~ Qubth-ut-Allah ~. Review on Fist of God, The - Frederick Forsyth

Saddam Hussain - the man who defied the world's only superpower, the man who has outlived and outlasted two direct wars with the world's most powerful army, the man who lost his two sons to the American army, the wily fox who has still managed to elude one of the largest search missions ever undertaken in the world (After Osama), the man who had a vision of creating Greater Arabia and a United Arabia by conquering all of it, is the villan in this book written sometime in 1995 by Frederick Forsyth.

''Qubth-ut-Allah'' or the ''Fist of God'' is at the vortex of the storm that is raised in this book. The book convinces us that there was a reason behind Saddam being so courageous and confident to fight against the superpower. In Saddam's Quixotic style of attack against the Windmills, Saddam had a secret ace up his sleeve...and the ace was ''Qubth-ut-Allah''.

The book is so convincingly written that, The America foreign policy makers also seem to have read the book and worked on the same lines. The American argument that Saddam had made weapons of mass destruction and has hidden them, and the endless search for this elusive WMD was behind Gulf War - Part II. The book also deals in many ways in those similar lines.

The author helps you dodge missiles and land mines and helps you enter the war and takes you through the shadowy unglamorous world of spies (No James Bond type skimpily clad women and steamy scenes in this one) are explained in such depth that you tend to forget that what you are reading is a fiction and not narration of a real life incident. As you read the scenes, you can feel your teeth rattle under the impact of the bombs and the wail of widowed Arab women. The reasons for this authenticity in detail could be in the fact that Frederick Forsyth comes from a journalistic background and his best years in that career were spent with TIME magazine where he was a war correspondent. Frederick Forsyth was also a Royal Air Force (RAF ) pilot in his youth.

The Storyline :

The story begins when the world is watching in bated breath, a modern day Arabic Hitler rumble his Russian made Tanks into the kingdom of Kuwait. The protagonist in our story is a man, specially recriuted by the secret services (SAS) , UK called Major Mike Martin. Mike is an Arab languages and geography expert who enters Iraq , Via Kuwait, camouflaged as a Bedouin (A tribal). Mike's agenda initially is to create unrest in Kuwait, which is under Saddam's control and keep the Iraqi army at their edge. He then slips into Baghdad, Iraq and this is where the real story begins.

Mike has to handle a high ranking Iraqi Spy code named ''Jericho'' whose intelligence feeds are shared between the CIA & MI....and suddenly all hell breaks loose, when Jericho passes on some very valuable information to Mike...The ''Qubth-ut-Allah'' exists...somewhere! Where is it? Does Mike manage to find it out? Do the Allied forces manage to track it down? Does Saddam manage to hide it from the US? How does Saddam manage the creation of this weapon that kill millions?

It is almost as if George Bush has based his entire foreign policy document on the basis of this book. Otherwise why was Bush so convinced that Saddam actually hid such massive weapons of mass destruction? Even today, after the second Gulf War, the American search for the elusive ''Qubth-ut-Allah'' continues...If it exists, then this story is truly amazing….if not..I shall shed a tear for those the men and women, whose lives were made sacrificial pawns at the grand altar of world politics….

An open letter to Mr. George Bush:

Coming back to real world…from the almost convincing world created by Forsyth in this novel, we all know that war on Iraq was not anything to do with Qubth-ut-Allah or Saddam himself. It was all about the one three letter word – OIL. After all , Mr. Bush, we saw on Television what your armies first jumped to protect. It was not the people of Iraq whom you tried to protect, it was the fields of black gold that you were more bothered about. This entire war for you was more of a business deal where you invested a few billion dollars of army might to capture a few hundred trillion worth of the black gold that belonged rightfully to the Iraqis.

Mr.Bush, we also know that now that you have Saddam running for his life and his country in tatters, you are not bothered with all the lawlessness that is ruling the streets of Iraq. Is that not the reason behind, you wanting to pull out of Iraq, now that the oil field contracts have gone to companies in your country. (Ahhh!!! I also forgot, Mr.Bush, the Iraqis are also killing your own soldiers, that’s also a reason for you to pull out your boys from I-raq…But…I thought you were supposed to be the good guys…so how come the good guys are being killed by the Iraqis…

Let peace reign on earth,

Moonraker

P.S : I would be delighted if u use the comments section to give your views on the Iraq war too, Not just my review on the book.