In the midst of a torrent of lies

ROBERT Fisk has a well-earned reputation as one of the most honest and hard-hitting foreign correspondents in the British media.

He has worked in Northern Ireland, where he exposed the presence of the SAS in the mid-1970s, as well as Bosnia, Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon. And it was here, as a witness to the immediate aftermath of the Israeli-organised Sabra and Shatila massacre of 2,000 Palestinian refugees, that his journalism took on its current form - angry, passionate and, as he puts it, "partial on the side of the victims."

In the midst of a torrent of lies and propaganda emanating from our media about British and US policy in the Middle East, Fisk's writings are a breath of fresh air, although the hellish reality that he depicts does not always make for pleasant reading.

When I meet him in Christchurch College, sandwiched between an earlier speaking engagement in Bristol and a lecture at the Oxford Literary Festival - seemingly without a moment's rest - we begin by talking about the role of journalism in times of war. First, I want to know whether journalism, by sanitising or justifying war, also has a role in perpetuating it.

"There are several things," Fisk replies. "First of all, there's the inability of many journalists from the US to actually tell the truth about the Israel-Palestine situation - hence, occupied territories are called 'disputed territories,' the wall is called the 'security barrier,' a colony or settlement is called a 'neighbourhood' or an 'outpost.'

"Which means that, if you see a Palestinian chucking a stone, if it's about an occupation, you can understand it, but, if it's about a dispute, which you can presumably settle over a cup of tea, then obviously the Palestinians are generically violent. So you demean one side in this appalling conflict.

"Then you have this business where television will not show what we see, for reasons of so-called 'bad taste.' I remember once being on the phone to a TV editor in London when Al Jazeera were asked to feed some tape of children killed and wounded by British shell fire in Basra and the guy started saying: 'There's no point feeding us this, we can't show this.'

"'People will be having their tea' and 'we have to show respect for the dead,' came the excuses. So, we don't show any respect for them when they are alive, we blow them to bits and then we show respect for them.

"It becomes a game. You start propagating this idea that war is primarily about victory or defeat, when, in fact, it's about death and the infliction of massive pain," says Fisk.

"I was in Iraq in 1991 when Britain and the US had been bombing one of the highways. There were women and children dead and in bits and all these dogs came out of the desert and started eating them. If you saw what I saw, you would never, ever think of supporting war of any kind against anyone ever again.

"But of course, the politicians - our leaders - are very happy that these pictures are not shown, because they make war more attractive, less painful," he says.

Journalistic standards are degenerating rapidly in other areas too. Watching the news two weeks ago, I was shocked to see Yassin Nassari and Abdul Patel referred to by the BBC as "terrorists" - not "alleged" or "suspected," but straight down the line "terrorists." The only charges that they faced related to "possession of materials" - Islamist literature and video - and they had not even been accused of planning terrorist attacks, let alone carrying any out. Has terrorism become a catch-all phrase?

"I've just had an interesting example of what's going on. I was lecturing in Ottawa to 600 Muslim Canadians and I said to them: 'You are absolutely right to exercise your right to free speech to attack the US and Israel when they kill people, commit torture and occupy other people's lands, but why don't I ever hear you condemning the regimes in Egypt, Damascus, Libya and so on?' Silence. I couldn't work it out."

So what was going on? "Later, I was driving across Canada with two Muslims and they told me. In Canada, if they speak out against these regimes, what happens is that these various countries have their own muhabarat people in Canada - security people - who will then pass home the message that certain people are speaking up against Mubarak, Assad or whoever.

"Then, under the new friendship between intelligence services, the Syrian or Egyptian regime tells the Canadians that there is a potential terrorist - anti-regime, right? - and CSIS, the Canadian version of the FBI, starts putting taps on them.

"So, by exercising their freedom of speech against dictatorships, they end up being suspected of terrorism by their new country of citizenship. The result is that, at the end of the day, they are silent. As I would be too, in their position," Fisk says.

What about the silence of the rest of us, who are not so easily excused? With ever dwindling numbers on the anti-war demonstrations, have we forgotten what is really going on in those countries suffering Western "liberation?"

"You keep having to say to people in London, 'but it's real' because most people don't have any experience of war in the West any more. There isn't a single one of our political leaders with any experience of war. Bush dodged it, Cheney dodged it, Powell was in Vietnam, but he's gone. Hollywood is their experience of war. And, when you send people off to war and your experience is Hollywood, you might be a bit shocked when they start dying," Fisk warns.

The true extent of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan has been masked by the massive use of mercenaries - hidden from the troop figures.

Estimates suggest that 1,000 have been killed in Iraq alone. Fisk is one of very few journalists to call them by their name, as opposed to the "contractor" euphemism.

"Just as the wall is called a fence instead of a wall and it's a neighbourhood not a settlement, so these are now contractors rather than mercenaries," says Fisk. "I've always called them mercenaries.

"I noticed that, in 2003, they were popping up with belts loaded with machine gun bullets in the hotel that I was in. It was obvious that they were going to attract attacks. So I went to some of them and said: 'Look, for god's sakes, can't you just keep your weapons in your room? You're making this out to be a barracks and endangering yourselves and endangering us.' This guy walked up to me with two rifles and said: 'Well, when you're in trouble mate, don't come asking me for help.' I said: 'I don't want your fucking help, I want you to leave'."

But they didn't leave. And the big excuse for staying now is, of course, the looming spectre of civil war. Is there, then, a functional value to the occupation of the "civil war theory?"

"The first man I ever heard mention the danger of civil war in Iraq was Dan Semor, spokesman for the occupying power in the Green Zone in August 2003.

No-one had ever heard about the danger of civil war before, no Iraqi ever mentioned it. I remember thinking: 'What are they trying to do, frighten the Iraqis into obedience?'

"You don't need to set up car bombs to divide people, you can do it quite successfully just by constant repetition - civil war, Shi'ites, militias, Sunnis, power. You create the narrative. And then, in due course, people fall into line because it is the only one they get.

"I once asked the brother of a Sunni dentist who had been shot dead: 'So, will there be civil war?' He replied: 'Why do you people want us to have a civil war? I'm married to a Shi'ite - do you want me to kill my wife?'"

Unfortunately, the sectarian lines are becoming clearer in Iraq by the day, with the US army building walls to create separate ghettoes in Baghdad and with the Kurdish north now negotiating its own oil deals. The Western-imposed solution for Bosnia was full-scale ethnic partition. Will this be the future of Iraq?

"Bosnia was in Europe, so eventually, we wanted to switch the war off. Iraq is a different matter - we're in Iraq for oil. If the national product of Iraq was asparagus, we would not be there, I promise," Fisk quips.

"There are parallels with Bosnia, not least indifference towards the Muslim victims - we did nothing for them until the war had consumed a quarter of a million of them - and we don't care about the Iraqis. But I think that there are big differences with Bosnia.

"There are more parallels, I think, between the NATO-Serb Kosovo war, because that is where we got people used to the idea that bombing civilian trains on railway bridges, bombing hospitals and TV stations was OK. I think that the Kosovo war started off the acceptability of doing these things."

Whatever the occupiers' plans for Iraq and whatever barbarities it imposes, one thing is for sure - the future of that country is not entirely in their hands.

Even with their full-scale promotion of sectarian violence in 1950s Algeria, the French were still forced to leave. The dilemma for the US in Iraq, as Fisk puts it, is that "they must leave, they will leave, but they can't leave - that is the equation that turns sand into blood."

For those who want to understand this process and what it means in human terms, rather than simply be lied to about it, Robert Fisk's reporting is a good place to start.

The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings by Robert Fisk is out now on Fourth Estate, priced £14.99.