Joby Warrick

4.3478 learners

"Black Flags" traces the brutal rise of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, from a petty Jordanian street thug to the ruthless architect of Iraq’s sectarian chaos, and his legacy that birthed the Islamic State (ISIS). Drawing on exclusive intelligence, interviews, and firsthand accounts, Jody Warrick chronicles Zarqawi’s transformation in Jafar Prison, his tense alliance with Al-Qaeda, his reign of terror in Iraq—including beheadings, suicide bombings, and chemical weapon plots—and his eventual death in a 2006 U.S. airstrike. The book also exposes how Zarqawi’s extremist ideology and tactics were adopted by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who built ISIS into a global terror threat amid the chaos of the Syrian civil war. It’s a gripping, meticulously researched account of how one man’s violence reshaped the Middle East and fueled a decades-long terror crisis.