Robert Fisk

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World ignores signs of civil war in Lebanon

Published: 27 January 2007

This is how the 1975-90 conflict began in Lebanon. Outbreaks of sectarian hatred, appeals for restraint, promises of aid from Western and Arab nations and a total refusal to understand that this is how civil wars begin.

Robert Fisk: Money can't close the sectarian divide

Published: 26 January 2007

If only money could buy peace - or was the £4bn handed out to Lebanon's PM in Paris yesterday supposed to help him defeat the US's Hizbollah enemies in Beirut's increasingly savage street battles?

Robert Fisk: Hizbollah warn that Lebanon will see more violence

Published: 25 January 2007

There is worse to come. That is what Lebanon's opposition, led by the Hizbollah, said only hours after they lifted their violent day-long "strike" on Tuesday night and - here is the rub - there are few in this country who do not believe it.

Robert Fisk: Beirut is a violent sectarian battleground

Published: 24 January 2007

Christians fighting Christians north of Beirut, Sunni and Shia Muslims in the capital, a rain of stones, shrieks of hatred and occasionally even gunfire - Lebanon has become a battleground again

Robert Fisk: Fear climate change, not our enemies

Published: 20 January 2007

From this wreckage was bound to come the insurgencies and the hatred

Robert Fisk: This jargon disease is choking language

Published: 13 January 2007

In the military sex-speak of the Pentagon, Iraq would endure a 'spike' of violence

Robert Fisk: Bush's new strategy - the march of folly

Published: 11 January 2007

So into the graveyard of Iraq, George Bush, commander-in-chief, is to send another 21,000 of his soldiers. The march of folly is to continue...

Robert Fisk: The whole bloody thing was obscene

Published: 06 January 2007

Butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn execution

Robert Fisk: He takes his secrets to the grave

Published: 31 December 2006

How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal

Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America

Published: 30 December 2006

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

Robert Fisk: Football and violence go together

Published: 30 December 2006

Red Star's pre-war match against the Croatian Partizans ended in a pitched battle

Review of the year: The Middle East

Published: 29 December 2006

Pray for little countries that believe in empty promises of a superpower

Robert Fisk: Banality and barefaced lies

Published: 23 December 2006

Here in America, I stare at the land in which I live and see a landscape I do not recognise

Robert Fisk: Different narratives in the Middle East

Published: 16 December 2006

No, Israelis are not Nazis. But it's time we talked of war crimes

Robert Fisk: Who's running Lebanon?

Published: 15 December 2006

Devastated by Israel's bombs, threatened by the looming might of Iran and Syria, and divided from within by its own ethnic bloodletting - Lebanon is an unfolding tragedy with little hope of salvation. As the nation rushes headlong towards civil war, Robert Fisk, who has lived in Beirut for 30 years, picks through the city's wreckage to identify the agitators, military leaders and politicians who now wield the real power

Robert Fisk: Revolution in the air as Lebanon's rift widens

Published: 11 December 2006

With Fouad Siniora's cabinet hiding in the Grand Serail behind acres of razor wire and thousands of troops - a veritable "green zone" in the heart of Beirut - the largely Shia Muslim opposition, assisted by their Christian allies, brought up to two million supporters into the centre of the city yesterday to declare the forthcoming creation of a second Lebanese administration. A "transitional" government is what ex-general Michel Aoun called it, while Naeem Qassem, Hizbollah's deputy chairman, spoke ominously of the mass demonstrations as "the separatist day".

Robert Fisk: The Roman Empire is falling - so it turns to Iran and Syria

Published: 07 December 2006

The Roman Empire is falling. That, in a phrase, is what the Baker report says. The legions cannot impose their rule on Mesopotamia.

Robert Fisk: My reservations about the French

Published: 02 December 2006

Pétain sent his country's Jews to Auschwitz with an enthusiasm that surprised the Nazis

Robert Fisk: Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in denial

Published: 01 December 2006

More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia - and still George W Bush is in denial. How does he do it? How does he persuade himself - as he apparently did in Amman yesterday - that the United States will stay in Iraq "until the job is complete"? The "job" - Washington's project to reshape the Middle East in its own and Israel's image - is long dead, its very neoconservative originators disavowing their hopeless political aims and blaming Bush, along with the Iraqis of course, for their disaster.

Robert Fisk: 'There are enough weapons for the next war'

Published: 26 November 2006

In his diary of a week which saw yet another assassination, our man in Beirut reflects that the present violence in Lebanon creates longings for a supposedly peaceful past

Robert Fisk: A French colonial legacy of despair

Published: 25 November 2006

They wanted Lebanon's 'independence' - but they wanted it in France's favour

Robert Fisk: Dragons of Lebanon's past emerge for Gemayel funeral

Published: 24 November 2006

Amin Gemayel wept and swooned in front of us. The tens of thousands of Christians and Muslims burst into applause before the improvised stage. Gemayel - a foppish man with little charisma when he was President of Lebanon - held up his right hand and suddenly became a symbol of nobility, still swaying on his feet, his left arm supported by the tall, far younger figure of Saad Hariri. Only two days earlier, Gemayel's MP son, Pierre, had been blasted to death by gunmen in Beirut; his body still lay in the Cathedral of St George a few metres from where we were standing. But nothing became Gemayel like his courage yesterday as he told the vast mass of Lebanese in front of him that, yes, there would be a second revolution in this country which would end only when the pro-Syrian President had been removed.

Robert Fisk: In Lebanon nothing is what it seems

Published: 23 November 2006

As Pierre Gemayel's family mourned, the detectives - who have never solved a single one of the country's multitude of political murders - began their investigation.

Robert Fisk: Civil war - the fear for Lebanon

Published: 22 November 2006

The murder of Lebanon's Minister for Industry in broad daylight was a message for all who live in this tragic land

Robert Fisk: A terrible legacy of hatred and death

Published: 18 November 2006

This is the hell we have bequeathed to the Arab peoples of Iraq

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