In March 2003, Patrick Cockburn traveled secretly to Iraq just before the invasion, and has covered the war from Baghdad ever since. In “The Occupation”, Cockburn describes the fighting on the ground as Saddam Hussein’s armies collapsed, the looting of Baghdad, the failure of the US occupation, the emergence of the resistance into uprising. Explaining how the three main Iraqi communities-the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni-responded to the growing conflict, Cockburn paints a nuanced portrait of daily life in Baghdad under siege.