Notes on "The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East" (by Robert Fisk)

I found this work by Fisk fascinating so I'm sharing my notes on it in my last five posts before hanging up my blogging gloves indefinitely. That will make it 100 posts.

Fisk notes in the Preface to his 2006 revised edition his assessment of war as inherently the practice of powerful, relatively unaccountable and villainous figures and of his role as a journalist being to hold those arrogant powers to account. His personal attention in this work appears to have been paid to the following regions in the following periods for the following main stories (originally generally reported from his base in Beirut):

1975? to 1978 Beirut Lebanese Civil War

1979 to 1980 Iran Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution

1980 Afghanistan the Soviet Invasion and Occupation (and

making of Osama Bin Laden)

1980 to 1988 Iran/Iraq/Beirut the Iran/Iraq War (Gulf War), Lebanese Civil War

1986 Libya, Egypt American Attacks, Suez Anniversary story

1989 Beirut Lebanese Civil Wars and Hostage Crises

1990 to 1991 Iraq/Kuwait the 1990-1 War for Kuwait (Gulf War)

1992 Algeria the 1992 to 2002 Algerian Civil War

1993 to 2003 Israel/Palestine/Iraq the Israeli/Palestinian ‘Peace Process’

US (and sanctions against Iraq and war)

2001 Afghanistan/Pakistan the ‘Allied’ hunt for Bin Laden

2004 to 2006 Beirut, US and Iraq Unrest and Occupation

1993 to 1997 with Osama Bin Laden in the Middle East generally and in Sudan and Afghanistan

Chapter One gives an account of Fisk’s three interviews in 1993 in Sudan and in 1996 and 1997 in Afghanistan with Osama Bin Laden and Bin Laden’s history (in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, the US and Afghanistan again), popularity and views. It follows a map of the Middle East which shows most of the places he mentions.

1980 in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Chapter Two first records the century of Russian and English interference in Afghanistan and includes a map (also showing relevant locations). It focuses next on his experience of the Soviet troops and Afghanistan in Kabul, Jalalabad, Ghazni, Salang and surrounds in January of 1980, shortly after the beginning of the Soviet occupation. He concludes the chapter with a description of finally leaving Afghanistan via the Khyber Pass by bus and arriving in the former Raj border city of Peshawar, now in Pakistan.