool. A short while later, as I was reaching the top of the highest board to dive into the water, we heard a strange sound overhead. It sounded like a car backfiring but it was coming from the sky. For a moment, the sound receded and everyone looked around at one another in silence, confused. Then it started again, this time accompanied by a soft whooshing and then a deafening roar. Fighter jets appeared in the sky, swooping low over the gardens, dropping bombs and shooting at the palace. ‘Haider,’ my father shouted, ‘come down now, we have to get out of here!’ I descended the steps of the diving board as quickly as I could and joined my father, who had climbed out of the pool.

We ran for cover, sheltering in my father’s car and then driving home as quickly as we could, still in our wet swimming costumes. Most people stayed behind and were stuck there for hours. Some lost their cars when the tanks arrived, destroying the vehicles in their path. My father drove home via the back streets from the Presidential Palace, trying to avoid the main roads and intersections as much as possible. We approached the Al-Muqatil roundabout, the crossing between the road to the Presidential Palace and the 14 July Bridge, and found ourselves facing a tank head on. When they saw my father’s car, they started shooting in our direction. The noise of the automatic machine gun was deafening. To this day the action of that tank crew bemuses me. In a simpler time before anyone’s sadistic mind had stretched as far as filling a car with explosives and using suicide as a weapon, it is remarkable to think that the gunner of that armoured behemoth found Father’s green Volkswagen sufficiently threatening to have at it with his machine gun. My father ducked down, trying to drive with his head and body below window level. He aimed the car down the bridge, gritted his teeth, and hit the gas pedal. Once we got halfway across, the tank stopped shooting. We were safe.

I was a young teenager, jolted away from a day out with my family by gunfire and fighter planes, violence and conspiracy, political agendas and conflicting ambitions. It was the first time I had ever experienced armed conflict close up. I could not know at the time that it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Nor could I know that what now terrified me would eventually become part of my daily life. Something I would have to learn to live with, a fear I would force myself to overcome. Later, the excitement of this day was declared to have been a failed attempt at a coup d’état led by Arif Abd ar-Razzaq. Abd ar-Razzaq had been Prime Minister for eleven days a year earlier, but fled to Egypt after the failure of his first coup attempt against the previous President, Abdul Salam Arif. He became known as ‘The Man of Coups’ in Iraq, having participated in five attempts in just eight years. From that day on, whenever a major, unexpected event took place in Iraq, my father, brothers and sisters would ask me if I’d already seen it coming in my dreams.

This book is the product of a different dream – a dream I have for the future of my country. In it, I tell the story of how Iraq overcame one of the darkest, cruellest chapters in its recent history. One which, if things had turned out differently, could have been the beginning of an even darker age for the Middle East and the wider world. It is a story of a country on the brink of collapse, a people reaching the limits of their capacity to bear violence, pain and despair. A story of how Iraq, and Iraqis, came face to face with a brutal and nihilistic force that the whole world feared. How we fought it, and, in spite of everything that divided us, in spite of the cynical expectations of the watching world, we won. Just a few years ago, the terrorist organisation known as Daesh posed a very real, existential threat not only to Iraq, but to some of the most economically and militarily powerful countries in the region and beyond. Even governments with all the resources in the world at their disposal were afraid. Had Daesh continued their advances unabated, had Iraqis not come together to stand in their way, the Middle East – and the world – would probably look very different today.

This book is the testament of how we did it. It’s my story, but it is also Iraq’s story. Though I tell it from my unique vantage point as Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the military, with every privilege and responsibility that entails, it is really the story of my people. I am not telling it to boast about what we achieved or to suggest that our troubles are over, but to show what is possible, to show the world what Iraqis are capable of. By writing about the lessons of leadership that I learned and telling our story of triumph over adversity, I hope this book will present a roadmap for how we can continue to move forward and create a better future for our people. For the children who have only known war; for the young men who risked their lives and lost their friends on the frontlines; for the mothers whose husbands and sons were martyred; for the exiles who never felt like they could come home; for the university students who long for a country that values them and invests in their potential.

Iraq has overcome colonialism, dictatorship, occupation, insurgency, sectarianism and terrorism. In defeating Daesh, the most brutal and ambitious terrorist organisation in recent history, we achieved what the whole world thought was impossible. We bore an enormous cost and the world is a safer place because of it. For the first time in decades, the world looked at Iraq differently. Iraqis looked at Iraq differently. For a brief moment, we were united and it felt like anything was possible.

The enemy Iraq faces today may look different than it did in 2014, but the threat to divide and weaken the country remains. I wrote this book because of the dream I have for my homeland. To show what Iraq is capable of when we move past our differences and unite as fellow citizens. I wrote it because I believe we can, and we must, do it again.

Edition details

• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1785907352
• ISBN 13: 9781785907357
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352