From the frontline
JOHN SIMPSON, BBC's World Affairs Editor, may have chosen to call his latest book The Wars Against Saddam: Taking the Hard Road to Baghdad. But it is not just about the two Gulf Wars or Iraq's long military engagement with Iran. Simpson not only chronicles Saddam Hussein over the past two decades when his professional calling took him to the region, but also goes back in time to trace the origin and making of the "benevolent despot".
Coming as the book does to India round about the time when the world was once again being "carpet bombed" with television images of the big story from Iraq — the capture of Saddam from a "spider hole" in his hometown of Tikrit — one cannot help feel sorry for Simpson. After all, every journalist likes to follow through his story to its logical conclusion. And if there's anything missing in Simpson's narrative on the "Arab who stood up to the West" it is the whereabouts of America's friend-turned-foe.
Having almost become part of the story he was sent out to cover on more than one occasion — the latest being when he and his crew came in the line of an American missile attack during the second Gulf War which left his translator dead and Simpson himself deaf in one ear and a limp — the narrative has a fair share of personal overtones.
A journalist's account, yes, like most of his despatches for the Beeb, but Simpson does ventilate his views on Saddam's regime and the West's dalliance with the man they came to hate besides his doubts about the campaign unleashed by Bush Jr.
The Wars Against Saddam: Taking the Hard Road to Baghdad, John Simpson, Macmillan, £6.25 (special Indian price).
ANITA JOSHUA
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