The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant emerges from the wreckage of the 2003 US invasion, and this two-part series traces how it happened. Former Iraqi Minister of Defense Ali Allawi and National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie sit among a panel of experts from three continents, arguing over how Saddam Hussein's fall and the collapse of Iraq's government left an opening for insurgency. The film centers on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once dismissed as a minor militant, who pledges allegiance to Osama bin Laden, releases videotaped beheadings of American hostages, and bombs Shia shrines to ignite sectarian war, driving the death toll in Iraq as high as 5,000 a month at his peak. His killing in a US air strike does not end the movement; it regroups and rebrands as ISIL. Original footage from Syria and Iraq runs alongside the interviews, and the panel splits openly on whether US intervention created the conditions for the very insurgency it later fought.