Surviving the Islamic State: Contention, Cooperation, and Neutrality in Wartime Iraq by Austin J.Knuppe, New York, NY, Columbia University Press, 2024, xxii + 284 pp.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: This academic monograph focuses on the question of how civilians survived the rise and fall of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq in the period between 2011 and 2017.Rather than following rational and well-planned strategies as individuals confronted Sunni extremists, the author's compellingly presented thesis is that they adopted an improvisational and dynamic-albeit often inconsistent-range of behavioral options.While Austin Knuppe rejects the notion that there is some simple explanation for how ordinary people continued living under the specter of IS, he maintains survival was not merely a random outcome.Accordingly, he identifies three important factors that influenced these civilians' decisions.These include whether they had a shared identity with the insurgents, their perception of IS as a threat and how they thought it would govern them, and their assessment of the chances that they would suffer arbitrary acts of violence at the hands of the jihadis.Ultimately, as Knuppe rightly maintains, the goal of most of these Iraqis was somehow to survive with their honor and dignity intact.Surviving the Islamic State is a well-researched empirical study.Part of the Columbia Studies in Middle East Politics series, it combines fieldwork that includes surveys and interviews with an impressive host of secondary sources.It should demand the attention of those interested in developments in contemporary Iraq and those seeking a better understanding of the Middle East.This work offers new wine from an old bottle as it brings fresh insights to the now-standard paradigm of issues related to resistance and collaboration in the face of the rule of an occupying power.Whether one's interest is historical-for example, the Nazi occupation of Europe during the Second World War-or more contemporary and topical, as in the case of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, one will learn much that can apply to such situations from this work.While occasionally the author might introduce without explanation a social science concept such as path dependency or a term like Asayish-the security forces in Iraq's Kurdistan Region-overall, he avoids unnecessary jargon so that general readers will also benefit from reading his book.One might note that Knuppe's treatment of his methodology follows the conclusion, and maps, figures, and tables make it relatively easy to follow the already-clear narrative.A strength of this work is its concise and accessible treatment of recent Iraqi history, which appears in the third chapter.Knuppe, a promising political scientist, makes brief mention of the US-led coalition's invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 2003, the ensuing insurgency, the sectarian clashes that arose between Iraq's majority Arab Shi'i and minority Sunni populations, Kurdish separatism, and the coalition's troop "surge" and Anbar Awakening that finally brought a respite to the fighting.Knuppe then goes more in
Source: The Developing Economies
DOI: 10.1111/deve.12433
Author: George L. Simpson
Institution: High Point University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4407149040