The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq by Emma Sky (review)

Emma Sky’s memoir is a chatty, personalistic account of her time in Iraq that often notes various experiences she found moving, frustrating, funny, or tragic. At one level, it is an examination of a liberal British civilian’s encounter with the organizational culture of the United States Army at war, and her unexpected bonding with her military colleagues. At a more important level, the book centers on Sky’s observations about the progress, setbacks, and heartbreak of the effort to build a new Iraq. Sky deeply opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq but still hoped that a new, democratic country could emerge from the ashes of the Saddam Husayn regime. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, she wanted to play a part in helping the Iraqis achieve a decent future.

Sky’s initial deployment to Iraq was as a civilian advisor to the US 173^rd Airborne Infantry Brigade, which was then based in Kirkuk in northern Iraq. In this appointment, she was under the authority of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which she assessed as well-meaning but largely wrong-headed and ineffective in its efforts to help the Iraqis. In their own area of deployment, Sky and her military counterparts attempted to minimize the damage of the CPA-originated de-Ba‘thification policies that helped to cause the partial collapse of the Iraqi state bureaucracy. As she struggled with these problems, Sky never quite figured out CPA administrator L. Paul Bremer. She was unsure if his relentless optimism on Iraq was real or simply based on leadership principles designed to boost morale. She maintains that Bremer, “relied heavily on those who shared his convictions but lacked experience of the region, and he marginalized the experienced and skilled diplomats who had their doubts” (p. 103). When the CPA mission ended in 2004, Bremer told the disbanding CPA’s members that for the rest of their lives they would remember contributing to building democracy in Iraq with the sound of gunfire and explosions in the background. Sky found the experience surreal as an increasing number of Iraqis came to equate democracy with chaos.

After the CPA’s disbanding, Sky briefly returned briefly to the United Kingdom, but then agreed to a request to become Political Advisor (POLAD) to General Raymond Odierno, the overall US commander in Iraq. General Odierno viewed her as iconoclastic, and much to his credit, wanted a POLAD willing to challenge any conventional wisdom and groupthink that might emerge during the course of the effort in Iraq. This position required Sky to interact more with senior Iraqi leaders, a task she sometimes found disillusioning. She describes the Iraqi government under former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki as a “[c]lique of former exiles, Islamists and Iranian proxies” who sought to remain “indefinitely in power” (p. 253). Iraq also remained deeply corrupt and became even more sectarian under Maliki, who viewed the source of antigovernment violence to be Ba‘thist refusal “to accept Shia rule” (p. 139).

Sky believes that the US military surge and the establishment of the US-funded Awakening Council militias dramatically improved security and bought time for the Mali-ki government to establish greater legitimacy. Unfortunately, Maliki squandered and misused the opportunities that his country gained through this strategy. Sky states that Maliki had become much more assertive by early 2011 as he gained confidence in his ability to remain in power. This confidence allowed him to rule in a more blatantly sectarian and authoritarian way, with less concern about US objections. Maliki, in complete contrast to US military leaders, viewed the Awakening Council volunteers as insurgents, who might turn on him at any moment. He further believed he was in a life and death struggle with secret Ba‘thist sympathizers, and the Iraqi advisors surrounding him fed these beliefs. Sky and others referred to this outlook as “Maliki’s paranoia” (p. 269).

Maliki’s increasingly dysfunctional style of governance was disheartening for...