Adel Darwish

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Adel Darwish is a British journalist, author, historian, broadcaster and political commentator, specialising on Middle Eastern politics.

Darwish is a veteran Fleet Street foreign correspondent and has written for The Daily Telegraph and The Independent, as well as maintaining his online blog and publishing several books.^[1]

1 Name
2 Early Life
3 Journalistic Career
4 Theatre
5 Publications
6 References

[edit] Name

Despite an apparently Arabic name and his expertise in the Middle East, Darwish, rather than an Arab, is understood to be of Eastern European origin. "Adel", as well as being common in Arabic (as عادل), is also a male name of Germanic origin, meaning brave.^[2] The surname "Darwish" is commonly held in the Levant, most famously by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. However, its popularity meant that many Ottoman-period Balkan immigrants adopted the name to blend into their new environments. In this context, Darwish may be a corruption or Arabization of the Slavic name Darvic.

[edit] Early Life

Darwish was born in 1945 in Alexandria, Egypt, to Eastern European parents from Albania and Hungary, but holding British citizenship.

After attending British schools in Alexandria, Darwish moved to Britain in 1959 to continue his studies, eventually graduating in 1966.

After leaving university, Darwish began his journalistic career in Africa, as a correspondent for several British Fleet Street newspapers, before moving to the Middle East to cover events there. Darwish reported on the Dawson's Field hijackings of several aircraft by the Palestinian radical group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in 1970, and the ensuing Black September clashes in Jordan.

Darwish was also sent to Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Iraq between 1970 and 1972. While in Iraq, he met Saddam Hussein,^[3] at that time still relatively unknown in the West and just beginning his political career as shadow deputy leader of the local Baath Party and vice-chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council. In 1973, Darwish moved permanently to the Middle East, and went on to cover that year's Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria invaded Israel to recapture land lost in the 1967 Six Day War.

[edit] Journalistic Career

A prolific writer, Darwish covered the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty (1980), the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Al Sadat (1981) and his state funeral, and the Gulf War (1991).

Darwish was the first journalist in the world to expose Saddam Hussein’s missile programme after an explosion in al-Hella, a facility south of Baghdad, killed over 800 people in August 1987.^[4] Darwish, together with Pierre Salinger, also had a scoop when he obtained the transcripts of the meetings between United States' Ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein a week before the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, in which Hussein made clear his aggressive intentions without any objections from Glaspie. Darwish's story was printed in The Independent in August 1990 with an agreement from Salinger that ABC News would air the story a few hours later. The day before, Darwish had published a story on the meeting between the American Chargé d'affaires, Joseph C. Wilson, and Saddam Hussein on 06 August 1990, when the Iraqi President offered to give America oil below market price if he were to annex Kuwait.

Strengthening Darwish's position as a leading regional investigative reporter during his time at The Independent (1986-1998), Darwish published numerous exclusive stories, including his exposé on Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi’s chemical weapons factory at Rabta; the attempt on al-Gaddafi's life during a visit by the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad; and the Libyan leader's efforts to buy a nuclear-powered submarine from a Russian captain. Darwish also revealed secret talks between Syria and Israel; the 1988 secret missile deal between Saudi Arabia and China;^[5] and the role of the United States Navy and Air Force in supporting Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War and Hussein's long-standing relationship with the United States' Central Intelligence Agency.^[6] He was among the first writers to use the term "Islamists" to refer to Islamic extremists employing violence.

Personally acquainted with most Middle Eastern leaders and statesmen, Darwish also had close ties to British Arabists and Foreign Office officials active in the region, known as the Camel Corps. The many obituaries he has written for The Independent, numbering more than 200, give a unique insight into a century of Middle Eastern history and the interaction of the British Empire and the Arab world.

As well as The Independent and The Daily Telegraph, Darwish has worked for The Times and his articles have been printed in The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Scotsman, The Washington Post and The Economist magazine. He frequently appears as a commentator on the BBC, Sky News and ITN, as well as major American and Canadian networks and Arabic-language television stations, including Nile TV and Kuwait TV.

[edit] Theatre

As a playwright, Darwish has been involved in British theatre, with some of his plays performed at the Edinburgh Festival and at the Young Vic and several Fringe theatres in London during the 1970s. Most of his plays are adaptations of poems and short stories from Africa, especially from Egypt.