Kampuchea!! Haven't heard that name after my school text books in the 70s and 80s ..... Combodia, Vietnam, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chile, the Banana Republics of Central America .... The list goes on.
The roots of Today's Iranian crisis go back to 1953 .... Problems in Yemen go back to the forgotten adventures of Nasser backed by the Soviets and who remembers what Saddam did to the Kurds, who rose up believing in false promises .... Zia-ul-Huq's Pakistan and a pact with the Devil and what came out of it ....
James Barr wrote two wonderful books - Lines in the Sand about British and French machinations in ME and Lords of the Desert about the rivalry between British and Americans that shaped the ME .
I first read about what happened at Hama and the events of Sabra and Shatilla, both in the same year, 1982, about 25 years ago and in all these years, I have rarely heard anyone speaks about them. But that is the case with so many issues
Kampuchea was the regime's own name for itself, twice over — under the Khmer Rouge and then under the Vietnamese-installed government that replaced them. Hun Sen restored Cambodia in 1989, distancing his republic from its socialist branding. Words tend to outlive the regimes that claim them.
Your list is the map, and the map keeps extending — Sudan since 2023, Lebanon collapsing through 2024, Syria reopening this year onto questions no one has answered. Barr is among the best on the European mechanism. Lines in the Sand catches Paris and London arguing in real time, in cables, over who would draw which line through which valley, with the inhabitants of the valleys appearing as logistical considerations. The reader closes that book understanding something abstract accounts of Sykes-Picot never deliver: the casualness of it. Two empires negotiating other people's countries between cigarettes.
Hama and Sabra-Shatila in the same year. February and September. The first inside a country that called itself sovereign. The second inside a camp that no country claimed. My mother heard about Hama through fragments on state radio that contradicted itself within the same broadcast — the city was calm, the city was being cleansed of terrorists, the city was as before. The people of Sabra-Shatila had cameras pointed at them, and a world that watched, did not stop watching, and eventually turned away. Different silences. Same family.
You read the essay carefully. That is the rarer thing. The list you offered is most of what the next several months are about.
Kampuchea!! Haven't heard that name after my school text books in the 70s and 80s ..... Combodia, Vietnam, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chile, the Banana Republics of Central America .... The list goes on.
The roots of Today's Iranian crisis go back to 1953 .... Problems in Yemen go back to the forgotten adventures of Nasser backed by the Soviets and who remembers what Saddam did to the Kurds, who rose up believing in false promises .... Zia-ul-Huq's Pakistan and a pact with the Devil and what came out of it ....
James Barr wrote two wonderful books - Lines in the Sand about British and French machinations in ME and Lords of the Desert about the rivalry between British and Americans that shaped the ME .
I first read about what happened at Hama and the events of Sabra and Shatilla, both in the same year, 1982, about 25 years ago and in all these years, I have rarely heard anyone speaks about them. But that is the case with so many issues
Kampuchea was the regime's own name for itself, twice over — under the Khmer Rouge and then under the Vietnamese-installed government that replaced them. Hun Sen restored Cambodia in 1989, distancing his republic from its socialist branding. Words tend to outlive the regimes that claim them.
Your list is the map, and the map keeps extending — Sudan since 2023, Lebanon collapsing through 2024, Syria reopening this year onto questions no one has answered. Barr is among the best on the European mechanism. Lines in the Sand catches Paris and London arguing in real time, in cables, over who would draw which line through which valley, with the inhabitants of the valleys appearing as logistical considerations. The reader closes that book understanding something abstract accounts of Sykes-Picot never deliver: the casualness of it. Two empires negotiating other people's countries between cigarettes.
Hama and Sabra-Shatila in the same year. February and September. The first inside a country that called itself sovereign. The second inside a camp that no country claimed. My mother heard about Hama through fragments on state radio that contradicted itself within the same broadcast — the city was calm, the city was being cleansed of terrorists, the city was as before. The people of Sabra-Shatila had cameras pointed at them, and a world that watched, did not stop watching, and eventually turned away. Different silences. Same family.
You read the essay carefully. That is the rarer thing. The list you offered is most of what the next several months are about.