Ce n’est pas l’engagement de Fisk que nous voulons ici mettre en cause, ou bien que voudrions louer comme c’est plus souvent le cas. C’est la forme différente de son article de The Independent, du 4 mai 2015. Fisk ne s’intéresse plus guère au sens des choses (des politiques), au jugement qu’il pourrait porter ici et là. Non, il ne lui importe que de décrire, en renvoyant finalement tout le monde dos à dos pour faire la place qui importe à son principal propos : la folie des bombardements dans tous les sens, sans savoir qui bombarde qui, ou bien pourquoi celui-ci bombarde celui-là, ou bien quelle étrange chose que cet autre, — ou bien est-ce le même ? – bombarde untel dans cette région, et l’adversaire d’untel dans cette autre région.

Le Moyen-Orient est dans un état de décomposition avancée (Fisk cite le mot, qui est le résumé du rapport que le chef d’état-major français, le général Pierre de Villers, a rapporté de l’Irak : “état de décomposition”)… Tout se défait, tout se dissout, – bien au-delà du stade de la déstructuration. Le désordre règne, cavalcade, tourbillonne, et alors l’on comprend qu’il ne s’agit plus vraiment du seul Moyen-Orient qui est mis en cause … Non, le Moyen-Orient, finalement, n’est qu’une folie un peu plus visible que le reste, mais c’est aussi et d’abord un reflet de la situation absolument tourbillonnante du monde. Même le commentateur le plus “engagé”, à certains moments, baisse les bras et admet qu’il y a d’abord à décrire cette situation générale, absolument terrible et incroyable, qui nous file comme du sable entre les doigts.

«Let me try to get this right. The Saudis are bombing Yemen because they fear the Shia Houthis are working for the Iranians. The Saudis are also bombing Isis in Iraq and the Isis in Syria. So are the United Arab Emirates. The Syrian government is bombing its enemies in Syria and the Iraqi government is also bombing its enemies in Iraq. America, France, Britain, Denmark, Holland, Australia and – believe it or not – Canada are bombing Isis in Syria and Isis in Iraq, partly on behalf of the Iraqi government (for which read Shia militias) but absolutely not on behalf of the Syrian government.

»The Jordanians and Saudis and Bahrainis are also bombing Isis in Syria and Iraq because they don’t like them, but the Jordanians are bombing Isis even more than the Saudis after their pilot-prisoner was burned to death in a cage. The Egyptians are bombing parts of Libya because a group of Christian Egyptians had their heads chopped off by what might – notionally – be the same so-called Islamic State, as Isis refers to itself. The Iranians have acknowledged bombing Isis in Iraq – of which the Americans (but not the Iraqi government) take a rather dim view. And of course the Israelis have several times bombed Syrian government forces in Syria but not Isis (an interesting choice, we’d all agree). Chocks away!

»It amazes me that all these warriors of the air don’t regularly crash into each other as they go on bombing and bombing. And since Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines is the only international carrier still flying over Syria – but not, thank heavens, over Isis’s Syrian capital of Raqqa – I’m even more amazed that my flights from Beirut to the Gulf have gone untouched by the blitz boys of so many Arab and Western states as they career around the skies of Mesopotamia and the Levant. The sectarian and theological nature of this war seems perfectly clear to all who live in the Middle East – albeit not to our American chums. The Sunni Saudis are bombing the Shia Yemenis and the Shia Iranians are bombing the Sunni Iraqis. The Sunni Egyptians are bombing Sunni Libyans, it’s true, and the Jordanian Sunnis are bombing Iraqi Sunnis. But the Shia-supported Syrian government forces are bombing their Sunni Syrian enemies and the Lebanese Hezbollah – Shia to a man – are fighting the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Sunni enemies, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guards and an ever-larger number of Afghan Shia men in Syrian uniforms.

»Over the past three days, by the way, Hezbollah members in Lebanon have been told to stand by to return to Syria in the next two weeks to fight a great battle in the Qalamoun hills – across the north-east border of Lebanon – lest Isis tries to push into Lebanon itself and cut Hezbollah’s supply line from Hermel to Baalbek and southern Lebanon.

»And if you want to taste the sectarianism of all this, just take a look at Saudi Arabia’s latest request to send more Pakistani troops to protect the kingdom (and possibly help to invade Yemen), which came from the new Saudi Crown Prince and Defence Minister Mohammed bin Salman who at only 34 is not much older than his fighter pilots. But the Saudis added an outrageous second request: that the Pakistanis send only Sunni Muslim soldiers. Pakistani Shia Muslim officers and men (30 per cent of the Pakistani armed forces) would not be welcome.

»It’s best left to that fine Pakistani newspaper The Nation – and the writer Khalid Muhammad – to respond to this sectarian demand. “The army and the population of Pakistan are united for the first time in many years to eliminate the scourge of terrorism,” Muhammad writes. But “the Saudis are now trying to not only divide the population, but divide our army as well. When a soldier puts on a uniform, he fights for the country that he calls home, not the religious beliefs that they carry individually… Do they (the Saudis) believe that a professional military like Pakistan… can’t fight for a unified justified cause? If that is the case then why ask Pakistan to send its armed forces?”…»