Century Art published on June 10, 2010
This is an article that tries di riparare ad un torto commesso da me, forse, a parziale scusa, in compagnia di altri studiosi coinvolti, a vario titolo, in affari internazionale. Come sempre, quando succede qualcosa al di là del Mediterraneo, mi riferisco ai fatti a largo di Gaza, sono andato a vedere cosa dicesse al riguardo il professor Fred Halliday, uno dei più grandi esperti del mondo di questioni medio orientali, ed ho scoperto che se ne era andato, stroncato da un tumore, a Barcellona quasi due mesi fa. Chiunque studioso o semplicemente appassionato di politica si fosse avvicinato agli affari e alla storia del Medio Oriente avrebbe incontrato sul suo cammino la figura di Fred Halliday, il socialista irlandese conoscitore di più di 10 lingue, dal persiano all'arabo passando per tutti i dialetti, che dal fatidico 1968 si occupava di quel mondo. Avevo iniziato a conoscerlo su "Quaderni piacentini", la rivista di estrema sinistra vicino al filone operaista fondata e diretta da Piergiorgio Bellocchio fino al 1980, e poi ho seguito il suo percorso di grande conoscitore di Medio Oriente nei suoi libri e nei commenti on line sul sito Open Democracy
( http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/fred-halliday )
Nonostante gli anni, Halliday era rimasto di sinistra, in quel modo che solo un anglosassone sa e può esserlo. Libero da schemi nelle analisi teoriche ma con giudizi politici sull'attualità al limite dello scontato, simile in questo all'altra famous English scholar of international relations, Mary Kaldor, could fly high or fly heads unworthy of the plan. His mastery of the subject and as a powerful antidote to the ideologies of pragmatism, however, made him immune from historical and analytical simplifications, indeed seemed frankly amazing how much insight is accompanied by a choir result of political legacy of the past.
We like to be remembered not so much for the impromptu reviews, but for the depth of gaze. Take for example his latest book published in Italian, "The Middle East. Power, politics and ideology" (Life and Thought, 2007), here the professor Irish produce a key reading can hold together the various phenomena and jagged range from Ankara cha going from Jerusalem to Kabul. By the end of the cold facts together in different parts of the world far away from each other and with different explanations have been making a weld blending a specific crisis with the result of making a new area and wide area of \u200b\u200bcrisis, "the Greater Middle East" or "Middle East". The process of modernization in those countries, thrown into a globalization without ideological boundaries, has unleashed a series of reactions and counter reactions from telluric, komen with the revolution of the eighties, the entry of religion in politics and eventually put crisis in the same structure heavily Institutional product par excellence of modernity: the nation state. The revolution growth, the expulsion of the Soviets in Kabul, the strength of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the rise of al Qaeda, the Gulf Wars have ended up producing a single puzzle where each piece is held together with the other seamlessly . "An incremental process of joint regional crisis, slow but sure" is going to occur both locally and at international level to end at the same perceptions and popular narratives where Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan have become the cause all related. But the process of unification of geopolitics, and internalization of the area, is not synonymous total replacement of power dynamics twentieth century, the construction of the "Greater Middle East" is in fact went hand in hand with social disruption and the struggle for greater regional influence, if not hegemony, by former state actors, once allies West, first to Persia and now Turkey.
If it is always difficult to predict the future, the outcome of these processes with different lines of force between them will still be able to create a series of continuous transformations in a crisis continues where it appears to be difficult to locate the point of equilibrium, Starting with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iranian nuclear issue. If a historical point of view the Israeli political is right to argue that the Palestinian issue has nothing to do with the Sept. 11, what is certain is that ideology and globalization will be produced on the fragile Arab Muslim identity is very different results. This analysis is the best legacy he left us Fred Halliday.
