Pip Hinman, Sydney
In a powerful presentation that included a short "war correspondent" tour of Bosnia, Palestine and south Lebanon, Robert Fisk reminded a packed forum at Sydney's Seymour Centre on March 6 that the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq repeats history.
Fisk, renowned journalist, author and film-maker, used the first Sydney Ideas forum to talk about why the 9/11 terror attacks occurred — a subject he researched extensively for his new book, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.
Fisk said writing about the history of the Middle East was "a depressing experience" because it is "an immense world of suffering and interference", first by the British and then by the United States. "I'm surprised that Muslims have been so restrained", he added.
When Britain invaded Iraq in 1917 they proclaimed themselves "liberators", Fisk explained, just as Washington is doing today. He described how the British, under PM David Lloyd-George, attacked Fallujah and Najaf, demanded loyalty from various Shiite clerics and warned of terrorists crossing the border from Syria. "Lloyd-George also said the UK couldn't leave Iraq because it would end in civil war."
While Iraq today is in "total chaos", Fisk downplayed the likelihood of civil war. It's not as simple as the politicians and media declare, he said. As he told ABC TV's Lateline on March 2, "Iraqis are not suicidal people. They don't go around blowing up mosques every day."
He went on: "Iraq is not a sectarian society, but a tribal society ... Shiites and Sunnis marry each other ... But certainly, somebody at the moment is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq ... The real question is, who are these people?"
Fisk railed against journalists who have adopted US state department language, or simply omit the facts. He is especially angry that there is no reporting on how many Iraqis have died in the war and occupation. "The Iraqi ministry of health was told by the US and UK governments not to reveal the details", Fisk said. "Now there is evidence that death squads have killed up to 3000 Iraqis in one month ... that's up to 36,000 in one year."
Fisk told Lateline's Tony Jones that he noticed equal numbers of Sunnis and Shiites at the morgue he visited. Many of the death squads work for the Iraqi ministry of the interior, he said, adding: "Who runs the ministry of interior in Baghdad? Who pays the ministry of the interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? ... The occupation authorities."
"I'd like to know what the Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to provoke the civil war. It seems not very much. We don't hear of any suicide bombers being stopped before they blow themselves up. We don't hear of anybody stopping a mosque getting blown up. We're not hearing of death squads all being arrested."
As Fisk told Jones, "Is it really the case that all of these Iraqis that fought together for eight years against the Iranians, Shiites and Sunnis together ... suddenly all want to kill each other? Why, because that's something wrong with Iraqis? I don't think so. They are intelligent, educated people."
Fisk added that if history repeats itself, and the Shiites and Sunnis combine together as they did in the 1920s in the insurgency against the British, the occupation will be "finished" in Iraq. "And that will mean that Iraq actually will be united."
Fisk showed some clips from his Discovery Channel series, which was censored in the US. First, he took us to a small township in west Bosnia where Muslims and Christians had lived side by side until Serb forces moved in, uprooting the Muslims and forcing them into refugee camps. Fisk had returned after a year to find the local mosque obliterated and the Muslim population gone.
He then showed Mohammed Khatib and his family valiantly trying to hold onto their farm outside Jerusalem against the Israeli occupiers, but failing. Finally, he screened footage taken by a UN soldier in south Lebanon of Israeli forces massacring Palestinian refugees who had fled to a UN mission. This video, given to Fisk by a soldier with a conscience, eventually became critical to disproving the Israeli army claim that it had only been defending itself from a Hezbollah attack.
Fisk ended the forum by saying: "We're being told that 9/11 has changed the world forever, but I haven't let 19 Arab men change my world, and nor should you." Unless the lessons from history are learned, mistakes are bound to be repeated.
From Green Left Weekly, March 15, 2006.
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