As a specialist on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Michael Griffin is well placed to put IS in context with his recently published Islamic State – Rewriting History (Pluto Press, 9780745886510). Griffin takes a long view, tracking the beginnings of IS (or ISIL) in Iraq, its involvement in the Arab Spring and current impact on Syria. He also looks at the role played by regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Iraq and the way they have contributed to IS’s success by supplying arms and funding.
From Deep State to Islamic State (Hurst, 9781849045469) by French academic Jean-Pierre Filiu analyses the autocracies of the Middle East which, he argues, crushed the Arab Spring by turning loose their intelligence and security agencies and the mafia-like gangs of the ‘Deep State’. He points the finger at regimes that secretly armed Islamic terrorists in the hope of convincing Western states to back their dictatorships. (This book is strongly recommended by Daniel Adamson, who edited the New Internationalist’s September issue on Syria.)
