Collective memory in the middle east. I spent the weekend reading it. I couldnt put it down it was so interesting. If you havent read it after this evening im sure you will try to get the book if you havent already and i urge you to read it. Absolutely fascinating, very wellwritten, very well researched, there is a narrative flow to it and it is very troubling i have to say. I would like to announce unfortunately that our event in two days with ambassador dennis ross, is unable to come, he had a family emergency, so his lecture wednesday evening will be postponed until later. Wuhan is an Emmy Awardwinning journalist and writer on the middle east for 20 years for bbc, and the financial times. She reported from iraq, syria, lebanon and cover the war between israel and hezbollah earning enemy for International News coverage. She has also reported on the state department and american politics regularly traveling with secretaries of state including condoleezza rice, Hillary Clinton and john kerry. Shes been published in the atlanta, the washington post, foreignpolicy and is currently nonresident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Police in washington. Her first book the secretary, was a New York Times bestseller. The status regularly continues to speak on american telogen and radio. She was raised in lebanon but now lives between beirut and washington dc. If you have questions, please write them on the cards, Bush School Ambassadors with the blue blazers on, they walked all up and down the aisle, they will continue to do that and once you write questions, pass them to the aisle, pick them up, given to me and i will go through them after wuhan speaks and i will ask her some questions. Please join me in welcoming kim ghattas to the stage. [applause] good evening, everybody. It is a delight to be here this evening. Thank you for the generous introduction. Thank you for hosting me here at the scowcroft institute. I see in the front row my good friend, i am delighted to be back in texas. I havent been here in a long time. I must complain about the weather. This will give me a good excuse to return. Im here to speak about my recent book just out two weeks ago, black wave. In any book it is the result of the journey. Every writing endeavor is a journey, many of you have written books. You know it can be an aggravating experience, very intellectual, lonely experience with every book is a journey but this one is more than the journey of the writing. It is a journey of 20 years of covering the middle east, a combination of my experience growing up as a child of war in beirut. I grew up during the civil war in the 80s and i wanted to write a story about that region that was not your typical story about the region. A lot has been written about the middle east. Im sure you have read about the region, many of your experts sitting here this evening. I wanted to write the story because i had questions that i did not find the answers to in the top books that were out there. I wanted to answer questions about the region that are often asked, what went wrong, what happened, why is it the way it is, but i wanted to come at it from a different perspective, the perspective from the region because i do think what is out there at the moment is not enough to explain why we got to where we are and i also think it does not do justice to the people of the region who have tried very hard to find different paths forward. My toxin readings, i tried to make it accessible to as large an audience as possible. Many of you tonight are experts on the middle east but i hope even for the experts i can bring Something Different answers in a different perspective why the region is the way it is today. What drove me to write this book is the fact that there wasnt much out there that addressed the core of the problem and it took me a while to put my finger on what it was that was the core of the problem or the point at which things have changed. What i want to do as a starting point is give you the conclusion. I know that is the wrong way around but it is important because what i try to do with my writing and the research i have done is go against the preconceived ideas people have about the middle east because of media coverage, headlines, the intensity of the news that comes at us from the middle east. I want to start by telling you the things you know about the middle east are wrong. I hope you will allow me to start like that. I want to check out three things. Iran and saudi arabia despite the headlines we see today in the last few decades that indicate it has always been like that, saudi arabia and iran have not always been rivals, have not always been enemies and we forget that. There was a time iran and saudi arabia you worked to counter communism in the region. They were competitors, allies in that endeavor. You had visits explained between the two countries. They called each other honorific titles. They were not the closest of friends but they were friendly and they cooperated in a lot of ways. That is an assumption they may, that it has always been that way between iran and saudi arabia and it wasnt. The other one is a phrase we hear very often, muslims have always killed each other, in particular if you listen closely, sunni and shias always killed each, those are the two elements of islam. Like the catholics and protestants, sunnis and shias or two sects of islam, they split after the death of the prophet mohammed when some thought his there should be his closest relative and those became the shias and others thought his there should be his closest confident and those became the sunnis. The first few decades following the profits death those identities were not as clearly defined, they evolved over time. That was another preconceived conception people have about the region when even president obama said they have been killing each other for millennia and it will always be like that i would like to take out it hasnt been like that and it also doesnt need to be like that forever. That is part of what drives the writing in this book, to remind us there was this past and there can be a different future. The final misconception people have particularly because it is the constant droning on of the headlines that are focused on tyrants and dictators, the region is always in the throes of violence and intolerant, the cultural intolerance defines the region. I would like to tell you it has not always been like that and doesnt always need to be like that. So what happened . That is the classic question Bernard Lewis once asked but i would like to give you a different approach because that question, what happened to us, doesnt want us in the arab and muslim world. We repeat it like a mantra. For my country of lebanon to pakistan, from saudi arabia to syria. The past is a different country. It is one that is not mired in the horrors of sectarian violence, a more vibrant place without the crushing intolerance of religious zealots and endless wars. The past was not perfect. You had mores and coups as well but they were contained in time and space in the future did hold much promise. The question today in the region does not generally occur to those too young to remember when vibrant Tolerant Society was the norm. Those are the ones whose parents did not tell them of poetry in pakistan, it was a different connotation. Or marxism in the bars of beirut or riding bikes on the river tigris. All of these things which seemed impossible. Especially the question, it would surprise those in the west to assume it has always been as it is today. Nostalgia is a complicated thing. It makes us think the past was perfect. In the United States there are people who have nostalgia for different time, 60s or 50s and forget the things that were wrong because we idealize the past. I was not idealizing the past but i wanted to understand why things had unraveled, what was the starting point and they unraveled slowly at first without people noticing and then it took on an unexpected course in the last decade or 50 years. There are many turning points in any country or region that explains what happened and many turning points in middle east history whether it is the end of the Ottoman Empire or the last islamic caliphate after world war i, people say this is when the world lost its way, some people talk about the creation of israel in 1948 and the defeat of the arabs in 1967 as the moment there was a real fisher in the psyche of the arab and muslim world. Others skip directly to 2003 and the usled invasion of iraq at the moment everything became worse that had already been like that. Sunnis and shias killing each other, at each others throes and people therefore because of the headlines the last two decades or so, it has always been like that, it is eternal. Apart from the eternal none of these explanations are completely correct. The eternal part is totally wrong. I insist on underlying that but none of these explanations of the turning point in the region give you a complete understanding of why we are where we are today. As i dug deeper and deeper into trying to find the answer i came back to that one year, 1979. A lot of you will remember that year is the year of the hostage crisis in tehran and the year of the iran revolution in february of that year, the hostage crisis was in november. At the same time as the hostage crisis you had another hostage crisis in saudi arabia in mecca when they laid siege to the holy mosque in the for two weeks and later that year in november, in december, on Christmas Eve you have the soviet invasion of afghanistan. Those three events, the iranian revolution, the hostage crisis is the result of that in some respects but the iranian revolution, the siege of the holy mosque and the invasion of afghanistan were seemingly independent events independent of one another but became completely intertwined. The combination of all three was toxic. First of all, from this confluence of events was born the saudi iran rivalry. The two countries were friendly rivals before, no reason they should have become enemies, no apparent reason they should have become enemies or rivals after the iran revolution except for the fact they call themselves leaders of the muslim world. The two holy sites of mecca and islam and mecca and medina. Ayatollah kemeny landed in iran in february of 1979 with planned ambitions beyond just iran or the community of shias in his country and beyond. You had two countries saudi arabia, sunni, and when she sunni, iran, vying for leadership of the muslim world. That not only changes the geopolitics of the region but started slow growth of sectarian language and sectarian identities as both countries wielded those identities in their efforts to dominate the region, to rally the people to their side. In that battle they distort and exploit religion in the pursuit of something very simple that any world leader will understand, and that is raw power. From 1979 to this day, the torrent that flattens everything. I believe nothing has changed the arab and muslim world as deeply and fundamentally as the events of 1979 and the way that started after those events. Other alliances end or start wars. They see the beginning of Fiscal Movement and political ideology but 1979 changed the geopolitics, it did more than that. Because they started using religion as a tool it had an impact on society, on culture and whats 1979 did was begin a process of transforming society and altered cultural and religious references. The dynamics that were unleashed since 1979 changed the we are in the region and hijacked our collective memory. I was keen to have the words collective memory in the title. It is important to understand the processes unleashed by events like that when they rippled across not just years but decades. Overtime peoples memories of what came before, a lot of people in the United States forget that actually the iranian revolution did not begin as an effort to bring theocracy to the country. It was an effort to topple the shot where a lot of leftists and secularists and modernists were involved except ayatollah khameini road that wave and came out on top. The year 1979 and the four decades that followed are the story i tell in black wave. As i mentioned the rivalry went beyond geopolitics, descended into this constant effort to outbid each other in a holier than thou effort to show who was the real leader of the muslim world. They fought for islamic legitimacy through religious and cultural domination and changed not just within iran and saudi arabia but in countries that extended from egypt to pakistan and beyond. I couldnt include everything in this book because i tried to write it as a story, as a narrative. It is hard to keep a narrative on track if you include too many details and do many places. I know you will say that pakistan is not part of the middle east. I have not forgotten my geography. What i wanted to do is show how the dots are connected across countries and across continents because is a tendency to look at them as only the middle east and pakistan and that dynamic as separate but they are very intertwined as well. Pakistans modern history is connected to events in the middle east, not only because of the jihad against the soviets that began after the invasion of afghanistan, pakistan played a crucial role and everyone remembers or should remember that that was us backed as well. That is why pakistan is central to the narrative in this book as i look at how the iran revolution rippled out. There is a tendency to look at the iranian revolution in isolation. How did it affect iran or irans role in the region but there is not enough effort to look at how it rippled across the region, how the sunni world reacted and interacted with it and other arab countries because there were a lot of reactions and they were not all negative. A lot of people admired, or some people admired how khameini managed to rise on top and bring theocracy to power in iran. What was interesting about the research i conducted for this book and the fact that i had pointed out 1979 as the crucial turning point was i found it everywhere i asked the question tell me about 1979 i found reactions were very validating to my thesis because people, i was met with a flood of emotions. When i asked people in pakistan or egypt or baghdad, tell me about 1979, out came all their memories and emotions, everything they kept bottled up, question no one had asked them before because it is not easy when you are living in such upheaval to really come to terms or analyze what you are going through. They thought yes, 1979, let me tell you about 1979, how that wrecked my career or my marriage or my childrens education, why i had to go into exile at that time, or how i had to lose my job after 1979 and why. Even people who were not born before 1979 had a story because there is the beginning of an understanding in the region about what that year has done to us. It felt a little bit like i was conducting National Therapy for studies or living rooms as they poured their hearts out to me. Im a journalist, not a historian, im not an academic but this is more than a reported narrative. I rely on interviews with people in these countries. We dug deep into the archives with my research assistants. We look that old footage, we read academic articles because it is very interesting to see how change when you look at academic articles written after the iran revolution or the siege in mecca and read about it now. When you put it together you have a virtual livery of the history of the region. I have 19 binders full of printed papers that tell the story because i thought it was important to see in front of me the pictures, the articles, the headlines. Imagine finding a headline from february of 1979 where saudi arabia welcomed the iranian revolution. They are sorry to see the shah go, they were concerned about the possibility of a communist takeover of iran. Those with the trends of the time, islam was not the dominant story. They had somebody they could relate to even though he was shia, a very conservative man. He wanted to bring the koran to the country and they welcomed that. We can now cooperate on the basis of our common religion and understanding of how it should be applied to society. When you look at these events and details, you put it all together, you put together a puzzle of known events, overlooked events, when you have the puzzle in front of you it gives you a different understanding, of the last four decades of history that spans twee 7 countries, i go from egypt to pakistan, iran, saudi arabia, iraq and lebanon. It shatters some of those accepted truths that even we have in the region because i can tell you sometimes even we forget sunnis and shias of not always kill each other. The two words were never really used. It wasnt that kind of conflict but it is accepted in our collective memory that we forget what it looked like before. The saudi iran rivalry evil and mutated with consequences no one could have foreseen in 1979. There has been a lot written about the middle east i know that. I am trying to present a different approach. You will find lot of poetry, literature, music, cultural references in this book. Because i think it is important to remember the richness of this region and to humanize this region which is so devoid of context in the headlines. It is not a book about terrorism. It is not a book about isis or the sunni or shia split or the dangers violent fundamentalists pose for the west. This is everything you have already read or seen on television in the headlines, with all do respect my colleagues, even i sometimes, that is just the nature of our business and that is why i wanted to take a step back and write this book. This is the story of the people, there are very very very many, whose voices have not necessarily been heard, who have been silenced, but continue to fight against the intellectual and cultural darkness in the region. They are intellectuals, poets, lawyers, young progressive clerics, they are men and women who have an equal number of men and women characters in the book because you dont hear enough from women in the region even though they are feisty, strong, powerful, you should see what is happening in iraq, lebanon and iran with women leading protests against corruption and mismanagement of our country. They are mostly devout. My characters are mostly devout, they pray, they fast, they go to mosque, they go to church and still believe in the separation of church and state so you cant be a secular muslim. You can believe in separation of mosque and state. These are progressive thinkers who represent a very vibrant pluralistic society, still there underneath that black wave. They suffered immensely at the hands of those who wield power or a gun or are relentlessly intolerant of other people. Some paid with their life. Many of them. Som