Kim Ghattas insider´s account of Hilary Clinton´s projects within the State Department, published under the title of The Secretary were a valuable investigation that goes beyond the usual mandate of a politically designated person. It revealed institutional mechanisms and behaviors that are there to maintain the continuity of an institution, the diplomacy, aimed to serve the national interests of a country no matter who is heading the country or the institution.
Black Wave. Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Forty-Year Rivalry that Unraveled Culture, Religion and Collective Memory in the Middle East is an elaborated cultural and journalistic investigation that goes far beyong what we usually consume in the media nowadays. The book is based on a variety of sources, from history books to interviews with main players in the region or media in seven countries with the aim to give voice to the ´silent majority´ of people who are unable to have their say, caught in the terrible fight for geopolitical survival of their countries.
For someone like me, relatively familiar with the area and its players, but far from being an expert, Black Wave reads almost like a thriller where the roles between criminal and victims are free to switch.
The starting point is the year 1979, where three important events took place in the region, whose reverberations continue to complicate the mental and geographical map of the region: the Iranian revolution, the siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca by Saudi zealots and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (´the first battleground for jihad in modern times´). 40 years is 10 years over a generation and caught between religious fervors and cynical realpolitik games, those born after this year in the region are asking ´What Happened to Us?´. I would rather ask: ´What they did to us?´
The book evolves in waves, waves of an earthquake with movable epicenter, shaken by the permanent rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. A rivalry with many collateral victims and which viciously self-reproduces with no chance of end in sight. The identities those two countries created for themselves and the ways in which influenced the neighbouring countries are a fact. How many generations will be needed to challenge those structures, that in the case of Lebanon, for instance, are rotting the state from within, it´s a very sad and complex question.
Black Wave is a heavy read and definitely will need more than once to browse a couple of times more my notes before heading to other resources, particularly about religious differences within Islam and intellectual elites. The book creates a solid basis to build on further knowledge about specificities not necessarily within the research range of this terrible - and sometimes horrible - rivalry.
As for the question of what the future has in store for the people living - and refusing the option of leaving - here, it is largely unknown. A new alignment of events like in 1979 might change everything, but predictions are neither the work of the historian nor the journalist. For sure, the Middle East will remain a valuable source for creating historical encounters, we are far from writing a final/conclusion chapter.
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