Famed Journalist Robert Fisk: Canada’s Moral Power Is Lost
Middle East sage on ISIS, refugees, Harper, ‘short-termism’ and more. A Tyee interview.
Fisk has interviewed numerous leaders and figures in the region, including Osama bin Laden (three times). The current refugee crisis, created by instability in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, is the worst of its kind since the Second World War, he says.
Fisk argues the bombing campaign against ISIS — of which Canada is a part — is a huge mistake, one that will only complicate matters. “It amazes me,” he wrote in a column in May, “that all these warriors of the air don’t regularly crash into each other.”
Fisk blasts both politicians and the media for lack of historical perspective on the region. In particular, he points to the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, in which the British and French colonial powers covertly agreed to carve up much of the Middle East between them. It was a secret agreement that was later exposed by the Russians, one Fisk points to as a valid reason for ongoing resentment throughout much of the Middle East.
Currently on a cross-Canada tour, Robert Fisk spoke to The Tyee about the deepening crisis in the Middle East and how the global community should react to it.
The Tyee: Seeing the images coming out of the Middle East, of so much of Syria destroyed, of the things ISIS is up to, of the droves of refugees, of dead children on the beach, people feel a sense that something must be done. You have pointed to the dire complications presented by the bombing campaigns. What is to be done?
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