Robert Fisk

Profile: Full name: Robert Fisk Area of interest: Foreign affairs, politics (esp. Middle East affairs) Journals/Organisation: The Independent Email: r.fisk@independent.co.uk Personal website: Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk Blog: Networks: https://twitter.com/#!/therobertfisk | Facebook

Biography: About: Education: Lancaster University: BA in English Literature; Trinity College, Dublin: PhD in Political Science (title of his doctoral thesis was "A condition of limited warfare: Eire’s neutrality and the relationship between Dublin, Belfast and London, 1939–1945) Career: Newcastle Evening Chronicle; Sunday Express: worked on the diary column; The Times: Belfast correspondent, 1972/75, correspondent in Portugal (covering the aftermath of the 1974 revolution), Middle East correspondent, 1976/1988); The Independent: Middle East correspondent, 1989- see career (Wikipedia) Current position/role: Middle East correspondent (based in Beirut) also writes/has written for: Other roles/Main role: Author Other activities: Disclosures: Viewpoints/Insight: Robert Fisk on Shakespeare and war The Independent, 30th March 2007 BBC News: Viewpoint: UK war reporter Robert Fisk 3rd December 2005 (interview) Broadcast media: Video: YouTube Alternative Radio: Archived Programs Controversy/Criticism: The curious case of the forged biography The Independent, 1st February 2008 Awards/Honours: see awards (Wikipedia) Scoops: Other:

Books & Debate: The Point of No Return: The Strike which Broke the British in Ulster (1975) OCLC 1925410 In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939-1945 (1983) OCLC 9282893 Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (1990) OCLC 22764853 The Great War for Civilisation - The Conquest of the Middle East (2005) OCLC 60401821 Latest work: The Age of the Warrior: selected essays (2008) OCLC 183146519 Speaking/Appearances: ZNet collection of global speaking engagements RSA lecture 'The Age of the Warrior' (MP3 archive) Debate:

The Independent: Column name: Robert Fisk's World Remit/Info: Comment and reportage of Foreign affairs, politics (esp. Middle East affairs) Section: Role: Foreign correspondent Pen-name: Email: r.fisk@independent.co.uk Website: Independent.co / Robert Fisk Commissioning editor: Day published: Saturday (plus occasional other days) Regularity: Weekly Column format: Average length:

Articles: 2012 Must we stand idly by while world leaders spout this codswallop? - Even Churchill told the Empire that Britain would 'not stand by idly and see Poland trampled' - 14th May Arab Spring has washed the region's appalling racism out of the news - The Long View: Migrant workers from the subcontinent often live eight to a room in slums – even in oil-rich Kuwait - 7th May Did Osama really believe I would polish his image? - He should have spent more time watching his contact messenger and the drones overhead - 4th May After the Arab Spring, an Islamic Awakening? - Surely the doors of Islamic perception may now swing open in the Arab world - 28th April The Children of Fallujah - the hospital of horrors - Stillbirths, disabilities, deformities too distressing to describe - what lies behind the torments in Fallujah hospital? - 27th April Iraq's road back from oblivion - Memories of sectarian war, kidnapping and child killing are fading. It is safer. But nine years since Saddam's fall, Robert Fisk meets many who feel they have lost their homeland - 24th April This is politics not sport. If drivers can't see that, they are the pits - Supposing it was Assad shelling out £40m for a race. Would Ecclestone be happy to give him a soft sporting cover for his repression? - 21st April Counter-revolution – the next deadly chapter - Bahrain is crushing dissent. Syria is crushing dissent. Mubarak's former head of intelligence is standing for president in Egypt - 21st April The Baghdad street of books that refuses to die - Here you get a feeling of what is going on in the mind of an educated Baghdadi, who still walks a road that you could get killed on five years ago - 14th April Shot in the heart - the journalist Assad made into a martyr - Mourners demand answers over fate of cameraman killed on the Lebanese border - 12th April Under siege but vicar of Baghdad is still spreading the word - Andrew White, the Anglican Chaplain to Iraq, supported the US invasion - 7th April Watch us lead the UN donkey up the Khyber - What happens to the Afghans? The women? The schools? The bridges? The Taliban know we are leaving - 31st March On Lebanon's border, silent Syrians are flocking to an unknown future - Our writer visits a village where families flee Assad's wrath - 30th March Living on the edge of Syria's bloody war - As Assad's troops fire shots across the border into Lebanon, the nation's religious factions remain bitterly divided on how to tackle their neighbour from hell: President Assad - 29th March When did we stop caring about meaning? - Is our writing getting worse? I've made no secret that I suspect the internet and text messaging have damaged literacy - 24th March Madness is not the reason for this massacre - I'm getting a bit tired of the "deranged" soldier story. It was predictable, of course - 17th March Condemn me, but get your facts right first - Last time I faced this sort of filth, it came from the actor John Malkovich - 10th March The fearful realities keeping the Assad regime in power - Nevermind the claims of armchair interventionists and the hypocrisy of Western leaders, this is what is really happening in Syria - 4th March War reporting: The heroic myth and the uncomfortable truth - Robert Fisk has risked his life to 'witness history'. But after almost four decades, he feels ambivalent towards his profession - 3rd March Jailed in Geneva - the colonel who stood up against Mubarak, but refused to spy for the Swiss - His defence of Christian Copts made him a thorn in the side of Egypt's regime. But when he fled, Colonel Ghanem found himself in an equally dangerous game. After six years in prison, he tells his story - 2nd March The regime calls it 'cleaning', but the dirty truth is plain to see - The word being used by Syria is a chilling one - 1st March The new Cold War has already started – in Syria - The new Cold War in the region which Hague was blathering on about has already started over Syria, not Iran - 25th February If only Hague and Clinton would listen to Yusuf Islam - Robert Fisk sees Cat Stevens thrill an audience in Beirut and give his verdict on a Wild World - 22nd February Tewfik Mishlawi: I've lost a good, brave, honourable friend - Tewfik Mishlawi was the first Palestinian to report for The Times - 18th February Could there be some bad guys among the rebels too? - John McCain backed the good guys in Libya, who are now keenly torturing their opponents to death - 11th February John McCarthy knows the value of history - John McCarthy's interest in history – and getting it right – is admirable - 11th February From Washington this looks like Syria's 'Benghazi moment'. But not from here - Look east and what does Bashar see? Iran standing with him and Iraq refusing to impose sanctions - 7th February An attack on Tehran would bemadness. So don't rule it out - After invading Iraq over weapons of mass destruction, we plan to clap as Israel bombs Iran - 4th February The present stands no chance against the past - The political heirs of 'deeply racist traditions' are the new champions of the Jewish state - 28th January We've been here before – and it suits Israel that we never forget 'Nuclear Iran' - The Ayatollah ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was the work of the devil - 25th January Fragments of history rescued from oblivion - There are statements on the Bismarck, although contemporary reports got the story wrong - 21st January The 'invented people' stand little chance - Thank goodness we don't have to hear Newt Gingrich for a while - 14th January This is not about 'bad apples'. This is the horror of war - How many other abuses took place off camera? How many Hadithas? How many My Lais? - 13th January Assad faces his people's hatred - But as their anger grows, his excuses are still just the same - 11th January The shocking truth that killing can be so casual - International law doesn’t stop us from turning others into Nazis - 7th January

Articles: 2011 France's shamefully forgotten allies - It took Indigènes to remind the French that they owed their liberation not only to De Gaulle's largely white Free French troops - 31st December Turkey's long road to reconciliation - I've just completed 21 interviews on the Armenian genocide - 24th December The adventures of Tintin in Beirut - Why were posters for Spielberg’s Tintin blacked out in Beirut? - 17th December Bankers: Dictators of the West - I have never read so much garbage, so much utter drivel, as I have about the world financial crisis - 10th December Phoenician footprints all over Beirut - I walked down a Phoenician street the other day, built under Persian rule - 3rd December Back to Tahrir Square - When they massed to call for the fall of Mubarak, Egypt's protesters were filled with hope. Now they are disillusioned with the army they trusted – but just as angry as ever - 2nd December Sanctions are only a small part of the history that makes Iranians hate the UK - It's a weird irony that Iranians know the history of Anglo-Persian relations better than the Brits - 30th November A glimpse of real democracy – but it may be too good to be true - The cops and soldiers were on the streets of Cairo again ... ignored by the queues outside polling stations - 29th November Why torturers film their handiwork - When prisoners were brought to Saddam Hussein's intelligence service for interrogation, their torturers often videotaped the torment - 26th November Exile dreams of a bloodless return after a life spent opposing Assad regime - Opposition leader Khaled Khoja tells our writer in Istanbul why revenge is not on the table - 25th November Ukraine, 1942. What are we seeing? - In 1942, in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, a Polish postal official working for the resistance opened a letter sent by a German soldier to his family - 19th November Arab Spring has given Turkey a voice. Don't mess with it - Turkey is angry over the Syrian failure to apologise for an attack on the Turkish embassy - 18th November Assad will only go if his own tanks turn against him - Predictions of Syrian leader's imminent demise are hopelessly optimistic - 15th November Arab League's 'roar' at Syria shows how tiny Qatar is starting to flex its muscle - The once pathetic group has now got the clout to stand up to Damascus - 14th November Will computers make extinct the last of Islam's proud and honourable calligraphers? - Calligraphy is an Islamic rather than a mere Arabic form of art, partly because Muslims disapprove of the human image in religious work - 12th November Do those who flaunt the poppy on their lapels know that they mock the war dead? - Heaven be thanked the soldiers of the Great War cannot return today to discover how their sacrifice has become a fashion appendage - 5th November Al Jazeera - 15 years in the headlines - The Qatar-based channel has become the world's best-known – and most influential – source of news from the Middle East - 2nd November What the killing of Gaddafi means to Syria - Two days before Gaddafi was murdered, I was reading the morning newspapers in Beirut and discovered a remarkable story on most front pages - 29th October Syria slips towards war - Stories of killings in Homs are reinforcing support for Assad in Damascus - 27th October Assad's army remains defiant as it buries its dead - Syrian officers told me 1,150 soldiers have been killed in Syria in the past seven months - 26th October Assad, his raids on Lebanon, and Syria's slow slip into civil war - In Damascus, the regime presents a picture of vast rallies of support. But as tensions rise on the nation's borders, cracks are showing. In Beirut, Robert Fisk peers behind the propaganda - 17th October Great War secrets of the Ottoman Arabs - Forgotten soldiers. We all know about Gallipoli; hopelessly conceived mess, dreamed up by Churchill to move the Great War from the glued trenches of France to a fast-moving invasion of Germany's Ottoman allies in 1915 - 15th October Democratic governments don't deal with terrorists – until they do - In three decades, the Israelis have freed 7,000 prisoners in return for 19 Israeli prisoners - 13th October Violence shows uneasy place of minorities after Arab Spring - Egypt is no stranger to religious tensions – but where do Christians fit into its revolution? - 11th October The never-ending war against cliché and jargon - Asked to give a talk on the Middle East last week, I read on my invitation: "We want to bring visionaries, innovators, doers, funders, connectors, and their community into one space...With all of these people gathered into one space, it's inevitable that sparks will happen, ideas will find momentum, and positive change will take [sic] birth." - 1st October Palestine, yes, but Israelis draw the line at Jerusalem - Mahmoud Abbas's call for a return to the 1967 border cuts through the heart of the 'eternal capital' - 27th September Prayers, taunts and weary resignation in Jerusalem - The Palestinians have watched the US acceptance of Israeli occupation for 44 years - 24th September A President who is helpless in the face of Middle East reality - Obama's UN speech insists Israelis and Palestinians are equal parties to conflict - 23rd September Dreams of a helpful US keep Palestinians hoping - With two days to go before the UN statehood vote, some are celebrating already - 22nd September Why the Middle East will never be the same again - The Palestinians won't achieve statehood, but they will consign the 'peace process' to history - 20th September German U-boats refuelled in Ireland? Surely not - Never a man to neglect a good tale, I return to that old saw about German U-boats refuelling in neutral Ireland. Not because I believe it – I spent much of my PhD thesis on Ireland in the Second World War disproving it. But because a reader has sent me a fascinating account of his dad's war service as an SOE recruit - 17th September Bin Laden's haunting last words, a decade after 9/11 - Al-Qa'ida anniversary video reveals a weakened and inept group with a decaying ideology - 14th September New light on an old horror – and still there is no justice - On Wednesday morning, 14 April 1909, British Vice Consul Major Charles Doughty-Wylie set off to the Turkish city of Adana after receiving a letter from his dragoman – his Turkish translator, a man called Trypani – saying that "there was a very dangerous feeling in that town, threats had been freely offered, there were some murders..." - 10th September It's not the brutality that is 'systematic'. It's the lying about it - Not long after Baha Mousa had been arrested and beaten to death, a British officer came to his father's home and offered cash by way of saying sorry - 9th September Lies we still tell ourselves about 9/11 - Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? - 3rd September Algeria sends the West a message by taking in Gaddafi's brood - Neighbour thinks the Libyan revolution gathered Western support because the land is so rich in oil - 31st August Prosecuting war crimes? Be sure to read the small print - It's good to see bad guys behind bars. Especially if they're convicted. Justice is better than revenge - 27th August History repeats itself, with mistakes of Iraq rehearsed afresh - With Gaddafi at large, a guerrilla war eroding the new powers is inevitable - 25th August How long before the dominoes fall? - The West is offering lessons in democracy to New Libya; how to avoid the chaos we ourselves inflicted on the Iraqis - 23rd August How long does it take before justice is irrelevant? - A great storm blew across Europe in 1993 and even the trees of Treblinka were torn out by their roots. The Nazis had destroyed their death camp before the arrival of the Red Army almost half a century earlier, scattering the remains of hundreds of thousands of their Jewish victims - 20th August It's his fast-disappearing billions that will worry Assad, not words from Washington - Nearly 10 per cent of Syria's deposits went in the first four months of 2011, some ending up in Lebanese banks - 19th August The immortality of a great, if flawed, historian - How many of the Nato admirals fighting the beast of Tripoli realise the origin of their title? - 13th August This slaughter will end only when words of condemnation are acted on - Dictator of Damascus will continue his bloody reign until he is stopped - 9th August The city and its workers that first took on Mubarak - The Egyptian cotton city of Mahallah hides its political lessons well - 6th August Once untouchable, the old despot and his sons faced the wrath of the nation they had terrorised - This was a moment when a country proved not only that its revolution was real, but that its victims were real - 4th August Egypt awaits first trial of an Arab Spring dictator - Former president Hosni Mubarak is charged with corruption and the killing of protesters - 3rd August Egypt's revolutionary youth are being sidelined - Revolution betrayed. The Egyptian army now colludes with the hated Muslim Brotherhood - 2nd August The Arab world's dictators cling on, but for how long? - Ever a weathervane of passing fortunes, Walid Jumblatt has begun to make some very pessimistic comments about Syria - 30th July Heard the one about the child and the blood money? - The book bazaar stands just opposite the main gates of Tehran University, a line of "libraries" of Persian poetry, American obstetrics manuals, English literature and novels translated from Russian, French and Italian authors - 23rd July Now the Arab Spring becomes an Arab Summer - Syrians shot down in the streets across the country, tanks surrounding the major cities of Syria, soldiers killing unarmed, largely Sunni Muslim demonstrators as the authorities protest that "armed gangs" are themselves killing troops - 16th July In Tahrir Square the anger is growing again - Mubarak may be gone, but the new order is floundering and people still demand change - 12th July Why I had to leave The Times - When he worked at The Times, Robert Fisk witnessed the curious working practices of the paper's proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. Despite their jocular exchanges, the writer knew he couldn't stay... 11th July A dictator's trial that even his enemies questioned - How do you defend a dictator who's been around for years and years and years when he's accused of – well, being a dictator for years and years and years? - 9th July The new focus of Syria's crackdown - In February 1982, President Hafez al-Assad's army stormed into the ancient cities - 6th July How Iran wages its own global 'war on terror' - The Iranians know how to do these things - 2nd July First the Syrians, then the Iranians, then the Libyans were the expedient culprits - At first, it was the horrible Syrians. Since the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri wanted the remainder of Syria's military rabble out of Lebanon, it must have been the Syrians who did it. Syria's "friends" in Lebanon – security agents who should have been able to keep Hariri alive if they had wanted to – were arrested - 1st July Iran's war games go underground - The Iranians doctored a photograph of a missile which in reality plunged to the desert floor - 29th June Demise of an adviser could bring down Ahmadinejad - A corruption row engulfing the Iranian President's inner circle may be his undoing - 28th June Words of wisdom from an Irish Renaissance man - To Monaghan, then, with its narrow sun-flashed lanes and petrol smugglers and hidden lakes and the North's wind farms on the horizon and the driver telling me that Patrick Kavanagh came from here and me, tired and irritable after the flight from Beirut, saying yes I know that, and then infuriated when the man adds that he's never read anything by the fellah - 25th June No wonder they were rioting in Damascus. This was insulting both to the living and to the dead - the reality behind Bashar al-Assad's address to the nation - 21st June I saw these brave Bahraini doctors trying to save lives – these charges are a pack of lies - Eyewitness: Bahrain didn't invite the Saudis to send their troops; the Saudis invaded and received a post-dated invitation - 14th June Swat the flies and tell the truth – live on al-Jazeera - 'This is al-Jazeera." The familiar "jib shot" as the boom swings the camera down from the height of the studio, and there is Sami Zeidan or David Foster or Darren Jordan or Nick Clark or Ghida Fakhry - 11th June The people vs The President - Syria in turmoil as resistance turns to insurrection - 8th June The dumping ground for despots welcomes another - We haven't weaned ourselves off the little Hitlers of the Middle East - 7th June Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says? - The Arab world is turning its back on a president who has shown himself to be weak in his dealings with the Middle East - 30th May A tale from the frontline of Palestinian protest - 28th May Uneasy times in Lebanon as Syrian revolt simmers - If you want to discover the truth about Tripoli, you have only to visit the castle of Saint Gilles - 21st May Lots of rhetoric – but very little help - Then we had to hear what America's 'role' was going to be in the new Middle East. We did not hear if the Arabs wanted them to have a role - 20th May Fine words may not address Middle East's real needs - In a keynote speech today, Barack Obama will try to redefine America's relationship with the Arab world - 19th May Why no outcry over these torturing tyrants? - Christopher Hill, a former US secretary of state for east Asia who was ambassador to Iraq – and usually a very obedient and un-eloquent American diplomat – wrote the other day that "the notion that a dictator can claim the sovereign right to abuse his people has become unacceptable" - 14th May Truth and reconciliation? It won't happen in Syria - 7th May Is Shane Bauer really an enemy of Iran? - The journalist, a fearless defender of the Middle East's dispossessed, is about to go on trial in Tehran for alleged espionage - 6th May The al-Qa'ida leader knew he was a failure. Now US has turned him into martyr - The West has taught a different lesson to the people of the Middle East: that executing opponents is perfectly acceptable - 5th May If this is a US victory should its forces go home now? - We long ago lost the plot in the graveyard of empires - 4th May A close encounter with the man who shook the world - One hot evening in late June 1996, the telephone on my desk in Beirut rang with one of the more extraordinary messages I was to receive as a foreign correspondent - 3rd May Bin Laden died a failure, outstripped by history - The mass revolutions in the Arab world this year mean that al-Qa’ida is already politically dead - 3rd May I may need 'space' to get over this linguistic crime - Artists use it; office managers use it; architects and journalists and incomprehensible academics use it - 30th April If the rumours and conspiracies are true, then President Assad's regime is on the road to civil war - If the dead soldiers are victims of revenge killings, it means the opposition is prepared to use force - 27th April Shifting blame to Lebanon may be the method in Assad's madness - Many Arabs were appalled that Mr Obama would apparently try to make cheap propaganda over the tragedy - 25th April But what if the spirit of rebellion spread to Iran? - there's a non-Arab country with a very big stake in this extraordinary history - 23rd April Every concession makes the President more vulnerable - Every dictator knows that, when he starts making concessions, he is at his most vulnerable - 23rd April Can Assad do what it takes to cleanse his regime? - There are those in Syria who say it is over, there is nothing the President can do - 20th April A legacy of light from the sorrow of death - There are some individual things in life so terrible, so unspeakable, so hideous that ordinary language no longer works - 16th April The Arab awakening - It began not in Tunisia this year, but in Lebanon in 2005 - 15th April Let the images of war speak for themselves - I hate being called a war reporter. Firstly, because there is an unhappy flavour of the junkie about it. Secondly, because you cannot report a war without knowing the politics behind it - 2nd April The Arab Spring stops here - While Syria's protesters demand freedom, the President has a stark message for his people - 31st March Ottoman adventures hold lessons for our leaders - Amid the fury of the Arab awakening – not to mention our own deepening crisis over Libya – old Constantinople is a tonic - 26th March Right across the Arab world, freedom is now a prospect - From the mildewed, corrupted dictatorships is emerging a people reborn. Not without bloodshed and violence. But now at last, the Arabs can hope to march into the bright sunlit uplands - 22nd March Remember the civilian victims of past 'Allied' bombing campaigns - People such as Raafat al-Ghosain are often tragically forgotten in the fog of air attacks - 21st March First it was Saddam. Then Gaddafi. Now there's a vacancy for the West's favourite crackpot tyrant - Gaddafi is completely bonkers, a crackpot on the level of Ahmadinejad and Lieberman - 19th March Palestinians understand Gaddafi better than we do - To Beirut. Storms. Heavy rain. Seas sweeping over the little port by my home - 12th March The Tunisian whose jihad was for the people, not God - The second Arab awakening of modern history – the first was the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire – requires some new definitions, perhaps even some new words in at least the English language - 5th March The historical narrative that lies beneath the Gaddafi rebellion - Poor old Libyans. After 42 years of Gaddafi, the spirit of resistance did not burn so strongly. The intellectual heart of Libya had fled abroad - 3rd March The destiny of this pageant lies in the Kingdom of Oil - The Middle East earthquake of the past five weeks has been the most tumultuous, shattering, mind-numbing experience in the history of the region since the fall of the Ottoman empire - 26th February Gaddafi raved and cursed, but he faces forces he cannot control - So he will go down fighting. That's what Muammar Gaddafi told us last night, and most Libyans believe him - 23rd February Cruel. Vainglorious. Steeped in blood. And now, surely, after more than four decades of terror and oppression, on his way out? - Muammar Gaddafi, tyrant of Tripoli - 22nd February These are secular popular revolts – yet everyone is blaming religion - Our writer, who was in Cairo as the revolution took hold in Egypt, reports from Bahrain on why Islam has little to do with what is going on - 20th February Dark humour in a time of dictatorship - In an old and rather tatty gift shop in the Zamalek district of Cairo this week, I asked the owner if he had a photograph of Saad Zaghloul for sale. No sooner said than done - 19th February Three weeks in Egypt show the power of brutality – and its limits - As he leaves Cairo, Robert Fisk reflects on the lessons of an extraordinary uprising for protesters and police alike - 16th February Is the army tightening its grip on Egypt? - 14th February Full circle on Tahrir Square as history comes in gulps - Fresh from Northern Ireland and the aftermath of the Portuguese revolution, I arrived in the Middle East in June of 1976, and turned up in Cairo to cover one of Lebanon's interminable civil war ceasefire negotiations - 12th February A tyrant's exit. A nation's joy - They sang. They laughed. They cried. Mubarak was no more - 12th February As Mubarak clings on... What now? - Fury of a people whose hopes were raised and then dashed - 11th February Hypocrisy is exposed by the wind of change - So when the Arabs cry out for the very future that Obama outlined, we show them disrespect - 10th February Week 3, day 16, and with every passing hour, the regime digs in deeper - Our writer sees Cairo's protesters rally again in Tahrir Square - 9th February Exhausted, scared and trapped, protesters put forward plan for future - On a day of drama and confusion in Cairo, opponents of the Mubarak regime propose a new kind of politics - 5th February Egyptians marched together with one goal - Secular and devout. Rich and poor. They came in their hundreds of thousands singing - 2nd February Egypt: Death throes of a dictatorship - Our writer joins protesters atop a Cairo tank as the army shows signs of backing the people against Mubarak's regime - 30th January Egypt's day of reckoning - Mubarak regime may not survive new protests as flames of anger spread through Middle East - 28th January A new truth dawns on the Arab world - Palestinian papers put region in revolutionary mood - 26th January Tombs that bear witness to Algeria's Jewish tragedy - "Do you want to see the Israelite graves?" the security guard asked me - 22nd January The brutal truth about Tunisia - Bloodshed, tears, but no democracy. Bloody turmoil won’t necessarily presage the dawn of democracy - 17th January Some people will do anything to avoid blame - I am no happy reader of Canada's National Post, but am driven to report to you that a recent graph in the paper suggests that "the term 'Palestinian' became popularised as a marker of identity after the Six Day War of 1967" - 15th January Lebanon: a nation haunted by the murder of Hariri - Soldiers, soldiers everywhere. And targeting Hezbollah could create a new crisis - 14th January The forgotten martyrdom of Algeria's reporters - How quickly we forget the murder of colleagues - 8th January Bombs make no moral distinctions where they fall - To Mannheim for its annual film festival and I am gripped by Armadillo, a documentary on a Danish NATO unit in Afghanistan, real bullets whizzing past one of the bravest directors of photography in the world, real soldiers falling wounded, one with a Wilfred Owen pallour of death on his face - 1st January

Articles: 2010 The tragedy of Algeria's 'disappeared' - Algeria is hailing half a century of freedom from French rule. But what followed left its own scars - 20th December Stay out of trouble by not speaking to Western spies - Almost 30 years ago, a British diplomat asked me to lunch in Beirut - 18th December Why can't a Palestinian woman tell her own story? - Ypres and Palestine, the Jewish Holocaust and Iraqi Kurdistan - 11th December Qatar's the star – and Washington is worried - Latest cables show that the emirate's growing power is seen as a threat elsewhere - 8th December Survival of the neutral - Ireland's Second World War - On 11 November 1939, Irish diplomat Francis Cremins cabled home to Dublin from neutral Switzerland that his host country was taking steps to strengthen its defences against air attack. "I am told that at Berne ... the view prevails that this country need not feel too anxious so long as Italy refrains from entering the war on the German side." - 4th December 2010 Now we know. America really doesn't care about injustice in the Middle East - Leaked US diplomatic literature proves that the mainstay of Washington's Middle East policy is alignment with Israel - 30th November Egypt's election magic turns the opposition almost invisible - Mubarak's campaign workers hand out meat and beatings - 29th November Oceans of blood and profits for the mongers of war - Since there are now three conflicts in the greater Middle East; Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/"Palestine" and maybe another Lebanese war in the offing, it might be a good idea to take a look at the cost of war - 27th November The man who dares to take on Egypt's brutal regime - Despite beatings and corruption, Ayman Nour still hopes for change. Robert Fisk meets him ahead of new polls - 25th November An American bribe that stinks of appeasement - In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter's reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else's property would be regarded as preposterous - 20th November Canberra, Ankara and other 'fake' capitals - Just up behind my Beirut home is a narrow, shady laneway called Makhoul Street. And in Makhoul Street, there is a small shop with a rusting door behind which an Armenian sells ancient postcards of Beirut - 13th November How Lebanon can't escape shadow of Hariri's murder - Five years after former PM was killed, rising sectarian tensions and teetering government are threatening new conflict - 12th November Only justice can bring peace to this benighted region - The speed with which the Baghdad church massacre by al-Qa'ida has frightened the peoples of the Middle East is a sign of just how fragile is the earth's crust beneath their feet - 6th November Lebanon and Iran make uneasy bedfellows - I think it should be a Beirut Diary this week. Deep background, you understand. The truth. Believe me, it is - 30th October The changing map of the Middle East - A Christian flight of Biblical proportions has begun - 26th October The shaming of America - Robert Fisk on the revelations that expose the brutality of war in Iraq - and the astonishing deceit of the US - 24th October They're trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge again - Refusing to buy The Wall Street Journal, I sometimes sneak a look at copies that are left behind by other people - 23rd October Phantom oil deals and political murder - the real story behind Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent visit - 20th October What I learned the day I took tea with Ian Blair - Not long after the 34-day Hizbollah-Israel war in 2006 – in which Israel reached its now almost routine scorecard of killing about 1,300 Lebanese, most of them civilians (the Hizbollah killed 130 Israelis, most of them soldiers) – I received a long letter from a man called Blair - 16th October Israel comes face to face with Ahmadinejad - Lebanon's southern border hosted latest leg of Iranian president's provocative tour - 15th October Lebanon and Hizbollah ready to welcome Ahmadinejad - Iran's leader is coming to town in the hope of a propaganda victory - 13th October Injustice in three dimensions - I am now the proud owner of a wooden "Perfecscope". Do not, readers, Google - 9th October Grand old warbirds with a guilty past - Castle Air Force Base has a dark memory for a lady I meet in Fresno - 2nd October An artist who gave us life as it was lived - The Dutch Golden Age - 25th September Steam trains, relic of a bygone era that will outlast us all - The 10.50 from Dublin Connolly to Maynooth, No 186, a J-15 class 0-6-0 steam loco in spit-and-polish black livery, was born exactly 20 years before my father - 18th September Freedom, democracy and human rights in Syria - Ribal al-Assad gives Robert Fisk a rare insight into the dynasty that has shaped modern Syria - 16th September A man who lived by his word – and died by it - Most of the audience for my David Roberts lecture were Lebanese – not surprising, since this is the British-Lebanese Association – so I pulled out my old copy of the biography of David Roberts, Scottish lithographer, romantic, the man who brought the might as well as the detail of Egypt's and Lebanon's dynastic and Roman ruins to early 19th-century Britain Nine years, two wars, hundreds of thousands dead – and nothing learnt - Did 9/11 make us all mad? Our memorial to the innocents who died nine years ago has been a holocaust of fire and blood . . . - 11th September The truth about 'honour' killings - All this week, 'The Independent' has been highlighting a global scandal: the murder of thousands of women every year in the name of 'honour'. Here, Robert Fisk concludes a remarkable series of reports by reflecting on his findings - 10th September The crimewave that shames the world - It's one of the last great taboos: the murder of at least 20,000 women a year in the name of 'honour'. Nor is the problem confined to the Middle East: the contagion is spreading rapidly - 7th September On the trail of a dead British major in Vichy Lebanon - Search for the past - 4th September Blair should take responsibility for Iraq. But he won't. He can't This is not a debate, it's a bloody, blood-soaked disaster for which the former PM should take responsibility - 3rd September Battlefield stereotypes that were fed to young minds - In the late 1950s, my father would drop by Reynolds paper shop in Maidstone High Street to buy pipe tobacco for himself and comics for me - 28th August Even the little dog was not spared by Cromwell - To Saint Canice's, then, in the ancient city of Kilkenny, its ninth-century round tower still watching for Viking invaders, home of the forgotten Gaelic Irish-Old English Confederation, its citizens spared by Cromwell - 21st August The Iraq legacy: Torture. Civil war. Corruption - Its combat troops have gone, but America has certainly left its mark - 20th August Our language has a way of turning women into men - Gender politics - 14th August Butcher of Buchenwald in an Egyptian paradise - War criminals - 7th August An apology fatally devalued by the passage of 65 years - Robert Fisk reports on the day that America and Britain united with Japan to remember victims of Hiroshima - 7th August Israel-Lebanon tensions flare after skirmish leaves four dead - Can a tree start a Middle East war? It almost did yesterday - 4th August Israel has crept into the EU without anyone noticing - The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline. There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that's OK then - 31st July We should mourn these desert staging posts - So what, readers, is a "caravanserai"? - 24th July The Palestinian invasion - Robert Fisk on fears that Israeli plans for the West Bank – and US policy – could destroy the country - 22nd July They're all grovelling and you can guess the reason - Which brings us, of course, to the Grovel of the Week, the unctuous, weak-willed, cringing figure of Barack "Change" Obama - 17th July CNN was wrong about Ayatollah Fadlallah - I might have guessed it. CNN has fired one of its senior Middle East editors, Octavia Nasr, for publishing a twitter – or twatter in this case, I suppose – extolling Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah of Lebanon, calling him "one of Hizbollah's giants whom I respect a lot" - 10th July Return to the scene of a lynching - The killing of Mohamed Msallem shocked a nation. Two months on, Robert Fisk visited Ketermaya to find out what his death says about Lebanon - 6th July The bloody truth about the Battle of Britain 70 years on - The Battle of Britain is far more complex, ruthless and bloody than we often care to remember - 3rd July Newspeak: why the BBC has an 'issue' with problems - Rhetoric - 3rd July Syria's 30 years of fear - A grim report sheds light on the thousands of 'disappearances' during Hafez al-Assad's rule - 24th June Journalism as a linguistic battleground - Using terms such as ‘spike in violence’ is playing along with a pernicious game - 21st June German captains, U-boats and other lies about Ireland - By chance, I arrived in Dublin this week on the day that the Saville report on Bloody Sunday was published - 19th June The day the innocent became the guilty - We knew the First Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. 'Tough' was the word we used if the soldiers were beating up rioters. Brutal was the word we should have used - 16th June (Bloody Sunday: summary) The premier who thought Hitler was a 'Joan of Arc' - Wartime diaries - 12th June The truth behind the Israeli propaganda - I have, of course, been outraged at armed men boarding ships in international waters, killing passengers on board who attempt to resist and then forcing their ship to the hijackers' home port - 5th June West is too cowardly to help save lives - Can the Gaza War of 2008-09 (1,300 dead) and the Lebanon War of 2006 (1,006 dead) and all the other wars and now yesterday's killings mean that the world will no longer accept Israel's rule? - 1st June Remorse and redemption in a terrorist's mind - Letter from a prisoner - 29th May Russia: Middle East peace broker? - If America can't broker peace in the Middle East, is it time for the Russians to step in? They have a long history with the region – and aren't hobbled by an Israeli lobby - 27th May Tea with Bin Laden...and other stories - The Independent's distinguished Middle East correspondent recalls the culinary highs and lows of his career - 22nd May Beirut is determined to kill its rich Ottoman past - Destruction of history - 22nd May Silenced for speaking the truth about Guantanamo - I began my column last week with the words "We know all about Guantanamo". I was wrong - 15th May Arabs have their gulags too - How many readers of the Independent can name a single man imprisoned in the Arab gulags? - 8th May Afghanistan's ancient treasures must be saved - Over the door of the Kabul museum today is a Persian quotation: 'A nation stays alive when its culture and history are kept alive' - 1st May The luxury resort in the middle of a war zone - Under the gaze of the Israeli army, but protected by Lebanon, one man is building an extraordinary hotel - 27th April Churchill reckoned the Japanese preferred war-war to jaw-jaw - The advance down the coast of Malaya made steady progress and the British had insufficient forces there to stop it - 24th April I listen as a lost people tell of their woes in a kind of trance - These people speak with great and terrifying and justifiable anger - 17th April Hizbollah's silence over Scuds speaks volumes to Israel - Robert Fisk: Fears of conflict escalate as group refuses to discuss its arsenal with Jerusalem – or the Lebanese government - 16th April Malaya 1948: another shameful episode in Britain's colonial past - Some 24 innocent villagers were killed by Scots Guards in a pre-Vietnam My Lai - 10th April Spare me the academics who only want a 'safe, positive space' - I put my medium bomber squadron on alert to defend the English language - 3rd April Glossy new front in battle for hearts and minds - Once it was grainy video footage on websites. Now the Taliban believes its best chance of winning the propaganda war lies in a magazine - 2nd April Pakistan's advocates of justice - The top judge is again on a collision course with the country's political leaders, this time over corruption. Robert Fisk reports from Islamabad on the judiciary's battle to uphold due process and the rule of law - 1st April On the streets of Pakistan, it's as if the sun hasn't set on the Raj - Like everything else here, the bigger your cortège, the more important you are - 27th March As things get worse in Pakistan, the optimism continues to soar - Civilians have paid the price in revenge attacks that usually target the army - 20th March It really won't be the internet that wins it - Not a day now goes by without someone dubbing the coming election the e-election, the Twitter election, the Facebook election, the first British election that will be won or lost in the virtual world - 19th March The mysterious case of the Grey Lady of Bagram - How does a neuro- scientist and mother of three end up in jail as an al-Qa'ida agent? - 19th March Into the terrifying world of Pakistan's 'disappeared' - Robert Fisk meets the wife of one of 8,000 citizens who have gone 'missing' at the hands of the state - 18th March Try this reading list if you want to understand the Middle East - The greatest problem of writing historically is that the story has not ended - 13th March Living proof of the Armenian genocide - Evidence for Turkey's slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians is in an orphanage near Beirut - 9th March Once again, a nation walks through fire to give the West its 'democracy' - Democracy doesn't seem to work when countries are occupied by Western troops - 8th March The true eloquence of letters from the front - Is it their humanity, or fear, that spares real soldiers from the clichés of journalism? - 6th March Someone remembers this atrocity at last – to Obama's dismay - World Focus: Armenia - 6th March Mubarak's challenger can't rely on a fair race - World Focus: Opponents accuse ElBaradei of wanting to play Karzai in a new pro-American Egypt - 5th March Scenes from a busy Beirut correspondent's notebook - The Israeli police turn up to see what we are doing prowling on the Jewish Sabbath - 27th February An eventful, yet typical, day out with Our Man in Jerusalem - I haven’t been through this type of illusory world since the Lebanese civil war - 20th February It's time to come clean - Britain's explanation is riddled with inconsistencies. How could the Arabs pick up on a Mossad killing, if that is what it was? Well, we shall see - 18th February Passport to truth in Dubai remains secret - Whoever killed the Hamas official in Dubai – let's speak frankly – it's part of an old, dirty war between the Israelis and the Palestinians in which they have been murdering their secret police antagonists for decades - 17th February Arieli is a man with a plan. The trouble is, it's a map of Israel - How do you make sense of this place, with its weird Areas A, B and C? - 13th February State of denial: Robert Fisk searches for peace in Israel - Can peace in the Middle East really be achieved? - 11th February Gaza's defiant tunnellers head deeper underground - Robert Fisk meets the Palestinian smugglers bringing oranges, car batteries and bottle tops to a territory under siege - 10th February The presence of the Palestinian in the Israeli painter's eye - Many of the Tel Aviv paintings show an emergent Israel with fewer Arabs - 6th February Israel feels under siege. Like a victim. An underdog -Insecurity - and paranoia - at this week's Herzliya Conference about the state of Israel - 2nd February Tony Blair and his oh-so-clean conscience - 30th January (Iraq war inquiry) Israel can no longer ignore the existence of the first Holocaust - Recognition of the Armenian genocide is a paramount moral and educational act - 30th January Why does the US turn a blind eye to Israeli bulldozers? - Most of the West Bank is under rule which amounts to apartheid by paper - 30th January Concerns over safety of planes taking off in storms - An explosion in the sky – and Beirut's worst fears came true - 26th January The never-ending exodus of Christians from the Middle East - One of the oldest sects in the world is still fleeing sectarian violence for the West - 23rd January The tree-lined bunkers that could change the face of the Middle East - The border looks peaceful, but Hizbollah and Israel are preparing for war - 21st January The stakes get higher as Arab princes try to outdo each other - Do the Saudis not have the slightest idea of what is going on around them? - 16th January The stakes get higher as Arab princes try to outdo each other - Do the Saudis not have the slightest idea of what is going on around them? - 16th January Suicide as spectator sport – what does that say about us? - One guy bawled at the man on the crane. ‘Come on! Jump! I haven’t got all day!’ - 9th January US desire to be loved and feared has long misled CIA - The mystery is how Jordanian 'mole' could be of use in Afghanistan - 6th January Walls never work: in the Middle East or in Ireland - Israel’s illegal claim to West Bank Arab land is based on holy texts, not on a king’s fiat - 2nd January

Articles: 2009 Why did no imams plead for Akmal Shaikh's life? - From Cairo to Mecca, the Briton got a raw deal from his co-religionists - 30th December The silent cleric who holds the key to Iran's future - Iranian politics do not run on the supposedly Western principle of majority rule - 29th December (see: Iran: summary) If you think we can ignore these linguistic crimes, think again - My favourite is 'any', as in 'any passengers who may have been inconvenienced' - 19th December You can glimpse the divine in a carpet as in a cave - The rugs had blossoms and birds, leaves, deer, vast medallions and quotations from Hafiz - 12th December A glittering palace that's built on shifting sands - Robert Fisk finds Abu Dhabi's opulence undermined by the encroaching financial crisis - 11th December These Iranian troubadours show how music can corrupt the soul - I am old enough to remember Ruhollah Khomeini banning Mozart and Haydn - 5th December How the anti-Semites of Hizbollah have sent Anne Frank back into hiding - The Jewish Holocaust is not a subject which Arabs have learned to live with - 4th December This strategy has been tried before - without success - As Barack Obama plunges ever deeper into chaos, let us remember the British retreat from Kabul and its destruction in 1842 - 3rd December We're not taken in by luxury hotels' new green awareness - If you want clean towels, you’ve got to leave them on the floor like a peasant - 28th November India may hold whip hand in this power game - The biggest merchants in Dubai are Indian and they stand to gain as the emirate falters - 27th November Reasons for Alec Collett's death remain buried in Bekaa - World Focus: Even Gaddafi has been airbrushed from the body-recovery story - after all he is now our friend - 26th November Scars of the past reveal Britain's doomed empire in Hong Kong - By the time the British surrendered in 1941, thousands of civilians had been killed - 21st November Hatchets and hostages – the old days of Mao's revolution - Grey's experience is painfully similar to those of his later colleagues in Beirut - 14th November The Great War and words to remember - Poets and soldiers recorded the horror of the Great War in writing that has affected generations. But as English evolves in the digital age, will their powerful words soon stop making sense? - 11th November The German Lawrence of Arabia had much to live up to – and failed - The victors write the history, so Frobenius's adventures are today virtually unknown - 7th November America is performing its familiar role of propping up a dictator - As in Vietnam, Karzai is going to rule over an equally tiny island of corruption - 4th November The truth about the Middle East is buried beneath the headlines -News bureau chiefs in Cairo know who their local spies are but can’t dismiss them - 31st October Beirut's history can't be reduced to a mere 'heritage trail' - The Romans were here. The Crusaders were here, and then the Muslims came - 24th October End of an era for Lebanon's free press - Once a bastion of journalistic independence, Beirut's newspapers are losing their edge - 22nd October You don't need colour to see the full bloody horror of war - I took black-and-white pictures of the Bosnian war to bleed colour out of the world - 17th October The right photographer can strip a leader's power - Karsh of Ottawa was an arch man, not afraid to make his sitter into a clown or a chump - 10th October Genocide forgotten: Armenians horrified by treaty with Turkey - A new trade deal is set to gloss over the murder of 1.5 million people - 8th October A financial revolution with profound political implications - Such large financial movements will have major political effects in the Middle East - 7th October In a remote corner of China lies a tiny patch of Muslim freedom - I find a brace of outrageously polite children learning the Koran - 3rd October Israel should pay attention to criticism from its own people - They wouldn’t accept that the casualties of this war were disproportionate - 26th September Typhoon Sarah blows in - Robert Fisk witnesses the carnage as Alaska's former mom-in-chief touches down in Hong Kong - 24th September Everyone seems to be agreeing with Bin Laden these days - Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message that we’re losing Afghanistan - 19th September Not even a civil war could stop the old bookbinder of Beirut - Riyad is a man who gives context to this city in which I have lived these 33 years - 12th September Saddam revisited as Iraq accuses Syria of sheltering Baathist bombers - World Focus: In the Saddam-Hafez era, they hanged each other's bombers - 11th September Hidden secrets of a scandalous branch of the Fisk family tree - I didn’t like him a lot because I suspect my father grovelled to him - 5th September The curious case of the missing Egyptian and the Swiss police - Now here's a weird story from Cairo. Or rather from Geneva. Or wherever ex-Colonel Mohamed el-Ghanem, formerly a senior officer in the Egyptian interior ministry, happens to be - 29th August For the truth, look to Tehran and Damascus – not Tripoli - The welcome given to Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi in Tripoli was a perfect deviation from what the British Government is trying to avoid. It's called the truth, not that Mr Miliband would know much about it - 22nd August Democracy will not bring freedom - So they voted. But for what? Democracy? Yes, the Afghans wanted to vote. They showed great courage in the face of the Taliban's threats. But there's a problem - 21st August Why these deaths hit home as hard as the Somme - More than 200 soldiers dead in Afghanistan, and now Gordon Brown advises us that "the best way to honour their memory is to see the course through" - 18th August In praise of tea, the brew that powered Britain for centuries - Before tea, needless to say, millions of Brits warmed themselves with alcohol - 15th August Little has changed since the secretive days of the Suez crisis - It seems we really are going to have an Iraq inquiry. But I’m not holding my breath - 8th August Could Iran be plotting a Hizbollah offensive to take the heat off its leaders? - 4th August Gulf War legacy flares as 'stingy' Kuwait puts the squeeze on Iraq - Oil-rich state demands billions from Baghdad as dispute over border rages - 29th July Why does life in the Middle East remain rooted in the Middle Ages? - According to a UN report, the global improvement in living standards has passed much of the Arab world by - 28th July World Focus: As Iran protests go global, the regime reacts - Protest demonstrations over Iran's presidential election results spread across at least 80 cities in six continents this weekend – with one worrying sign for supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi in Tehran - 27th July Lessons in justice and fairness from a no-nonsense historian - He will go into the whole Middle East fiasco and come out fighting - 25th July Some lessons in sacrifice from Liverpool in two world wars - Were we made of ‘sterner stuff’, as my Dad would have said, in those days - 18th July The story of Baha Mousa - 'He was a decent guy. They didn't need to do that' - 12th July You won't find any lessons in unity in the Dead Sea Scrolls - I looked at the texts in Toronto – a tale that was bound to pose a series of questions - 11th July Tanks roll and guns fall silent, but the clichés go on for ever - Catholics are always ‘devout’, Protestants in Northern Ireland inevitably ‘staunch’ - 4th July The jury is out on the Iranian model of religion and politics - So what of the famous revolution? Was it a return to the basic values of Shia Islam? - 27th June (See: Iran: summary) Symbols are not enough to win this battle - It is indeed an 'intifada' that has broken out in Iran, however hopeless its aims - 23rd June The battle for the Islamic Republic - Robert Fisk: Iran's Supreme Leader and its officially elected president are terrified of counter-revolution - 21st June Khamenei is fighting for his own position as well as Ahmadinejad's - Is he worried about another clergyman who would like to be Supreme Leader? - 20th June The dead of Iran are mourned – but the fight goes on - Despite the intimidation, the appetite to overthrow Ahmadinejad remains strong - 19th June Secret letter 'proves Mousavi won poll' - The letter may well join the thousands of documents, real and forged, that have shaped Iran's recent history - 18th June Fear has gone in a land that has tasted freedom - Defying the ban on foreign reporters, The Independent's correspondent witnesses an extraordinary stand-off in Tehran - 17th June Iran's day of destiny - Fisk witnesses the courage of one million protesters who ignored threats, guns and bloodshed to demand freedom in Iran - 16th June Two sides to Iran's controversial winner - Ahmadinejad whips crowd to frenzy as Iran's opposition muzzled - 15th June Voters back 'the Democrator' - A smash in the face, a kick in the balls - that's how police deal with protesters after Iran's poll kept the hardliners in power - 14th June The world may be one but you need a visa to get around it - Rich countries give you tiny stamps while poorer ones plaster a whole page - 13th June Iran's old guard are poised to crush any hope of revolution - The West has no right to expect the polls to bring in radical change - 12th June A glimpse of Obama in a Cairo emptied of its people and its poor - The sight of POTUS was enough, a lithe, athletic figure by a dumpy little old lady - 6th June Words that could heal wounds of centuries - President Obama reaches out to the Islamic world in a landmark speech - 5th June (See: Decoding the President: what Obama's words really mean - Patrick Cockburn analyses the highlights of the much-anticipated – and carefully constructed – Cairo speech) Could it be al-Qa'ida is missing Bush? - Is the ever-smiling President Barack Obama beginning to stick in Osama bin Laden's craw? - 4th June Police state is the wrong venue for Obama's speech - Maybe Barack Obama chose Egypt for his "great message" to Muslims tomorrow because it contains a quarter of the world's Arab population, but he is also coming to one of the region's most repressed, undemocratic and ruthless police states - 3rd June Most Arabs know this speech will make little difference - I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear is that Obama will take his soldiers out of Muslim lands - 2nd June The mysterious case of the Israeli spy ring, Hizbollah and the Lebanese ballot - Spying is as familiar in Beirut as it was in post-war Vienna – there's even a giant "Third Man"-type ferris wheel here – but the events of the last few days are growing more mysterious by the hour - 1st June You don't need colour to tell the brutality of war – but it helps - French troops march to their deaths in red kepis, the British in brown uniforms - 30th May Biden's real mission is to stop Hizbollah - When Joe Biden came to town yesterday he was accused by Hizbollah of interfering in Lebanese domestic affairs. And I thought, they may be right - 23rd May When I look at the Pyramids, I wonder why I tire of Egypt - 23rd May The West awaits the return of friendly 'democrats' to Lebanon - The Hizbollah issue won’t go away any more than Hamas will go out of sight in Gaza - 16th May If every picture tells a story, what do they say to each other? - Years ago I framed a postcard of Archduke Ferdinand, posted in Vienna in 1914 - 9th May Civilians pay price of war from above - We shall be told the dead Afghan civilians were "human shields" and shall "deeply regret" innocent lives were lost - 7th May Right to the very end in Iraq, our masters denied us the truth - The sentence ‘millions of Iraqis now live free of oppression’ is pure public relations - 2nd May A historic day for Iraq - but not in the way the British want to believe - One hundred and seventy-nine dead soldiers. For what? 179,000 dead Iraqis? Or is the real figure closer to a million? We don't know. And we don't care. We never cared about the Iraqis - 1st May Is this the price of America's new friendship with Syria? - World Focus: Pro-Damascus generals held for the assassination that sparked turmoil in Lebanon walk free after four years - 30th April Obama falls short on Armenian pledge - It was clever, crafty – artful, even – but it was not the truth. For in the end, Barack Obama dishonoured his promise to his American-Armenian voters to call the deliberate mass murder of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 a genocide. How grateful today's Turkish generals must be - 28th April Everyone wants to be an author, but no one is reading books - Our dependency on computers is destroying our ability to ‘deep read’ - 25th April The wars come and go but the enemy remains the same - Note how the Taliban has now become conflated with al-Qa’ida - 18th April How can you trust the cowardly BBC? - The BBC Trust is now a mouthpiece for the Israeli lobby which abused Bowen - 16th April Another win that's too good to be true - At a supposed vote in his favour of 90.24 per cent, Abdul Aziz Bouteflika, the 72-year-old Algerian leader, anointed himself President for an unprecedented – and quite possibly unconstitutional – third term yesterday - 11th April Will Obama honour pledge on genocide of Armenians? - when the Obama cavalcade turned up in the heart of the old Ottoman Empire last night, he and all his panjandrums were praying that he did not have to use the "G" word - 6th April Now I've really lived. I've gone on a movie set and shouted 'Action!' - The film is about an honour killing in an Afghan village. I am on the road to Hollywood - 4th April Galloway a victim of Canada's baffling approach to fighting terror - How could the Canadian embassy in London have believed Mr Galloway's food and medicine shipment to Gaza, made with Israel's agreement, and its delivery to the Hamas government was a "terrorist" act, even if Stephen Harper's Canadian government regards Hamas as a "terrorist organisation" - 1st April A brave man who stood alone. If only the world had listened to him - I wish I had met Tom Hurndall, a remarkable man of remarkable principle - 28th March I told him I admired his refusal to sign the death sentences - The executioners messed up their work; at least one of the pair had to be throttled - 21st March Why Avigdor Lieberman is the worst thing that could happen to the Middle East - I can identify Lieberman's language with the language of Messrs Mladic and Karadzic and Milosevic - 18th March The West should feel shame over its collusion with torturers - I want to know why those complicit in Almalki’s ordeal are not tried in court - 14th March A Christian painter who could not see the light in Palestine - Holman Hunt appears to have been blind to the divisions within Jewish society - 7th March Examine the Pope's words, and there's only one thing to conclude - Benedict will demean other religions to prove Christianity’s ‘superiority’ - 28th February Obama was unconvinced by Bibi’s desire for peace - Mr Obama apparently found Bibi arrogant and unconvincing in his professed desire for peace with the Palestinians - 21st February It’s been 250 years, but war still rages on the Plains of Abraham - The Québecois just don’t want Wolfe to rest in peace. Maybe they should do what the French used to do at Waterloo: pretend that they won - 21st February A fair point: Everyone is equal in their suffering during wartime - The third and very final part of the "normality" of war - 14th Febraury I saw a mesmeric Islamic uprising turn to savagery - The fall of the Shah was an epic, a morality play or a Greek tragedy if he had been a truly great man rather than just another American satrap, complete with US fighter aircraft, a swamp of corrupt officials and a sadistic intelligence service - 10th February Iran: A nation still haunted by its bloody past - 11 February 1979: Ayatollah Khomeini ushered in a regime that was at once brutal and naive, provocative and dangerous - 8th February War reporters used to prefer morality over impartiality - I wonder whether we show the same power and passion as the earlier generations - 7th February When did we stop caring about civilian deaths during wartime? - The mere monitoring of bloody conflict assumes precedence over human suffering - 31st January Plots, sense and nonsense: the view from the post bag - A letter tells me that I am encouraging fundamentalist attacks on the West - 24th January So far, Obama's missed the point on Gaza... - It would have helped if Obama had the courage to talk about what everyone in the Middle East was talking about - 22nd January Posturing and laughter as victims rot - Mahmoud Abbas stepped further into humiliation by saying the only option for Arabs isto make peace with Israel - 20th January So, I asked the UN secretary general, isn't it time for a war crimes tribunal? - Mr Ban said it would not be up to him to launch a war crimes tribunal. It was pathetic - 19th January When it comes to Gaza, leave the Second World War out of it - How do Holocaust survivors in Israel feel about being called Nazis? - 17th January Wherever I go, I hear the same tired Middle East comparisons - On both sides of the Atlantic the experience has been weirdly repetitive - 10th January Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask - Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. What is amazing is that so many Western leaders bought the old lie; that Israelis take great care to avoid civilian casualties - 7th January Bring in the peacekeepers? It's not as easy as it sounds - Do I hear the braying of the UN donkey in Gaza? - 6th January Keeping out the cameras and reporters simply doesn't work - Israel's version of events has been given so much credence by the dying Bush administration that the ban on journalists entering Gaza may simply be of little importance to the Israeli army - 5th January The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act - Egyptians and Kuwaitis and Jordanians will be allowed to shout in the streets of their capitals – but then they will be shut down - 1st January What's in a name? Quite a lot, where the military is concerned - Churchill objected to names of a frivolous nature and banned Operation Bunnyhug - 3rd January

Articles: 2008 The self delusion that plagues both sides in this bloody conflict - Israel has never won a war in a built-up city, that's why threats of 'war to the bitter end' are nonsense - 31st December 2008 (see: 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict) Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony - How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza - 30th December 2008 (see: Ashkelon, modern history) Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored - We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis - 29th December 2008 How can anyone believe there is 'progress' in the Middle East? - A test of Obama’s gumption will come scarcely three months after his inauguration - 27th December 2008 One missing word sowed the seeds of catastrophe - No one in 1967 thought the Arab-Israeli conflict would still be in progress 41 years late - 20th December 2008 Back to Portugal, where once there was revolution in the air - Who knew when the Soviet menace would blow across the English Channel? - 13th December 2008 Whenever I'm in Tajikistan, my mobile phone says I'm in Dubai - Just look how we’ve forgotten the CIA’s secret prisons in Afghanistan - 6th December 2008 The British should not forget the massive debt they owe the Irish - Those long-dead soldiers were in the wrong uniform in the wrong war - 29th November 2008 'Nobody supports the Taliban, but people hate the government' - As he leaves Afghanistan, our correspondent reflects on a failed state cursed by brutal fundamentalism and rampant corruption - 27th November 2008 Kabul 30 years ago, and Kabul today. Have we learned nothing? - 'Terrorists' were in Soviet sights; now they are in the Americans' - 22nd November 2008 Once more fear stalks the streets of Kandahar - Five years after his last visit, our correspondent finds the Taliban back in charge of their spiritual home – and girls attacked with acid simply for attending school - 20th November 2008 There is no end to the centuries of savagery in Afghanistan - Geneva Conventions were supposed to end the mass destruction of human life - 15th November 2008 Double agents, car bombs and antics worthy of James Bond - A mystery visitor leads our man in Beirut to wonder what Syria was up to when it aired a mass confession on state TV - 13th November 2008 Obama has to pay for eight years of Bush's delusions - He will have to get out of Iraq, and tell Israel a few home truths - 8th November 2008 Arabs have to rely on Britain and Israel for their history - There is no Public Record Office in the Arab World, no National Archive - 6th November 2008 Scandal of six held in Guantanamo even after Bush plot claim is dropped - No evidence that men living in Bosnia plotted attack on Sarajevo embassy - 31st October 2008 Financial doom and gloom is everywhere – except Lebanon - Beirut’s Blombank has just boasted a record 34 per cent rise in profits - 25th October 2008 From the fourth century BC, words our leaders should heed - Thucydides' account of the Spartan war contains a dark and chilling relevance - 18th October 2008 'Collateral damage' or targeted killing, the effect is much the same - One grandfather lost all his sons and grandsons. His family line came to an end - 11th October 2008 When it comes to Palestine and Israel, the US simply doesn't get it - Biden and Palin hid like rabbits from the centre of the Middle East earthquake - 4th October 2008 Bush rescues Wall Street but leaves his soldiers to die in Iraq - Until the elections, the people in the Middle East are yesterday’s men - 27th September 2008 Why does the US think it can win in Afghanistan? - The Taliban are better trained, and – sad to say – increasingly tolerated by the local civilian population - 20th September 2008 Horrors of war our leaders never have to confront - Bush and Blair have not had to soil their thoughts with images of wickedness that make the gorge rise - 13th September 2008 It's never good to swap people for bodies - If you get into this grisly game, the result is a murderer released from Israel parading around Lebanon - 6th September 2008 Why do we keep letting the politicians get away with lies? - How on earth do they get away with it? Let's start with war between Hizbollah and Israel – past and future war, that is - 30th August 2008 A voice recovered from Armenia's bitter past - It's a tiny book, only 116 pages long, but it contains a monumental truth, another sign that one and a half million dead Armenians will not go away - 23rd August 2008 Al-Qa'ida keeps its promise to be 'bone in crusaders' throats' - Al-Qa'ida "in the Maghreb" strikes again. Forty three dead on Tuesday, another 11 yesterday. And across the Muslim world, it continues - 21st August 2008 A region boiling with tales of kings, gangs and war - Two groups from Moscow fought it out with Kalashnikovs amid Dubai's architectural masterpieces - 16th August 2008 Al-Qa'ida sends its warriors from Iraq to wage 'jihad' in Lebanon - Bomb attack in Tripoli has exposed the brutal infighting in the country's second city - 15th August 2008 Avoid cliché like the plague? Never - We are all guilty. To my distress, I find that I thrice used the word 'iconic' in my book. Ye Gods! - 9th August 2008 The tragic last moments of Margaret Hassan - When a renowned British aid worker was kidnapped in Iraq, the world was horrified. Her body was never recovered, but her execution was captured on video and sent to Al Jazeera,the Arab satellite channel. Robert Fisk watched it and reveals why it has never been broadcast - Thursday, 7th August 2008 New actor on the same old stage - If Obama is elected he will be enmeshed in the Middle East tragedy and forced to take sides - Saturday, 2nd August 2008 My days in Fleet Street's Lubyanka - Our readers' demands for an idealised Britain were met with a diet of dolly birds - Saturday, 26th July 2008 When propaganda turns out to be fact...I'm talking about the "myth" of the German army's atrocities in little Belgium in 1914 - Saturday, 19th July 2008 Theatrical return for the living and the dead...Yesterday was the last day of the 2006 Lebanon war, the final chapter of Israel's folly and Hizbollah's hubris - Thursday, 17th July 2008 Day of jackals as Paris marks the overthrow of a monarch - The Caliph of Damascus celebrated the overthrow of the French king yesterday. Bashar al-Assad looked quite at home, standing in his pale blue suit, wearing those inevitable Baathist sunglasses, occasionally clapping the precision drill of the French regiments in front of him, some of whom spent decades repressing Arab nations - Tuesday, 15th July 2008 Europe has a duty to educate the US about Middle East - Walid Moallem leans forward in the armchair of the Paris Intercontinental Opera. "It's all on the record," he snaps. It usually is. The Syrians can be up- front when you least expect it - Tuesday, 15th July 2008 A lesson from across the Atlantic - Canadians don't want to be the 'melting pot' that the US boasts - Saturday, 12th July 2008 Thank you, readers, for these gems - Why, I find myself asking when I read them, can't we journalists write like this? - Saturday, 5th July 2008 Today's despot is tomorrow's statesman - Millions believe Bashar al-Assad plotted murder. Now France is honouring him - Saturday, 21st June 2008 Snapshots of life in Baghdad - The dangerous face of ordinary life has been captured by Iraqis on their mobile phones – reaching the places Western photographers can no longer go - Wednesday, 18th June 2008 The Middle East never tires of threats - Governments love warnings, hence the endless waffle about the 'war on terror' - Saturday, 14th June 2008 The West's weapon of self-delusion - There are gun battles in Beirut – and America thinks things are going fine - Saturday, 7th June 2008 So al-Qa'ida's defeated, eh? Go tell it to the marines - Last week the head of the CIA claimed it was winning the battle. Nonsense, argues Robert Fisk. The extremists in the Middle East are growing stronger - Sunday, 1st June 2008 Horrors we have no choice but to forget - Only a poet could come up with the idea of a poem that would clear amnesia - Saturday, 31st May 2008 So just where does the madness end? - All the monsters buried in the mass graves of the civil war have been dug up - Saturday, 17th May 2008 Lebanon does not want another war. Does it? - Despite everything that has happened in the past few days, the people have no appetite for yet more civil conflict - Sunday, 11th May 2008 Hizbollah rules west Beirut in Iran's proxy war with US - Saturday, 10th May 2008 The mystery of the man who shot Nelson - Against advice, Horatio is wearing his many decorations. Talk about asking for it - Saturday, 10th May 2008 Gun battles as Hizbollah claims Lebanon is at war - Friday, 9th May 2008 Lebanon descends into chaos as rival leaders order general strike - Thursday, 8th May 2008 It's easy to be snotty with an airline so haughty that it regards its own customers as an inconvenience - BA should be broken up and left with a core institution. Deportation or Rendition Airlines - Saurday, 26th April 2008 Painters love martyrs and prophets - Saint Sebastian's death – arrows puncturing skin – is straight out of Shia martyrology - Saturday, 19th April 2008 The fearful lives in a land of the free - Westerners assume that anyone with a Canadian passport is safe - Saturday, 5th April 2008 Where is our man for all seasons? - Ghosts from our recent tragedy spring at us from this screenplay - Saturday, 29th March 2008 How Ireland exorcised the ghost of empire - On the 92nd anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin, our Middle East correspondent sees numerous parallels between the bloody, intractable conflicts in Ireland and Israel – and says that the war in Iraq has shown us the true value of neutrality - Sunday, 23rd March 2008 It's not a straight road to dictatorship - An Italian restaurant in the Irish village of Dalkey caused quite a kerfuffle when it opened a few months ago. It is called Benito's and – yes – it is indeed named after Il Duce - Saturday, 22nd March 2008 The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn - Wednesday, 19th March 2008 Silenced by the men in white socks - The Damascus Spring has presaged no golden summer for Syria - Saturday, 15th March 2008 The cult of the suicide bomber - Friday, 14th March 2008 Offended by Shakespeare? Let's ban him - Into the bin must go TS Eliot, and I guess we’ll have to chuck out Winston Churchill - Saturday, 8th March 2008 The gardens of the devil, still sowing death - The foundation of their lives remains the war that was fought before they were born - Saturday, 1st March 2008 Dreams of becoming Hitchcock's hero - When I was at university, I wrote to every journalist known to me for advice. Should I return to my old job on the Newcastle Evening Chronicle or try for Fleet Street? - Saturday, 23rd February 2008 The remnants of war in the desert sands - Saturday, 16th February 2008 Bloody end of man who made kidnapping a weapon of war - (Imad Mughniyah) Thursday, 14th February 2008 Seduced by the power of historic books - I prowl through parchment pages in search of the city I live in today - Saturday, 9th February 2008 Torture does not work, as history shows - The Americans are just apeing their predecessors in the Inquisition - Saturday, 2nd February 2008 The curious case of the forged biography - When Robert Fisk heard that his life of Saddam Hussein was selling well, one thing bothered him: he had never written one. His investigation took him to the murkiest corners of Cairo - Friday, 1st February 2008 Eight dead, and echoes of Beirut's bloody history reverberate around its streets - Tuesday, 29th January 2008 Visions that come to men as they sleep - For many extreme Muslims, dreams are a serious affair. Osama bin Laden is a dream-believer - Saturday, 26th January 2008 Beirut's assassins kill the detective on their trail - Saturday, 26th January 2008 A lesson in how to create Iraqi orphans. And then how to make life worse for them - Thursday, 24th January 2008 Film-makers must atone for their sins - Cultural censorship is like a disease. It moves among us unseen. Let me show you how it works - Saturday, 19th January 2008 Bloody reality bears no relation to the delusions of this President - As a bomb explodes in Beirut and Israel kills 19 in Gaza raids, Bush takes his Middle East peace mission to Saudi Arabia (and signs off $20bn weapons deal with repressive regime) - Wednesday, 16th January 2008

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