The Great War for Civilisation

by Robert Fisk

  (n.) 640 “I was stepping on bodies”: Associated Press report from Baghdad, 21 March 1991.

  (n.) 640 The most thorough investigation: New Yorker, 22 May 2000, pp. 48–82, “Overwhelming Force: What happened in the final days of the Gulf War?,” by Seymour M. Hersh.

  643 Some people, Hurd said: Hurd interview in The Times (London), 2 August 1991.

  Chapter Sixteen: Betrayal

  646 “Rise to save the homeland”: See Middle East Reporter (Beirut), 25 February 1991, p. 4, “Iraqis Urged to Revolt, Save Country from Dictatorship, War.”

  647 the Iraqis had tried to jam: See Middle East Reporter (Beirut), 4 January 1991, “Anti-Saddam Radio Believed Jammed.”

  647 “the allies to liberate Iraq”: Interview with Haidar al-Assadi, Beirut, 3 May 1998.

  649 Iraqi dead at up to 150,000: Middle East Reporter (Beirut), 1 March 1991.

  649 had claimed that 26,000 Iraqis: Jumhouri-y Islami (Tehran), 19 February 1991, cited by Dilip Hiro in letter to The Independent, 8 February 1992.

  649 When a Pentagon source: Newsday, 12 September 1991, cited by Hiro, as above.

  650 dropped nearly as many tons: International Herald Tribune, 10 July 1996, quoting New York Times article by Tim Weiner, “Smart Arms in Gulf War Are Found Overrated.”

  650 “35—almost one-quarter”: Associated Press report from Washington, 13 August 1991, “Gulf Friendly Fire Casualties Rise,” by Susanne M. Chafer.

  650 The independent U.S. General Accounting Office: See International Herald Tribune, 10 July 1996, op. cit.

  650 In fact, as Seymour Hersh: New Yorker, 26 September 1994, pp. 86–99, “Missile Wars,” by Seymour Hersh, esp. p. 92.

  (n.) 650 Timothy McVeigh, a promising young soldier: Reuters report in Irish Times, 3 June 1997.

  652 All of this I duly reported: See Independent, 27 March 1991.

  (n.) 652 Other testimony to Kuwaiti persecution: See, for example, Libération, 20 March 1991, “La grande peur des Palestiniens du Kuweit,” by Jean Michel Thénard.

  657 The refugees who now streamed: See Guardian, 14 March 1991, “Rebels ‘hanged from tank gun barrels’ by Saddam’s men,” by Sharif Imam-Jomeh (Reuters) and Nora Boustany (Washington Post).

  658 “Better the Saddam Hussein”: Guardian, 13 March 1991, “Britain and U.S. part over Iraqi rebels,” by Hella Pick.

  661 would be compared to the Soviet demands: See, for example, Independent , 28 March 1991, “Fiddling while Basra burns,” by Godfrey Hodgson.

  663 “What’s the better option”: International Herald Tribune , 23 March 1991, quoting Washington Post report by Dan Balz and Al Kamen, “U.S. Fears of a Divided Iraq Muddle Policy on Hussein.”

  664 “to harvest them, the wheat with the chaff”: Guardian , 27 March 1991, quoting WashingtonPost report by Nora Boustany, “Republican Guard reaps harvest of death.”

  664 “consigned the Iraqi insurgents”: Independent, 28 March 1991, “White House leaves Iraqi rebels to their fate,” by Edward Lucas, quoting The New York Times.

  665 “the mightiest military machine”: Independent, 2 April 1991.

  665 “the logic of intervention”: New York Times, 31 March 1991.

  665 “there would be, downtown Baghdad”: International Herald Tribune, 16 January 1991, quoting Los Angeles Times report by James Gertstenzang, “Bush’s Gulf War Regrets: ‘Could Have Done More’ Against Saddam.” The Bush interviews were broadcast on PBS in January 1996.

  666 “It was almost a healing process”: Associated Press report, Washington, 2 August 1991.

  666 “is betting that Americans”: Associated Press report, Houston, 8 April 1991.

  680 “Hard to imagine the quality”: Note to the author from Larry Heinzerling, 5 March 1991.

  (n.) 681 the object of an unnecessary controversy: See Makiya, Cruelty and Silence; also review by Mouin Rabbani in Middle East Report, March–June 1993; review by Eqbal Ahmad in The Nation, 9–16 August 1993; Makiya’s response to Ahmad in The Nation, 8 November 1993; review by As’ad Abu Khalil in Middle East Journal, Autumn 1993; The Independent, 27 May 1991 (containing the author’s original report from Dahuk), and The Independent, 13 September 1994, “Showering Platitudes on Islam’s Suffering Women,” by Robert Fisk; typical of the mis-sourcing of the reports was a letter to the author from Mouin Rabbani, 13 November 1994, referring to the 13 September 1994 Independent article which mentioned “raping rooms,” and claiming inaccurately: “I believe I am right in stating that it [Makiya’s book] is the source of your . . . statement.”

  686 Some would say that 200,000 died: See, for example, statement by the Islamic Union for Iraqi Students and Youth (London), 1992, “Saddam Launches Ruthless Campaign to Wipe Out Marsh Arabs,” which refers to the crushed uprising as “a betrayal that will be forever engraved on the minds of Iraqi civilians.”

  Chapter Seventeen: The Land of Graves

  701 the return of Kuwaiti civilian prisoners: Schwarzkopf, Autobiography , p. 485.

  701 “We settled for”: Ibid., pp. 485, 488.

  703 A Harvard team of lawyers: Public Health in Iraq After the Gulf War, Harvard Study Team report, May 1991.

  706 “Big picture”: Washington Post, 23 June 1991.

  706 “With no domestic sources”: Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, 22 January 1991, cited in The Progressive , September 2001.

  707 the Tigris River had changed colour: Independent, 25 April 1998, “Poisoned Tigris spreads tide of death in Iraq.”

  (n.) 707 The evidence of massive human suffering: UN Humanitarian Panel’s Report on Sanctions, 30 March 1999; “if the substantial reduction”: UNICEF Iraq, Child and Maternal MortalitySurveys, Executive Summary, August 1999.

  708 A mere glance at the list: Simons, Scourging of Iraq, p. 118, table 3.1.

  708 just before Christmas 1999: Guardian, 4 March 2000.

  708 167 Iraqi children were dying: Toronto Star, 25 June 2000.

  (n.) 708 For example, the Iraqi: K. M. Al-Chalabi, “Spinal Cord,” Journal of the International Spinal Cord Society, 2004, pp. 447–9.

  709 “The World Health Organisation”: From a speech by Dennis Halliday on Capitol Hill, Washington, 6 October 1998.

  709 “here we are”: Guardian, 2 August 2000.

  709 “We know that”: Letter from Arvin Sumoondur of the Foreign Office’s Middle East Department to Dr. Stephen Goldby, 19 October 2000.

  Chapter Eighteen: The Plague

  718 RAF pilots flying out of: See John Pilger, “The Cost of Conflict,” in The Saddam Hussein Reader: Selections from Leading Writers on Iraq (ed. Turi Munthe) (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002), pp. 363–4, citing a study by Dr. Eric Herring, Iraqi sanctions specialist at Bristol University, UK, and the Washington Post, October 2002.

  721 “I can honestly say”: Ha’aretz, 28 September 1998.

  724 “UNSCOM directly facilitated”: Washington Post, 6 January 1999, report by Barton Gellman.

  734 I still treasure a sarcastic letter: Lord Gilbert to the editor, the Independent, 30 May 1988.

  740 “The Government is aware”: Letter from Ministry of Defence Secretary of State Doug Henderson, dated 22 December 1998, to Dr. Evan Harris, MP, answering a letter from his constituent, Dr. Mercy Heatley of Oxford.

  (n.) 740 When I travelled to Bosnia: See the author’s reports in the Independent between 11 and 16 January 2001.

  Chapter Nineteen: Now Thrive the Armourers . . .

  769 expressing its confidence: see Financial Times, 29 July 1991, “Government licensed gas chemical sales.”

  778 “individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians”: Article 50, paragraph 3, of the Geneva Conventions’ Protocol 1.

  784 I made a formal request: Fisk letter to Lt. Col. Byars of U.S. Defense Department, Washington, 6 May 1997.

  785 Thus did a U.S. marine missile: My detailed account of the missile attack on the ambulance, “Return to Sender,” was published in the Sunday Review of the Indepen
dent on Sunday, 18 May 1997.

  (n.) 785 In the late 1970s: Independent, 24 June 1997, “A Rocket Is Returned to Sender.”

  Chapter Twenty: Even to Kings, He Comes . . .

  791 “we are not going to let”: George Bush in Beirut, 26 October 1983.

  796 Dinner with the PLK: Author’s notes of dinner with King Hussein at the Royal Palace, Amman, 25 September 1993.

  (n.) 801 A British diplomat: Author’s notes of conversation with Alan Urwick, British ambassador in Amman, 17 April 1983.

  807 why Queen Noor wept: Speech given by Leith Shubeilath in Irbid, Jordan, 7 November 1995.

  818 “I am your elder brother”: See Seale, Asad, p. 430.

  820 For the Alawis: See ibid., p. 8.

  822 Before the First World War: For a discussion of Arab demands on the Ottomans at this time, see especially Antonius, Arab Awakening, pp. 101–25, and Kamal Salibi, The ModernHistory of Lebanon (New York: Caravan, 1977), pp. 156–9.

  823 “We had become like animals”: See Daily Star (Beirut), 14 December 1998, “When life was worth a radish,” by Carl Gibeily.

  824 a heavily stained pamphlet: Antoine Yammine, Quatre ans de misère: Le Liban et la Syrie pendant la guerre (Cairo: Imprimerie Emin Hindi, 1922).

  825 A French scholar: See Khoury, La France et l’Orient Arabe, pp. 68–71.

  826 The scholar and historian: See Antonius, pp. 190–1.

  Chapter Twenty-one: Why?

  828 “Sana Sersawi speaks carefully”: This article was finally published in the Independent on 28 November 2001 under the headline “New evidence indicates Palestinians died hours after surviving camp massacres.”

  834 “So it has come to this”: Independent, 12 September 2001, “The Wickedness and Awesome Cruelty of a Crushed and Humiliated People.”

  (n.) 841 Arab elections: See Keysing’s Record of World Events, 1993 , pp. 39711, 40797; SANA (Damascus), 2 February 1999; AP, Algiers, 16 April 1999. See also Independent, 8 October 1999.

  (n.) 846 “a treacherous and cowardly crime”: The Second Afghan War 1878–80, Appendix XII, pp. 656–7.

  847 Wahhabism, the strict, pseudo-reformist: for a modern critique of Wahhabism, see Abu Khalil, Battle for Saudi Arabia, pp. 52–75.

  848 In 1998, a Saudi student: Nawaf Obaid, Improving U.S. Intelligence Analysis on the Saudi Arabian Decision-Making Process, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1998, submitted to Ambassador Ronald Neumann, deputy assistant secretary for Near East affairs; see especially pp. 18–19, 21–25, 27, and 36.

  848 The Saudis deployed 10,000 troops: See The Times, 5 December 1979, “Last of the Great Mosque rebels rooted out by Saudi forces”; also Guardian, 6 December 1979, “Saudis identify disfigured body of Muslim rebel who led siege in Grand Mosque,” by John Andrews.

  849 sixty-three men were beheaded in public: See Le Monde, 20–21 November 1994, “Il y a quinze ans: La prise de la Grande Mosquée de La Mecque,” by Olivier Da Lage.

  849 “timeless culture”: International Herald Tribune, 6 July 1994 (reprinted from the WashingtonPost), “Saudi Arabia’s Solid Foundations Assure a Durable Kingdom,” by Bandar ibn Sultan.

  849 “to act with the grain”: Focus on Saudi Arabia (Jeddah), 23 September 1994, “My Sojourn,” by Sir Alun Munro, British ambassador to Saudi Arabia 1989–93.

  849 Amnesty International appeals: See, for example, Amnesty’s Saudi Arabia: A Secret State of Sufering, 28 March 2000, and Saudi Arabia: A Justice System Without Justice, 10 May 2000.

  (n.) 849 “Standing to the left”: Irish Times, 19 June 1997, “An Irishman at a beheading,” by Gary Keenan.

  863 “The first time I arrived”: Rashid, Taliban, p. 56.

  865 reporters found the mass grave: See especially Newsweek, 26 August 2002, “The Death Convoy of Afghanistan.”

  875 “beaten up by a mob”: Mail on Sunday, 9 December 2001.

  875 “if I was an Afghan refugee”: Independent, 10 December 2001.

  875 “A self-loathing multiculturalist”: Wall Street Journal , 15 December 2001.

  877 “how Muslims were coming to hate the West”: Film From Beirut to Bosnia, 1983, op. cit.

  879 “impeccable English diction”: Joseph I. Ungar of “Primer,” Beyond Bias 1994.

  879 “By airing Beirut to Bosnia”: Laibson to Hendriks, 16 June 1994.

  879 to claim that we had edited an interview: Safian to Bunting, 9 June 1994.

  879 “absurd and demonstrably wrong”: Dutfield to Tomi Landis, Discovery executive producer, 19 June 1994.

  879 “given the reaction to the series”: Bunting to Chrissie Smith of Baraclough Carey Productions, 28 March 1995.

  886 “in terms of equipment”: Los Angeles Times, 9 May 1986, “Strike a Success.”

  886 “a piece of the action”: Washington Post, 16 April 1986.

  886 “It was the greatest thrill”: Chicago Tribune, 16 April 1986, “Missing Jet Reportedly Fell in Sea.”

  Chapter Twenty-two: The Die Is Cast

  890 “where every day, fiction is spun”: International Herald Tribune, 4 October 2003, “When the Politicians Outdo the Artists,” by Frank Rich, reprinted from the New York Times.

  898 according to eighteen of the prisoners: See International Herald Tribune, 27 March 2002, “Failure to communicate: 30 captive Afghans turn out to be U.S. allies,” by John Ward Anderson, reprinted from the Washington Post.

  (n.) 899 between 3,000 and 3,400 civilians were killed in Afghanistan: Professor Marc W. Herold, A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A ComprehensiveAccounting (Revised), March 2002 (http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths .htm); for specific reports in the American media, see, for example, International Herald Tribune, 2 July 2002, “Errant U.S. bomb said to kill scores” (drawing on AP and Reuters dispatches) on the Uruzgan wedding bombing and, more typically, International Herald Tribune, 11 February 2002, “Afghan toll of civilians is lost in the fog of war: Families demand a reckoning for hundreds killed,” by Barry Bearak, Eric Schmitt and Craig S. Smith, originally published in the New York Times.

  (n.) 904 a remarkable account of al-Qaeda’s order of battle: Ahmed Zeidan Bin Laden Blaqna (Bin Laden Unmasked) (Beirut: World Book Publishing, 2003).

  914 “We all knew it was a job we had to do”: Interview with Captain Ali Nasr, Port Said, Egypt, 22 October 1986.

  915 “Hit, hit hard and hit now”: Scott Lucas, Divided We Stand, p. 142.

  915 The Times led the way: Shaw, Eden, Suez and the Mass Media , p. 57, quoting The Times, 27 August 1956, “Escapers” Club.”

  916 an attack on the right to speak out: Shaw, Eden, p. 58, quoting Manchester Guardian, 28 August 1956.

  916 “Clark worked in unison with the Times”: Shaw, Eden, p. 59.

  916 “The objection to the matter”: Ibid., quoting The Times , 1 September 1956, “Widening the Circle.”

  916 “was born of a marriage”: Love, Suez, p. 433.

  (n.) 916 According to Arye Biro: See Irish Times, 7 August 1995, “Egypt angry at admission of POW killings,” by David Horowitz; also L’Orient Le Jour (Beirut), 22 July 1995, “L’Armée Israelienne aurait abattu des prisonniers Egyptiens en 1956.”

  917 “It was a nightmare”: Interview with Mustafa Kamal Murad, Cairo, 18 October 1986.

  918 Several civilians were massacred: Love, Suez, p. 601.

  919 He claimed then that the British: Interview with Mohamed Mahran Othman, Port Said, Egypt, 21 July 1997.

  919 to treat his comrades for five more hours: NA AIR20/9577.

  919 “malicious mentality”: NA AIR20/10369.

  919 was to see bodies still unburied: Interview with Alex Eftyvoulos of Associated Press, Nicosia, 26 July 1997.

  (n.) 919 “interrogation of Prisoners of War”: NA WO288/51; “We have not extended our enquiries”: NA WO32/16345.

  921 “If we had allowed things to drift”: Love, Suez, p. 578.

  931 It was written not for the United States: For full text, se
e http://www.israeleconomy.org/ strat1.htm

  Chapter Twenty-three: Atomic Dog, Annihilator, Arsonist, Anthrax, Anguish and Agamemnon

  949 “If Providence does not intrude”: Pat Buchanan; see http://amconmag.com/2002_10_7/after_the_war.htm

  955 “Mosque attendance is rising”: Economist, 31 January 1998, “Iraq discovers religion: Battered by seven years of sanctions, Iraqis are turning to Islam. For his own reasons, Saddam is doing the same.”

  (n.) 972 It concluded that while the killings: Reporters Without Borders, Two Murders and a Lie: An Investigation by Jean-Paul Mari, January 2004.

  Chapter Twenty-four: Into the Wilderness

  1,032 bin Laden appears to admit: A privately made videotape disclosed by the Pentagon, 13 December 2001.

  1,032 Dream theories: See Iain R. Edgar’s “The Dream Will Tell: Militant Muslim Dreaming in the Context of Traditional and Contemporary Islamic Dream Theory and Practice,” published in Dreaming 14, no. 1, 2004.

  (n.) 1,032 anti-Islamic tracts: see Dr. Grace Heney, “Distorted Images: Anti-Islamic Propaganda at the time of the expulsion of the Moriscos,” published in Images des Morisques dans La Littérature et les Arts (Zaghoun, Tunisia: Fondation Termini pour la Recherche Scientifique et l’Information, April 1999).

  1,040 “It is true that we cannot”: Albert Camus, “Neither Victims nor Executioners” (New York: Liberation, 1960), p. 22. Camus’s essay was originally serialized in the French newspaper Combat in the autumn of 1946; the New York Liberation edition was subsequently reprinted by Ourside, Gloucestershire, 2005, in its original format.

  (n.) 1,037 It was the Israeli newspaper: Ma’ariv, 14 February 2002.

  1,040 “Justice itself tends”: T. S. Eliot writing on 28 January 1946 in the preface to The Dark Side of the Moon (London: Faber, 1946), p. 8.

  Select Bibliography

  THE FOLLOWING BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS are listed here as a guide for readers who want to follow up the story of Palestine, Israel, the Armenian Holocaust, Saddam’s regime, the Iranian revolution and its eight-year war with Iraq, the Algerian conflict, past and present, and the history of the modern Middle East—if indeed there is a “modern” Middle East. They are by no means comprehensive, and I disagree with some of their conclusions. Martin Gilbert’s volume on modern Israel, for example, lacks the unflinching academic impartiality of his magisterial history of the Jewish Holocaust. Details of Kanan Makiya’s work on the cruelty of Saddam’s Iraq have been questioned by several prominent scholars. David Fromkin’s wonderful analysis of the Middle East and the results of the 1914–18 war is marred by an exceptionally prejudiced section (Chapter 58) on the Palestinians. Moammar Ghadafi’s ghastly novel is included to represent the delusion of dictators—I have spared the reader Saddam’s own romantic epics. General Sir Peter de la Billière’s account of the 1991 Gulf War is pompous and frustrating—he won’t even tell his readers that his SAS men escaped via Syria—but there are some grim and disturbing references to the “anti-terrorist” war in the Gulf. The history of the 2003 Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq has dealt cruelly with Kenneth Pollack’s moralistic arguments for war; I’ve included The Threatening Storm to show just how specific—and misleading—were the efforts to persuade Americans to invade.