Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“ Heaven be thanked that the soldiers of the Great War cannot return today to discover how their sacrifice has been turned into a fashion appendage.” The Great War?

Robert Fisk, the revered foreign correspondent for The Independent, his knowledge and insight of the Middle East is perhaps unrivalled among contemporary commentators. Fisk, who has met Osama bin Laden three times, talks about his experience of covering conflict throughout the region, the Middle East's history and the possibilities for its future.  Here is part of a talk I recorded at the Institute of Education at the book launch of Fisk's  Wars for Civilization,  London 13 October 2005.  He was a vigorous opponent of the new-fangled concept of “embedded journalism”. Latterly, however, his own embedded reports on the continuing civil war in Syria, which tended to absolve the Assad regime of some of the worst crimes credited to it, provoked a backlash, even among his anti-imperialist acolytes. Obituary