‘WE HAVE GOT TO CALL A SPADE A SPADE AND WE ARE NOT’
By Jean Christou

Cyprus Mail
22 June 06

International journalist says West’s good intentions are misfiring

THE WAR on Terror is a sham and America’s "peacemaking" is producing
neither peace nor democracy in the Middle East, award-winning
journalist and author Robert Fisk said in Nicosia yesterday.

Beirut-based Fisk, who was on the island to take part in a conference
on mediation and conflict resolution, took time out to talk about
his epic 1,366-page new book The Great War for Civilisation : The
Conquest of the Middle East.

Love him or hate him – and it’s heard in equal measure – Fisk,
who writes for Britain’s Independent newspaper nothing if not
outspoken. He said his book aims at correcting Western misconceptions
of the Middle East. The purpose to tell those who read it not to accept
the narratives of history as told by presidents, prime ministers and
journalists, he said.

"Writing the book was a depressing experience. The book is hell,"
he told the audience at Cyprus College. "The people of the Middle
East have endured years of consistent injustice and war, mostly at
our hands. I am amazed at how restrained Muslims have been.

We are always arriving to liberate the Arabs. We are always offering
the Muslims democracy. I think what they want is freedom from us."

Fisk lashed out, not only at Western governments but also at the
mainstream US media and their continuing compliance with the official
agenda. He said journalists today were in denial when it comes to
the question of "why" terrorism exists.

He said the Western attitude towards the Middle East over the past
century, with its support of police states and dictators was part of
that "why". "There is no hope for peace in the Middle East when what
the people there want is justice," he said.

In interview with the Cyprus Mail earlier yesterday, Fisk said one
of the great tragedies of what was going on in the region was that
the Arabs would probably like to see some of the democracy the West
says it wants to give them.

"And they’d like some packets of human rights off our western
supermarket shelves. But I think they would also like another kind
of freedom, which is freedom from us, and that, we are not going to
give them," he said.

"We are always arriving in the Arab world with our tanks and
helicopters and our swords offering them liberation but they never
seem to get that liberation."

Fisk said the West keeps apologising for the mistakes they have made
in Iraq but qualify it by saying they are not as bad as Saddam was.

However he said if that was the benchmark that was being used to
measure the behaviour of the occupying forces, there were likely to
be a lot more Hadithas in the future.

"We have got to call a spade a spade and we are not. Western policy
is filled with lies like never before," said Fisk.

"The word terrorism is a plague on our vocabulary. The war on terror
is a war against America’s enemies. It has nothing to do with terrorism
at all."

Fisk, who spends quite a bit of time in the Baghdad morgue while some
of his colleagues hole up in hotels in safe areas, said the current
rate of deaths of civilians does make him angry, even after more than
30 years covering conflicts in the region.

"The deaths of civilians makes me very, very angry. It didn’t used
to trouble me as much as it does now. But now I see young women
with their hands tied together shot in the head, babies shot in the
face. It’s outrageous and we journalists should say it is," he said.

"I can’t see any obvious signs for hope at the moment.

America’s "peacemaking" is not producing peace. It was a terrible
mistake to invade Iraq. The whole American project is dead.

The schools are not being rebuilt. The electricity is not on. There is
no democracy. The only thing the government controls is the Green Zone,
which is about three acres of grass at the side of the Tigris River."

The Iraq invasion was probably part of the bigger plan to redraw the
Middle East but Fisk said it obviously hasn’t worked. He said Bush
and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and their war cabinets knew
very little about wars, unlike their World War II predecessors.

"Their experience today is Hollywood and TV. They don’t see the reality
that war is effectively total failure of the human spirit. It’s about
death," said Fisk.

Asked his opinion of the Cyprus issue, Fisk said he thought a lot of
people in the world had grown tired of the Cyprus problem.

"There are genuine issues that need to be resolved. My feeling is that
to get into the European Union the Turks have a number of hurdles
to get over and the first and primary one for me is to acknowledge
that the Armenian genocide happened. Continued denial would be like
accepting Germany into the European Union if it denied the Jewish
holocaust. Germany acknowledges it. Turkey should do the same,"
he said.

"You have very intelligent Cypriots on both sides of the Green
Line. You may lack the sensible people but you don’t lack intelligent
people and I think Cyprus could be resolved."

Fisk said he believes the bottom line in Cyprus is the same as it is
for the Iraqis, the Palestinians and the Israelis.

"People want security. They want to feel they are safe. Turkish
Cypriots want to feel they’re safe and Greek Cypriots want to feel
they’re safe even before talking about property, land territory.

"It’s about security. Just like Israel and Palestine is about
security. Just like Iraq is about security. Do Cypriots want to
live together? Do they? That’s the question. We believed that the
Bosnian Muslims and Christians wanted to live together and we were
wrong. It’s very easy to be wishful thinking and modern and trendy
and liberal and say that all people are the same but they’re clearly
not the same are they?"