经济学人14:中东的解密者 弗瑞德·韩礼德

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　　讣告;弗瑞德·韩礼德;

　　Fred Halliday, demystifier of the Middle East, died on April 26th, aged¹ 64

　　中东的解密者——弗瑞德·韩礼德，4月26日逝世，享年64岁

　　A crush of 500 listeners waited apprehensively² as, ill and moving slowly, Fred Halliday came up to speak about Iran. The occasion, in February 2009, was the 30th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's takeover. The place was the London School of Economics, where for 24 years Mr Halliday was professor of international politics, concentrating on the Middle East.

　　当病中的弗瑞德·韩礼德慢慢地走上讲台作关于伊朗的演讲时，等待中挤作一团的500名听众都有些担心。这是2009年二月的一天，阿亚图拉·霍梅尼掌权30周年的纪念日。地点是在伦敦经济学院——过去的24年里，韩礼德先生在这里任国际政治系的教授，他的研究专注于中东问题。

　　Yet for close on 90 minutes he held his audience spellbound. He told them that social conflict, not religious fervour, had provoked the Iranian revolution; that conflict persisted, and the regime was not likely to crack. He spoke³ with learning, humour and passion. At the end, his audience rose to applaud as for a piano virtuoso⁴.

　　在近九十分钟的演讲里，听众们听得如痴如醉。他讲到，激起伊朗革命的，是社会冲突，而不是宗教狂热；这样的冲突仍在持续，而政权不像要垮台。他的演讲充满了学识、幽默和激情。演讲结束时，观众们像对待钢琴大师般齐身站起，为他鼓掌。

　　As an interpreter of the Middle East, Mr Halliday's talents overflowed⁵. He spoke Arabic and Persian, as well as French, German, Spanish and Russian. He knew the history and cultures of the countries he wrote about. More than anything, he knew people. His London students, once back home in Cairo, Baghdad or Tehran, rose to high positions in government and business. His contacts were a foreign correspondent's envy, as well as a boon⁶ to the LSE's fund-raisers.

　　作为中东的解说人，韩礼德先生才华横溢。他会讲阿拉伯语、波斯语、法语、德语、西班牙语和俄语。他熟知他写到的国家的历史文化。更重要的是，他认识很多人。他在伦敦的学生，一旦回到开罗、巴格达或者德黑兰，都能在政界和商界位居高职。他的关系网使驻外记者们嫉妒，然而也是伦敦经济学院募捐者们的一大幸事。

　　His learning came not only from books but from bars and cafés. He travelled, listened and argued. He had a thesaurus of political jokes, collected over years, at the expense of Baathists, Islamists, nationalists, imperialists, Palestinians, Israelis, everyone. He could be superbly rude to peddlers of cliché and to plausible-sounding simplifiers. With a tilt⁷ of the head and an ironic⁸ smile he could give a friendly tease or a devastating⁹ “Come off it.” Students adored him.

　　他的学识不仅来自于书本，也来自于酒吧和咖啡馆。通过云游四海，耳听八方，舌战群儒，他有了满腹的政治笑话，其对象包括叙利亚社会党人、伊斯兰教主义者、民族主义者、帝国主义者、巴勒斯坦人、以色列人等几乎所有人。对待陈词滥调的兜售者以及似乎言之可信的简化论者，他能表现出一种精彩绝伦的粗鲁态度。带着嘲讽的微笑歪一歪脑袋，他可能友好的戏弄他们或者来一句极具杀伤力的“您就歇歇吧”。学生们都很喜欢他。

　　Middle Eastern studies suffered, in his view, from three faults. One was “mappism”. Behind handy diplomatic counters marked on maps “Iran”, “Iraq” or “Saudi Arabia” he saw poorly understood societies that were complex and shifting. He had no patience, secondly¹⁰, with efforts, particularly in the United States, to illuminate¹¹ the region from the armchair with mathematical models and theorising (“all this meta-stuff”). He thought, thirdly, that the cold war had led everyone, Middle Easterners included, to exaggerate the influence of outsiders. The region's problems, he insisted, lay in the region more than in Moscow, Washington or the colonial past. Such views are now commonplace. They were not when Mr Halliday began.

　　在他看来，中东问题的研究困难重重，有三方面的原因。一是“地图主义”。在作为好用的外交棋子而被标在地图上的“伊朗”、“伊拉克”或“沙特阿拉伯”的背后，他看到的是未被充分了解的复杂、多变的社会。其次，他无法忍受（尤其是在美国）在扶手椅上努力地用数学模型和理论来阐述该地区（所有这些形而上的东西）注[1]。然后是他认为冷战使得包括中东人在内的所有人夸大了局外人的影响力。他坚持认为，中东的问题更多是在自己，而不是莫斯科、华盛顿或者殖民主义的过去。这样的观点现在已经是老生常谈了，可在韩礼德先生提出来那会儿，却是新鲜的事情。

　　In a world of doctrines¹² and positions, he was impossible to box. A stickler¹³ for meanings, he liked to be called not internationalist, but cosmopolitan¹⁴. His mother was an Irish Catholic, his father an English Methodist-Quaker. He grew up in Ireland close to the border with the north. He was schooled in that least national of faiths, Catholicism, and tempted¹⁵ by the priesthood for a while. But at Oxford¹⁶ University he was drawn¹⁷ to a different universal message, that of Karl Marx. Instead of taking a fellowship, he joined the New Left Review.

　　在一个充满教条和立场的世界里，他很难进行驳斥。作为一个在意义上一丝不苟的人，他希望自己被称作世界主义者，而不是国际主义者。他的母亲是爱尔兰人，一个罗马天主教徒；他的父亲是英国人，一个卫理公会和贵格会教徒。他在爱尔兰靠近北部边境的地方长大。他接受的是受民族主义影响最小的天主教的信仰教育，并且曾被牧师这一行当所吸引。然而在牛津大学，他的兴趣转向了一个不同的普世理论——马克思主义。他没有领取什么学术奖金，而是加入了《新左派评论》。

　　Explaining bin¹⁸ Laden¹⁹

　　诠释本·拉登

　　He stayed until 1983. He marched against the Vietnam war, summered at a student work camp in Cuba and trekked²⁰ with Dhofari guerrillas, who were fighting the British-trained soldiers of the Sultan of Oman. At another time, a brainy left-winger interested in foreign affairs might well have entered the Labour Party and become foreign secretary or secretary of defence. Mr Halliday chose a stonier²¹ path.

　　他于1983年退出《新左派评论》。他参加过反对越战的游行，曾在古巴的一个学生作业营地避暑，曾与佐法尔的游击队员一起长途跋涉（这些游击队员当时正与阿曼地区受过英国人训练的苏丹士兵交锋）。在另一些时候，一位对外交事务感兴趣的足智多谋的左派分子或许会加入工党，成为外相或国防大臣。而韩礼德先生选择了一条更为崎岖的道路。

　　In the early 1980s he began a winding²² journey away from the radical²³ left. It was not a prodigal's return to neoconservatism, from one simplicity²⁴ to another. He looked for a less dogmatic politics that combined liberal values, respect for human rights and social equity²⁵. He hoped the space for such a social-democratic outlook existed in regions he knew best, beyond Europe and the United States. He was too shrewd to believe that it must exist. He was nevertheless withering²⁶ with anyone who claimed that the persistence²⁷ of autocratic and theocratic²⁸ attitudes meant that it could not exist. As with God and Marx before, he thought of political values as universal.

　　十九世纪八十年代早期，他开始了一次曲折的旅程，离开了激进的左派。这并不是浪子回头般的回到新保守主义，从一个简单的主义换到另一个。他是在寻求一种教条主义更少的、结合了自由主义价值观的、尊重人权和社会公平的政治。他希望这一社会民主主义的愿景能够存在于欧洲和美国之外他最了解的地区。他到是不至于愚蠢到相信那一定会存在。然而，他鄙视任何声称独裁和神权政治的留存即意味着该政治理念不可能存活的人。就像先前对于上帝和马克思一样，他认为政治观点也具有普世价值。

　　He also favoured outside intervention²⁹ to rid people of oppressors. A Soviet-backed regime was preferable to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and he blamed the United States for creating a seedbed for Islamist terror there. “Bin Laden”, he said, “is the illegitimate child of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher³⁰.” He was for removing Saddam Hussein, though he thought the occupiers recklessly ill prepared. To the enemies this earned him on the left, he retorted: “The future of humanity does not lie in the back streets of Fallujah.”

　　他同样支持以外部干预的方式使被压迫的人民摆脱暴君的统治。对付阿富汗的塔利班组织，一个有苏维埃支持的政权更可取；他也谴责美国在阿富汗制造了伊斯兰恐怖主义的温床。“本·拉登”，他说，“是罗纳德·里根和玛格丽特·撒切尔的私生子”。他站在推翻萨达姆·侯赛因的一方，然而他认为占领军的准备糟糕鲁莽。他的反对者指出他又回到了左派阵营，他则反驳道：“人道主义的未来不是位于费卢杰的偏僻街道里。”

　　Mr Halliday published more than 20 books. Ranging wide, he was not always right or consistent. He probably underplayed the force of faith in politics. Yet he had a nose for looming³¹ trouble, as his choice of travel spots in the 1970s attests³²: Cyprus, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan. He grasped the social instabilities of the Middle East, and sensed that they would burst out in new ways once the cold war ended. Diplomats³³ and politicians, including Tony Blair, were glad of his advice.

　　韩礼德先生出版了二十多本书。范围广泛，他并不是一贯正确或者始终前后一致。他或许没有充分表达出政治中信仰的力量，然而他对麻烦的迫近却很有远见，这从他七十年代在旅游地点的选择上就能看出：塞浦路斯、也门、伊朗和阿富汗。他预见到了中东的社会动荡，意识到了一旦冷战结束，他们可能会以新的形势爆发。外交官和政客们（包括托尼·布莱尔）都很乐意听到他的建议。

　　Looking for a tidy thread in Mr Halliday's views may be mistaken. His achievement was to be a personal bridge. He introduced Westerners to Middle Easterners who were neither hostile nor exotic, but hoped for the same things and treasured the same values as they did.

　　若想在韩礼德先生的观点中找到一条清晰的脉络，那你就错了。他的成就是成为了一座个人桥梁。他将西方人介绍给既不排外也不崇洋的中东人，但却和他们有着同样的希望，珍视着同样的价值观。

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