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Patrick Oliver Cockburn ( ; born 5 March 1950) is a journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent for the ''
Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...
'' since 1979 and, from 1990, ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
''. He has also worked as a correspondent in Moscow and Washington and is a frequent contributor to the ''
London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review o ...
''. He has written three books on Iraq's recent history. He won the
Martha Gellhorn Prize The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, was established in 1999 by the Martha Gellhorn Trust. The Trust is a UK-registered charity. The award is founded on the following principles: The award ...
in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, the
Orwell Prize The Orwell Prize, based at University College London, is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity (Registered Charity No 1161563, formerly "The Orwell Prize") governed by a boa ...
for Journalism in 2009, Foreign Commentator of the Year (Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards 2013), Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year (British Journalism Awards 2014), Foreign Reporter of the Year (The Press Awards For 2014).


Early life and family

Cockburn was born in Ireland and grew up in
County Cork County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns a ...
. His parents were the well-known socialist author and journalist
Claud Cockburn Francis Claud Cockburn ( ; 12 April 1904 – 15 December 1981) was a British journalist. His saying "believe nothing until it has been officially denied" is widely quoted in journalistic studies, but he did not claim credit for origin ...
and Patricia Byron (née Arbuthnot), author of the book ''Figure of Eight.'' He was educated at
Trinity College, Glenalmond Glenalmond College is a co-educational independent boarding school in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, for children aged between 12 and 18 years. It is situated on the River Almond near the village of Methven, about west of the city of Perth. ...
, an independent school in Perthshire, and then
Trinity College, Oxford (That which you wish to be secret, tell to nobody) , named_for = The Holy Trinity , established = , sister_college = Churchill College, Cambridge , president = Dame Hilary Boulding , location = Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BH , coordinates ...
. He was a research student at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queens University Belfast, from 1972 to 1975. In 1981, Cockburn married Janet Elisabeth ("Jan") Montefiore (14 November 1948), Professor of English Literature at the
University of Kent , motto_lang = , mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...
, Canterbury, Kent, daughter of the late Bishop
Hugh Montefiore Hugh William Montefiore (born Hugh William Sebag-Montefiore; 12 May 1920 – 13 May 2005) was an English Anglican bishop and academic, who served as Bishop of Kingston from 1970 to 1978 and Bishop of Birmingham from 1978 to 1987. Early life and ...
, and has two children, Henry Cockburn (4 January 1982) and Alexander Cockburn (17 April 1987). His two brothers also became journalists,
Alexander Cockburn Alexander Claud Cockburn ( ; 6 June 1941 – 21 July 2012) was a Scottish-born Irish-American political journalist and writer. Cockburn was brought up by British parents in Ireland, but lived and worked in the United States from 1972. Together ...
, who died in 2012, and
Andrew Cockburn Andrew Myles Cockburn ( ; born 7 January 1947) is a British journalist and the Washington, D.C., editor of ''Harper's Magazine''. Early life Born in the London suburb of Willesden in 1947, Cockburn grew up in County Cork, Ireland. His father ...
, and a half-sister was mystery writer
Sarah Caudwell Sarah Caudwell was the pseudonym of Sarah Cockburn (/ˈkoʊbərn/ KOH-bərn; 27 May 1939 – 28 January 2000), a British barrister and writer of detective stories. She is best known for a series of four murder stories written between 1980 a ...
. Journalists
Laura Flanders Laura Flanders (born 5 December 1961) is an English broadcast journalist living in the United States who presents the weekly, long-form interview show ''The Laura Flanders Show''. Flanders has described herself as a "lefty person". The brother ...
and Stephanie Flanders are his nieces, daughters of his half-sister Claudia Flanders, and civil rights lawyer Chloe Cockburn and actress
Olivia Wilde Olivia Jane Cockburn ( ; born March 10, 1984), known professionally as Olivia Wilde, is an American actress and filmmaker. She played Remy "Thirteen" Hadley on the medical-drama television series ''House'' (2007–2012), and has appeared in the ...
are his nieces, daughters of Andrew and Leslie Cockburn. Cockburn is a descendant of Sir George Cockburn, a British commander during the
Burning of Washington The Burning of Washington was a British invasion of Washington City (now Washington, D.C.), the capital of the United States, during the Chesapeake Campaign of the War of 1812. It is the only time since the American Revolutionary War that a ...
.


Career


Newspaper correspondent

Cockburn began his career in 1979 shortly after leaving his PhD in Irish History at
Queen's University Belfast , mottoeng = For so much, what shall we give back? , top_free_label = , top_free = , top_free_label1 = , top_free1 = , top_free_label2 = , top_free2 = , established = , closed = , type = Public research university , parent = ...
due to the violence of the troubles that he began in 1972. He worked for the ''Financial Times'' as its Middle East correspondent until 1990, when he left and joined ''The Independent'' to cover the Gulf War. He befriended
Robert Fisk Robert Fisk (12 July 194630 October 2020) was a writer and journalist who held British and Irish citizenship. He was critical of United States foreign policy in the Middle East, and the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians. His stan ...
in Belfast and the two remained in contact until Fisk's death in October 2020.


Writings

Cockburn has written three books on Iraq. The first, ''Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein'', was written with his brother Andrew prior to the
war in Iraq This is a list of wars involving the Republic of Iraq and its predecessor states. Other armed conflicts involving Iraq * Wars during Mandatory Iraq ** Ikhwan raid on South Iraq 1921 * Smaller conflicts, revolutions, coups and periphery confli ...
. The book was later re-published in Britain under the title ''Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession''. Two more books were written by Cockburn after the U.S. invasion, following his reporting from Iraq. ''The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq'' (2006) mixes first hand accounts with reporting. Cockburn's book is critical of the invasion as well as the
Salafi The Salafi movement or Salafism () is a reform branch movement within Sunni Islam that originated during the nineteenth century. The name refers to advocacy of a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors" (), the first three genera ...
fundamentalists who comprised much of the insurgency. ''The Occupation'' was nominated for the 2006
National Book Critics Circle The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American nonprofit organization (501(c)(3)) with more than 700 members. It is the professional association of American book review editors and critics, known primarily for the National Book Critics C ...
award for nonfiction. The second, ''Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq'' was published in 2008. ''Muqtada'' is a journalistic account of the recent history of the religiously and politically prominent Sadr family, the rise of Muqtada, and the development of the
Sadrist Movement The Sadrist Movement ( ar, التيار الصدري ') is an Iraqi Islamic national movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr. The movement draws wide support from across Iraqi society and especially from the Shi'a poor in the country. The most important ...
since the 2003 U.S. invasion. He is also the author of ''The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising'' (2014), which has been translated into nine languages, and ''The Rise of Islamic State: Isis and the New Sunni Revolution'' (2015). Both are about how the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic ter ...
was able to set up its own state in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. Cockburn has written a memoir, ''The Broken Boy'' (2005), which describes his childhood in 1950s Ireland, as well as an investigation of the way
polio Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe sy ...
was handled – Cockburn himself caught and survived
polio Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe sy ...
in 1956. He has also published a collection of essays on the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
, titled ''Getting Russia Wrong: The End of Kremlinology'' (1989). He co-wrote the book '' Henry's Demons'' with his son, Henry, which explains their coming to terms with the latter's diagnosis with schizophrenia. Cockburn also writes for ''
CounterPunch ''CounterPunch'' is a left-wing online magazine. Content includes a free section published five days a week as well as a subscriber-only area called CounterPunch+, where original articles are published weekly. ''CounterPunch'' is based in the Un ...
'' and the ''London Review of Books''.


Views

Cockburn is critical of embedded journalism, writing in the ''Independent'' in 2010 "...There is a more subtle disadvantage to "embedding": it leads reporters to see the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts primarily in military terms, while the most important developments are political or, if they are military, may have little to do with foreign forces". He later added "...Halfway through the Iraq war, one bureau chief lamented to me, saying: "The only fairly safe place for me to send young reporters, who haven't been to Iraq before, is on 'embeds', but then they drink up everything the army tells them and report it as fact." The best reporting in any single publication during the height of the sectarian slaughter in Iraq in 2006–07 was in The New York Times, which got round this dilemma by simply hiring experienced and highly regarded correspondents from other newspapers." On the relationship between the
Covid-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quick ...
pandemic and wars, Cockburn wrote in a blog for Verso in 2020 "None of the wars I covered then have ever really ended. What has happened, however, is that they have largely ended up receding, if not disappearing, from the news agenda. I suspect that, if a successful vaccine for Covid-19 isn’t found and used globally, something of the same sort could happen with the coronavirus pandemic as well. "


Criticism

Cockburn was criticised by Idrees Ahmad for an apparent claim made in his 2015 book ''The Rise of Islamic State'' about the
Adra massacre The Adra massacre was the killing of at least 32 Alawite, Christian, Druze and Ismailite civilians in the industrial town of Adra, Syria in December 2013, during the Syrian Civil War. According to the government and activists it was conduct ...
of Alawites and Christians during the Syrian Civil War. Ahmad wrote that in the book Cockburn was apparently claiming to be a witness to the massacre and that this claim disagreed with Cockburn's reportage at the time, in which he stated he learned of the killings via "a Syrian ssad regimesoldier who gave his name as Abu Ali". Ahmad also questioned whether the massacre had taken place. Cockburn said that he had not claimed to be a witness to the massacre. Rather, he charged, an "obvious error" had been, at best, misconstrued by Ahmad. Cockburn said that it was his contemporary report that was correct, that he did not witness the massacre and admonished Ahmad for doubting the fact of the massacre, mentioning "reports from the AP and Reuters news agencies" describing the massacre by Islamic militants and quoting local witnesses. Cockburn's publisher explained the error arose from the publisher summarising but misunderstanding writings by Cockburn, that Cockburn had never claimed to be a witness and that the error would be corrected in subsequent printings of the book. The publisher criticised Ahmad for using a "minor" mistake "made evident by text that surrounds and contradicts it" to "impugn the integrity" of Cockburn.


Awards

*2014 Foreign Reporter of the Year (The Press Awards). *2014 Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year (British Journalism Awards UK Press Gazette) *2013 Foreign Commentator of the Year (Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards) *
2011 Costa Book Awards The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, th ...
(Biography), shortlist, ''Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son's Story'' (with Henry Cockburn) *2010
International Media Awards International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...
Peace Through Media Award. *2009
Orwell Prize The Orwell Prize, based at University College London, is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity (Registered Charity No 1161563, formerly "The Orwell Prize") governed by a boa ...
, coverage of Iraq and his son's
schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social w ...
.Stephen Broo
"Independent's Patrick Cockburn wins 2009 Orwell journalism prize"
''The Guardian'', 23 April 2009
*2006 The National Book Critics Circle award, shortlist, for non-fiction. ''The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq''. *2006 James Cameron Prize *2005
Martha Gellhorn Prize The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, was established in 1999 by the Martha Gellhorn Trust. The Trust is a UK-registered charity. The award is founded on the following principles: The award ...


Books

* (1989), ''Getting Russia Wrong: The End of Kremlinology'',
Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a left-wing publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of '' New Left Review''. Renaming, new brand and logo Verso Books was originally known as New Left Books. The ...
, * (with
Andrew Cockburn Andrew Myles Cockburn ( ; born 7 January 1947) is a British journalist and the Washington, D.C., editor of ''Harper's Magazine''. Early life Born in the London suburb of Willesden in 1947, Cockburn grew up in County Cork, Ireland. His father ...
, 1999), ''Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein'',
HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...
. (British title: ''Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession'', 2002.) * (2005), ''The Broken Boy'',
Jonathan Cape Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960. Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...
, * (2006), ''The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq'',
Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a left-wing publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of '' New Left Review''. Renaming, new brand and logo Verso Books was originally known as New Left Books. The ...
, * (2008), ''Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq'', Scribner, . (British title: ''Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq'',
Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel ...
, ; ''Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Shia Insurgency in Iraq'',
Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel ...
, ) * (2011), '' Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son's Story'' Charles Scribner's Sons Scribner * (2014), ''The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising'',
OR Books OR Books is a New York City-based independent publishing house founded by John Oakes and Colin Robinson in 2009. The company sells digital and print-on-demand books directly to the customer and focuses on creative promotion through traditional med ...
, New York: 2014 :Republished in 2015 as .

* (2016) ''Chaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the struggle for the Middle East'', OR Books, * (2016) ''The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East'', Verso Books, * (2020) ''War in the Age of Trump: The Defeat of Isis, the Fall of the Kurds, the Conflict with Iran'', Verso Books,


References


External links


Articles at The Independent
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cockburn, Patrick People educated at Glenalmond College Historians of the Iraq War Historians of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant People from County Cork British war correspondents Writers on the Middle East 1950 births Living people Irish people of Scottish descent Irish reporters and correspondents Patrick The Independent people I (newspaper) journalists Financial Times people British newspaper journalists