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During the thirty years that award-winning journalist Robert Fisk has been reporting on the Middle East, he has covered every major event in the region, from the Algerian Civil War to the Iranian Revolution, from the American hostage crisis in Beirut (as one of only two Western journalists in the city at the time) to the Iran-Iraq War, from the Russian invasion of Afghanistan to Israels invasions of Lebanon, from the Gulf War to the invasion and ongoing war in Iraq. Now he brings his knowledge, his firsthand experience and his intimate understanding of the Middle East to a book that addresses the full complexity of its political history and its current state of affairs.
Passionate in his concerns about the region and relentless in his pursuit of the truth, Fisk has been able to enter the world of the Middle East and the lives of its people as few other journalists have. The result is a work of stunning reportage. His unblinking eyewitness testimony to the horrors of war places him squarely in the tradition of the great frontline reporters of the Second World War. His searing descriptions of lives mangled in the chaos of battle and of the battles themselves are at once dreadful and heartrending.
This is also a book of lucid, incisive analysis. Reaching back into the long history of invasion, occupation and colonization in the region, Fisk sets forth this information in a way that makes clear how a history of injustice “has condemned the Middle East to war.” He lays open the role of the West in the seemingly endless strife and warfare in the region, traces the growth of the Wests involvement and influence there over the past one hundred years, and outlines the Wests record of support for some of the most ruthless leaders in the Middle East. He chronicles the ever-more-powerful military presence of the United States and tracks the consequent, increasingly virulent anti-Western-and particularly anti-American-sentiment among the regions Muslim populations.
Fisk interweaves this history with his own vividly rendered experiences in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon-on the front lines; behind the scenes; in the streets of cities and villages; and inside military headquarters, the hideouts of guerrillas, the homes of ordinary citizens. Here, too, are indelible portraits of Osama bin Laden, Ayatollah Khomeini and Yassir Arafat, among others-all of whom he has met face-to-face-revelatory in their apprehension of the individuals and the ideologies they represent.
Finally, The Great War for Civilisation is the story of journalists in war: of their attempts to report the first, impartial drafts of history, to monitor the centers of power, to challenge authority (“especially . . . when governments and politicians take us to war”) and to battle an increasingly partisan worldwide media in their determination to report the truth.
Unflinching, provocative, brilliantly written-a work of major importance for todays world.
Review:
"Combining a novelist's talent for atmosphere with a scholar's grasp of historical sweep, foreign correspondent Fisk (Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon) has written one of the most dense and compelling accounts of recent Middle Eastern history yet. The book opens with a deftly juxtaposed account of Fisk's two interviews with Osama bin Laden. In the first, held in Sudan in 1993, bin Laden declared himself "a construction engineer and an agriculturist." He had no time to train mujahideen, he said; he was busy constructing a highway. In the second, held four years later in Afghanistan, he declared war on the Saudi royal family and America.Fisk, who has lived in and reported on the Middle East since 1976, first for the (London) Times and now for the Independent, possesses deep knowledge of the broader history of the region, which allows him to discuss the Armenian genocide 90 years ago, the 2002 destruction of Jenin, and the battlefields of Iraq with equal aplomb. But it is his stunning capacity for visceral description" he has seen, or tracked down firsthand accounts of, all the major events of the past 25 years" that makes this volume unique. Some of the chapters contain detailed accounts of torture and murder, which more squeamish readers may be inclined to skip, but such scenes are not gratuitous. They are designed to drive home Fisk's belief that "war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death." Though Fisk's political stances may sometimes be controversial, no one can deny that this volume is a stunning achievement. "
Review:
"This is first of all a book about war — in particular, the wars that have scarred the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Algeria, throughout the author's long career as a correspondent for the London Times and then the Independent. It switches back and forth across the 20th century in a way that seems driven more by stream of consciousness than by any linear design, and, as befits its topic, it is... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) a book of almost unremitting violence. The author presents himself both as unflinching witness and implacable judge of the events he recounts, for he believes that he is telling a story of unrelenting perfidy and betrayal — in part a story of Middle Easterners being betrayed by themselves and their leaders, but mostly one of the Middle East being betrayed by the power, greed and arrogance of the West. Fisk has thrown himself into the fiery pit time after time, often at grave personal risk — Afghanistan at the beginning of the long struggle against the Soviets, the bloodbath of the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, the civil war in Algeria after 1991, the second Palestinian intifada since the fall of 2000. When he is not personally in the midst of conflict and destruction, he evokes them, as in his lengthy discussion of the Armenian deportations and massacres of World War I or (in a different register) his treatment of the shah of Iran's prisons and torture chambers. However Fisk regards himself, he is at bottom a war correspondent, and the fabric of his book is woven largely from his battlefield reporting. Fisk's writing on war is vivid, graphic, intense and very personal. Readers will encounter no 'collateral damage' here, only homes destroyed and bodies torn to shreds. At times, as one horror is heaped upon another, it all seems too much to absorb or bear. That intensity is both the book's great strength and one of its principal weaknesses. After reading it, no one can hide from the immense human costs of the decisions made by generals and politicians, Middle Eastern or otherwise. But Fisk portrays the Middle East as a place of such unrelieved violence that the reader can hardly imagine that anyone has enjoyed a single ordinary day there over the past quarter-century. That picture is a serious distortion. Life in the region is far from easy, but in spite of endemic anxiety and frustration, most Middle Easterners, most of the time, are able to get on tolerably well. Fisk says little about more abstract, less violent issues such as economic stagnation, the complexities of political Islam or the status of women. This gap is not a weakness in itself — Fisk is writing about different themes — but readers need to be aware that, despite its staggering length, this book is not The Complete Middle East. It may well be The Complete Robert Fisk, however. It is full of autobiographical reminiscences about the author's troubled but intense relationship with his father, Bill; indeed, that relationship provides the book's title. The elder Fisk had been awarded a campaign medal for his service in France in 1918, and the medal (which he bequeathed to his son) was inscribed with the motto 'The Great War for Civilisation.' The bitter irony of that motto is underscored by another gift, this one from the author's grandmother to his father — a boy's novel, 'Tom Graham, V.C.,' which recounts the adventures of a young British soldier in Afghanistan in the late 19th century. For the author, both the medal and the novel symbolize the West's arrogant and destructive intrusion in the Middle East throughout the last century. If this is a book about war, it is equally a book about the hypocrisy and indifference of those in power. Fisk is an angry man and more than a little self-righteous. No national leader comes off with a scrap of credit here; he regards the lot of them with contempt, if not loathing. Among the men in charge — whether Arab, Iranian, Turkish, Israeli, British or American — there are no heroes and precious few honorable people doing their inadequate best in difficult situations. Jimmy Carter is lucky to escape with condescension, King Hussein of Jordan with a bit better than that. Fisk is not fond of the media either (though he grants some exceptions); CNN and the New York Times are particular targets of his scorn for what he sees as their abject failure to challenge the lies, distortions and cover-ups of U.S. policymakers. Only among ordinary people, entangled in a web of forces beyond their control, does Fisk find a human mixture of courage, cowardice, charity and cruelty. Given the present state of things in the Middle East, one is tempted to agree with him. The mendacity and bland pomposity of the suits and talking heads, both Western and Middle Eastern, are infuriating to anyone who has any direct knowledge of what is going on there. Again, however, there is a problem: Fisk excoriates politicians for the awful suffering they have imposed on the peoples of the Middle East, but he never seriously asks why they make the decisions they do or what real alternatives they might have. It is all very well to flog Western and Middle Eastern leaders for their ignorance, moral blindness, lust for power, etc. That might instill shame and guilt (though it rarely does), but it provides no serious principles or criteria that serious policymakers might use to develop something better. In short, 'The Great War for Civilisation' is a book of unquestionable importance, given Fisk's unmatched experience of war and its impact in the contemporary Middle East and his capacity to convey that experience in concrete, passionate language. Still, novices will find themselves both overwhelmed by the book's exhaustive detail and hard put to follow the author's leaps across countries and decades. 'The Great War for Civilisation' is also a deeply troubling book; it may well confirm the conviction of many that the Middle East is incurably sunk in violence and depravity and that only a fool would imagine it could ever be redeemed. As tragic as the last three decades have been, there are different lessons to be learned — one must hope so, at least. Stephen Humphreys is a professor of Middle Eastern history and Islamic studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of 'Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age.'" Reviewed by Stephen Humphreys, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Synopsis:
Unflinching, provocative, and brilliantly written, this work of stunning reportage addresses the full complexity of recent history and political events in the Middle East.
Best-selling author and journalist Robert Fisk, based in Beirut as Middle East Correspondent of The Independent, has lived in the Middle East for almost three decades and holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent. His last book, Pity the Nation, a history of the Lebanon war, was published to great critical acclaim.
Daniel Raphael, April 17, 2006 (view all comments by Daniel Raphael)
I read this book over a period of 3-4 weeks, late last year. It took that long because the type is small, the book is large, and the subject matter is, for those not yet deadened by the world's predictable procession of horrors, heartbreaking. The author has spent 30 years in the area about which he reports, and lives in Beirut. He knows whereof he speaks and has done things one might expect of a real journalist (not the faux kind we have in abundance): repeatedly risking his life, almost having been beaten to death by a mob in Afghanistan; reporting under fire during the Iraq/Iran war (remember that one, when Saddam was Our Boy?), from both sides of the line; looking firsthand at the casualties of American-made missiles in Baghdad, Palestine, and wherever else someone's collateral ran out.
That said, his great value is not that he writes from an "anti-American" perspective, but that he is equally unsparing of any and all who have lied, manipulated, and terrorized common people into graves, hospitals, or cowering submission. No one gets a free pass from Robert Fisk, and his outrage at human inhumanity is a precious natural resource. A bit of the book is autobiographical, but needfully so rather than self-indulgent; knowing that Fisk's dad was both an archetypal racist of the British colonial mentality as well as the guide to his son's early awareness of what battlefields and war represented, helps the reader understand the author's concern. Similarly, knowing that the first book his mother gave him about the world was Anne Frank's Diary, explains much both about maternal influence and Robert's head start in grasping the lessons of Injustice 101.
This book covers many wars, the original holocaust (the one against the Armenians) on which the later persecution of the Nazis' victims was patterned, and the background to much of what we now read in every day's news. If you can bear to read this book from cover to cover, do so and then keep it as an unrivalled resource about the stories that corporate news media either never report, or only distort.
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The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
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Robert Fisk
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Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Combining a novelist's talent for atmosphere with a scholar's grasp of historical sweep, foreign correspondent Fisk (Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon) has written one of the most dense and compelling accounts of recent Middle Eastern history yet. The book opens with a deftly juxtaposed account of Fisk's two interviews with Osama bin Laden. In the first, held in Sudan in 1993, bin Laden declared himself "a construction engineer and an agriculturist." He had no time to train mujahideen, he said; he was busy constructing a highway. In the second, held four years later in Afghanistan, he declared war on the Saudi royal family and America.Fisk, who has lived in and reported on the Middle East since 1976, first for the (London) Times and now for the Independent, possesses deep knowledge of the broader history of the region, which allows him to discuss the Armenian genocide 90 years ago, the 2002 destruction of Jenin, and the battlefields of Iraq with equal aplomb. But it is his stunning capacity for visceral description" he has seen, or tracked down firsthand accounts of, all the major events of the past 25 years" that makes this volume unique. Some of the chapters contain detailed accounts of torture and murder, which more squeamish readers may be inclined to skip, but such scenes are not gratuitous. They are designed to drive home Fisk's belief that "war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death." Though Fisk's political stances may sometimes be controversial, no one can deny that this volume is a stunning achievement. "
"Synopsis"
by Libri,
Unflinching, provocative, and brilliantly written, this work of stunning reportage addresses the full complexity of recent history and political events in the Middle East.
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