ICH | The entirety of the August 14 print edition
of the New York Times Magazine is dedicated
to a series titled “Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart,” by Scott Anderson. The series is
60 pages long and includes detailed sketches of the
lives of six people from various parts of the Middle
East dating back to the years before the 2003 US
invasion of Iraq, through the Arab Spring, the rise
of ISIS in 2014-15, and the migratory outpouring
from the war-torn region.
The
magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jake Silverstein, notes
in a foreword to the series:
“This is an
issue unlike any we have previously published…the
subject of this book is the catastrophe that has
fractured the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq
13 years ago, leading to the rise of ISIS and the
global refugee crisis. The geography of this
catastrophe is broad and its causes are many, but
its consequences—terror and uncertainty around the
world—are familiar to us all.”
Silverstein
concludes his editor’s note: “It is unprecedented
for us to focus so much energy and attention on a
single story and to ask our readers to do the same.
We would not do so were we not convinced that this
is one of the most clear-eyed, powerful and human
explanations of what has gone wrong in this region
that you will ever read.”
The
publication of “Fractured Lands” has an objective
significance. The presentation, the content and the
tone of the series express the American ruling
class’ sense that it faces a catastrophe of
historically unprecedented proportions in the Middle
East. When Anderson asks in his preface: “Why did it
turn out that way?” he is asking on behalf of a
ruling class that is dazed by the catastrophic
outcome of its own reckless and shortsighted
policies.
For the
last 25 years, US imperialism has laid waste to a
span of territory stretching several thousand miles
from North Africa to Central Asia, leaving over 1
million dead. A new vocabulary of words like “shock
and awe,” “extraordinary rendition,” “black site
prison,” “disposition matrix” and “Terror Tuesday”
has emerged as the language of the US wars. A
significant portion of the region’s 200 million
people has been left homeless or have fled for safe
haven abroad. Next January, Barack Obama will leave
office as the first president in US history to serve
his entire two terms while the country was at war.
“Fractured
Lands” is an apologia for the record of American
imperialism. Its author has served as a war
correspondent for 33 years and has worked for the
New York Times for the last 17. He is a
prolific, educated writer and recently published a
historical book on the post-World War One
imperialist carve-up of the Middle East. Whatever
Anderson’s intentions, “Fractured Lands” is a “human
interest” story that serves to justify “human rights
imperialism” and pave the way for new wars.
“Fractured
Lands” makes the argument that the nation-state
system established in the aftermath of the First
World War failed to conform sufficiently to the
various tribal, ethnic and religious divisions in
the region. Anderson concludes that the collapse of
the bourgeois nationalist governments in Syria,
Egypt, Iraq and Libya proves the necessity for
racial and ethnic groups to fill the political
vacuum and fight among themselves to establish
fiefdoms and zones of tribal influence. “Fractured
Lands” acknowledges that this may involve ethnic
cleansing. The author concludes by contemplating
whether pogroms and genocide may be necessary to
establish order in the region.
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