More Fisk Precis

1980 in Afghanistan and Pakistan (continued)

Chapter Three continues the story as the author returns to Afghanistan gaining access only by bribing a border guard or guards, this time based in Jalalabad and Kabul at various times from late January or February of 1980. The climax of this second sojourn appears to be an epic journey to, and noteworthy stay in, Kandahar before returning to Kabul, Peshawar and finally his main base, war-torn Beirut. A theme seems to be developing in the work that a journalist is not a visionary. Most of the signs he notes that he missed are of major developments such as the break-up of the Soviet Union under the pressure of nationalist and religious rivalries between states and the advent of Arab involvement in major geo-political movements such as the one that produced the Soviet defeat and 9/11. He also refers briefly to a 48-hour flying visit a few months later to Kabul in the summer of 1980.

1978 to 1980 in Iran

Chapter Four turns to Iran where Fisk first covered the Iranian Revolution that ousted the last Shah two years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A map is included. He begins by noting the British and US role in the anti-democratic coup and return of the Shah in the 1950s. He then details the venality and viciousness of the Shah’s subsequent regime and the rise of the opposition force, Ruhollah Khomeini. He intimates his pre-revolutionary experience of Iran and then records his meetings and activity in Tehran throughout 1979 and in 1980 as the US briefly sheltered the Shah and Iranians retaliated by attacking the embassy and visits to Qom, once when a revolutionary trial was occurring, to meet Hojatalislam Khalkhali, the ‘hanging judge’, several times and another time to meet Khomeini.

He also writes of learning from former Iranian internal spies of Western cooperation with the brutal security agencies and from Revolutionary government figures that cooperation continued between the countries. His discusses certain Iranian-published captured secret American embassy and other documents at length. He also refers to his extensive train travel specifically in the North West, especially in the troubled region of Kurdistan and to a small village. He deals at some length with Iran’s revolution’s issues with neighbours such as the USSR, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Late 1970s to 1985 in Iraq and the Middle East generally

In Chapter Five the author turns to Iraq and begins with a discussion of the British involvement from its First World War campaign. He discusses the British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement and also provides a map. He notes the history which followed the 'Great War' up until the ‘Confrontation Front Summit’ in Baghdad led by Saddam Hussein and his predecessor al-Bakr in the late 1970s which the author attended. He then recounts interviews with an Egyptian journalist and a ‘victim’ concerning the nature of Saddam’s rule, both of which took place outside Iraq. He goes on to note attending a 1980 Saddam press conference and making reports in that year from Iraq. He raises the fear felt by the regime at the time of the political Islam of the Shi’a majority inspired as it was by the revolution in Iran next-door and its reaction which involved the execution of Ayatollah Bakr Sadr (the chief of Khomeini’s supporters) at the Shi’a holy city of Najaf and the author’s 1980 visit to the city. He mentions another visit shortly after Rumsfeld’s now-famous 1983 visit to normalise relations (probably his 1985 visit which Saddam decided should be his last though the author notes he returned presumably after Saddam’s final downfall).

He then refers to US support of Iraq first in its opposition to Communists and then in its opposition to Iran. Fisk finally concludes this chapter with a review of this abominable period of the early 1980s in what he calls an arc of hate that stretched from Iraq through Iran to Afghanistan and notes he sees it as a prelude to the disastrous mutual agitation for what became the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. He suggests also that the arc extended at least to Lebanon and perhaps Chechnya.