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Robert
Fisk is one of the great war correspondents and a giant amongst
journalists.
He
covered all the great conflicts, from the Soviet invasion of
Afghanstan, the Iran-Iraq war to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq
in 2003
He
was never an embedded journalist but was on the ground, notebook in
hand, covering some of the most terrible events of the last 30 years.
After
the Iraq invasion he had seen enough of blood and gore (he famously
describes war as “failure of the human spirit”)
His
reports (along with those by Dahr Jamail) were the ones that allowed
me to undestand events in Iraq and the crimes perpertrated against
that nation.
He
wrote the seminal work on the origins of the Middle East
conflict, The
Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East,
which,
if you want to understand the origins of today's conflict is
essential reading.
He
no longer reports direct from the battlefields but comments on events
from his home in Beirut.
Robert Fisk is practically unknown in the US as he never been published by a single US newspaper. He used to appear regularly in the NZ media until he was dropped, presumably because of his uncompromising anti-war stance.
Here
are his latest articles and some older interviews from 2003-4, which
I recommend to get a sense of where we are today.
It
was Fisk that informed me that before the Americans destroyed Iraq
there was no Sunni-Shi'ite divide in the secular state of Iraq. Clan
ties were the most important and there was much intermarriage between
Sunnis and Shi'ites.
---SMR
Robert Fisk is practically unknown in the US as he never been published by a single US newspaper. He used to appear regularly in the NZ media until he was dropped, presumably because of his uncompromising anti-war stance.
Robert Fisk: The old partition of the Middle East is dead. I dread to think what will follow
13
June, 2014
“Sykes-Picot
is dead,” Walid Jumblatt roared at me last night – and he may
well be right.
The
Lebanese Druze leader – who fought in a 15-year civil war that
redrew the map of Lebanon – believes that the new battles for Sunni
Muslim jihadi control of northern and eastern Syria and western Iraq
have finally destroyed the post-World War Anglo-French conspiracy,
hatched by Mark Sykes and François Picot, which divided up the old
Ottoman Middle East into Arab statelets controlled by the West.
The
Islamic Caliphate of Iraq and Syria has been fought into existence –
however temporarily – by al-Qa’ida-affiliated Sunni fighters who
pay no attention to the artificial borders of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon or
Jordan, or even mandate Palestine, created by the British and French.
Their capture of the city of Mosul only emphasises the collapse of
the secret partition plan which the Allies drew up in the First World
War – for Mosul was sought after for its oil wealth by both Britain
and France.
The
entire Middle East has been haunted by the Sykes-Picot agreement,
which also allowed Britain to implement Foreign Secretary Arthur
Balfour’s 1917 promise to give British support to the creation of a
Jewish “homeland” in Palestine. Perhaps only today’s Arabs (and
Israelis) fully understand the profound historical changes – and
deep political significance – that the extraordinary battles of
this past week have wrought on the old colonial map of the Middle
East.
The
collapsing Ottoman Empire of 1918 was to be split into two on a
north-east, south-west axis which would run roughly from near Kirkuk
– today under Kurdish control – across from Mosul in northern
Iraq and the Syrian desert and through what is now the West Bank to
Gaza. Mosul was initially given to the French – its oil surrendered
by the British in return for what would become a French buffer zone
between Britain and the Russian Caucasus, Baghdad and Basra being
safe in British hands below the French lines. But growing British
commercial desires for oil took over from imperial agreements. Mosul
was configured into the British zone inside the new state of Iraq
(previously Mesopotamia), its oil supplies safely in the hands of
London. Iraq, Trans- jordan and Palestine were under British
mandatory control, Syria and Lebanon under the French mandate.
But
the new geographical map created by al-Qa’ida and its Nusra and
Isis allies runs not north-east to south-west but east to west,
taking in the cities of Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul, and Raqqa and
large areas of eastern Syria. Jihadi tactics strongly suggest that
the line was intended to run from west of Baghdad right across the
Iraqi and Syrian deserts to include Homs, Hama and Aleppo in Iraq.
But the Syrian government army – successfully fighting a
near-identical battle to that now involving a demoralised Iraqi army
– has recaptured Homs, held on to Hama and relieved the siege of
Aleppo.
By
chance, economist Ian Rutledge has just published an account of the
battle for Mosul and oil during and after the First World War, and of
the betrayal of the Sunni Muslim Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who was
promised an independent Arab land by the British in return for his
help in overthrowing the Ottoman Empire. Rutledge has researched
Britain’s concern about Shia power in southern Iraq – where
Basra’s oil lies – material with acute relevance to the crisis
now tearing Iraq
to pieces.
Volunteers
join the Iraqi army in Baghdad (AP)
For
the successor power to Sharif Hussein in Arabia is the Saudi royal
family, which has been channelling billions of dollars to the very
same jihadi groups that have taken over eastern Syria and western
Iraq and now Mosul and Tikrit. The Saudis set themselves up as the
foundational Sunni power in the region, controlling Arab Gulf oil
wealth – until America’s overthrow of the Sunni dictator Saddam
Hussein led inexorably to a majority Shia government in Baghdad
allied to Shia Iran.
Thus
the new Middle Eastern map substantially increases Saudi power over
the region’s oil, lowering Iraq’s exports, raising the cost of
oil (including, of course, Saudi oil) and at the expense of a
frightened and still sanctioned Iran, which must defend its
co-religionists in the collapsing Baghdad government. Mosul’s oil
is now Sunni oil. And the vast and unexplored reserves believed to
lie beneath the jihadi-held deserts west of Baghdad are now also
firmly in Sunni rather than in national, Shia-controlled Baghdad
government hands.
Rebels
parade through Mosul (Reuters)
This
break-up may also, of course, engender a new version of the
terrifying Iran-Iraq war – a conflict that killed 1.5 million Sunni
and Shia Muslims, both sides armed by outside powers while the Arab
Gulf states funded the Sunni leadership of Saddam. The West was happy
to see these great Muslim powers fighting each other. Israel sent
weapons to Iran and watched its principal Muslim enemies destroy each
other. Which is why Walid Jumblatt now also believes that the current
tragedy – while it has killed off Mr Sykes and Mr Picot – will
have Arthur Balfour smiling in his grave.
Iraq
crisis: Sunni caliphate
has been bankrolled by Saudi
Arabia
Bush
and Blair said Iraq was a war on Islamic fascism. They lost
12
June, 2014
So
after the grotesquerie of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and 15 of
the 19 suicide killers of 9/11, meet Saudi Arabia’s latest
monstrous contribution to world history: the Islamist Sunni caliphate
of Iraq and the Levant, conquerors of Mosul and Tikrit – and Raqqa
in Syria – and possibly Baghdad, and the ultimate humiliators of
Bush and Obama.
From
Aleppo in northern Syria almost to the Iraqi-Iranian border, the
jihadists of Isis and sundry other groupuscules paid by the Saudi
Wahhabis – and by Kuwaiti oligarchs – now rule thousands of
square miles.
Apart
from Saudi Arabia’s role in this catastrophe, what other stories
are to be hidden from us in the coming days and weeks?
The story of Iraq and the story of Syria are the same –
politically, militarily and journalistically: two leaders, one Shia,
the other Alawite, fighting for the existence of their regimes
against the power of a growing Sunni Muslim international army.
While the Americans support the wretched Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki and his elected Shia government in Iraq, the same Americans
still demand the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his
regime, even though both leaders are now brothers-in-arms against the
victors of Mosul and Tikrit.
The Croesus-like wealth of Qatar may soon be redirected away from the
Muslim rebels of Syria and Iraq to the Assad regime, out of fear and
deep hatred for its Sunni brothers in Saudi Arabia (which may invade
Qatar if it becomes very angry).
We all know of the “deep concern” of Washington and London at the
territorial victories of the Islamists – and the utter destruction
of all that America and Britain bled and died for in Iraq. No one,
however, will feel as much of this “deep concern” as Shia Iran
and Assad of Syria and Maliki of Iraq, who must regard the news from
Mosul and Tikrit as a political and military disaster. Just when
Syrian military forces were winning the war for Assad, tens of
thousands of Iraqi-based militants may now turn on the Damascus
government, before or after they choose to advance on Baghdad.
No one will care now how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have
been slaughtered since 2003 because of the fantasies of Bush and
Blair. These two men destroyed Saddam’s regime to make the world
safe and declared that Iraq was part of a titanic battle against
“Islamofascism”. Well, they lost. Remember that the Americans
captured and recaptured Mosul to crush the power of Islamist
fighters. They fought for Fallujah twice. And both cities have now
been lost again to the Islamists. The armies of Bush and Blair have
long gone home, declaring victory.
Under Obama, Saudi Arabia will continue to be treated as a friendly
“moderate” in the Arab world, even though its royal family is
founded upon the Wahhabist convictions of the Sunni Islamists in
Syria and Iraq – and even though millions of its dollars are arming
those same fighters. Thus does Saudi power both feed the monster in
the deserts of Syria and Iraq and cosy up to the Western powers that
protect it.
We should also remember that Maliki’s military attempts to retake
Mosul are likely to be ferocious and bloody, just as Assad’s
battles to retake cities have proved to be. The refugees fleeing
Mosul are more frightened of Shia government revenge than they are of
the Sunni jihadists who have captured their city.
We will all be told to regard the new armed “caliphate” as a
“terror nation”. Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, the Isis spokesman, is
intelligent, warning against arrogance, talking of an advance on
Baghdad when he may be thinking of Damascus. Isis is largely leaving
the civilians of Mosul unharmed.
Finally, we will be invited to regard the future as a sectarian war
when it will be a war between Muslim sectarians and Muslim
non-sectarians. The “terror” bit will be provided by the arms we
send to all sides.
Will Iraq Become a
"Quagmire for the
Americans"? Non-Embedded
Journalist Robert Fisk
Reports From Baghdad
25 March, 2013
Veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk wrote an article in yesterday’s London Independent headlined, 'Iraq will become a quagmire for the Americans.'
Well, after several days of attempting to reach Robert Fisk in Baghdad, we finally got through late last night.
He elaborated on the article in the interview. He told us "[the Bush administration] dreams up moral ideas and then believes that they’re all true, and characterizes this policy by assuming that everyone else will then play their roles. In their attempt to dream up an excuse to invade Iraq, they’ve started out, remember, by saying first of all that there are weapons of mass destruction. We were then told that al Qaeda had links to Iraq, which, there certainly isn’t an al Qaeda link. Then we were told that there were links to September 11th, which was rubbish. And in the end, the best the Bush administration could do was to say, 'Well, we're going to liberate the people of Iraq.’"
Fisk went on, "the American administration allowed that little cabal of advisors around Bush-I’m talking about Perle, Wolfowitz, and these other people-people who have never been to war, never served their country, never put on a uniform-nor, indeed, has Mr. Bush ever served his country-they persuaded themselves of this Hollywood scenario of GIs driving through the streets of Iraqi cities being showered with roses by a relieved populace who desperately want this offer of democracy. . . .
"And the truth of the matter is that Iraq has a very, very strong political tradition of strong anti-colonial struggle. It doesn’t matter whether that’s carried out under the guise of kings or under the guise of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath party, or under the guise of a total dictator. There are many people in this country who would love to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I’m sure, but they don’t want to live under American occupation."
The Mire of Death, Lies and Atrocities: Robert Fisk Looks Back at 2004
3
January, 2004
Veteran
Middle East Correspondent Robert Fisk says, "Over the past year,
there has been evidence enough that our whole project in Iraq is
hopelessly flawed, that our Western armies–when they are not
torturing prisoners, killing innocents and destroying one of the
largest cities in Iraq–are being vanquished by a ferocious
guerrilla army, the like of which we have not seen before in the
Middle East." Fisk joins us from Beirut, Lebanon. [includes rush
transcript]
In
a year-in-review article by veteran Middle east correspondent Robert
Fisk in the Independent of London, Fisk begins his piece with a
question:
Who
said this and when?
"The
people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which
it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been
tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad
communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far
worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and
inefficient that the public knows... We are today not far from a
disaster."
Those
were the words of T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame) in The Sunday Times
in August, 1920.
"And,"
Robert Fisk writes, "every word of it is true today."
We
turn now to Robert Fisk to look back on 2004 from Iraq to Palestine
and beyond.
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