Robert Fisk speaking to The Arab American News at his hotel in Dearborn

DEARBORN — The modern history of the Middle East is plagued by war. The books tell us about it, but British foreign correspondent Robert Fisk witnessed it first-hand and his work has contributed to our knowledge of that violent past.

His non-conformist reporting has often landed him in hot water. He spent most of career in Beirut, writing for the London Times and later the Independent, but he always went where the story/war was. He was there when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and reported on the Iranian-Iraqi front from both sides. He returned to Iraq after the first Gulf War and following the U.S. invasion. But he does not like to be called a legend. 

“I am just a foreign correspondent,” he said.

In an interview with The Arab American News, Fisk said the problem of the Middle East is lack of education. 

“During the Arab revolutions on the streets, when I was there, I never saw anybody wanting democracy,” he said. “We claimed they were; but they asked for dignity and justice, which are not the same thing and which we do not intend to give them.”

Fisk added that you get dignity by being educated, but the educational system in the Middle East is a failure.

“Spain publishes more books than the Middle East does,” he said.

The veteran reporter said the countries that witnessed inevitable revolutions— including Egypt— returned to the patriarchal systems because that’s all they knew.

“They returned to the father figure, the big daddy, who treats them like schoolchildren because you didn’t have a sufficiently educated, intellectual depth to move the revolution in a direction that would solve the country’s problems,” he said. “They regressed back into military rule.”

Fisk clarified that the lack of education is not the fault of the masses. 

“If you go to an Egyptian hospital, you would be risking your life,” he said. “But if you go to Houston, you find that some of the finest doctors are Egyptian or Iraqi. It has nothing to do with the people themselves. In the right environment, they can flourish. But when you have these ossified states that don’t work and were never intended to work, you effectively turn countries into schoolchildren.”

Fisk said the patriarchal dictatorial systems in Libya, Egypt and Syria “went wrong” when the rulers— the father figures— started to appoint their sons as heirs.

“It was going to be Gamal Mubarak; it was going to be Saif al-Islam Gaddafi; it was Bashar Assad,” he said. “People suddenly realized that it was the biological children of the president who are going to have power, not the children of the country.”

Fisk is approaching 70, but he still travels the world to witness and write history. With an expressive face and excess of hand gestures, he spoke with a hint of despair in his voice when asked about the solution to the Middle East’s issues.

“There are no solutions to countries,” he said. “There are resolutions in a vague sort of way.” 

Fisk said ISIS is a cult that is the opposite of  education. 

He explained that Osama Bin Laden’s appeal was that he was able to say what Arab dictators could not say about American foreign policy and the occupation of Palestine, even though Arab masses did not necessarily agree with his methods. As for ISIS, Fisk said the organization’s appeal lies in its ability to offer strength and significance to people with ordinary lives.

“What ISIS was able to do was to grasp that we all have an alter ego in us and they’re providing this alter ego with an existence.”

Fisk, who has interviewed Bin Laden and the military leader of Hezbollah Imad Mughniyeh among many Arab leaders and villains, said ISIS-controlled territories are the first places in the course of his career where he is not prepared to go. 

“And before America was militarily involved, I could go anywhere.”

Fisk said he has not seen any evidence of moderate rebels in Syria, adding that most deserters who formed the Free Syrian Army have either rejoined the Syrian Arab army or gone home. 

According to Fisk, 46,000 soldiers have been killed, which has impaired the army’s ability to hold areas it recaptures from the opposition. He said the army, which is mostly Sunni, is now relying on foreign Shi’a fighters, saying he witnessed Afghanis in Syrian army uniforms, besides the presence of Hezbollah.

“I never thought the regime would go,” he said. “The Baath Party is built to survive. So was Saddam’s [regime] if the Americans hadn’t invaded. He survived huge uprisings by the Kurds and the Shi’a. The Baath Party is not there for the benefit of the people. It is there for itself.”

However, Fisk added that if any institution is preserving any sort of order in Syria, it is the army. 

“It doesn’t mean I like the Syrian army; they are war criminals,” he continued. “They boast to me that they take no prisoners. Injured prisoners are left to be eaten by dogs. That’s what ISIS does as well. There are no good guys there, in case you are wondering.”

Fisk has been criticized by both the Syrian regime and the opposition for his reporting, especially by the latter after covering the war from regime-controlled areas at the beginning of the uprising.

“At the beginning [I was criticized], but those words are silent now; aren’t they?” he said. “Because suddenly up comes ISIS. I thought somebody has to cover the Assad side of the story, not be on the side of, but cover it. We’ve got someone on the rebel side. You can’t have one reporter in both places. It doesn’t work.”

Fisk said he discovered early on that the Syrian army is a real fighting force and the regime may not crack. 

“The moment I said Assad would survive, that’s when the shit started falling at me,” he said. “People shouted at me at lectures in Norway. I said I’m sorry, I’m doing my job. I’m a Middle East correspondent. I’m not an activist.”

Fisk wrote in a recent piece that as long as both sides of the Syrian war think they can win, the war will continue. 

“But if the Iranian agreement with the Americans goes through, they could stop the Syrian War tomorrow,” he said.

He explained that the United states would tell the Saudis that “it’s over” and Iran would tell Assad to stop the fighting. He said a post-war government would recognize that it is a Sunni-majority country, without marginalizing the Alawites, especially bureaucrats who already know how to run the country. 

Fisk said Syrians, like Iraqis after the U.S. invasion, want security and peace. 

Fisk said U.S. and British foreign policy have contributed greatly to the woes of the Middle East.

“Because of our own lack of education and failure to understand what foreign policy means, we don’t look ahead anymore,” he said. “We don’t plan.”

Fisk added that during World War II, in the early part of 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill established a committee to draw a strategy on how to deal with post-war occupied Germany.

“Even facing invasion, Churchill was planning how we would govern Germany after we won,” Fisk said. “But when the American tanks crossed the Tigris River in Baghdad, they hadn’t thought about it for half an hour.” 

He added that then-President George W. Bush was not interested in the people. 

“He was interested in the land and that’s the problem,” Fisk said.

The veteran reporter said he has not met many Iraqis who wouldn’t like to go back to Saddam Hussein’s day, despite the toppled regime’s brutality.

He added that Arabs do not think long term, either, because they are ruled by U.S. foreign policy.

“We give them those ridiculous dictators and they don’t ask for democracy because they associate it with the people who fed the dictators,” he said.

Fisk added that the aimlessness of American and British foreign policy in the Middle East is not a planned conspiracy, but rather lack of vision.

Fisk said Britons and Americans have a hard time understanding the terrorist attacks are a response to our constant military, political and cultural interference in the Arab and Muslim world. According to Fisk, following the Iraq invasion, the West had more military personnel in the Middle East than the Crusaders at the beginning of the 12th Century.

“Is it surprising that what’s happening is happening?” he asked. “Did we bring about the chaos in the Middle East? Yes, but we did it through fantasy. Just as in the 19th century, [when] we fantasized about harems and ladies with veils, we fantasize now we are going to bring democracy on the front of an M1A1 Tank.”

Fisk said there has always been a dangerously close relationship between American journalists and the government in the United States. 

“The problem is that your newspapers and TV stations are subservient to power and frightened of Israel,” he said. “They’re frightened of being attacked by Israel. That’s why their coverage of the West Bank and Gaza is so lamentable.”

He said a foreign correspondent cannot be dispassionate when reporting in the Middle East. “Your job is to challenge power.”

He also said 50/50 journalism has no role in the Middle East, adding that journalism schools teach young reporters to give both sides of a story equal time or equal space. 

“But the Middle East is not a football match; it’s a bloody tragedy,” Fisk said. “When you’re dealing with human suffering on this scale, you’ve got to be neutral and unbiased on the side of those who suffer. If you were covering the slave trade in the 18th century, would you spend 50 percent of your story chatting to the captain of the slave ship? You would talk to the surviving slaves and count how many were thrown over to the  sharks.”

He said in August of 2001, after an Islamic Jihad militant carried a suicide bomb in a Sbarro pizza store in west Jerusalem, killing 15 civilians, he wrote a story about the victims, not the militant.

“At Sabra and Shatila, I was in there when the murderers were still there, the Kataeb,” he said. “I did not give equal time to the Israelis who watched it. My stories was all about the survivors and what I saw of the dead.”

Fisk has witnessed carnage and bloody scenes throughout his career. However, he said the bleak images of war do not affect him psychologically.

“I never have bad dreams,” he said. “I can go out to dinner in the evening or watch a movie.”

He said he is angry when he sees innocent people— especially children— die, but he perceives himself as a friend of the dead he writes about. 

“They want me to tell their story,” he said.