Den rasende farten som begivenhetene skjer med i Midtøsten, gjør det maktpåliggende å oppdatere begrepsapparatet og forestillingene om Midtøsten. Norsk debatt er preget av noen gjengangere, som sprites opp, men sjelden revuderes eller skiftes ut. Verst er Klassekampen og Rødt som ikke greier å være for vestlig intervensjon i Libya, av prinsipp, selv om libyerne må betale med sitt blod.

Michael J Totten har den fordomsfrie holdningen vi skulle ønske oss mer av fra norske journalister. Her er et sitat fra en anmeldelse i the Propagandist, også det en publikasjon det er verdt å stifte bekjentskap med.

Over five years of research went into “The Road to Fatima Gate”, which begins with the ‘Beirut Spring’ of 2005 which followed the political murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri. The book documents the subsequent seismic shifts in Lebanese politics over the next half-decade and the related events in the broader region, including the 2006 summer war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Not only does Totten manage to unravel for his reader the intricacies of the various factions at work in Lebanon, he succeeds in mapping their changing alliances and connections to the broader regional picture, whilst at the same time deconstructing the often one-dimensional impressions which many Westerners hold of the players at work in the entire Middle East.

However, this is no dry study of Middle East current affairs: the book is written in an engaging ‘zoom in –zoom out’ style whereby Totten recounts his first-person experiences during the many months he spent living in Beirut and visiting the surrounding countries in among the detailed political overview. But even Totten’s documentation of his own experiences such as being blacklisted by Hezbollah, dodging rockets in Northern Israel or extracting Christopher Hitchens from a fight with the Syrian Social National Party are not about him; they are used as a conduit through which to give the Western reader better access to understanding an environment in which all he thought he knew is largely irrelevant.

Just as Totten himself manages to produce such quality work because he has grasped during the long time he has spent in the Middle East that in order to understand his environment he must jettison his own culturally-defined inbuilt perspectives, he encourages his reader to do the same. As he states himself in the book, at some point he stopped asking his interviewees “so what do you think the solution is?” because he came to understand how ridiculous a question it is. Unlike so many Western journalists he also understands that concepts of winner and loser, right and wrong, good and bad have little relevance in such a complicated region and therefore his writing is refreshingly free of misleading judgment.

“The Road to Fatima Gate” is essential reading for anyone who wishes to look beyond the trite reporting of Middle East affairs and find out what really makes this region tick. It offers no easy answers, no instant solutions and little comfort or reason for optimism. But then again, that is precisely what makes it an accurate record and analysis of five years in the life of a region which, despite always being in the news, so few know much about. Even more importantly, Totten’s work will provide the reader with an essential basis for the understanding of future events in this region, the mechanisms of which are already in process.

Review. The Road To Fatima Gate
By Hadar Sela

The Road to Fatima Gate
The Beirut Spring, the rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian war against Israel

By Michael J Totten
Encounter Books,