Eavesdrop on any gathering of Middle East correspondents huddled by the poolside of the Hamra Hotel in Baghdad or enjoying a late supper at Cairo’s Greek Club and the name Robert Fisk will inevitably enter the conversation. For three decades the reporter and author has energetically criss-crossed the Arab world and beyond, generating respect and loathing in equal measure from his colleagues and readers.
For some Fisk is the apologist for every dictator and fanatic from Belgrade to Bagram, a prophet of doom with a giant ego who blames all the region’s ills on American arrogance, Israeli conspiracies and Western meddling. To his supporters Fisk is the award-winning journalist who has defied the neo-cons and America’s Jewish lobby and risked his life repeatedly to stand up for the region’s downtrodden and dispossessed.
Whatever your view no one would doubt Fisk’s eloquence. He is not a great Arabic linguist, nor does he possess the keenest insight into the region’s politics. Often he allows his imagination to run away with a story or his partisan views to cloud its objectivity. But he can bring to life people and places caught up in conflicts about whom many in the West know little and would otherwise care less. His energy is remarkable. Approaching his 60th birthday, when most of his peers are considering retirement, he still turns up in Baghdad and other hotspots competing against reporters less than half his age.
So what to make of his gargantuan book that spans three continents, 90 years of conflict and 30 years of reporting? The most obvious reflection is that it is far too big and unwieldy. Were it dropped from one of Fisk’s hated US bombers it would flatten an entire Afghan village.
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