Robert Fisk: The West's Racial Maps Promote Civil War (Seattle P-I)

[marmar]

The West's racial maps promote civil war

ROBERT FISK
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Why are we trying to divide up the peoples of the Middle East? Why are we trying to chop them up, make them different, remind them -- constantly, insidiously, viciously, cruelly -- of their divisions, of their suspicions, of their capacity for mutual hatred? Is this just our casual racism? Or is there something darker in our Western souls?

Take the maps. Am I the only one sickened by our journalistic propensity to publish sectarian maps of the Middle East? We are all familiar with the color-coded map of Iraq. Shiites at the bottom (of course), Sunnis in their middle "triangle" -- actually, it's more like an octagon (even a pentagon) -- and the Kurds in the north.

Or the map of Lebanon, where I live. Shiites at the bottom (of course), Druze farther north, Sunnis in Sidon and on the coastal strip south of Beirut, Shiites in the southern suburbs of the capital, Sunnis and Christians in the city, Christian Maronites farther north, Sunnis in Tripoli, more Shiites to the east. How we love these maps. Hatred made easy.

Of course, it's not that simple. I live in a small Druze enclave in the west of Beirut. But my local grocer and my driver are Sunnis. I suppose they have no business to be in the wrong bit of our map. So do I tell my driver Abed that our map shows he can no longer park outside my home? ....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/306326_fisk07.html

[twilight_sailing]

1. Just for the sake of illustration, here's a map -

[MrModerate]

2. Reality is always more complicated than can be represented . . .

on a map.

Maps are abstractions of reality. So we should stop using maps because they're incomplete representations of the real world? Hardly. I don't find such a tool to be a racist mechanism.

The ethnic map of Washington DC would most definite be published if it was useful to illustrate some concept. I think if you looked, you could find equivalent maps indicating the density of White Socks fans in Chicago. Not exactly an example of the darkness of our Western souls.

This article is piffle.

[xxqqqzme]

3. '...This article is piffle...'??

because you are an expert on middle east relationships?

Just curious -

Robert Fisk lives in Lebanon and has lived there for many years. I'll take his 'piffle' over your flippant dismissal.

[MrModerate]

4. Please feel free to accept Fisk's piffle . . .

I have no argument with his concern for the division among mankind. They're serious and real. Blaming them on the fact that people make maps that indicate various demographic data is, however, silly and unserious.

[stillcool]

5. red states/blue states...

was not an accurate depiction of the U.S. to me, until the maps came around. Back in the day I considered people...people. Maps are helpful in defining what I can not see or sense, but there is good reason to be skeptical. I remember when a map of the world showed the U.S. in a predominant proportion. The article may be piffle to you, but if the goal is to separate people from their land, re-drawing maps is the common tool. I find it helpful to be reminded of the plethora of material surrounding me that is not accurate.

[MrModerate]

6. No doubts that maps can -- and have -- been used . . .

To drive wedges between people (or, in extreme cases, to establish by fiat new national borders -- ask the Kashmiris). Red State/Blue State maps are another example of specious mapmaking that slipped into consensus reality while I wasn't paying attention.

My problem with the article is Fisk's rather overwrought contention that the dark, Western soul uses maps like Sauron uses rings to divide and enslave people -- not only a distraction from more serious causes, but a case of blaming the messenger (more precisely, the envelope the message comes in) for situations that have emerged in much more complicated ways. Complicated ways that Fisk alludes to (in fact, his article is steeped in the complexities of dysfunctional human/political relations), but tries to cram into the box of "mapmaking."

[On the Road]

7. People are Always Fighting the Last War

The British (and to a lesser extent the French) carved up the Ottoman Empire after WWI, mixing dissimilar groups and appointing leadership that inevitably led to conflicts. What they did is a very bad model for nation-building.

So now people come along, take a cursory look at history, and think "Oh, we should divide along ethnic lines to prevent one group (eg, Arab Sunnis) from ruling others (eg, Kurds and Shiites).

The problem is partly what Fisk points out -- namely, that the population lines are not cleanly drawn and separation can just as easily lead to persecution of minorities and to conflict between neighboring states.

However, there is a broader issue. As every American knows that an ethnically mixed state like the US can work well, and that separating ethnic groups is not necessarily the solution. Let's say that during the days of segregation someone proposed that the US be divided into cantons based on the predominant race of the population -- Latinos would get parts of the Southwest, blacks would get parts of the Southeast, whites would get midwestern farmland, etc. Cities might be divided by neighborhood. It's obvious what a strange and horrible idea that would be for the US, but we have no problem proposing it for other countries.

It is true that a country's leadership has to make a priority of peace and evenhandedness. Marshall Tito, for example, handled Yugoslavia pretty well, doling out resources among the Slovenians, Croats, Muslims, Albanians, and Serbs, and keeping the country stable for a long time. Yugoslavia was probably better off as a single country than as its warring parts. Iraq could have been the same, and still might be, although at this point there may have too much violence already to keep the groups cooperative.

I take a slightly kinder view than Fisk. I think the racism is in the simplistic and paternalistic belief that other people can't handle diversity and that ethnic strife is inevitable.

[Lisa]

8. humanistic geographers have been arguing this for a long time ...

Even the attempt to map an area (topographical surveys, or just the display of data in a thematic map) can become highly politicized. Old-school cartographers tended to believe (possibly due to Enlightenment philosophy?) that clarifying things with a map could only improve the situation for all parties involved. Geographers now accept that this isn't always the case -- maps can exacerbate tensions and even cause more confusion. One geography prof I know recalled a nasty dispute that erupted at a conference on the Middle East, because one delegate (could have been deliberately, or out of ignorance) used a map which identified a certain body of water as "Lake Kinneret" -- others disagreed vehemently and insisted that it was "Lake Tiberias".

Fisk's take is mild, compared to what some geographers, like Neil Smith and Mark Monmonier, have said about the power relationships involved in mapping -- sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious. The militarization and privatization of map technology (especially with the rising prominence of computerized Geographical Information Systems) have been noted by many radical commentators.


If the guy who presented this particular map at a conference hadn't been retired, he would likely have been called on the carpet by the top brass -- as it was, the Turkish delegation was concerned. There was a story reported a while back on DU, where a US military officer was criticized for using another map during a briefing which had labels that implied a policy change -- the guy had just picked up a rough map for pointing out certain areas, but because it was an official briefing, people were worried that he seemed to be speaking for the military about that.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0611/S00158.htm