Before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, most Americans, indeed most people living outside of the region that sits between the border of western China and Morocco's coastline were not interested about bespeckled patch of deserts, mountains, valleys, gorges that had been plagued with violence since time immemorial. However, as the United States' wild forays into Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 came into being, much of that amnesia and blithe disregard dissipated. With that being said, journalist Robert Fisk of the UK newspaper, the Independent, has written an enormous tome that chronicles the Middle East's history and its entanglement with the great "civilised countries" of the West. While many authors have painted the region with a thick brush that simply labels the entire Middle East as a terrorist haven, Fisk is much more sensible to get past the antiquated cliches and banal platitudes that often hamper the ability for many of us to have a clear understanding about a region many of us are quite, emotionally, indifferent to.
Fisk's book begins with his trip to Afghanistan in 1996. After being led from checkpoint to checkpoint, Fisk is presented to none other than Osama bin Laden himself. He holds a cordial interview with him while bin Laden goes on about his latest criticism of the West as Fisk faithfully takes note of his posture, tone, and least to say, his words; the most chilling of which makes one's hair rise: "One of our brothers had a dream..." Fisk's book is essentially about his travels along the Middle Eastern countries and occasionally taps open the history book. His book is revealing and written with excellence and empathy. As he traveled to Afghanistan to cover the war, with the Soviets in 1979, not 2001, he captures the brutality of the Afghan rebels who mercilessly slaughter Soviet teachers, hanging them from telephone wires. Yet it was not all conquest and satellite states for the Soviet Union as Fisk notes, "a modern educational system in which girls as well as boys would go to school, at which young women did not have to wear the veil, in which science and literature would be taught alongside Islam...."It had been trying to create a secular, equal society in the villages around Jalalabad" (page 58).
The next several chapters spans and chronographs the Iranian revolution and its subsequent struggles in fending off the invasion by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which was unconditionally supported by the West. Fisk documents the brutal torture methods employed by the United States' second greatest ally in the Middle East on its domestic population and how the US turned a blind eye against the atrocities. Of course, the author has no kind words to spare for the West's adored "Butcher of Baghdad", constantly and rightly so, castigating him and reminding us of his victims. The Islamic "tribunals" set up by Iran are also extensively mentioned with the US, bizarrely enough, condemning Iran. Yet the United States has no words of regret when it came to downing an Iranian passenger jet during the Iran-Iraq war despite the fact evidence proved an otherwise intentional attack.
Perhaps Fisk's most emotionally driven part of the book is Chapter 10, entitled "The First Holocaust", known much better as the Armenian Genocide. Being an Armenian myself I was surprised to find an entire chapter solely devoted to the near elimination of the Armenian people in 1915, when the Ottoman Turkish government sought to cleanse its minority problem by systematic rape, mass murder, and deportations through the scorching deserts of Syria. Fisk's fervent arguments are seen most pronounced in this chapter as he lambastes the world media which often refers to the event with simple euphemisms: "tragedy", "massacres", and "deportations". He documents how even many Jewish leaders, notably Shimon Peres, refuse to acknowledge the plight of the Armenians as a Genocide. He condemns the present day Turkish government for giving its ridiculous excuses and for denying its own past and goes further to condemn those countries who refuses to do it because of their close relations with the NATO member. Fisk asks us what would happen if world leaders would similarly use those terms to describe the Jewish Holocaust and refer it to a disputed event...of course we all know what would happen if they did.
Of course no Middle Eastern book can be written without mentioning the Palestine-Israel conflict. Three chapters are devoted and while Fisk acknowledges the brutality of the Palestinian suicide bombers he turns and asks why Israel's actions often go uncritcized by the media and by world leaders. He does an exceptional job in not only this section but the entire book by naming for us the once nameless, the victims who weren't famous partisan leaders or known diplomats but those who were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. By doing this, he allows us to at least place some sympathy so that those who perished in a cell in Iraq's torture pens do not remain a statistic; only to be cited endlessly twenty years later as a rational for war. He doesn't allow us to forget Israel's indiscrimante military raids which lead to the deaths of thousands and notes the number of UN resolutions it has violated, including building illegal settlements across the West Bank and Gaza. He recognizes the violence committed by the Palestinians but also forces us to take a look and scrutinize Israel's questionable ethics in dealing with the Palestinians.
Fisk's book also contains no praise for the George W. Bush administration, especially its botched invasions of not only Iraq but also Afghanistan. He records the US's reckless trampling of Iraq against its former ally, Saddam and the subsequent looting that took place after Saddam fell as the administration obliviously pointed to it as an example of new found liberty. His work chronicles the Middle East from the 20th century and its frequent interventions by the French, British, and Americans whom constantly change the region's political landscape each time it reconfigures itself to be incongruent with their interests. It is poigant, shocking at times, and he does not spare us from the bloody carnage that has been wrought upon the area for decades and which will most probably continue to do as years pass by as we idlely watch it change all over again.
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Arrived on time and in excellent condition. Very happy with my purchase.Thank you
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Sandhamsman
An excellent book - well written
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A mirror for us all - and hard to look into
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