[R-G] Fisk: Darkness Falls on the Middle East

[Anthony Fenton]

Weekend Edition
November 24 / 25, 2007
Who are the A'adhamiya Knights?
Darkness Falls on the Middle East
http://counterpunch.org/fisk11242007.html

By ROBERT FISK

So where do we go from here? I am talking into blackness because  
there is no electricity in Beirut. And everyone, of course, is  
frightened. A president was supposed to be elected today. He was not  
elected. The corniche outside my home is empty. No one wants to walk  
beside the sea.

When I went to get my usual breakfast cheese manouche there were no  
other guests in the café. We are all afraid. My driver, Abed, who has  
loyally travelled with me across all the war zones of Lebanon, is  
frightened to drive by night. I was supposed to go to Rome yesterday.  
I spared him the journey to the airport.

It's difficult to describe what it's like to be in a country that  
sits on plate glass. It is impossible to be certain if the glass will  
break. When a constitution breaks--as it is beginning to break in  
Lebanon--you never know when the glass will give way.

People are moving out of their homes, just as they have moved out of  
their homes in Baghdad. I may not be frightened, because I'm a  
foreigner. But the Lebanese are frightened. I was not in Lebanon in  
1975 when the civil war began, but I was in Lebanon in 1976 when it  
was under way. I see many young Lebanese who want to invest their  
lives in this country, who are frightened, and they are right to  
frightened. What can we do?

Last week, I had lunch at Giovanni's, one of the best restaurants in  
Beirut, and took out as my companion Sherif Samaha, who is the owner  
of the Mayflower Hotel. Many of the guests I've had over the past 31  
years I have sent to the Mayflower. But Sherif was worried because I  
suggested that his guests had included militia working for Saad  
Hariri, who is the son of the former prime minister, murdered--if you  
believe most Lebanese--by the Syrians on 14 February 2005.

Poor Sherif. He never had the militia men in his hotel. They were in  
a neighbouring building. But so Lebanese is Sherif that he even  
offered to pick me up in his car to have lunch. He is right to be  
worried.

A woman friend of mine, married to a doctor at the American  
University Hospital, called me two days before. "Robert, come and see  
the building they are making next to us," she said. And I took Abed  
and we went to see this awful building. It has almost no windows. All  
its installations are plumbing. It is virtually a militia prison. And  
I'm sure that's what it is meant to be. This evening I sit on my  
balcony, in a power cut, as I dictate this column. And there is no  
one in the street. Because they are all frightened.

So what can a Middle East correspondent write on a Saturday morning  
except that the world in the Middle East is growing darker and darker  
by the hour. Pakistan. Afghanistan. Iraq. "Palestine". Lebanon. From  
the borders of Hindu Kush to the Mediterranean, we--we Westerners  
that is--are creating (as I have said before) a hell disaster. Next  
week, we are supposed to believe in peace in Annapolis, between the  
colourless American apparatchik and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime  
Minister who has no more interest in a Palestinian state than his  
predecessor Ariel Sharon.

And what hell disasters are we creating? Let me quote a letter from a  
reader in Bristol. She asks me to quote a professor at Baghdad  
University, a respected man in his community who tells a story of  
real hell; you should read it. Here are his own words:

     "'A'adhamiya Knights' is a new force that has started its task  
with the Americans to lead them to al-Qa'ida and Tawheed and Jihad  
militants. This 300-fighter force started their raids very early at  
dawn wearing their black uniform and black masks to hide their faces.  
Their tours started three days ago, arresting about 150 citizens from  
A'adhamiya. The 'Knight' leads the Americans to a citizen who might  
be one of his colleagues who used to fight the Americans with him.  
These acts resulted in violent reactions of al-Qa'ida. Its militants  
and the militants of Tawheed and Jihad distributed banners on  
mosques' walls, especially on Imam Abu Hanifa mosque, threatening the  
Islamic Party, al-Ishreen revolution groups and Sunni endowment Diwan  
with death because these three groups took part in establishing  
'A'adhamiya Knights'. Some crimes happened accordingly, targeting two  
from Sunni Diwan staff and one from the Islamic Party.

     "Al-Qa'ida militants are distributed through the streets,  
stopping the people and asking about their IDs ... they carry lists  
of names. Anyone whose name is on these lists is kidnapped and taken  
to an unknown place. Eleven persons have been kidnapped up to now  
from Omar Bin Abdul Aziz Street."

The writer describes how her professor friend was kidnapped and taken  
to a prison. "They helped me sit on a chair (I was blindfolded) and  
someone came and held my hand saying, 'We are Muhajeen, we know you  
but we don't know where you are from.' They did not take my wallet  
nor did they search me. They only asked me if I have a gun. An hour  
or so later, one of them came and asked me to come with them. They  
drove me towards where my car was in the street and they said no  
more." So who are the A'adhamiya Knights? Who is paying them? What  
are we doing in the Middle East?

And how can we even conceive of a moral stand in the Middle East when  
we still we refuse to accept the fact--reiterated by Winston  
Churchill, Lloyd George, and all the details of US diplomats in the  
First World War--that the Armenian genocide occurred in 1915? Here is  
the official British government position on the massacre of 1.5  
million Armenians in 1915. "Officially, the Government acknowledges  
the strength of feeling [note, reader, the 'strength of feeling']  
about what it describes as a terrible episode of history and  
recognises the massacres of 1915-16 as a tragedy. However, neither  
the current Government nor previous British governments have judged  
that the evidence is sufficiently unequivocal to be persuaded that  
these events should be categorised as genocide as it is defined by  
the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide." When we can't get the First  
World War right, how in God's name can we get World War III right?

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the  
Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, The  
Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book is The Conquest of the  
Middle East.