Darkness
Falls On The Middle East
By Robert Fisk
26 November, 2007
The
Independent
So where do we go from here?
I am talking into blackness because there is no electricity in Beirut.
And everyone, of course, is frightened. A president was supposed to
be elected today. He was not elected. The corniche outside my home is
empty. No one wants to walk beside the sea.
When I went to get my usual
breakfast cheese manouche there were no other guests in the café.
We are all afraid. My driver, Abed, who has loyally travelled with me
across all the war zones of Lebanon, is frightened to drive by night.
I was supposed to go to Rome yesterday. I spared him the journey to
the airport.
It's difficult to describe
what it's like to be in a country that sits on plate glass. It is impossible
to be certain if the glass will break. When a constitution breaks –
as it is beginning to break in Lebanon – you never know when the
glass will give way.
People are moving out of
their homes, just as they have moved out of their homes in Baghdad.
I may not be frightened, because I'm a foreigner. But the Lebanese are
frightened. I was not in Lebanon in 1975 when the civil war began, but
I was in Lebanon in 1976 when it was under way. I see many young Lebanese
who want to invest their lives in this country, who are frightened,
and they are right to frightened. What can we do?
Last week, I had lunch at
Giovanni's, one of the best restaurants in Beirut, and took out as my
companion Sherif Samaha, who is the owner of the Mayflower Hotel. Many
of the guests I've had over the past 31 years I have sent to the Mayflower.
But Sherif was worried because I suggested that his guests had included
militia working for Saad Hariri, who is the son of the former prime
minister, murdered – if you believe most Lebanese – by the
Syrians on 14 February 2005.
Poor Sherif. He never had
the militia men in his hotel. They were in a neighbouring building.
But so Lebanese is Sherif that he even offered to pick me up in his
car to have lunch. He is right to be worried.
A woman friend of mine, married
to a doctor at the American University Hospital, called me two days
before. "Robert, come and see the building they are making next
to us," she said. And I took Abed and we went to see this awful
building. It has almost no windows. All its installations are plumbing.
It is virtually a militia prison. And I'm sure that's what it is meant
to be. This evening I sit on my balcony, in a power cut, as I dictate
this column. And there is no one in the street. Because they are all
frightened.
So what can a Middle East
correspondent write on a Saturday morning except that the world in the
Middle East is growing darker and darker by the hour. Pakistan. Afghanistan.
Iraq. "Palestine". Lebanon. From the borders of Hindu Kush
to the Mediterranean, we – we Westerners that is – are creating
(as I have said before) a hell disaster. Next week, we are supposed
to believe in peace in Annapolis, between the colourless American apparatchik
and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister who has no more interest
in a Palestinian state than his predecessor Ariel Sharon.
And what hell disasters are
we creating? Let me quote a letter from a reader in Bristol. She asks
me to quote a professor at Baghdad University, a respected man in his
community who tells a story of real hell; you should read it. Here are
his own words:
"'A'adhamiya Knights'
is a new force that has started its task with the Americans to lead
them to al-Qa'ida and Tawheed and Jihad militants. This 300-fighter
force started their raids very early at dawn wearing their black uniform
and black masks to hide their faces. Their tours started three days
ago, arresting about 150 citizens from A'adhamiya. The 'Knight' leads
the Americans to a citizen who might be one of his colleagues who used
to fight the Americans with him. These acts resulted in violent reactions
of al-Qa'ida. Its militants and the militants of Tawheed and Jihad distributed
banners on mosques' walls, especially on Imam Abu Hanifa mosque, threatening
the Islamic Party, al-Ishreen revolution groups and Sunni endowment
Diwan with death because these three groups took part in establishing
'A'adhamiya Knights'. Some crimes happened accordingly, targeting two
from Sunni Diwan staff and one from the Islamic Party.
"Al-Qa'ida militants
are distributed through the streets, stopping the people and asking
about their IDs ... they carry lists of names. Anyone whose name is
on these lists is kidnapped and taken to an unknown place. Eleven persons
have been kidnapped up to now from Omar Bin Abdul Aziz Street."
The writer describes how
her professor friend was kidnapped and taken to a prison. "They
helped me sit on a chair (I was blindfolded) and someone came and held
my hand saying, 'We are Muhajeen, we know you but we don't know where
you are from.' They did not take my wallet nor did they search me. They
only asked me if I have a gun. An hour or so later, one of them came
and asked me to come with them. They drove me towards where my car was
in the street and they said no more." So who are the A'adhamiya
Knights? Who is paying them? What are we doing in the Middle East?
And how can we even conceive
of a moral stand in the Middle East when we still we refuse to accept
the fact – reiterated by Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, and
all the details of US diplomats in the First World War – that
the Armenian genocide occurred in 1915? Here is the official British
government position on the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.
"Officially, the Government acknowledges the strength of feeling
[note, reader, the 'strength of feeling'] about what it describes as
a terrible episode of history and recognises the massacres of 1915-16
as a tragedy. However, neither the current Government nor previous British
governments have judged that the evidence is sufficiently unequivocal
to be persuaded that these events should be categorised as genocide
as it is defined by the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide." When we
can't get the First World War right, how in God's name can we get World
War III right?
© 2007 Independent News
and Media Limited
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