A compelling, masterly portrait of a country revaged by foreign occupation

In March 2003, Patrick Cockburn traveled secretly to Iraq just before the invasion, and has covered the war from Baghdad ever since. In The Occupation, Cockburn describes the fighting on the ground as Saddam’s armies collapsed, the looting of Baghdad, the failure of the US occupation, the springs of the resistance and how it turned into a full scale uprising. Explaining how the three main Iraqi communities, the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni, responded to the growing conflict, he gives us a nuanced portrait of daily life in Baghdad, of how Iraqis themselves reacted to the invasion and the long war and occupation that followed.

“Cockburn writes with authority and understatement... He’ll be read when the rest of us are long forgotten.” — The Times

“Of the raft of books about the calamitous mismanagement of the intervention in Iraq, Patrick Cockburn’s is probably the most readable … He continues to display exemplary courage in continuing to travel the country.” — Christopher Hitchens, Slate

“A quietly angry book about the foreseeable disaster of the Iraq War that everyone ought to read. Cockburn is a superb, courageous reporter. He writes with the clear simplicity that can be achieved only by those who really know what they are taking about.” — Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday Books of the Year

“The picture of the last eight years that emerges is among the most coherent and accessible of any book on Iraq to date.” — New York Times

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent of Independent, has been visiting Iraq since 1978. He was awarded the 2005 Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting. He is the author of The Broken Boy, a memoir, and, with Andrew Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein.

256 pages

Cloth
ISBN-13: 978 1 84467 100 7
US$24.95 / £15.99 / CAN$33

Paper
IABN-13: 978 1 84467 164 9
US$16.95 / £7.99 / CAN$21