You can. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome back to the Middle East Centre for the second of our two big events.
Tuesdays are a day where we get to take advantage of what's fresh in the air, usually fresh books in the air.
And I'm delighted to be able to say that this week's fresh book comes from one of the most experienced journalists in our area of common interest.
Jeremy Bowen, BBC's Middle East Editor. As you will learn from reading this book, Jeremy is a survivor of over 20 wars.
Yes. And that since he started his career in 1989.
Jeremy is no stranger to our community. You've addressed a very widely subscribed webinar when we are in the Gap.
I remember very well. Yes, it was a very, very interesting one.
Yeah. Yeah. Well you would say that. Well, not my bit. The other one, the other people.
Sorry, but I would stress that in 2011, Jeremy Bowen was actually invited to give our prestigious George Antonius annual lecture,
the culminating event of our academic year and the most prestigious lecture that we have on the calendar.
And then he blew us all off. Sorry, very short notice to go out and cover the Arab uprisings that happened to be going on in 2011.
That summer it was in Libya and Syria was a busy old time.
Yes, it was. Yeah, Syria was started. I'm still introducing you.
You're not allowed to talk. You just have to look a little bit embarrassed that you blew off our George Antonius lecture.
But we will all agree that still more still mortified.
But I thought it was a good excuse. Didn't you think that worked in. Well, you know the introduction.
Yeah. Guilt tripping. You were glad to have triggered my guilt to discuss.
To discuss his fourth and latest book. At this rate, we can just about give you tenure here.
Four books to your name. We'll give you the title of professor. Thank you.
So this follows on the Arab uprisings war stories, six days, Jeremy's book on the June 67 war.
And now we have the making of the modern Middle East.
What Jeremy rightly brands a very personal history tracking over 30 years of his coverage of the Middle East for the BBC,
where he has had encounters that those of us confined to the halls of Oxford can only envy.
You've talked about how we get to go deeper in our scholarship to you,
but you are more timely in respect for deadlines and in that we get to enjoy the benefit of your research far quicker than you get to enjoy ours.
So I'm going to say that the wannabe journalist in me is in or being in your company.
Jeremy. Welcome back to the Middle East Centre. Now I'm blushing. Thank you so much, Eugene.
Thank you for the welcome and thank you very much for coming here today and to the invitation.
I'm always a bit nervous about what I've come to St Anthony's because you guys know so much and and you know,
as a journalist, we always, you know, we have to do things and see things and and report them quite quickly.
I mean, hopefully over the years, you know,
one builds up a certain modicum of experience and knowledge so that it's not all based on what you see that day,
that there's some hinterland but one can drawn.
So it's usually my my son is just starting his second year as an undergraduate studying history at Cambridge,
and he's extremely sniffy about the whole prospect of an amateur historian,
especially one who works on television daring to put pen to paper and to call it a history.
But the reason why it's a personal history is the genesis of it is in I did some shared DNA with a radio series.
I did, but still available as a podcast on BBC. Sounds called Out of Mind in the Middle East,
and it was 25 programmes looking at different aspects of what's happened in the last 30 years or so and the,
you know, the target audience for that and in a sense for the book.
So I'll come on to that.
Are people who really are not like you that people though I hope those who got the books will enjoy it and there are several more.
So if you've neglected to pick one up all the way through, I've found over many years that a lot of people,
a lot of viewers and listeners, some people look at the website, they are interested, they're intelligent, but they're not knowledgeable.
And when you're a journalist, you especially in the broadcast media, you have to be aware that all kinds of people listen to what you say.
Now, for example, if you work for the for the people, you know, your audience, and if you write for the sun, you know your audience.
If you work for the BBC, then there are people who might see what we do, who knows everything about the story.
But the subjects must loads and there are people who are interested but don't have much grasp of the detail or the background.
And so the mantra always has to be never underestimate people's intelligence, but never overestimate their their knowledge.
So in the way that you've put together that I would put together a story would be in a way with sort of layers,
if you like, like a layer cake where there's always a layer that someone hopefully will get something out of.
And the way you do that is having the right words, the right pictures, putting it together in the right way.
You say a lot through allusion, as well as being very, you know, descriptive.
And so I hope the book is something that people who are interested.
But to be honest, as many of you will know,
if you a lot of people a lot of people in this country are quite put off by the complexities that they perceive in what's going on in the Middle East.
I think they know that it's something they ought to care about and then they worry about the project sometimes when they try to ignore it.
But even when they're interested, the misperception of the complexities is is there.
So I hope that that will help decode it somewhat.
It's called personal history, because I was asked to do this series, as I mentioned, and I thought to myself, Well,
it so happens that the time I've spent reporting in the Middle East, you could say,
started at a kind of a turning point or the beginning anyway, of of a new, new period.
And that was the time when the Soviet Union collapsed, when with the invasion of Kuwait,
the Americans in a much more active way entered the region in terms of their military footprint,
in terms of the way that they, of course, have been politically influential for a long time.
But they didn't have a permanent military base apart from their naval base in Bahrain until that first Gulf War.
And so they tried to do that. There is is look at various incidents in that that are from then, you know,
from that time that started in Afghanistan with the departure of the Soviets.
So that people are happy to hear that about the United States, not in Kabul, because, you know, it's a funny story,
but I when I was writing it well, when I was finished my book last year, Afghanistan was very much in the news.
But it wasn't just that. It was the fact that I would argue that, you know,
the absence of the Soviet Union gave the Americans impressive it for a short time, gave them unprecedented freedom of action.
The things they wanted were authorised in Security Council.
You know, the Soviets in the last couple of months or years, they didn't just stay there really for what the Americans wanted,
but at the same time as well, observing what had happened and observing the consequences of the invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,
there were those people who'd gone to fight, to fight the Soviets, the most famous of all, the notorious Osama bin Laden,
who then that ideology was from that point, you could argue, I'd say, turbocharged by the feeling that they achieved something quite remarkable.
The process that taken since well after the invasion of Kuwait, bin Laden went to the event Defence Minister and said this causes,
you know, it's very connected and said don't allow the Americans and the Americans into the car, you know, the Holy Land that you live in.
We can do it with people who have returned from the jihad.
The veterans will do it for you.
We've thrown was here and the Americans came in and, you know, I was in Saudi Arabia at the time and there was it was,
you know, extraordinary, incongruous sights, these huge American convoys,
women, truck drivers, women wearing clothes in an era when the country was very much in the grip of the religious orthodoxy,
which had been there double down on after the after 1979.
So I thought it's a good place to start because those strands that American involvement in the region,
the consequences that came from it, you know, I've spent most of the last.
As a reporter, I probably spent most of the last seven years well, most of my time as Middle East editor.
I got the job in 2005 dealing with a lot of the consequences of the 2003 invasion, which was catastrophic in its consequences.
And having spent a great deal of time in Iraq and Syria seeing the activities of the likes of ISIS, you can, of course,
is you know, you can trace it all back to the opportunities that were opened up by the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
So, yeah, so I saw a certain continuum that I could write about.
And so what I've tried to do is it's personal because the things I wasn't that I hadn't written about,
to be honest, because I first thing I had to bring to the policy was having seen stuff myself,
you know, having been in, in Mosul with the Iraqi special forces when they were fighting street to street fighting ISIS.
And, you know, having interviewed Assad and Gadhafi, not all of them aside, at the height of the war in 2015, we talked a bit more about ISIS.
You like using. But I was completely amazed by the way I'd met him before the war in Iraq.
And I thought that, you know, by that time, God knows what the death toll was in Syria, but it was way hundreds of thousands,
half the population of the country displaced, half of that called refugees and brought the country broken.
So one family and it's a regime to succeed.
I tell the story in the book. I was chatting to a he didn't.
I asked him if he didn't like it, if he minded me quoting, and he didn't mind at all.
Son Polis, whose assignment called us his last job as a British diplomat, was ambassador in Saudi Arabia.
He was in Syria. He was the last British ambassador to Syria when the war started, when they pulled out.
And I said I remember saying to him at the time, you know, Simon,
how would you to understand for our viewers to understand the Assad family, how do you what's the best way to reach them?
He said, well, it's very difficult, you know, for us, as well as guesswork here a lot of the time because, you know, it goes on within the family.
So he said, my advice is to watch The Godfather or Goodfellas or one of those Mafia movies, because that's what I like.
You know, it's a family business and you have to give the boss respect.
You don't give him respect. You suffer the consequences. You do as you're told.
Maybe you'll be okay and so forth.
But that was that was a very neat analogy. But anyway, think about Bashar al-Assad.
Is that because we look slightly nerdy and rather unassuming as opposed to his, you know, rather dynamic,
square jawed equestrian late brother who is intended to be the the son of that entity to have an untimely death in a car crash.
Because Bashar looks a little unassuming. People sometimes think, well, it can't help you.
We can tell it must be other people pulling the strings, certainly beginning, because if you remember,
he had this extraordinary publicity that was just gushing piece of notoriously
gushing piece in vogue about the Assads and particularly about his wife.
But actually, it was yes, whoever leaked out of magazines by the time he got on the phone, a desert rose or something,
the headline was gushing copy of the revival of Poppies and hope that yeah the and I think
the woman who wrote it never wrote a poem again but she she gave them what they wanted,
which was his gushing thing about this elegant, beautiful, sassy, intelligent woman who married into this extraordinary family.
And they were modernising their country and a lot of people for what it was.
But anyway, so when I saw it in 2015,
I thought it might be some science face at the very least about what he'd done to his country, done to his people.
You look just the same. You know, I'd aged to God sake, is exhausted in front of a reporter and the place to look like that was before the Syrian war.
And what was his fault, by the way? It's nothing to do with me having this old picture.
I think about Assad is he is extraordinarily polite in the most you know, I'm sure in the olden days you didn't know he was.
And so you go took him back to meet some of these delightfully rude flowers.
He you know, he when you have private time with him before the on camera interview and and he's waiting in L.A.
room and this little is rather grand in fact guest house in a big palace on the hill in Damascus.
And and he said, I'm going. Do you think Curtis offers you tea and then starts talking about what he thinks?
I mean, I think that he's tries to be like his dad.
He wants to be the spider in the centre of the world. He wants to be the man who understands power and manipulates power and who people respect.
And I think part of his problem was he you know, his father was a extremely formidable man.
Bashar is enough of a chip off the old block to be able to replicate his dad.
You know, he has a strained relationship with his brother in the way that his father had a strange relationship with his brother.
And anyway, so Assad, by the end, he's yes,
he's extremely courteous and practically breaks his back to try and make sure that you walk through the door ahead of him.
And it's a bit of a it's a bit mind blowing, too.
I mean, I don't think he's the kind of guy to turn torture chamber or anything like that.
I'm sure he never sees the call, but he's clearly very relaxed about what happens.
So he's a full partner. Anyway, that's enough for me for the time being.
On the contrary. Questions. I want to pick up where you left off with your sons.
So yesterday a lot of us were treated to the spectacle of Chris Mason interviewing Liz Truss.
Yes. Wow. Now, God, I mean, who needs foreign correspondents when you've got this built in entertainment?
Who needs political drama when you've got Westminster? I mean, there's not a better scripted programme on TV than the 10:00 news.
But the question is, is it that it's you look at the kind of questions that Chris Mason puts to a British prime minister.
Now, the interview I'd like you to go back to is yours with Khadafi.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which was a huge scoop. It was, you know, and it took a lot of your fixers time to make it happen.
Well, when you go to speak to an Arab dictator, you have to suspend the rules of British journalism.
You can't put the questions to them the way you do it back home.
That's and, you know, maybe you reflect a little bit on what you have to do to your principles as a
journalist to survive as a middle East editor when interviewing dictators.
Well, to start with, maybe the question is we should be maybe we are a little too softly,
softly and too respectful to people in the system in which we live.
I think I think Chris did a good job. I don't think Liz Truss felt that way last night after that.
I think. Well, I think I think he he sort of held back a bit.
And that's when we got the interview. Everyone wanted the interview.
When the uprising started in what was it just after Mubarak went?
So was talking about February. Yeah, I think it's when it started Benghazi, February of that year.
Everyone to start with, no one could get in the foreign journalists.
They wouldn't let people in. And then the word went out and it came from Gadhafi's son in that safe that we offer visas.
So we all heard this. And the person who he was communicating with quite a lot was my late, lamented dear friend Marie Colvin,
who worked for the Sunday Times, was killed a year later in Homs and Basic Marie.
We were all we all thought we had our own connections, okay? But Marie had the best connections because they were with safe.
And so finally she came to me.
I'd known her for many years, many, many years.
I was in Baghdad in the 1991 war with her and before that in different places in Bosnia and God knows where else anyway.
So they said, Look, it's going to happen. She said, it's going to happen. I've been speaking to said we fixed it all.
But, you know, she worked for the Sunday Times, so he needs TV.
So he said he wants an American TV company and he wants a global TV company in the sky with and CNN with that.
And so I said, you know, the global stuff for the BBC.
And at the time, Christiane Amanpour was not with CNN.
She was with ABC News in the States. So she considers the American the I've got to remember his name offhand.
His name is in the book. The son of one of Gadhafi's oldest collaborators.
And intelligence chief was the guy who was I was dealing with who was this designer urban guerrilla.
I mean, he he we were we were all walled up in the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli,
which is a fabulous hotel, if you ever want to spend, you know, in terms of the amenities.
The main thing was it had some of the best isolated moments. Hotels have some of the best bathrooms I've ever been in.
But this guy walked around as if. You know, he'd just been living in a cave for this double, and he had.
But it was beautifully done because he had a commando type black hat he always wore.
But it was cashmere. And the he had a sort of combat jacket, but it was one of those ones that Italian tourists were.
And beautiful boots, but they were blue suede.
And, you know, the thing about the whole Gadhafi coterie is they loved dressing up because as did the main man himself,
the leader, as they always call. And the leader was the leader with whom you designed his own uniforms.
He invented orders of chivalry and awarded them to himself.
He had a fantastic array of medals. So, you know, the look was quite a things in the Gadhafi period.
And so anyway, we rushed he said, come now, the leader awaits you.
And we went down to this absolutely fantastic BMW,
but we got in and it had suede everything inside really good suede lining armoured and my could use have put have
recording equipment in the boot and there was a gun rack in the boot and we got in and this gun my hand and he,
he turned around from the front seat and he was loving it and he said, it's a James Bond car isn't it.
Since you were going to interview Gadhafi and and he was right from what are the the royal families effectively of the country.
So anyway, to answer your question in more serious manner, you have to show that you're holding them to account.
And also because they are all powerful in their own environment, you have to really ram it home.
I mean, with because Assad was so polite always.
I said to him at the beginning when I interviewed him that thing in 2015, I said, you know, I'm going to ask the hardest questions I can think of.
He said, Ask away. Ask whatever you want. Gaddafi There was nothing like that.
He was, he was somewhat out of it. But the thing was what I liked about my questions to him,
which were the bits that everybody used and is that because I he was saying My people love me.
And I said, well, I've seen people demonstrating against you today because and he was he was saying, no, it's impossible.
My people love me. And he went into English from Arabic and he said, My people love me.
They all love me, they love me. And I said, I've seen them demonstrating, saying, you need to go.
No, he was dismissing it. I think he believed his own propaganda.
Yeah, he'd been in power since 1969.
Wherever he went, he was surrounded by a cheering crowd.
In the time I spent quite a few months over that year and I got to know the main faces because they're all busted, you know?
But they they were like the sort of people who professional employed to be as welcoming party.
I think wherever he went this has gone on not just for it was for years and years and years but I think and he was eccentric tending to loopy.
And I think that he I think he come to believe his own propaganda.
I think I think dictators who live in a bubble after a while believe their own publicity and they believe and it's complete nonsense.
And of course, he hollowed out the country and hollowed out the institutions.
The with the once the once the ruling family had gone.
Everything collapsed. Not that there was much to collapse, in a sense.
So. Yes. So the thing is, though, that because, you know, we're also concerned about how an interview sounds and looks,
it's very important to say the question to safe to say, you know, I mean, with Assad,
I was asking him about barrel bombs because it had been documented already.
There was video I'd been across because we had some connections with various rebel groups.
So I've been across from regime held Damascus into Duma, particularly in Duma in Eastern Ghouta.
And I saw the aftermath of these attacks burnt out buildings,
bits of barrel bits of the netting that some of the things came down and, and, and it was so well documented by then.
So I said to him, look, I have seen I've seen it myself in my own eyes.
I've seen the consequences of what these bombs do. And there's so much video around.
And he started making a about it know, he said, next thing you'd be saying, we're throwing cooking pots at the pots.
Barrels. Yes, there were bullets. We fired bullets at terrorists.
But that's it. And I really pushed him on the point, and he was just laughing.
And it's funny what goes through people's minds, what they think is a convincing.
Let me keep pushing you, though. What goes through your mind as a journalist?
Do the interviews with dictators, did you ever feel frightened, you know, in talking to some of these other.
No, because you're there in a very controlled environment.
And, you know, if they allow in the international media to talk to the boss, then you're going to be fired.
They're not going to. I mean, what's the worst thing to kick me out of the country?
I think maybe. Yeah, well, that. Yeah, you could.
You could get loose. I mean, you know. Yeah, it's.
Yes, you could have it. I said it could happen.
I think what is way more scary is dealing with guys at a roadblock who who may have killed someone that morning,
physically, himself, personally or what.
I mean, I write in the book about seeing the bus at the bus station in Damascus that went to Raqqa.
I felt scared looking at the sign, you know, when at the time that that ISIS was running, when the you know, the caliphate was at its height,
I felt scared even looking at the bus and imagining what it would be on that bus,
going towards the first ISIS's checkpoint, we came to the outskirts of Raqqa.
I mean, that kind of thing. I mean, I I'll give you one example.
In fact, the one of the reviews, the fox, I should have made more of it and said how dangerous it probably was.
But one of the the militias in Iraq the cycle I look I went I saw their spiritual leader in Baghdad and I said, can I come and see you?
And that was again, I mean, he's quite scary. And I said, Can I come and see your guys in the field?
And they said, yes. And so the next day we went out and they were right near the front line where they were fighting the ISIS people.
And we went and I was with the local producer.
I work with that experienced journalist, also a Shia.
And he look, he's never knows. He looked so nervous walking into their HQ.
And I said I said, what's what's eating you today?
What's the problem? He said, to get it. These people killed without hesitation.
They felt that, of course, they had a record of kidnapping and killing British people, too, in the journey.
Yeah. So they killed without hesitation the leader, the chief uniform guy in there was the little fellow with the most piercing eyes I have ever seen.
And he was looking at us and he was saying, I've been asked to entertain you here and be responsible for you, but I'm telling you.
If there is any if I think your life I will find it out.
And you know, he went on this way. I think I would tell a lie from a source.
I will not tell a lie because it was I mean, he was a you could see this guy's got oceans of blood on their hands, some of them.
But the reason why it's necessary, I think, for journalists to go to dangerous places sometimes is because I'm a big believer.
You know, I'm aware that there are issues about people trusting what we do.
And I think that I'm a big believer in eyewitness reporting because I think that is the way to help build trust,
because I hope that people over the many years realise that if I say something,
it's because I've seen it or spoken to someone and not it's not something that's popped into my inbox or seen on social media or anything like that.
So that's why, unfortunately, at times it means mixing with unsavoury characters.
Well, you get a mix with a lot of savoury characters too.
And I think some of the heroes that come through in the book are the people you interview to get behind
stories from the way they impact the lives of people like you and me who are in Gaza or in Beirut.
There are so many nice people. I me.
Yeah, most of my my work and of course, you know, a perception of the Middle East among people who are there and don't know.
It is very often that it's, you know, this seething mass of war torn countries.
And while there is quite a bit of war, sadly and even quite a bit of seething, in fact, you know, as everyone in this room knows,
the remarkable people and extraordinary history and culture, and people don't deserve what politics is of their way, basically.
Yeah, that's right. And you know, this the way that they've been so comprehensively failed.
Well, by everybody from the foreigners who invaded and colonised or took them over and trying to,
you know, for their own reasons, to their own leaders,
to those, you know, to that generation of military men who took over in the fifties, the Baathist, you name it, and any number of false dawns.
And underlying all of that, not just crisis of governance, but corruption, which is like cancer,
I think in a state, any state corruption is like cancer in the human body.
It eats away and sooner or later it kills you. Now, Jeremy, I like you.
I mean, I'd go so far as to say we're friends, but you're a nightmare. I sense a bus, is there?
There is no there is no discipline to the way in which you address the questions I put you.
And you have a great way of taking off in your own direction. I haven't touched a quarter of the questions I had.
Going to ambush you with Iran as to why it is is possible for this is probably because well I'm on the 10:00
news they say we've got a lot you know where you that bit where you have to sit in the studio and talk to you.
If you're the political editor, you get about five questions that answers you wax lyrical.
If you're the Middle East editor, as I'm now, the international as they say, we've got a nice long slot for you today.
Jeremy one minute 30 and you so you know, suddenly I'll go confronted by the broad expanses of Oxford University to go.
You said the soundbite went out the door.
I was, I was at the Cheltenham Literary Festival the weekend before then and my source for about three years.
So I was going to sit actually. Well, yes, sorry, yes, sorry.
No, no, no, no need to apologise because the content is fascinating.
But you've made this shift from being Middle East editor to international editor.
And if there's something that ties your journalism together, it is war.
And there is is my subject is war. There is a tendency in your profession that there are war journalists.
Yeah. You covered Bosnia, you covered Ukraine, you've covered Middle Eastern wars.
In other words, if you're international, your scope, it's less to do with politics and more war.
Well, as you know, Eugene was an extension of politics.
By the means we go. There you go. I'm sure you learned of your undergraduate.
And I think, yes, the thing is, we live in turbulent times and journalists like me, we don't really like the phrase war correspondent.
It seems to think of either some terrible adrenaline junkie and they do exist, you know, walking around in big boots.
And even when he's back in London and they do exist or maybe, you know, sort of a man from scoop in a white suits and a cleft stick and.
I think that I got involved in, first of all, went to a war because which was El Salvador in 1989.
Oh, you did, Salvador? Well, I was working in Washington at the time, and I went to Salvador, and I was just curious.
I felt this was a major part of human experience, and I wanted to see what it was like.
You know, I was just very curious about about how it felt, how it felt to be in the place where people were shooting.
I'd never heard a shot fired in anger. I'd never seen a dead body. I've seen so many other you know, it could be a undertake, to be honest.
And what I think is that if you try and cover it in a smart way, then you reflect the politics and you reflect why they're there.
If the story is simply, you know, here is Stephan, aged six, in the hospital bed.
He's been blown up. And then you're in another country and you see his Mohammed, age six, in the hospital bed.
He's blown up. And then if you say you're somewhere else and there's a you know, what I'm saying is that is that you have to say why it's happening.
When when reporting is about just, oh, my God, I've seen some terrible stuff today.
Well, yeah, that's okay for a couple of days.
But when it's a long running story, like Ukraine or like the Israelis and the Palestinians are like Iraq or Syria or whatever,
you have to get into why and then you get into the politics.
And so for me, the challenge of it is to try and approach it in such a way that people don't just think God, they're violent.
Shiites are. They're killing each other. They think, well, there's a reason why this is going on.
And it's my job to try and explain that. And sometimes you succeed, sometimes sometimes you don't.
I would have to say, having watched most of your broadcast career, I think you're 32 years out.
Wow. That your success rate is one that leads a lot of the people in your profession as admiring of your work.
Thank you. As those of us who are your viewers. Well, thank you.
It's been a lot of fun, of course, teasing you and talking with you and sharing your reflections with us.
I want to before we break, just recommend to everybody the making of the modern Middle East.
My view on this book, a gripping and compelling account that swings between gut wrenching eyewitness stories and dispassionate analysis.
I always laying bare the hopes and horrors of the Middle East in the 21st century.
A remarkable book. He didn't pay you to say that?
It is what I think. Yeah. And there are a few more copies out there.
And Christmas is only two months away, you senior scholar.
So more than that, before we break a new clip and everything, I'm going to escort Javi back to the table up.
There were those of you who smart people already bought your copy.
He will sign them for you. And those of you who have yet to buy a copy, please race as soon as we get out of here before they're all gone.
For that, I get 20%. But. But now, please give it up for Javi.
But.