Black Wave

I have to say that I am in awe of Kim Ghattas’ magnum opus, Black Wave. It is a book filled with heroes and villains. I have studied MENA on and off for years both professionally and personally, although my focus has at times been pushed by career needs to other regions of the world. I heard the stories of an officemate who had returned from Iran with the advent of the revolution. I only found out about the seizure of the American Tehran embassy when I purchased back copies of Time magazine in the Peking Hotel gift shop upon my return to Beijing from a month in the hinterlands of China. I had found my shortwave radio useless. At the time, I had thought the assassination of Park Chung-hee was the more momentous occurrence I had missed! I was subsequently posted in the KSA servicing Aramco for over two years in the early eighties while the Iran-Iraq war was raging, and subject to censorship most noticeable by the torn pages removing cleavage from printed media. I was inspired during that assignment to return to graduate school in Denver, and I believe it was in 1985 that I worked closely on a seminar project with a young man named Javad Zarif, defending the right of the U.S. to use force to defend its interests in a debate with the other two members of the class. (An avowed supporter of Khomeini, he of course asserted the same right of Iran to do the same.) As recently as 2016 I visited the “discovery” well of the extension of the Iranian Yadavaran oil field into Iraq and a mine-clearing operation for much of the Operation Ramadan battlefield. It was sobering to realize that an estimated 15% of the 180,000 troops involved were killed or wounded in a six-week bloodletting 34 years earlier. So my life, work experience and interests have been intertwined with the events described by Ms. Ghattas. Even with my voracious appetite for written perspectives on MENA in languages accessible to me, however, I still view myself as naïve in the region. Ghattas has filled in many gaps in my knowledge with her expansive account. I found it very readable, although slow going as I frequently put it down to further research specific subtopics or individuals. It will be worth a re-read at some point, and of course is a good reference. She barely touches upon the oil politics, and most of what has transpired in Libya, for instance, is beyond the scope of the book. She dissects the culture(s) of the region and the malignant effects upon it of the book’s two major protagonists, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The veiling she describes darkens the lives of not just women but everyone caught in the maelstrom unleashed by the religious fundamentalists. Anyone who wants to understand the cauldron that is the Middle East must read this book. Anyone who wants to understand the dangers of religious fundamentalism should read this book.

This book is a vastly informative, in-depth resource detailing the parallel countries of Iran and Saudi Arabia post 1979 Iranian Revolution. It details the religious extremism that emerged post revolution, with the all powerful Supreme Leader Khomeini dictating the Iranian Shia Sufism outward and the promotion of Wahhabism by the al-Saud dynasty for Sunnis in the Muslim world radiating from Saudi Arabia. The book powerfully captures the erosion of freedoms such as diversity of religious and political ideology as theocratic societies emerge with increasing extremism. The competition to proselytize the "correct" school of Muslim theology throughout the Middle East and the world and the increasingly violent sectarianism that was and is so destructive to the region (and the world) is clearly shown in historic and personal terms. The book captures the devastation of authoritarianism and the rise of religious extremism without solely focusing on the Western fear of terrorism, although the book provides context as to how and why groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, Daesh, and Hezbollah develop and flourish and the destruction they cause. The central emphasis of the book is how the absolute rule of men in positions of powers is corrosive and corrupting whether it comes in the form of government or religion, and that both religion and politics are often the tools of authoritarians, divisive so they can maintain and expand their power. This book is an excellent introduction to Middle Eastern affairs and despite complex and often unfamiliar concepts reads quickly and with suspense. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to better understand the Middle East beyond limited discussions of terrorists and terrorism.

This book tells the broad story of the past 40+ years of the Middle East starting from the premise that three significant events in 1979 have shaped the region's path: the Iranian Revolution, the siege of Mecca, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The story is told as a series of personal stories, relating the lives and fates of a number of important personalities from across the region with a narrative of how their thoughts and beliefs influenced and/or were impacted by the increasingly conservative Islamist narrative across the region. The author does a really good job of weaving it all together in a way in which the overlapping and cascading influences are laid out with clarity. The author states at the outset that she wanted to understand "What happened to us?", in the context of understanding what were the events and influences that have resulted in the bitter Saudi-Iranian rivalry, the vicious wars in Syria and Yemen, the rise of ISIS, and a general trend towards increasingly conservative Islam in places like Egypt and Pakistan. She approached the question, as one would guess from its phrasing, from an empathetic perspective of the impacts of all of this on the ordinary citizens of the region. An engrossing read and highly recommended for anyone with an interest in the region.

This is a timely and critically important book on the deepening tragedy that is the Middle East. Lebanese journalist Kim Ghattas explains the region through the prism of the Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry. She brings these two rich civilizations (and their neighbors) to life by showing them through the eyes of colorful individuals challenging the status quo. Her focal point is 1979. The year opened with the Iran’s Islamic Revolution and closed with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In between, the House of Saud survived a fundamentalist coup attempt. These three events would unleash what Ghattas calls a “Black Wave” of Islamic fundamentalism and war. Three lessons I took from “Black Wave”: 1.) Muslim reformers are fighting a losing battle with extremists. 2.) The Middle East is its own worst enemy (not Israel and/or the United States). 3.) U.S. involvement in the Middle East almost always makes things worse. The three most interesting people Ghattas profiles: 1.) Quassem Suleimani, Iranian military leader assassinated by Trump last month 2.) Masih Alinejad, Iranian exile in the U.S. fighting forced veiling 3.) Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi journalist butchered by his government in 2018 Middle Eastern Leader Most Like Trump: Saddam Hussein -- Flamboyance + False Piety Biggest Omission: No discussion of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. This was very much tied to the 1979 Revolution and defined Iran for me as a kid. I visited Egypt and Palestine in the early 1990s, so I have been following the region for almost 30 years, but this was my first book. Consequently, there were a few chapters where I found myself swimming in a sea of names and unfamiliar Arabic/Persian terms. Fortunately, Ghattas rewards us neophytes with wonderful writing, characters, and insights. I wish I could share the optimism Ghattas expresses in her Conclusion, but almost all of her heroes are either dead or in exile. Unfortunately, I cannot discern a pathway out of the darkness. I will be peppering my Iranian-American hiking buddies with questions on our next hike!

Not since "The Great War for Civilization" have I read such a sweeping overview of recent Middle Eastern history and in many ways, this book is better (as well as more accessible). While Robert Fisk, the author of that book, mostly blamed the West for everything that had happened to the Middle East, Kim Ghattas mostly blames Iran, Saudi Arabia and their rivalry (even if this theory is somewhat undermined by the two countries' détente during the 1990s and early 2000s). While that book was mostly a story about loss of life, this book is a story about loss of intellectual and social freedom. Iran and Saudi Arabia, since 1979, have both been out to prove that their models of Islam are the only valid ones. The Saudi government didn't understand that this would lead its citizens and proxies to turn on its own American protector, but far from cutting them loose, the Americans for their part have mostly blamed Iran (or minor players such as Saddam Hussein) and bucked up the pro-Saudi dictatorships holding power throughout most of the Sunni Muslim world. (I didn't say Ghattas takes us off the hook entirely.) These dictatorships turned to Islam as a source of legitimacy and increasingly cracked down not only on Western imports but their own cultural legacy of a more cosmopolitan Islam. Iran was doing the same thing as Saudi Arabia (on a smaller scale due to having less disposable income). Dissenters in both Iran and Saudi Arabia remember being told as children that if they enjoyed music, molten iron would be poured into their ears on Judgment Day. Ghattas' book is also superior to Fisk's in that the story of the devolution of Iran, Saudi Arabia and various other countries in the region is told not through her own eyes but through the eyes of a panoply of freethinkers both male and female with whom she has cultivated relationships. She tells the stories of their evolution and martyrdom or escape to the West. Only one of the people who escaped to the West eventually returned to live in the region, which is why unlike Ghattas, I am inclined to despair for the Middle East. I don't see how these countries can come back from the black hole into which the wave has swept them, especially given that people who want more freedom than currently on offer can simply move to the West. That pressure will prove irresistible to most, but perhaps there are exceptions. The young Saudi studying IT who lived in my boardinghouse might be one. I encouraged him to stay, but he went home to Saudi Arabia. If there is hope, it will be built upon by his generation. Five stars for the book.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Fitting so many events into fewer than 400 pages definitely isn’t easy, but Kim Ghattas pulls it off masterfully. What sets this book apart from other political history books is the stories of the people who actually lived that history, their struggles for freedom and their efforts to make things better. Another thing I really loved was how the book touches on culture, art, and music across all the countries it covers; Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, and more. It moves beyond the stereotypical images of these places and gives a more real and nuanced picture of what they were like and why they changed.

Kim Ghattas offers a study of the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia since the revolutions of 1979. For most Americans, we are familiar with the Iranian revolution of '79 but know less about the changes in Saudi Arabia and the Wahabi, which she describes as puritan, in order to provide an metaphor from American history. Ghattas begins with her own Lebanon. Despite being our focus as Americans since 2001, the Middle East is confusing, so each chapter makes clear what country we are discussing and what year or years the events took place. She then goes into Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Palestine and Israel and of course the United States. But the organizing principle for interpretation is the rivalry between the Sunni and Shia represented by Iran (Persia) and the Saudis. When the Obama administration made the nuclear deal with Iran, it was shifting American policy from favoring the Sunni toward the Shia side. This may have been influenced by Zbig Brzezinski's ideas about the balance of power in books such as the Grand Chessboard (my guess, that has nothing to do with the book). The Trump administration has moved back toward the alliance with the Saudi and Sunni side of the dispute. Ghattas says that both Iran and Saudi Arabia feared ISIS, but they hated each other more. Ghattas provides helpful metaphors and analogies from American culture to deal with all these names. For instance, the Wahabi is puritanical where the Ayatollah was radical and revolutionary, even though the practices may look similar, because their relationship to previous history was different. She'll say that so and so is the "Audrey Hepburn" of the country she's discussing. There are also musical references like Joan Baez and Led Zeppelin to show the interaction of cultures. Her perspective is basically liberal and feminist but not from a Western standard, we're talking about issues like "driving a car" which became a big thing with the Saudis. Although I didn't see his name, there's a lot of the radical scholar Edward Said and the theory of Orientalism. But the specific project of the book is to answer Bernard Lewis' question of "What Went Wrong" in the last 41 years. Among the major events are the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War of 1990-91, 9/11 and bin Laden/al Qaeda, and the wars in Syria. There's not a lot about Christians, although there were some mentions of their difficulties. From her Lebanese perspective, Ghattas says that the colonials gave power to the Christians, so the anti-Christian violence is partly anti-Western or anti-European. The concluding major event was the assassination of Jamal Kashoggi and the new crown prince MBS, who has claimed to be modernizing but is a disturbing authoritarian. There is a reference to the Saudis' desire for Suleimani to surrender, but he has since been killed by America. So while the book finished just a few months ago, the story keeps changing.

The ripple effect of well intended and horribly informed decisions has been massive. This was a great read, the writing style is very compelling and the stories of are super informative. Kim's competence and expertise show throughout the book. Wish I could write as well as her. The people that caused so much unrest in the middle east are all out of office or dead. It's time the west stopped interfering in other countries.