The world has just lost the greatest foreign correspondent of his generation. Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent, died at the age of 74 of a suspected stroke on October 30.

Based in Beirut since 1976 as Middle East correspondent first for The Times (1976-1987) (Fisk travelled to Iran to cover the Iranian Revolution in 1979) and then The Independent (1987-2020), what made the British-Irish Fisk unique was that he was hated by every kind of government, from dictatorships to democracies and everything in between, always a good sign for a fearless truth-telling journalist.  

Fisk was also Belfast correspondent for The Times from 1972-1975 and covered the Carnation revolution in Portugal in 1974.

Fascinated by the Middle East, he described covering it as follows:

“Covering the Middle East is a bit like reading a great novel; Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Anna Karina. And you sit up and you say ‘well it’s almost midnight, just one more chapter.’ And then you say, ‘well I’ll just read the next chapter to see what happens next.’ Before you know it the dawn is coming between the curtains, you’ve been reading all night because you want to know what happens next and that’s why I stay in the Middle East.”             

He was probably most famous in the western world for interviewing Osama bin Laden three times between 1993 and 1997. His two books on the Middle East Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War about the Lebanese civil war and The Great War for civilization: The conquest of the Middle East are must-reads.

I remember reading The Great War for Civilization with all of its dominant male characters: Yasser Arafat, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Hafez al-Assad, Hosni Mubarak, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush etc. It was interesting when watching a conversation about the book that Fisk considered his own father Bill to be the most prominent male figure in the book. Having said that the book was named after an inscription on a medal Fisk’s father was given for his service in World War One.     

Robert Fisk was probably most famous in the western world for interviewing Osama bin Laden three times between 1993 and 1997- Mark Manduca

Fisk will be especially missed by the Armenian people and their diaspora for all the great work he did covering the Armenian genocide (1914-1917). The Armenian genocide is covered in The Great War for Civilisation. In the book, Fisk even interviews survivors of the Genocide in chapter 10 titled The First Holocaust.

In his book about the Lebanese civil war, Fisk covered the massacres of Sabra and Chatila, when Christian militiamen with close links to the Kataeb political party murdered scores of predominantly Palestinian civilians. As one of the first western journalists to be on the scene, Fisk documented the massacre. Below are some excerpts of the massacre from chapter 11 of Pity the Nation:

 “It was the flies that told us. There were millions of them, their hum almost as eloquent as the smell…..At first we did not use the word massacre. We said very little because the flies would move unerringly for our mouths….If the smell of the dead in Sidon was nauseating, the stench in Chatila made us retch. Through the thickest of handkerchiefs, we smelled them. After some minutes, we began to smell of the dead.

“They were everywhere, in the road, in laneways, in back yards and broken rooms, beneath crumpled masonry and across the top of garbage tips. The murderers – the Christian militiamen whom Israel had let into the camps to ‘flush out terrorists’ – had only just left. In some cases, the blood was still wet on the ground.

“When we had seen a hundred bodies, we stopped counting. Down every alleyway, there were corpses – women, young men, babies and grandparents – lying together in lazy and terrible profusion where they had been knifed or machine-gunned to death. Each corridor through the rubble produced more bodies.”       

Fisk also produced a brilliant three-part documentary in 1993 on the Discovery Channel called From Beirut to Bosnia. It is a documentary that tries to explain Muslim animosity to the West. All three parts are available on YouTube. That’s what Robert Fisk was most concerned with, the why of things. He was not a stenographer. He wanted to understand and relay to his readers why events took place.

In 2019, a documentary film about Fisk’s career called This is not a movie was released. 

On a personal note, Robert Fisk was the one person I wanted to meet more than any other. I would have loved to have had a conversation with him discussing his more than 40 years covering the Middle East. Alas, now this will never be. However, his place in history as a truth-telling journalist who gave a voice to the voiceless is assured. Rest in peace Robert Fisk. For the career and life you’ve had, you certainly deserve to.

Mark Manduca has a Master’s Degree in Diplomatic Studies from the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies.

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