The Economist
October 15, 2005
U.S. Edition
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Bigger problems; The Middle East
IN THE course of 30 years as Middle East correspondent for two London
newspapers, the Times and the Independent, Robert Fisk has filled a
lot of notebooks with a lot of stories. Many of them are excellent.
His new book begins with a ripping yarn about his summons in 1996 to
interview Osama bin Laden. Setting up the encounter takes many
months. The process opens with an intermediary’s call to “Mr
Robert’s” office in Beirut. It continues with a mysterious meeting in
London’s Belgravia Sheraton hotel, moves via New Delhi to a flight
into Jalalabad’s old Soviet military airstrip, pauses for a sweaty
interlude in the Afghan city’s Spinghar hotel and culminates, after
an edgy night drive with machine-gun-toting escorts, in an interview
with Mr bin Laden at a remote mountain hideaway.
Mr Fisk is a gifted writer and an accomplished storyteller, so those
who have not read him before will enjoy the famous correspondent’s
colourful narrative. Mr Fisk tries to tell the story of the Middle
East, but he does not flinch from telling the story of Mr Fisk. So
here is not only a record of what he has seen and reported since 1976
in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Algeria and many other dusty and
violent places, but also a tale of how he got the lead, wangled the
flight, bribed the guard and brought home the scoop. The Times
offered Mr Fisk the Middle East when he was only 29, and his love
affair with the region and the glamorous profession of being a
foreign correspondent finds expression on every page.
Over the years, the vividness of his reporting and the vehemence of
his opinions have turned him into one of Britain’s most controversial
journalists. Two decades ago, in a history of Lebanon’s civil war, he
argued that the job of the journalist was to write a first draft of
history. Since then, he appears to have changed his mind. In the
preface of this book he endorses the view of an Israeli journalist,
Amira Hass, that the proper vocation of the reporter is to “monitor
the centres of power”. The upshot is that the chief villains in his
stories from the Middle East are governments, mainly those of the
West which he believes have been led by folly or knavery to meddle
needlessly in the affairs of a region not their own, and which have
almost invariably turned out to make a bad situation worse.
People who buy the Independent mainly to read Mr Fisk’s Old Testament
rants against the wickedness of Israel and America will love this
book. But is it possible to loathe this point of view and still enjoy
the read? Up to a point. For even if you are turned off by Mr Fisk’s
self-righteous identification with those he deems history’s
victims – and this habit’s subtle corollary of making himself the hero
of every story – he still repays reading. All you have to do is skip
the analysis and tuck into the wealth of hard-won narrative detail
accumulated over the decades of intrepid reporting. With Mr Fisk you
meet the grim Russian crews threading their tanks through
Afghanistan’s mountain passes in 1980; sit at the feet of Sadeq
Khalkhali, the Iranian revolution’s “hanging judge”; witness the
Israelis’ Merkava tanks clattering into downtown Beirut in 1982; and
join Ayatollah Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guards in their fearless,
doomed assaults on Iraqi lines in 1987.
The trouble with reading the reporter and ignoring the polemicist is
that only some of this book consists of reporting. Mr Fisk
interleaves his first-hand accounts with much material of more
doubtful quality: potted histories (of the Palestine conflict, the
Suez crisis of 1956, the Armenian genocide) and warmed-up off-cuts
from old columns (denouncing the George Bushes junior and senior,
Tony Blair and the supposedly supine reporting of CNN, the New York
Times and sundry other media that happen not to subscribe to the full
Fisk world view). As a result, the whole is worth rather less than
the sum of the parts.
When Mr Fisk at last conducts his interview with Mr bin Laden on that
bare Afghan mountain in 1997, the Saudi billionaire, who later
commends him as a rare western reporter who is “neutral”, says: “Mr
Robert, from this mountain upon which you are sitting, we broke the
Russian army and we destroyed the Soviet Union. And I pray to God
that he will permit us to turn the United States into a shadow of
itself.” Four years later, when the hijacked airliners glide into New
York’s twin towers, Mr Fisk recalls this warning and dictates a
column – reprinted in full in his book – in which the perpetrators are
described as representatives of a “crushed, humiliated population”
who are “striking back”.
The Middle East, Mr Fisk believes, is a region of victims, and the
terrorism it generates is the enraged lashing out of the powerless.
Seeing the region this way gives his writing its force. But it also
produces systematic distortion. Mr Fisk seems unwilling to find the
slightest hint of rhyme, reason or justification in the behaviour of
the powerful – especially America and Israel – lest doing so is allowed
to blunt his righteous anger. So he quarrels not only with America’s
invasion of Iraq but also with its invasion of Afghanistan. Israel’s
violence is invariably “brutal” or “ruthless” as it pursues “the last
colonial war”.
As for the American idea of spreading democracy, Mr Fisk says that
Arabs also want “justice, a setting-to-rights, a peaceful but an
honourable, fair end to the decades of occupation and deceit and
corruption and dictator-creation”. But hang on. The Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza came about because in 1967, as
in the decades before, the Palestinians and Arab states were intent
on liquidating the Jewish state; and the Arab dictators – the Nassers,
Saddams and Assads – were created at home, not abroad. The extent to
which Arabs have been the authors of their own misfortune is not
given adequate consideration in this dogged, powerful and often
infuriating polemic against the West.
GRAPHIC: Dangerous deceits; The Great War for Civilisation: The
Conquest of the Middle East.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress