On Sept. 22nd, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) hosted Robert Fisk and allowed him to share his views on issues currently plaguing the Middle East. Fisk had been in the Middle East just a few days prior, and has been based in Beirut for roughly 39 years now. Fisk is a man with incredible insight into the way international relations function and he is a true journalist in every sense of the word. He does not write from a far-removed hotel, but instead pursues the action in order to uncover whatever truth he can find throughout the chaos. It is with great embarrassment as a Canadian that I have to mention that one of the first things Fisk said about touching down in Canada was that he was, “amazed to find the government behaving the way it is.” He speaks, of course, about the Harper government’s reluctance to grant the entry of thousands of Syrian refugees.
Considering how few students actually showed up to this lecture, I do not think it is a stretch to assume that a lot of the people reading this are unfamiliar with Fisk’s credentials. If you will, allow me to lay them on the table. This is a man who has reported on the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Algerian Civil War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and currently the ongoing Syrian Civil War. Fisk has even interviewed Osama Bin Laden on three separate occasions, as well as Saddam Hussein. It would be difficult to find a reporter who knows the political landscape of the Middle East more than Fisk—he is a person with both deep knowledge and insight into the history of the World we live in.
Fisk’s approach to talking about these incredibly sensitive subjects speaks to his reverence for the human condition. Fisk uses a two-pronged approach—we need to look to at our past honestly in order to examine our mistakes and, with that knowledge, to plan for the future while dealing with the present. The title of Fisk’s lecture, “Goodbye Mr. Sykes, Adieu M. Picot,” was named after two individuals who, if you look to the past, made a decision in secret to divide Middle Eastern land for the West post-WW1 in what is today known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Fisk repeatedly stated that had the Arab people been awarded a sovereign state post-WWI, a lot of the problems centered in the Middle East could have been avoided. Non-governmental organizations (NGO) of the time requested such action, similar to today’s NGOs are requesting well-off countries to accept refugees. Aside from Fisk’s incredible insight into the workings of international relations and World history, I did take something else away from this lecture. Fisk came on a Tuesday night, and I could not help but notice how few students attended. Perhaps nobody knew, but I doubt that’s the case, because somehow I heard about it. I walked out of that lecture a changed person in a lot of respects. I found a newfound reverence for a character I had a shallow understanding, interest in a topic that’s scope both previously intimidated and eluded me—but I also found confusion for the aims of fellow students, and maybe lost a little faith in just what a university education really means in the modern day. Our university is supposed to be a place of free thought, enlightenment, and growth—but when I walked past the campus pub and saw it buzzing with careless abandon, I heard a culture that could only be described as stagnating.