Good evening everybody. Good evening. My name is Amanda Holmes im a bookseller here at politics and prose. On behalf of the owners of the store and all of the booksellers, welcome to this evenings event. Before we get started, can i ask you to take a moment to silence your cell phones. Also, since we are recording tonights event when we get to the question and answer portion of the event there is a microphone right over here next to the pillar and if you could step up to the microphone with your question, that would be great. Also, at the end of the event if you could fold up your chairs and stacked them against the bookcase or pillar, that would be very helpful to the staff in putting this back together. Now on to the event. Between october 2016 and july 2017 forces led by the Iraqi Government battled isis for control of muzzle in james sorini was there to witness it. His new book they will have to die now recounts the horrors and heartbreaks of urban combat and profiles many of those engaged in it. He writes at one point about the head nurse in an iraqi hospital in muzzle who had watched his country invaded, occupied, turned upon itself the city the greatest from a paradise as he described the muzzle of his youth his wife killed himself and family and friends humiliated by soldiers of the army he wants nurse to help. His children driven mad, denigrated, denied futures. Journalist and author George Packer writes that they will have to die now take its place among the very best were writing of the past two decades. James ruling he is an awardwinning journalist, National Geographic contributing writer and frequent contributor to the new yorker and the New York Times magazine. This evening he will be in conversation with ben castling, who also has experience as a foreign combat correspondent and National Security reporter for the wall street journal. And a former marine, combat marine we are very grateful to have you both here this evening. Please join me in welcoming them to politics and prose. [applause] james, i think we should start out by just situating things. Tell me about muzzle, what brought you there . What first interested you in covering the iraq war at one point in the book you say that you felt compelled to face the iraq war headon as a journalist. The immediate desire was just a recognition of what the Islamic State was which was the astonishing abto a movement, state, society, as you recall ben also covered the war against Islamic State and we were together in months old. As you recall just watching it in the news before we went over there was astonishing in itself. I wanted to write about that. I wanted to write about it as well because it was clear that the exotic state was very progressive jihadist organization. It had managed to not move war forward but move more backwards. By taking all of the territory and inciting a war the Islamic State had returned war to the 20th century to these set piece battles we havent seen in decades. If you write about conflict as i was doing at the time when i decided to go to iraq. Thats what you want to write about because its very rare we get to do that anymore as people who read about conflict. I initially went on assignment to write about what life had been like in the Islamic State for National Geographic and then quickly learned that the biggest battle of this war was about to take place and opted to stay there for it. Referring to what you mentioned, more deeply and going back further, the first big story i ever covered as a newspaper reporter was 9 11 for the new York Observer so jihadist him in americas place in the world and its adventures in the middle east had been on my mind for a decade and and a half once muzzle rolled around. I had decided that i finally needed to get to iraq. If i was going to be an american journalist who wrote about conflict, i had some sort of obligation to finally face the question of iraq, this country, my country had invaded and an invasion and occupation that had led directly to the creation and rise of isis. We are in a time and place now where these wars on some level have been forgotten or arch talked about as much. You are book is it surrounded by other memoirs of the iraq war or the stand. What is it that makes it timely . Why is now the time to read about this . Am not sure. Now is the time its getting published. I would like our government and our military to bear in mind the causes of this war. The war against isis. I suppose you could say as we approach a new election with new Foreign Policy discussions i would hope people would bear in mind people we have a few at least one candidate who is himself a veteran. I would hope to keep in mind the real causes of the war against isis and of isis itself and as you know from have reported their, the main appeal of isis to iraqis was not a religious appeal it was a political appeal. Isis was a direct reaction to iraqi politics and society that had come out of the American Occupation. I feel like the appeal of isis when you talk to folks in iraq is multifaceted. There was no single thing that drove people to embrace and not necessarily to embrace isis but to embrace it. To say we will give them a chance. What had happened to set the stage for isis. For the rise of isis and why people abided it. In the book i take it back real far to ancient history in the ancient historians in a talk about the history of warfare in northern mesopotamia in mesopotamia which is really the history of warfare as we know it. This is western culture at its inception. This is where the entire notion of holy war is a g hottie would understand it began with the assyrian empire in mesopotamia but coming back more recently almost every iraqi whom im interviewed and asked them why they supported the Islamic State or why they abided it or why they welcomed it or at least didnt mind its presence, almost to a person the first words out of her mouth when i asked this question were ab the former Prime Minister of iraq who wasnt sensually installed by the United States and he proceeded to turn the government of iraq in the view of many iraqis into essentially a shiite nationalist government. All of the most lollies i interviewed when i asked them why they initially abided the Islamic State was because they felt that his government, the Iraqi Government had come to be so indifferent toward them and abusive toward them. That any alternative was okay, including an alternative that happened to be a sadistic g hottie organization. You mentioned a couple times people abided Islamic State. I think for folks who have never been there we have it followed it blowbyblow the idea that this organization could come in and that the average man and woman on the street would say lets give them a shot can you talk a little bit about, i dont want to say indifference, but the sort of indifference that faced their initial entry into some of these places. I think indifference is part of it, it was also this collective opinion that the Iraqi Government had become so abusive particularly toward sunni iraqis nonexclusively but mainly even myths clearly violent organization was a welcome alternative the Islamic State was expert in making this argument to iraqis. The argument wasnt only a religious argument. The argument was a political one which was that new, sunni arabs, the rightful rulers of this region and of the muslim world, you have been abused and downtrodden it had your power taken from you by the hsias and america and israel. We are going to restore it to you. We are going to restore your political power and economic power and also, by the way, the quran says you deserve this power. This power is yours. They made the argument that islamic history had been kind of leading up to this point and i think for many iraqis and others, those who were more fervent in their support of the Islamic State 2014 felt to them like their 1979. It felt like their answer to the revolution in iran. These people had for years been watching as iran had gained power in iraq and also around the region. And they thought this was an exponential threat even ironically if they werent particularly developed. Islamic statesb you into iraq. This Islamic State immediately start shaving off beards and executing people . Making them grow their beards. Right. To grow beards and start executing people. What is the process that the implement when they come into the town. The Islamic States comes into iraq in january 2014 they first entered the first big city they enter was ramada yacht which is a lumbar presence. On the western border. But not too far from baghdad. They come in they roll in with their columns from syria and activate their sleeper cells in iraq. Within a matter of days they got half of the body and within a matter of months they got most of northwest iraq. You cant overstate how astonishing this was. You probably all remember reading about it in the news but its worth reiterating that this organization, which had only formed a few years before and had only been sharpening its knives in syria now owned the entire northwest what was still iraq middle income developed country with a great deal of International Military support and a large military of its own. It changed the nature of warfare just as surely as 9 11 had come in my opinion. When the Islamic State, to get to your question, when the Islamic State came into these places it was not abusive. At least as far as my reporting went. It did not begin by with the public executions that it would later be known for or with the extreme sartorial requirements for women of having to be completely covered in black that what they would later be known for. It told the residents of these cities to restore order, to restore pride to the iraqi people. To restore gods law. They very quickly instituted massive social reforms from the School System to rents, to market prices, a lot of people attested to me about how much good they did when they first came in fixing roads, stopping police abuse entirely. Most of the police had fled so they were now the police. And all kinds of things like this. I met an engineer for the Electricity Ministry who kept his job like many many muscle did. He described how the Islamic State electrical engineer started installing individual meters in peoples houses to make electricity consumption more efficient and cut down on grass. There were all sorts of stories like that. Soon enough, as we know from the news, that change. The Islamic State became more hemmed in and more vilified even by some of its former supporters. And by much of the rest of the g hottie community. As that happened, they became more and more brutal. And they ended up like every other see how chrissy ends up, which is a death toll. Can you talk a little bit about the reputation that must always have in iraq. He talk about the centuries of history in most mosta exactly. It balances the right word. Its one of the oldest cities we know about the world so what we consider culture. Mesopotamia is where we have our first inklings of written records and of monumental art. And real cities. And of the depiction of warfare. So aball this marvelous history that had built up over centuries and and you said mosul had never been since the days of nineveh since the seventh century bc mosul had never really come on to list some of another empire. It always been known as this obstructionist dependent frontier city, whether it was during the abbasids or the persons or the ottomans. Freelibrary. Org rose known by their larger capital city nearby. For the ottomans they were an essential garrison city providing lots of janissaries but they were never considered really part of the. The folks in mosul are always their own thing. They have a certain attitude that comes with that. Thats conveyed in your book. Its the reporting that james does it focuses on one of the red therapist threads it runs through his reporting is talking to everyday people and what happens in the day today in warfare. Not a whole lot of those big red arrows. He is able to capture shapiro said in the daily npr interview with the dignities of war. I think its fascinating that something you always do can you talk about the importance of capturing whats happening to the everyday person on the ground and how you do that. Whats the duty there to do that. Its always seemed to me as soon as i step foot in congo in 2012, which is the first real civil war i covered, that what was most interesting about the conflict was, not the red arrows and not what the generals were telling you, generals always say the same thing. Its what was life from normal people to live through these conflicts. The civilians and the soldiers as well because in most of these conflicts the soldiers are normal people from that area, many of whom are in the army because its the best salary. Or because they have no choice. Its always seemed to me the most interesting thing about conflict in the warfare is not is not what the commanders are doing its not the command postures. Its not the grand strategy. Its what its like to live through it minute by minute hour by hour because the fact is, if a war broke out tomorrow on the street, thats how most of us would experience it. We would not be in high command. We would be just baffled living through it. And noticing the strange details of the war, luckily for us war is 99 percent sitting around, which means that for a journalist you can observe people and see how they act and how they behave and how they talk to one another in the midst of this absurd situation. In a place like iraq and the situation of war is somewhat less absurd because theyve seen so much of it. But then again, then you get another layer, which is this sort of wonderful cynicism that they have about conflict and so many mosulowis what made it so interesting to report on, so many mosulowis played their a stayed there they refused to abandon their city. He said why why would you stay here and risk getting killed and theyd be like, im not leaving my house behind. Or, this is our city we been here for generations and centuries were not just believe it for these people. It was very touching. Always touching. You said 99 percent of the time combat or conflict was waiting around. Did you find this when youre actually in combat . Theres a lot of Walking Around and waiting around. Its sort of a truism. It is. One of the special things about this book is there have been books in the past that deal with the sort of pedestrian aspect of combat but i want to return to these absurdities and unfortunately the indignities that come with war. Thinking like world war i where its quiet on the western front where theres a scene where a guy put a helmet on another guys but because his butt is sticking in the air. Its an indignity but its reality. How many times a day would you see these absurdities . These indignities. And when you are covering them when you are covering the people who are affected every day in war how do you not end up making them seem like they are fools . How do you not belittle them . How do you keep people with Human Dignity without showing all the indignities happening to them. I like to think i did that im not sure it was a conscious effort. I think the goal is a journalist and as a writer is to describe what you see as visibly and accurately as you can and hopefully peoples natural dignity and their natural absurdity comes out in the depiction. Part of what i think you are getting at is that war is, for lack of a better word, often funny. The absurdity. The soldiers, particularly also civilians recognize the absurdity of it. Everyone does absurd things in absurd circumstances. Kind of the strange peccadilloes that they maintain in the civil war zone having to address just so. There were one time we are with the soldiers and they were all in their socks we were having breakfast and everything was destroyed around us just rubble and theres this little puddle and these guys are tiptoeing around the spiral because they didnt want to get their socks wet. What . I find that stuff wonderful. I would like to thank the reader recognizes that all of us would react to situations a awhats also fun to read is that you see that even in the midst of this office situation people dont give up their personalities. They dont give up the small things that matter to them they dont give up. They are not just immersed in the horror of it and sit there catatonic. Some people sadly do. Most people react by kind of keeping one hand and the petty realities of life. I remember going into west mosul very soon after it was retaken and going to this mans house and he was wearing a little girls pair of flipflops. They were like size 6 or something. And walked around in his ab and i said too bad about the policies and and he said i know. I think im in to open a shoe store. Theres always this dark humor and a joke ready to come out. In this book you good do a good job of capturing that. One day you and i were together and we were with the guy major hassan relentlessly he we thought he was showing off but isis was showing this by way where the civilians were trying to escape out of and as we were standing there there were literally thousands of ms. Lowys streaming trying to escape from the neighborhood and these two iraqi twins have came up to me. And i said are you guys from somewhere else . They were like plenty of us have gone there. There was a shell bursting feet away. Thats the kind of conversations you end up having. Theres another aspect to your reporting that comes up again and again in the book. You very honest about when you put your foot in your mouth with someone. There are times when you will Say Something to a person or people gathering around in the observation fall flat or the joke is a complete abclash of culture and not understanding fully where you are. Theres also a scene where iraqi general tells a joke about he jokes with someone with the religious police when you come to the house. So many mosulowi stated. Often times if you covering you just get the combatants and ab but in mosul you had all the commandments and you have all the mosulowi and the new kid watched the interaction between the iraqi soldiers and the mosulowi. And you would find all these wonderful moments like that like a general making offcolor joke about isis to a woman who just had to what made it particularly interesting in mosul so many mosulowis had supported and even work for isis. Many just to survive. In the soldiers were perfectly aware of this. The soldiers were perfectly aware that they were coming to liberate and help these people who hoping to run them out of the city. The soldiers were aware that many of these people who supported isis may be stilted. In the mosulowi were aware that so many of these soldiers would 2 and a half years ago had been abusing them at checkpoints and calling them names and calling them baptists. And it should be pointed out it cannot be ignored that most of the soldiers were shieh and most of the abthey all had these very differences about which everyone was cognizant. It was astonishing to watch. What in a place where we are always told talk about how in this cauldron where cultures whether its kurds and arabs. Turkmen, charlotte. How is having all these things bumping up against each other allow, like what makes mosul unique . I think iraqis, not to sound very foreign about it, but i think iraqis have had to learn how to forgive a great deal amongst themselves for the last couple generations as well as others of course. Someone said to me, in iraq if youre going to kill someone for every bad thing theyve done to you there would be no one left in iraq. And he might be right about that. Iraq until fairly recently was a very diverse country and still is in many ways and mosul was particularly diverse because it was at the Inflection Point of different empires and was in this temperate zone just below the mountains and above the desert desert and because it was traditionally so religiously tolerant under the other periods all of these heretics and schismatics from other regions congregated here and i got the sense from all the mosulowi i spoke with they were very proud of the fact they had a particularly keen tradition of learning to live with people who think very Different Things than you. And forgiving one another and you saw it in play all the time. Theres a downside to this which is that i got the sense that revenge comes very quickly as well. I left mosul with a sense there would be another war within a matter of months. It hasnt happened yet thank god. I would be the least surprised to see it begin soon. For my reporting there were times when i would talk to some expatriots in jordan i think a couple years into the war and i was asking them about when they were planning on going back to iraq and going home and he kept saying, well, as long as this current government and worried about going home. When isis was there sure they did a couple bad things but nobody looted my store. Nobody did this, nobody did that. They are still harboring those feelings. I went to abi deployed to falluja as a marine i went there 10 years after to report on where things had gone all and talking to people in the neighborhood in which i was stationed they said Central Government, it doesnt matter who the Central Government is Central Government is central casting. Always the bad guy. So there is this sort of constantly bubbling a theres this tragic cycle of regime even if the previous regime was the most sadistic thing that ever happened. When the American Occupation started going bad soon after it began there was all this nostalgia for saddam as it still is it should be pointed out. In mosul after talking to most mosulowis after the liberation there was this nostalgia, if thats the right word, for isis and the order isis had instilled. Its tragic. Theres no other word for it. The power of nostalgia is very apparent with a regime like the Islamic State. Nostalgia isnt harkening back to the past, its harkening back to a past that never existed. Talk to me a little bit about, where does isis, the theology and philosophy their ethos fitted in . Is it a throwback nostalgia to earlier time or is it firmly rooted in modernity. Isis is what is generally called sulla for switches to say that they advocate the return of the islamic world and perhaps all the world to the a athe original century of islam when they were the rightly guys. This is what they claim very few people who are in isis have read much history. Many of them dont even speak or read arabic. Many of them are only minimally conversant with the quran or had ayou have this huge swath of people who are being told what history is and being told abwe think he got a degree from Saddam Hussein university in baghdad. But they too are not talking about not talking about the past and the objective sense that you and i would talk about it. They are talking about this ideal in the past the past in which islam never put on the sword the past in which the true answer had been given to humanity and we got a return to that. In a past in which the end of times was very close. Ironically they tried to instill all of this and enact all of this by pushing the clock forward, not pushing it backwards. This was the first smart phone war just as much for the g ab jihadi in the Islamic State was in so many ways virtual and not even know it wasnt a state remarkably it was also a virtual place in the minds of so many of its adherents. All of these young people who came from europe or the United States to join up there value was not as soldiers or citizens of this place there value was as virtual storytellers who talk about their stories of redemption and discovery and then ended up being cannon fire when it came to it. It couldnt have done any of this if they had actually been really serious about their supposedly adherence to historical values. Will take some questions from the audience start thing about what you want to ask james about his reporting and mosul. I want to address the american legacy. The u. S. Military in america pop up as i want to say major bit player in your book. You are dealing with folks on the ground a lot but then you have the coalition that makes an appearance you are interacting with the coalition somewhat. What kind of warfare did the coalition think is happening as opposed to whats actually happening. What did you see that had reality in the fobs in the cops and command centers different from on the ground . You had a new drug deployment you had these great nations of got all the higher command, the kernels and captains and sergeants who had long experience in iraq. They knew what an insurgency was they never seen it on the scale but they dealt with it on a smaller scale for years and then he had most of the deployed like the kids literally kids from the 82nd and 101st two were still in grade school when the United States pulled out of iraq in 2011 who had except from maybe their courses at otf or movies didnt really know what sort of war this was. Then you had the air war which is sort of the starkest example of an outmoded notion of war being introduced into a new war. The pentagon made the claim that the air war against isis was second to none in its accuracy. And that every day we would receive emails from sitcom talking about which isis targets had been hit and how many jihadis had died as though every one of these strikes every day was a resounding success. So many iraqis civilians died. The rate of civilian casualties is literally Something Like 60 times what the pentagon claimed. Civilian casualties were immense. There was in large part because of the air war. Even that with extreme vetting of every strike were crossed and only got worse when the iraqis brought in their own power in the form of helicopters. To answer your question, there was a strange mixture among the americans as you recall a very detailed even tragic sense of what was going on. The colonel who was in charge of the 82nd cat this guys career was made by a rock and yet he knew perfectly well that for his career to be made he had to ruin the country. He and i were talking and he said its going to be decades to put the city back together. About which he is wrong, the city will never get put together. So there was this strange comingling of complete ignorance and also the tragic sensibility. Cj shivers talked about these weapons being precision munitions that go to precisely the wrong place. Yes. If anybody has questions please weve got a microphone set up over here. Come on up and fire away. Im just curious and im sure other people are too, how you as a reporter and historian, writer, how you get into situations like this and you are here. How do you do that and get accepted and be able to move around. Going to like a conflict zone . Taking that assignment . Yes. Thank you for calling me a historian, im not, i mailed brighter allegedly. With this i had been covering conflict for a long time i lived in africa and so i wanted to cover a bigger war for lack of a better term. And it was as simple as my pitching it to my editor at National Geographic and him saying, yes, go do that. When you get to a certain level of craziness, no one else wants to do what you are proposing and it makes it a lot easier. I think the better answer is ive just been around a long time doing this. Eventually you get the assignments you want if you just waited out long enough. Talk about the unique nature of covering this conflict in northern iraq. There is journalists staying in hotels just an hours drive from mosul. You can be with atroops and direct troops some of the militia troops. U. S. Troops you can drive up on your own. Talk about the accessibility and the human nature of this. As journalists working this war we were in a sense very fortunate. Its been a long time since journalists have been able to cover a war with this much freedom in this many choices of perspective. Also a war of this size. The pentagon calls the battle of mosul the most significant urban combat since world war ii. I dont know if thats true, it certainly looks true when you saw the aftermath. But at least its at first it was like a dealers choice. You can rack up and go with the kurds they were the best. They take you anywhere you wanted. The hutches shall be the she militia they were were skeptical but they had their terms. And the worst was the iraqi military, at first they were great. Then they got so sick of all the journalists running around mosul often with no protection freelancers everywhere it was a ship to show. Eventually the generals were like i couldnt blame them. They kicked us all out. For the remainder of my time there which is to say the last five months of it i had to sneak into mosul a lot and get hooked up with the commander who would allow me to stay and then once the general noticed me or colonel i would get kicked out again. Which was not as fun. The access was one time. Inconsistent. I would go out in our land, rented land cruiser and drove to the front cover the war rifles going up next to you. Then i remember one day i got a call from the 82nd they said you can come in bed with us. Come in bed with us we would go out and show you whats happening in mosul. Fantastic. You need to be at this landbased, to take off. Great. Get there flying in helicopter someplace. They put you in that . Yes. I had to go to baghdad to go to mosul. I get to mosul they put us in the m wrap and they drive up. Air raids come on. And like wait a minute, is this as far as we are going . Yes. Like i was just there like three blocks ahead of this yesterday in my own car. With their stupid firebase. Like watching youtube on their cell phones. Getting out there and the physical nuts and bolts of covering it was unique. You had to improvise a lot and you had to convince any given commander that he was winning the war singlehandedly. [laughter] and that he wanted you there to help show him how good a job he was doing. First, congratulations. A terrific book im looking forward to reading it. I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit more about the emotions of them mosulowi you experienced in recognizing everybodys gonna have a range of different emotions on any given day and different people but how much anger, how much frustration, how much denial, much resignation, much humor . How much of each of these different emotions did you encounter on a regular basis. All the emotions you just named were in surprisingly short supply. What i noticed more than anything else was a nobility in a filler schism and a willingness to see it out. And a forgiveness as we talked about in the sense of goodwill toward their neighbors and the soldiers. And a lot of said this of course. And a lot of resignation as well. There was a certain fatalism among many of the people i spent time with. The soldiers were very fatalistic, i think in part because they were soldiers in part because of their faith because of the belief that you dont control your faith. Its in gods hands. Partly because they wanted to show the tran nines but they were just as ready. To which the soldiers seem to want to say, we are happy to die as well, you dont have a monopoly on that fatalism. To the point of not wearing protective gear, which was really silly. And certainly anger but i saw that flare very rarely. My guess it would flare more in the aftermath. In the midst of these things people are trying to stay alive. And as you may know, in the midst of trauma and tragedy people and brings out peoples worst qualities but their best qualities. I hope that answers your question. Good evening. I was curious about the mosul band hearing potential catastrophe you mentioned ab how did that factor into the average daily life . It factored in the daily life and that there was very little water. By the time of the end of isiss tenure in mosul all the other sources of water the city had been cut off except for the mosul dam. Which you know is a rack and almost collapsed. It meant there was very little Running Water for much of the time isis was in power and i remember there ever being Running Water while i was there. About the details for that i recommend you to Dexter Filkins excellent article in the new yorker about the mosul dam which came out in early 2017. Did you report on the dam . I did not report on it partly because the folks i talked to didnt seem to care to think that. I guess they had bigger worries. The generals and the red cross officials seem to be the most worried about it and then when i talked to local officials they said a money problems. It was one of those things that it was just maintained. It was like so important in a weird way but it was just maintenance somehow was just enough to keep it going. Yes. I remember it kind of looming. Everyone knew about it but no one had the first idea what to do about it. Nothing after when i heard much about the results in the background. Id love to know. Did you speak the language . And how did that affect, what were some other challenges except for staying large i think about this a lot because if you really want to know people coming up to speak their language. Im embarrassed to admit i do not speak arabic much less kurdish. How i tried to compensate for the huge deficit of the language barrier was that i would record everything, it would record an audio recorder that i kept right here in my flak jacket in the little pocket. I would record everys the conversation every interaction everything i saw when i saw other people talking i would record it. As any journalist did, i would always have whats known as a six or, who helps you with all the logistics. Also an interpreter. Will help you translate on the spot. I would bring audio recordings back to beale in Iraqi Kurdistan were most of the general estate. I had a few excellent translators who i worked with. Young women recent university graduates. Who were fluent in arabic as well as kurdish. And who spoke excellent english. I would sit down with them at the recordings and we would go through it sentence by sentence. So that i can get all the nuances and try to get all the idiomatic expressions and all the little jokes and i would like to think that that shows in the reporting and in the book. I like to think the reader gets a better sense of also in the book there was some poetry that i wanted to quote that i had. I had asked the professor at the American University in beirut and arabic poetry from the seventh century i asked him to translate that to give a better sense of origins of jihadism from long ago. So i went to link to make up for the language barrier but you can only go so far. Eventually if i wanted to do a great book i should learn arabic. Following on that. Did you actually have a chance to talk to the other side . Either during or after the battle in interview combatants from the isis side . Yes. What did they have to say what was their perspective . Did you have much of a chance . I did not. Never. I interviewed a few who were incarcerated who been captured and the only way to interview them was the presence of their captors. So that did not make for very propitious interviews. They are not going to be honest with you and they are extremely frightened one guy interviewed was handcuffed and blindfolded. And if you are a 16 yearold who is angry or just bored that is an appealing life choice. So that just to follow up there is a case in illinois for a young man went to join an Islamic State and got to the root of where they wanted to go they didnt want to fight or take part in any violence they just knew that when the caliphate was established that is a very odd twist. Plan simple people wanted to bring their families there. And from manchester or new jersey. You saw the ancient civilization and that destruction what does that say about us quick. As humans, it says to me that we have always been at war until we developed the pharmaceuticals we will always be at war. But i dont find that to be necessary or tragic realization it is just the fact. We have conflict. Weve always been that way as a species. As for us as americans, maybe we are suicidal as a culture that many others i am starting to get that sense. I just want to ask a quick question, you talk about the language. What is it like . How do you square that circle for those who are foreign correspondents that to be asked to think about you cannot accurately represent someone because you are not them. Even if you spend a lot of time there. But you can see things so talk about what makes you thank you can write a book quick. The first challenge writing about conflict is to stop portraying people as victims taking the worst moment of their life as if its the only moment that they dont have a pastore future. But right now you have to get out if you are reporting on trauma and tragedy and one way to do that that we talked about is just to shut up and listen and watch. Just watching people interact with one another i dont want someone to listen to my Interview Questions i want the reader to see to talking about the situation but maintain the focus on them as much as possible. I hope you can help explain the plays through its history and after leaving i spent many months in libraries and archaeological sites learning about the history of muzzle and what to start one historians have written about it. And also what local historians have thought from the ottoman. And what had been said about it. In the Old Testament but my hope is that some amount of that historical consciousness that many of those were very well versed in our history. We forget this but saddam turned into one of the most literate countries in the region. He won the award from unesco for his efforts to educate women. Starting literacy programs and you will go to jail if you did not enroll that still, it was a literacy program. And also he was very concerned with educating iraqis so if you were the iraqi schoolchild in the seventies or eighties you would learn at the inscriptions from the syrians and then you would learn and then you could go to the place where they started their battles. I found that the knowledge and historical pride was often very deep and i hope that by including a lot of history in the book i can bring the reader into that consciousness. It sounds like a great reporting job from the wall street journal reporting on ukraine the last few days. Would you remind us of the population preferences of the shia versus sunni and iraq . And long run wont they be in the majority. Can you tell us the rough percentage . But the ottoman voted against and with those expectations. So to answer your questio question, when people express when the former Prime Minister was stridently shia what that was code for is they were worried he was doing the bidding of iran not so much about the theological differences. Isis was demonstrably that wanted to kill all that she is. If you felt very important its not blanket everywhere. Just as in any other religio religion, there are nooks and crannies and iraq he she is one dash shias is not synonymous with iranian shias. So that adds to the problem which is that shias with the intellectual Development Comes out of iraq which is always been iraq through that struggle and makes it even more complicated. What else havent we covered. So the title of the book. Why that title quick. So the battle went on for about nine months of the Kurdish Forces who now have a semi autonomous region and ices had infiltrated kerr to stand in the beginning of the battle for mosul saw them pushing out the remnants to extend the cord and around the cities not that the word they were waging wasnt real but but then on the last day with the city is where the kurds stopped and immediately thereafter so those that tried to and the clan from the royal families of Iraqi Kurdistan and the brother of the crew to stand one of the president came to talk to troops and they were so happy to see them and gave a rousing speech and they were hanging on to every word. One of the fighters who was listening to them and is giving this rousing speech and at the end of it so how can your heart not swell to that. And my editor picked it out of the first New York Times magazines stories and he was right. And if nothing else just read from the First Magazine piece and pushing when he was with the passion for god because andys tanks and diesel and showing up in taxis and then everybody would sit down and then i was there around the same time with the numbersign fighters and then they would be snapping overhead and say they are taking cell fees battle will be over soon. Chillout why dont you fix the gun cracks is not my job. All you do is talk you cant shut up. Lovely. Thank you very much for coming. [applause]