This time the book is about conflict all over the world: In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars by solo journalist, Kevin Sites. Which one of us doesn’t remember the U.S. soldier’s image shooting an unarmed insurgent in a mosque in Fallujah during the 2004 Fallujah battle? It was Kevin Sites who shot that controversial footage.

Watching the world’s conflicts, Sites came up with an idea, a one that led to an important project: covering twenty wars in one year.

Sites’ first chapter of the book and the introductory part of the documentary was about the Fallujah mosque shooting and his time in Iraq. He describes how he was labeled as a traitor by those who don’t accept facts and who do not want to admit that war is ugly and that crimes happen from both fighting parties. The insurgent who was shot might deserve what had happened to him, but the way he was killed was, of course, against the ethics of fighting in war zones. It’s sad to see that those who sent Sites threatening letters and text messages do not understand that he was just doing his job and had not expressed in no way ever his own, personal opinion regarding what happened. He let the world judge and it did.

I see Sites as a good example of balanced, sincere and extremely honest journalism. His words and the video footages he took in the countries he covered had an imprint of humanity. Throughout his travels as a solo journalist in conflict zones, the sense of humanity in his dispatches and reports was strongly evident, having it covered away from politics. There was a scream of horror that he wanted to let the rest of the world hear.

There were stories from Afghanistan, Nepal, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Congo, and other places in the world. Sites was successful in detailing in a summarized way what the cause of violence was and how it took its toll on the human beings there. The things that blew me up the most were the stories from the Congo, Lebanon and Afghanistan. In the documentary he interviews a woman called Marie (not her name, as he mentions in the book). She was raped several times in front of her husband by militiamen who killed her children before her eyes and then mutilated her husband’s body after killing him. The worst part was asking her to chew his cut flesh. “They use rape as a weapon of war,” she told Sites. “They have guns, but this is worse than the guns.” The entire interview in the documentary brought tears to my eyes.

His coverage of the Israel-Lebanon war in the summer of 2006 was noteworthy. He was there when Israel shelled entire buildings with civilians in them. The image of the woman weeping after their loved ones died and the image of the children covered with blood is unforgettable.

Reading the book now after watching the documentary makes me picture all those who were interviewed. Reading the words and comparing them to the people’s faces makes my heart ache. So much violence out there, so many wars, and so much pain and sorrow in the hearts and minds of people. Like Sites, I believe this violence aims to kill civilization and most importantly humanity. The worst part of all, in my opinion, is that there are people out there benefiting from all of this, encouraging more and more violence and causing the deaths and the suffering of millions of people across our cursed planet.

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

I have a friend in Philly who is a Shiite Muslim from Saudi Arabia’s infamous Qatif city. We have always sat and discussed issues that concern our region, religion, and our lives as they are related to these things. One day, I was completely upset and mad at what I had discovered in our religion. The discussion we both had led to realizing that it’s not the problem was not in the religion itself more than the practitioners of Islam themselves who used certain things and interpreted them the way they wanted them to mean. The goal is to make others believe them, and nothing other using certain things from the religion to make them believe in was better than that. During that discussion, I told my friend about my memories of Islam in Iraq. I remember leaning back on the plastic chair, saying “Our religion was simple. The war made it gross.”

Indeed, it was as simple as knowing the basic things in the Quran, knowing your prophet is Mohammed and your God is Allah and that there were other prophets whom God chose to deliver his messages. Yes, there were Sunni and Shiite differences, but among the people (at least those in Baghdad whom I was one of) it was not something we really cared about. During those years, books about religion were rarely found. The secular Baathist regime made sure people in my generation do not understand or know what the real history behind the two sects was. My family did tell me that the Shiites were victimized throughout history, especially during the Abbasid Empire era, but they never really went into details about it nor they stressed on making me or my sister insist on knowing it because it was not a big deal then.

The internet revolution and the flow of the books and the articles about the real history between the two sects appeared on surface in the aftermath of the US.-led invasion of Iraq, letting me and many others in my generation be able to read and learn about that grim and gruesome history of wars and struggle to get power.

One of these books is the Shia Revival. The book opened my eyes to many things that I did not before the war. I knew it all started when Prophet Mohammed died but did not know other details, including the fight between Iran and Saddam was a Shiite-Sunni fight. I know understand why the Arab countries supported Saddam against the “Evil Persians” and why Iran went on for eight years to fight Saddam. The goal was who would dominate? The Sunnis who wanted the Arab World always be Sunni or the Shiites, represented by Iran then, who wanted to spread their faith to a larger crowd in the Arab World?

Addressing the West in his book, Nasr relates the Shiite rituals to those of the other religions. This was something that I did not really know. Nasr also talks about Saudi Arabia’s Wahabism a lot. It is widely connected to the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites these days. It goes way back to the days when the Wahabis invaded the holy city of Karbala where Imam Hussein is buried and slaughtered the Shiites there, believing that they were infidels and tomb worshipers. He also writes about the Lebanon Shiites and how they emerged as a fighting and strong force in the region, making even Sunnis follow them in their fight against Israel which was occupying their land for decades. Then, came the Iran-Iraq war and the whole struggle of keeping the Shiites away from domination. There is also a long, detailed and very interesting chapter about Khomeini and his role in Shiism, followed by an interestingly-analyzed chapter about the new Iraq which he called it ‘The first Shiite Arab state,’ a term that I’ve never heard before and a one that is so true.

Overall, the book shows that the struggle is not religious more than political. Peoples from both sects were caught in the middle of this conflict. They were used and brain-washed over the decades to create differences.

Anyways, it is a wonderful book and a good source that I strongly recommend to readers interested in learning about political Islam.

The other book I’m sunk in its waters now is Robin Wright’s Dreams and Shadows: the future of the Middle East.

Blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

From this forum, I call on the free people in the word to raise their voice and demand the release of our friend whose media and blogging projects made a huge impact on raising the awareness in the world.

Update: (Thanks, Khalid)

In a email sent to Brian’s friends and supporters, Brian’s wife reported the following:

We just got word that Brian and friends are on a plane to Los Angeles, arriving Monday morning. He was released with 7 other US citizen detainees: Jeff Goldin, Tom Grant, Mike Liss, James Powderly, Jeff Rae, John Watterberg and Jeremy Wells.

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com