Black Flags Quotes

“Bloodthirsty fanatics who regarded all Western inventions and practices as works of the devil, they saw themselves as divinely appointed to purify the region by slaughtering all who allied with foreigners or deviated from their narrow vision of Islam.”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“In deciding to use the unsung Zarqawi as an excuse for launching a new front in the war against terrorism, the White House had managed to launch the career of one of the century’s great terrorists.”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“The truth as Joseph and his comrades discovered, was that the Islamic State's fighters were skilled butchers, but lousy soldiers. "They're only good at terrorizing people who aren't armed," he said. "They think they're good, but when we wake them up in the middle of the night, they would crap their pants.”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“brutal, media-obsessed ISIS commander in Anbar Province notorious for killing Shiite truck drivers and other civilians”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“What kind of person can command with only his eyes?”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“He was talking about physically restoring the Islamic caliphate in a way that nobody else did,” the U.S. official said. “He would establish an extremist vision of Islam and cleanse the land of apostates. And that would pave the way for a final showdown between Muslims and nonbelievers.”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“Zarqawi possessed a “jihadist mystique—a potent mix of violence and real charisma, perfumed by thick propaganda efforts,” McChrystal would later write. And now it was “wafting outside of Iraq’s border.”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“Young foreign-born Islamists who answered Zarqawi’s call to jihad most often ended in suicide-bomber school. Some would be called upon to sacrifice their own lives to destroy targets with no discernible gain other than to kill a few innocent Iraqis who happened to be in the wrong place.”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“Zarqawi had staked out a spot at the forefront of the global jihadist movement. No longer was he merely the leader of a particularly violent terrorist faction in Iraq. He was now a rival to Bin Laden himself as the terrorist that the West feared and young Islamists most wanted to emulate. Yes, Bin Laden had his videos, too: the Saudi appeared”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“Iraq’s secular regime persecuted and killed Islamic extremists, and al-Qaeda’s leaders abhorred the Iraqi dictator. The distrust was too great to allow even the most rudimentary cooperation.”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“Nur ad-Din had famously destroyed a European Crusader army and sought to unify a patchwork of Muslim kingdoms under a single sultanate extending from southern”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“Just after nightfall, a warrant arrived at the city’s main women’s prison for the execution of Sajida al-Rishawi. The instructions had come from King Abdullah”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“They were asking us to prove a negative: to prove to them that Zarqawi wasn’t part of al-Qaeda, and wasn’t working with Saddam,” Bakos said. “And even when we tried to do that, the answer would be: ‘So what? All those people have the same agenda, so who cares?”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“Абу Мута знал Коран не хуже большинства джихадистов и порой часами просиживал с одним-единственным заключённым, ведя с ним, стих за стихом, бесконечные богословские дебаты. Иногда во время этих дискуссий он извинялся - ему надо на пару часов удалиться в местную мечеть на молитву. Однако вместо мечети Абу Мута отправлялся через весь город в бар какого-нибудь отеля подкрепиться одним-двумя бокалами пива.”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“Back home in safe, stable Jordan, these men had been drawn to organizations that offered a way to relive the glories of the Afghan campaign through perpetual holy war against the enemies of Islam. Their”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

“Then, in the span of a month, everything changed. Zarqawi’s followers, it turned out, had not forgotten Rishawi. The”
― Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS