Journalist Joyce Davis

DATE June 3, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Riccardo Orizio discusses his new book "Talk of the
Devil"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The nature of evil has long fascinated historians and storytellers, and most
of us have wondered at one time or another what it would be like to come
face-to-face with someone capable of inhuman cruelty. Our guest, Italian
journalist Riccardo Orizio, has spent years tracking down former dictators
living either in exile or in captivity in their own countries. His new book,
"Talk of the Devil," is based on his interviews with deposed rulers from seven
countries and their relatives. His subjects include Idi Amin of Uganda,
Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti and Mira Markovic, the wife of Slobodan
Milosevic.

The dictators' crimes range from torture to mass execution to, in two cases,
cannibalism. Some of them amassed enormous personal wealth at the expense of
their poor nations; others seemed driven by ideology. Riccardo Orizio has
lived in Milan, London and Atlanta, and has served as foreign correspondent
for CNN and two Italian newspapers. He now lives in Kenya with his wife.

Riccardo Orizio recorded this FRESH AIR interview with Dave Davies last week
while I was away. Dave has guest-hosted FRESH AIR and is a senior writer and
reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News.

DAVE DAVIES (Philadelphia Daily News): Craving attention? Anxious to talk to
you? Dying to be important again?

Mr. RICCARDO ORIZIO (Author, "Talk of the Devil"): No, quite the opposite.
Maybe dying to be important, certainly, but not interested in having a
conversation with me or with any journalist. They all feel that they have
nothing to gain from giving another interview or talking to people who
associate their name with evil. They say, `Whatever I'm going to tell you,
you are not going to change your opinion about me. So why should I talk to
you?' You know, in many cases, the chase, you know, trying to locate these
people, trying to have access to these people has been more difficult and, in
a way, more fascinating and certainly much longer than the actual encounter,
the actual conversation with these people.

DAVIES: Idi Amin you found living in Saudi Arabia in the city of Jeddah,
living the life, he says, of a devout Muslim.

Mr. ORIZIO: Oh, yes, he lives this very secluded life in Jeddah, in Saudi
Arabia. He's the guest of the Saudi royal family, and he's someone who has no
regrets at all.

DAVIES: But he is probably the most notorious dictator in Africa. Is it true
that he actually practiced cannibalism?

Mr. ORIZIO: Well, he claimed to be a cannibal. He in a famous interview
said, `Oh, yes, you remember that minister of foreign affairs that used to sit
in my government some time ago? Well, you know, I got him killed and actually
I ate his flesh.' And he made the joke, `I didn't like him when he was alive;
I actually didn't like him when he was dead because his flesh was too salty
for me.'

Now it's very difficult to understand whether there was a highly ironic
statement to make to go along with the cliche that we all have in the West
about, you know, cannibalistic African dictators or whether he just was and
still is plainly mad.

DAVIES: He was known for broadcasting executions on television, right?

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes, and making sure that the people who were going to be
executed were wearing white shirts in order to make the blood more visible to
television viewers. He became quite famous when he used to send shiploads of
Ugandan bananas to Great Britain saying, `I hear that you have some economic
troubles. Please feed yourselves with these good bananas and remember that,
you know, we have a lot of history in common. We used to be your colony.
We're still good friends.'

Now, you know, was he being very satirical or was he being very ironic
towards, you know, the British government or, again, was he plainly mad?

He used to name one of the streets of Kampala after Adolf Hitler, and he used
to send telegrams to Richard Nixon in the White House, saying, `I hear you
have a problem with the Watergate. Just kill your opponents. It's a bit
ruthless, you know, but it works quite well. It's a very efficient way to
deal with internal opposition.'

DAVIES: The advice was to have them all killed?

Mr. ORIZIO: Yeah.

DAVIES: Yeah. When you finally reached him--I mean, of all the people, he
probably had the reputation for being the most sadistic--did it seem that you
were in the presence of a man who was frightening, unhinged?

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes. He's an extremely friendly man, quite jovial in his
manners. At the same time, he acts and looks like someone who could kill you
just for no reason.

DAVIES: What gave you that feeling about him?

Mr. ORIZIO: Well, for instance, he looked at me, he said, you know, `I'm
still on top of things. I'm still good friends with a lot of important
people. Do you believe me? Of course you have to believe me, it's what I'm
telling you.' And I said, `Yes, of course, Mr. President.' But I'm sure
that, maybe not on that occasion but in similar situations, 20 years before he
could have killed somebody who was saying, `Oh, no, no, it is not like you
say.' You know, he doesn't have any moral value, and he's totally detached
from reality. Besides he's killed 300,000 people, at least, and caused so
much suffering that, you know, what makes--you know, another victim doesn't
make much difference.

DAVIES: And he's still interested in African affairs and apparently trying to
intervene. Didn't he ask you to try and get a package to northern Uganda?

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes, he tried to send containers full of sensitive equipment to
northern Uganda, southern Sudan, where his eldest son is staging a war against
Ugandan forces, possibly on behalf of the Sudanese Islamic government. So
he's still somehow involved. And, you know, if you try to analyze the reasons
why the Saudi royal family is giving him safe harbor, they must have a
political reason for doing that apart from the official reason, which is
Islamic solidarity that is due to a former head of state. So somehow Idi Amin
is still involved in African politics and especially in that terrible war that
is destroying that part of Africa where eastern Congo, northern Uganda,
southern Sudan meet.

DAVIES: We're speaking with Riccardo Orizio. He's the author of a new book,
"Talk of the Devil," in which he interviews seven tyrants and, in some cases,
the relatives of these former dictators from other parts of the world.

Riccardo Orizio, Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic is not as
well-known as some of the other leaders that you interviewed but among the
more bizarre. He considered himself above other heads of state because he
crowned himself emperor in 1977. What was that coronation like?

Mr. ORIZIO: Oh, yes. It was one of the most bizarre episodes of recent
African history. He spent one-third of the national budget on that farcical
coronation ceremony. He had thousands of bottles of French champagne imported
to Central Africa. He had a golden carriage pulled by white horses. And he
spent an enormous amount of money in having a crown crafted by Parisian
jewelers that reminded of the Napoleonic crown. Actually he believed to be
Napoleon, and the event was staged in the Bokassa Stadium on Bokassa Avenue,
near Bokassa University. And he invited all the most powerful men on Earth,
and none of them actually accepted the invitation; only minor figures attended
the coronation ceremony.

But in a way, when I interviewed him, when I said, `Why you did that?' he
said, `Well, first of all, I was not paying that money because France gave me
the money to afford the ceremony. So if they paid, why should I have
refused?' And second, he said, `Only because I'm African, you believe I
cannot be a little grandiose about myself? Why African heads of state could
not, you know, should not have the same paraphernalias that, you know, Western
heads of state have?' I said, `But, you know, Western heads of state do not
proclaim themselves emperors.' But he said, you know, `My father was a king,
and therefore, I was entitled to have a proper crown and to sit on a throne
that was of impale proportions.'

DAVIES: Bokassa spent a lot of time enriching himself in this poor country,
but he was also known for a lot of brutality.

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes, of course. The French paratroopers who eventually deposed
him found human corpses in the fridges of the imperial palaces. And...

DAVIES: In the refrigerators...

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes.

DAVIES: ...next to the kitchen.

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes. Yes. Now whether that necessarily means that he was also a
cannibal, as it is claimed by several sources, it is not sure. I asked him
the question; he said, `No, of course I've never been a cannibal. How can you
think that a French army officer, as I was before becoming the president and
then the emperor of Central Africa, could also be a cannibal? You know, I
fought for the French against the Nazi Germans during the Second World War. I
was trained in Western military academies.' In a way, he was trying to say,
`I'm a civilized person. How can you believe that I was a cannibal?'

But on the other hand, you know, it is well known that the elders of the
African tribe where he came from were and still are cannibals. So the story
is not entirely far from reality.

DAVIES: Did he have any explanation for keeping cadavers on ice at the
kitchen where one of his residences were?

Mr. ORIZIO: No, he didn't have any explanation. He just said, `These are all
inventions. This is no reality. The French tried to damage my reputation
inventing all these stories. But they only had a political agenda to pursue.
I was not useful anymore to the French government, and so they tried to
destroy me, to depose me.'

DAVIES: Unlike other leaders who you interviewed in exile, when you
interviewed Bokassa in 1994, he was living in the country that he exploited.

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes, he had been sentenced to life, then the sentence had been
commuted into a shorter one. But, yes, he was a free man. But I must say he
was a free man with no financial means, and he was a very sad, sick old man.
But, you know, the idea that you can put a head of state or a former head of
state in front of a tribunal and put him on trial is a very recent idea. It's
a very young idea that's still not accepted by everybody, as we know. And,
you know, in those days, it was totally unconceivable that a former world
leader, as he was, as he had been, could face that kind of justice.

GROSS: We're listening to an interview that Dave Davies recorded with
Riccardo Orizio, author of "Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven
Dictators." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Let's get back to the interview that Dave Davies recorded with Italian
journalist Riccardo Orizio, author of "Talk of the Devil," about his encounter
with seven deposed dictators.

DAVIES: You found the former dictator of Haiti, Jean-Claude Duvalier, in
France. He was, of course, the son of his father, known as Papa Doc, Francois
Duvalier. He appears to be a tyrant who took to his role somewhat
reluctantly. He says he was only 19, he wasn't so sure he wanted to do it.

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes. Actually he said, `I want to go to university. I don't
really want to become a political leader. I don't want to be involved in the
family business,' which was ruling in a ruthless way Haiti. But he told me
this amazing story. He was 19, he was called to his father's office. All the
father's assistants and counselors were around them, and Papa Doc told him,
`Son, you don't know, but I'm going to die soon because I'm seriously ill, and
the revolution, the (foreign language spoken), our revolution has to go on.
And being you the only man in the family, you have to take on the job.' He
said, `But I'm too young.' Father said, `Remember the books that I gave you
to read about Roman emperors or about de Gaulle, about important historical
figures? You should have read the books and now you should be ready to take
on the job as president for life.'

And Baby Doc said, `Well, but the constitution says that you cannot be head of
state until the age of 30,' and father said, `Oh, don't worry about that.
We'll change the constitution tomorrow.' In fact, next day the constitution
was changed, the age was brought down to 20. But Papa Doc died when Baby Doc
was still 19, but nobody noticed, of course. A few days later, Baby Doc
Duvalier became president for life of Haiti.

DAVIES: One of the things that is most known about this period of Haiti was
the brutality of the Tontons Macoute, the secret police, and when Jean-Claude
Duvalier ascended, as you said, to the leadership of the country, really as a
teen-ager, I wonder to what extent he was aware of their brutality, and to
what extent he ever thought of striking a different course. Could he have
even be his own man?

Mr. ORIZIO: No, he could not. You know why? Because the father, even when
he was dead, he was still the most powerful man in the country and the most
powerful person within the Duvalier family. Papa Doc Duvalier is still a god
in the, you know, voodoo firmament, and actually Baby Doc Duvalier never felt
to have the freedom to change the situation because there was somebody above
him, his father, still looking down and making sure that things were run, you
know, according to the family rules. You know, he takes voodoo religion very,
very seriously, and he says, you know, `You Westerners criticize us for this
voodoo rituals and the voodoo customs, but this is our religion. We don't
criticize you for your religion. Why should you criticize us for our
religion? That's part of our culture. That's part of our heritage.'

And the Tontons Macoute, let's remember, were not only henchmen, they were
also agents of the voodoo sects within the African black population of Haiti.
The population was subjugated not only to the ideology of Duvalierism, but
subjugated by the religion. Religion had been an instrument, and you ask me
was Baby Doc aware. Of course he was. He's still hoping to become a semigod
in the voodoo firmament once he's dead. It's part of his life and hopes for
the future.

DAVIES: Did you speak to people in New York City, for example, who hope to
bring him back to power?

Mr. ORIZIO: Oh, yes. Absolutely.

DAVIES: What were your impressions of them?

Mr. ORIZIO: Yeah, regular meetings, and they worship the good old days of
Duvalier, because they say, `At least in those days there were jobs. There
was no hunger. There were roads. And go to Haiti today and look what
happened in the meanwhile with your democracy, with your freedom, with your
empty slogans that you try to impose. We didn't need that. We had our own
regime based on our traditional values and, yes, maybe was a bit tough on the
opposition, but you know, it was a price worth paying in order to have all the
other things that, in the meanwhile, have disappeared.'

DAVIES: The Duvaliers were known for enriching themselves, owning major
enterprises which got cash breaks from the government, and yet Jean-Claude
lives a relatively austere life now. Where did all his money go?

Mr. ORIZIO: The first wife managed to secure a very important settlement
during their divorce case. Besides, Duvalier loved to spend the money he had.
So he lived a few very flamboyant years after his exile, after being deposed,
and then the rest of the money was taken by the wife. So he lived through
some difficult years. The current wife, who's not wealthy at all, she used to
pay the electricity bill for him, the water bills, the restaurants for him.
He didn't have a single penny. So ask him, `How do you live now?' and he
says, you know, `Some friends help me.' Possibly the friends who still hope
in the future Duvalier regime, because a lot of people in Haiti, a lot of
people who now live in Europe and in the States made huge financial profits
after the Duvalier family--is not only Duvalier and his immediate family that
profited from that.

DAVIES: We're speaking with author Riccardo Orizio. He has written a new
book, "Talk of the Devil."

You spoke with Mira Markovic. She's the wife of Slobodan Milosevic. You
spoke to her while her husband was in The Hague on trial for war crimes.
Interesting in the interview, there was a moment when she actually phoned him
and didn't ask you to leave the room. What did you observe of their
interaction?

Mr. ORIZIO: Well, they were chatting like teen-agers and giggling like
teen-agers, and at the end of the conversation she said, `Oh, Slobodan is such
a beautiful man. I really adore him.' No political statement. She didn't
say, `Oh, he's so intelligent,' or, `He's so, you know--a great politician, a
great leader, a great statesman.' She said, `Oh, he's so beautiful.' And,
you know, I noticed she made several similar remarks in other conversations,
and you wonder of the sanity of somebody who can encapsulate the biography of
Slobodan Milosevic saying he's a beautiful man. What about the ethnic
cleansing? What about the suffering? What about the disaster of 10 years of
wars in the former Yugoslavia?

DAVIES: Well, you asked her and other leaders involved in the ethnic
cleansing about that. What did they tell you?

Mr. ORIZIO: Well, she told me two different things. The first one is that it
is not true, that these are fantasies, these are propaganda. The second is
that maybe some excesses were committed on the ground, but it was not the
leadership's fault. It was not because somebody in Belgrade had decided so,
but because some little obscure fanatical man on the ground had gone a little
bit too far maybe. But she said, `This is not my fault. Go and ask them why
they did it.'

DAVIES: It's the opposite of, `I was following orders.' People were not
following orders.

Mr. ORIZIO: Yeah, but then I went and talked to the little obscure man on the
ground, including a couple people who are now sitting in The Hague waiting
justice just like Mr. Milosevic, and they said, `Well, we were little men. We
were not aware of this political plans. We had been brainwashed. We had been
told that it was a matter of life or death, and that we had to defend the
Serbian people against its many, many enemies, and yes, we were brainwashed by
Mira Markovic and her husband. It is their fault. They should have known
better.'

GROSS: Dave Davies speaking with Riccardo Orizio, author of "Talk of the
Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators." They'll be back in the second half
of the show. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: Coming up, suicide bombers. We talk with journalist Joyce Davis,
author of the new book "Martyrs," and we continue our conversation about
deposed dictators with journalist Riccardo Orizio.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Let's get back to the interview that Dave Davies recorded with Riccardo
Orizio, author of "Talk of the Devil," based on his interviews with seven
deposed dictators about their lives after losing power.

DAVIES: Few Americans know much about Albania, which was ruled for nearly a
half century by Enver Hoxha and his wife, Nexhmije Hoxha. Enver Hoxha died in
the 1980s. You found his wife now living in a prison cell in the capital of
Tirana. When you went in, you went with a female host who actually found
it--was afraid to look at her. What was that all about?

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes. She was afraid to look at her. She was even afraid to
pronounce Mrs. Hoxha's name, because that name was inspiration of terror and
horror for many generations of Albanians. She was afraid to look this woman
in the eyes, maybe because she had been brainwashed that this super-powerful
couple, Mr. and Mrs. Hoxha--Uncle Enver, as he was called, and the wife had
incredible supernatural powers. You know, we have to remember that the
streets of Tirana, the capital city of Albania, the streets of Albania were
full of slogans saying, `Thank you, Uncle Enver, for the incredible progress
and wealth of Albania. Thank you for giving us this fantastic life. Thank
you, thank you, Uncle Enver.' And Albania was--still is--one of the poorest
countries in the world, was one of the most isolated countries in the world.

It was a big, huge bunker, and actually to show how isolated the country was,
she and her husband had built 700,000 small bunkers with holes to keep guns
pointed towards, you know, some enemies that, according to them, were ready to
invade Albania. And you know why the enemies wanted to invade Albania,
according to the ideologists of the Albanian regime? Because Albania was the
last remaining bastion of pure socialism. They had dismantled a relationship
with the Soviet Union in the '60s because they said, you know, after Stalin,
Soviet Union has betrayed your socialism.

Then they became allied of the Chinese, but then in the late '70s, early '80s,
China went soft, they said, betrayed again, the ideology. So, you know, they
said, `We are like the stalwarts of the purity of the ideology.'

DAVIES: The Hoxhas also carried Marxist orthodoxy to real extremes, for
example, in persecution of religion.

Mr. ORIZIO: Absolutely. They destroyed every single church and mosque in
the country, and they were the first country to proclaim itself the official
religion being Atheism. And again, when I made this point to Mrs. Hoxha, who
was in a prison cell, I said, `But ...(unintelligible) is not civilized to
destroy every single place of cult in the country.' She said that, `There
might have been excesses committed in this area. I agree. But let's not
forget that religion can also be very poisonous or very dangerous. See what's
happening now in the Balkans. See what's happening in many countries where
religion is taken as an excuse for, you know, terrorism, for fundamentalist
opinions.

So she said, you know, in a way we were living in a day where there was
division in the world between East and West. We belong to the East, or rather
we were even better than the Eastern bloc. And in those days it was important
to state that religion doesn't differentiate between citizens of the same
country. Albania has Christian Orthodox, has Catholics, has Muslims. You
know, under us there were no troubles between the three different communities,
and nowadays there are troubles.

DAVIES: She seems to be a contrast to some of the dictators you interviewed
in that the couple did not seem to enrich themselves at their country's
expense the way some other rulers did. What were they motivated by?

Mr. ORIZIO: I think they were motivated by a very sick form of idealism, if
you want. They were motivated by their experience as parties in the Civil War
against the Nazi Germans and against the fascists during the Second World War.
They, in a way, believed that Albania should not change from the Albania of
1946, after the Italian occupation, after the German Nazi occupation, this new
Albania opening to the world. They believed that in 1986 Albania should be
the same as it was 40 years earlier.

So they were not motivated by financial ambitions. There were rumors of the
Hoxha family having, you know, bank accounts in Switzerland, owning property
in several countries--Italy, South Africa--and that was not true. I'm not
saying this in their excuse; I'm not saying that this justifies the crimes
committed by them, but I'm saying that, yes, their case was a very evident
case of somebody who did what they did, pursuing an extremist political
agenda, and not necessarily personal agenda even if, it's interesting to
remember, that Mr. and Mrs. Hoxha and their sons were the only people in
Albania allowed to own and drive a private car for 40 years. No one else in
Albania had or was allowed to have a car.

DAVIES: Riccardo Orizio, it's remarkable that you spent years tracking down
these dictators and their relatives, all of them accused by human rights
organizations of a whole list of atrocities, and in the 200 pages of
interviews, nobody admits to doing anything wrong; they're all victims of
circumstance, prisoners of a difficult historical juncture, slandered by their
enemies. Were you surprised that no one accepted responsibility?

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes, I was, because I was hoping to find people who are getting
older who really have to face maybe the last years of their life, people who
have to reconcile themselves with themselves, and I was hoping to find
somebody ready to maybe cry in front of me and say, `Yes, I was horribly
wrong. I was horribly wrong, and I want to ask forgiveness for that.' It
didn't happen. They all went into the minutia of the little things that
justified this act or that other act. They didn't see, in a way, the bigger
picture, which was the big picture of the horrible suffering caused by they
their actions.

And it is, in a way, very discomforting to see how little we remember about
these people. These people were the men and the women behind the killing
fields. These are recent historical events, and still we are all too ready to
forget or maybe even to forgive them.

DAVIES: It is one of the most striking things, I think, about the book,
because I think when we look at the world's most brutal leaders, we expect to
be fascinated; we expect to see people who are monsters, perhaps tormented by
some psychological damage, but they seem ordinary, uninteresting people.

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes. But some psychopaths are really ordinary people, look
like or behave like ordinary people. And this, I think, has to be a warning.
I mean, when a democracy, when a society's in danger, it is not necessarily
because a very remarkable person is trying to take over. It might be somebody
who initially looks like a normal politician; it might be somebody who
initially looks like a normal general but eventually this person and also the
historical circumstances, you know, cause a tragic situation. We should be
very vigilant in a way and see and recognize the early symptoms of a
dictatorship.

DAVIES: Did you, when you talked to these people, find any of them that you
think might have succeeded in a Western democracy, who had leadership skills
that might have worked in a different context?

Mr. ORIZIO: Well, certainly Milosevic is someone who had certain skills that
could have been applied to a Western democracy. He is a man, I'm sure, many
Western leaders thought that you can do business with. It is not a
coincidence that he was welcomed, invited to the United States when he was
negotiating and then signing the Dayton peace agreement for the Balkans. In
fact, his wife says, you know, `So if my husband is such a monster, why nobody
said he was a monster while he was at Dayton putting an end to the wars in the
Balkans and signing the Dayton agreement?' You know, in a way, it was a
moment of statesmanship for him.

DAVIES: Did you find anything in common in the family histories of these
dictators, particularly in the relationships with their parents? Anything
strike you?

Mr. ORIZIO: Yes. In a way, they were all looking for a father figure.
They were all looking for somebody bigger, more important. They were all
looking to be adopted. I mean, Mengistu wants to be adopted by Leonid
Brezhnev, the Soviet leader of the time, and he called him, `My father.'
Bokassa wants to be adopted by General de Gaulle, the French president. And
Idi Amin, of course, wants to be accepted at Buckingham Palace as a peer. And
Jarvzelski is infatuated with Mikhail Gorbachev and with the previous Soviet
leaders.

And it's very interesting to see how many of them actually lacked a real
father. They didn't have a father or they lost their father very early in
their life, or they had a very difficult relationship with their father. In a
way, they were all looking for a new `big daddy,' as Idi Amin used to call
himself.

DAVIES: I wonder if any of the former dictators you spoke to were troubled by
the experience of the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who strayed
from his country, found himself arrested and held accountable for his crimes?

Mr. ORIZIO: Quite the opposite. The few ones who mentioned Pinochet did
so, saying, you know, `Pinochet's still wealthy. He's still respected by some
sections of the Chilean society. He's still free after that episode in
Britain.' And, you know, in a way, yes, of course, many people think that
Pinochet was a terrible dictator, but he's not labeled a monster, so, `Why you
want me to be at the labor of a monster?'

You know, in a way, yes, they used the story of Pinochet as another
explanation of why we're using double standards towards them.

DAVIES: Riccardo Orizio, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. ORIZIO: Thank you very much.

GROSS: Riccardo Orizio is the author of "Talk of the Devil: Encounters With
Seven Dictators." He spoke with Dave Davies. Dave has guest hosted FRESH AIR
and is a senior writer and reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News. Their
interview was recorded last week while I was away.

Coming up, Islam's teachings on martyrs. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Joyce M. Davis discusses her new book "Martyrs:
Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Islam's teachings on suicide and terrorism is the subject of the new book
"Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East." My guest is
the author, Joyce M. Davis. She's deputy foreign editor at Knight Ridder
newspapers and is a former Middle East editor at NPR. Her book is based on
her travels through the Middle East, interviewing the families of suicide
bombers, men who train the bombers and Islamic scholars.

How would you describe the difference between the Christian and the Islamic
concept of martyr?

Ms. JOYCE M. DAVIS (Deputy Foreign Editor, Knight Ridder Newspapers): Well,
Christians generally see martyrdom as a passive act, as one in which a person
is willing to die, but the ideal martyrs have not been those who also kill.
Now that's not to say that's not known in Christian history because I can
think of Joan of Arc as an example right away of a warrior martyr. But by and
large, the Christian martyr is a pacifist, someone who allows himself to be
persecuted and killed.

Islam, on the other hand, has a more aggressive creed with regard to how the
faithful are to respond to what they see as evil in the world. Islam does not
have a creed such as Christianity that calls for turning the other cheek or
doing good to those who are evil or do evil to you. Islam, on the other hand,
believes that the faithful have a duty to fight evil and they must use all
means to do that.

GROSS: Do you think suicide bombings fit the classic Islamic definition of
martyr?

Ms. DAVIS: Frankly no. I mean, in the research that I have done, which has
included extensive interviews with some of the leading Islamic scholars, the
basis of Islam clearly says that any suicide is forbidden. So right off the
bat, you're looking at the foundation being weak in support of suicide
bombings. If indeed the religion says no suicide, then how can a suicide
bomber fit into the realm of Islam?

That being said, you do have Islamic scholars, or at least some of the
militants, who argue that in some cases suicide bombers may be justified. And
why do they say this? They say this because, first of all when I talked to
Sheikh il Yassin of Hamas, the spiritual leader of this militant group in the
West Bank, he says that it all depends on the intention. If the intention of
the person was not really to commit suicide but to fight or defend his land,
his religion, his people, then indeed it's not suicide; it's an act of war.

GROSS: Are martyrs supposed to abide by Islam's teachings on just war, and do
they fit in with those teachings?

Ms. DAVIS: Islam sets very strict standards, very strict rules for war, for
just war. Several of those rules are completely outside of the bounds of what
many of the suicide bombers, and particularly those who attacked the United
States on September 11th, have done. One, Islam forbids attacking innocents,
especially women, children, the elderly, the weak, the sick. This is very,
very clear. So you would have to look at the actions of suicide bombers who
indiscriminately walk into, let's say, a pizzeria, one of the cases I profiled
in the book, and realizing that as he walked in he was walking past baby
carriages, you would have to say that he was not given any thought to what
Islam's real teachings are on it.

Now on the other side of that argument you have people who would argue that
but yes, those suicide bombers who attack military targets, who attack
government installations, are indeed fitting into the concept of just war in
Islam. And, for example, with September 11th, I could hear them arguing, if
they took the time to do so, that, `We're going to strike at military
installations'--the Pentagon, for example. `We're going to strike at the
foundation of US power and wealth'--the twin towers. So in their arguments
they probably try to make a case for their actions as being part of just war,
but most of the scholars that I've spoken to say that those actions, September
11th and those that attack innocents, have no basis in the religion.

GROSS: How much of a debate is there among Islamic scholars in the Gulf
region and in the Middle East, about whether, you know, suicide bombings and
September 11th are justified under Islamic law?

Ms. DAVIS: There's a great debate. There's a raging debate going on within
Islam on these issues, but overwhelmingly the Islamic scholars, the
mainstream, including many of the militants--I have to be frank with you;
including many of the militants--just thought it was an outrage, September
11th. And actually I did some stories for Knight Ridder to that effect.
Frequently many of the American media, unfortunately, didn't take the time to
cover that, and Americans don't know the great outrage amongst the scholars,
Islamic scholars, that came after September 11th.

But the debate rages. Just what is justified? I mean, in particular the
debate rages with regard to suicide bombers in Israel. That's where the issue
is. What happened to the United States, it's generally conceded, outside of
the bounds. But the debate on whether Palestinians have a right under Islam
to use suicide bombers against the Israelis--that's another matter.

GROSS: What's the difference between what happened in the United States on
September 11th and what's happening in Israel with Palestinian suicide bombers
in terms of the Islamic debate?

Ms. DAVIS: Yes, well, when I've talked to scholars about this, two different
issues. One, they say that the action of September 11th occurred outside of
what they call the Islamic land, so these people left their own land to attack
people outside. Now again, the attack seemed to many people to be
indiscriminate, to include innocents, I mean, including--many, many Muslims,
as we well know, were killed in those attacks. So that's number one.

With the Palestinian-Israeli situation, as they see it, the Palestinians and
Muslims in general are fighting to reclaim what they consider to be holy land.
Remember, Jerusalem is also holy, not only to Christians and to Jews but to
Muslims as well. So they see that as a demand that they must fight to
recapture that land. They also see the Palestinians as a people under siege,
as a people who are fighting for their own survival. So in this case the
argument is that they are allowed to use extraordinary means, all means, to
defend themselves. Still, though, you have many scholars arguing that to
attack women and children, even Israeli women and children who may be
occupying, as they see it, your land, that is completely outside of the bounds
of what the religion dictates.

GROSS: My guest is Joyce Davis, author of the new book "Martyrs." More after
a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Joyce Davis, author of the new book "Martyrs." It's about
suicide bombers and the Islamic debate over whether their actions can be
justified. The book also looks at how children are used as soldiers.

You went to the Martyrs Museum in Iran. What's the purpose of the museum?
And maybe you could just describe it for us.

Ms. DAVIS: It's a very interesting building. When you walk in, of course,
there's a deep red carpet that runs the length of this long hall. And that
red carpet, of course, symbolizes the blood of the martyrs. So you walk in
and there's this somber music that's playing as you walk in. Off to each side
of this long hall are different rooms, and with cases, glass cases, in which
the Korans of different martyrs or their personal effects or what they were
wearing on their last days are showcased.

The center of this museum, of course, are the martyrs who died in the
Iran-Iraq War. One of the ones that I profile in this book is a young boy
named Hossein Fahmada(ph) who, at the age of about 13, was killed when he
threw himself under an advancing Iraqi tank and blew it up with himself
underneath it. Now this young boy has just been lauded throughout the country
and by, you know, all of the ayatollahs as a prime example of the nobility of
martyrdom. And martyrdom amongst the Shia in Iran is especially revered
because of the history, the foundation of Islam in which the prophet's son and
grandson were brutally killed, as they see it, in defense of the faith.

So this museum is almost--it's a very eerie feeling, but it's also a
very--it's somber and it's moving in many ways as you see that people like
this boy deliberately gave their lives for their causes.

GROSS: The exhibits at this Martyrs Museum--well, some of them are divided by
age. And, like, one wall, I guess, that is devoted to martyrs is categorized
ages 10 and under?

Ms. DAVIS: Yes. Yes. And...

GROSS: That's really young.

Ms. DAVIS: Yes. Well, it is. It is. But you have to understand, these are
also not people who deliberately--in some cases the definition is not
someone...

GROSS: I see.

Ms. DAVIS: ...who was fighting on the battlefield but who may have been
killed within a battle.

GROSS: Right.

Ms. DAVIS: So these are also young children who were killed as well.

GROSS: Now you say that Egypt and Israel have the most experience battling
Islamic militants and martyrs. What do you think we can learn from their
experiences, from what they've done right or what they've done wrong?

Ms. DAVIS: Well, one of the things we can clearly learn is that it's
impossible to stop it without extraordinary brutality on our part. Why do I
say this? I look at the Egyptian model. Egypt fought the militants for, you
know, several years, for a decade, during the '80s and early '90s, and they
used extraordinary means to do so. They are criticized, the government's been
criticized, for violations of human rights, for basically going into homes and
not caring who was there in search of the militants. It was able, we thought
at one point, to crush the movements. The two movements that were working
there is--Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya was one, and Al-Jihad.

But what we later found was that they really didn't crush those movements.
They sent those people off into exile. People like Ayman Zawahiri fled Egypt
and ended up circumnavigating the globe to end up in Afghanistan with bin
Laden. So Egypt basically sent its militants out to wreak even more havoc in
the greater world. Israel also has a daily battle with militants, and what we
have seen is that the most stringent efforts to cordon off the West Bank, to
infiltrate the groups, to bomb the West Bank cities--none of that has been
able to stop the suicide bombers from getting through to terrorize--and yes,
it is terrorizing--Israelis.

This is an issue that cannot be battled by military or defensive means alone.
It must be done as part of a complex package of solutions, which has to
involve a look at what is fueling this kind of rage.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you very much for talking with us. Thank you.

Ms. DAVIS: It's been my pleasure. Thank you very much.

GROSS: Joyce Davis is the author of "Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance and
Despair in the Middle East."

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.