This is John Bachelor. In conversation with the author,

Haith Abdel Ahad is new book Stranger in Your Own City,

reporting from the Iraq War in the first two decades of this century.

I learned the magic and secret and sinister nature of the ISIS group

called the Gihadis in general.

The mistake that the Sunni awakening fighting back against the Shia,

sectarian aggression.

The mistake the Sunni awakening made was that it believed that it could

ally with the Sunni radicals called Gihadis, called ISIS,

and still control them.

The ISIS was eager to make that deal and then immediately betray their allies,

turning to capturing small cities and then the very large city of Mosul.

Here's Haith Abdel Ahad explaining how the Sunni, Gihadis,

fighters whom we call ISIS today, still a poisons throughout the region,

work when they first appear as liberators.

It is another, it is another one of these, you know, moments in Iraqi history

that you would stop and think, this is another crucial moment.

Again, the Sunni leaders, I have to say, the Sunni leaders, tribal elders,

bunch of mavericks, who decide to go into another fasting deal.

Again with the Gihadis, thinking we will use the Gihadis to defeat Maliki

and then we will take over again.

But of course, I mean, they tried this once and they failed and they tried it again.

...