The Great War for Civilisation

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East is a book published in 2005 by the award-winning English journalist Robert Fisk. The book is a compilation of many of the articles Fisk wrote when he was serving as a correspondent in the Middle East for The Times and The Independent. The book revolves around several key themes regarding the history of the modern Middle East: the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf War as well as the 2003 Iraq War (United States invasion of Iraq) as well as other regional conflicts such as the Armenian Genocide and the Algerian Civil War. The Great War for Civilisation is the second book Fisk has written about the Middle East with the first one, Pity the Nation, (Nation Books, 2002) being about the Lebanese Civil War.

Fisk's book details his travels to many of the hotspots of the Middle East, such as Iraq and Iran during the Iran–Iraq War, and his numerous interviews with both the country's leaders and its people. Along with these interviews, Fisk also provides much of the historical context to these conflicts.

In the book, Fisk criticizes the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom for what he perceives as their hypocritical and biased foreign policy towards the Middle East, especially in regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the 2003 Iraq War. He contends leaders of both countries deliberately misled the world about their motivations for invading Iraq in 2003.^[1]

The name of the book comes from a campaign medal Fisk's father was awarded for his services in the First World War.^[2]

Contents

The first two chapters of the book focus on Fisk's first hand accounts of the first year of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Above, Soviet Spetsnaz prepare for a military operation.

1. "One of Our Brothers Had a Dream..." is about Fisk's first interview in 1996 with the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan. The title of the chapter is derived from bin Laden who explains that one of his fighters had a dream of Fisk, wearing a robe and with a beard, and who was approaching them on a horse, signifying that he was, according to bin Laden, a "true Muslim".^[3] Fisk immediately understood the context of the dream as an attempt by bin Laden to recruit him into his organization.^[4]

2. They Shoot Russians is on the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan where Fisk chronicles much of the problems the Soviet Union faced in dealing with the Afghan mujahideen when they entered the country as well as the invasion's galvanizing effect in recruiting thousands of foreign Muslim fighters to the country and the resurgence of radical Islam in the country.

3. The Choirs of Kandahar is essentially a continuation of Chapter 2.

4. The Carpet-Weavers begins with the United States' and Great Britain's successful overthrow of the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. From there, it moves on to the events leading up to and following the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which deposed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

An Iranian soldier wearing a gas mask during the Iran–Iraq War.

5-8. The Path to War and the subsequent chapters The Whirlwind War, War Against War and the Fast Train to Paradise and Drinking the Poisoned Chalice deal with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the battles of the Iran-Iraq of the 1980s including the Tanker War, Iran's use of human wave tactics and Saddam's use of chemical weapons against Iran, the United States' and West's roles in the conflict and the conclusion of the war.

9. Sentenced to Suffer Death is Fisk's account of his father, Bill Fisk, during his service in the British military in World War I and his difficult decision to refuse to take part as a member of a firing squad ordered to execute another soldier.

10. The First Holocaust is devoted to the topic of the Armenian Genocide. Its title is derived from the fact that the Genocide, organized by the government of the Ottoman Empire, took place in 1915, several decades before the Jewish Holocaust. In it, Fisk provides the historical context of the Armenian Genocide and includes his numerous interviews with survivors of the Genocide who are then living in Lebanon and Armenia. Fisk also heavily criticizes the denialist stance of Turkey, the successor to the Ottoman Empire, as well as Israel and Great Britain for failing to recognize the massacres and deportations as genocide.

11-13. Fifty Thousand Miles from Palestine and the subsequent chapters The Last Colonial War and The Girl and the Child and Love are devoted to the Arab-Israeli conflict from the 1980s onward. The chapters deal with the deaths of civilians on both sides, suicide bombings and the Israeli government's military approach to the Palestinian issue. Much of these chapters also detail with media coverage of the conflict and the terms used by them to describe both sides, most notably the word "terrorist".

14. Anything to Wipe Out a Devil... briefly focuses on the Algerian War and the use of torture and terrorism by both the French military and Algerian fighters of the 1954-1962 war. After the French pullout and Algerian independence, the book details the internal power struggles among the secular and Islamist factions and continues on with this theme into the Algerian Civil War which began in 1991.

15. Planet Damnation gives an eyewitness report of the Gulf War. Fisk was stationed in the desert with the Allied forces and makes references both to the push-back of Iraqis from Kuwait as to the bombing of Iraq in connection to it.

16. Betrayal describes the repression of the Iraqi uprising after the Gulf War by the Iraqi government, which attacked and persecuted the rebels, as well as the Kurdish northern minority.

17. The Land of Graves. The pun in chapter's title points at the repercussions that U.N.'s sanctions against Iraq had on the civilian population.

18. The Plague deals with the unusual illnesses which plagued the Iraqi public after the war.

19. Now Thrive the Armourers... is an incursion into the world of the arms manufacturers of "all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes," ^[5] which provide belligerents with weapons.

20. Even to Kings, He Comes... is an analysis of the deeds of King Hussein of Jordan and President Hafez al-Assad of Syria. The first, a controversial ruler, whose subjects were both acclaiming him and shrieking at his coffin during his burial ceremony, is put alongside "The Lion of Damascus", whose Hama massacre is looked into.

21. Why ? tries to find an explanation to the September 11, 2001, attacks. From a strict journalistic point of view, the tragedy came totally unwelcome for Fisk, as it postponed indefinitely his coverage of the Sabra and Chatila massacres out of the pages of The Independent. Fisk inserts the skipped report in the first part of Chapter 21.

22. The Die Is Cast examines the diplomatic and mass media moves which led to the Operation Iraqi Freedom.

23. Atomic Dog, Annihilator, Arsonist, Anthrax, Anguish and Agamemnon describes in great detail the turbulences which have accompanied the takeover of Iraq and its capital, Baghdad.

24. Into the Wilderness is the last chapter of the book. It gives an idea of the challenges the Coalition Provisional Authority has faced in that country, and reports on the assassination of the Lebanese Prime-Minister Rafiq Hariri, witnessed by Fisk.

The book ends, as it has begun, in the "tiny village of Louvencourt, on the Somme,"^[2] where Robert Fisk's father has fought. This is not only meant as a homage to Bill Fisk, but is also an implicit reminder of one of the leitmotifs of the book: the volatile situation in the Middle East is a consequence of the political arrangements concluded at the end of the First World War.

The work has also a Chronology of the Middle East, starting with the birth of the Prophet Mohammed and ending in 2005, the year of the book's British release, with the words: "UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1968 -- calling for Israel's withdrawal from occupied land -- remains unfulfilled."

Reviews

The Guardian published a review of the book by Oliver Miles where numerous mistakes were pointed out in the book by Miles such as regarding the Ba'ath party and Iraq's revolutions, the Balfour declaration, locations of US bases, claiming the Hijazi Hashemites were Gulf people, wrongly assigning an Umayyad character to Baghdad, the century of Ali bin Abi Talib's death, and mistakes in the meaning of Arabic, Farsi, Russian, and French words and the birthplace of Jesus.^[6]

Footnotes

References

Fisk, Robert (2007): The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, Vintage, ISBN 1-4000-7517-3, ISBN 978-1-4000-7517-1, 1136 pages.

External links

• An interview of Robert Fisk by Justin Podur on ZNet about the book.