Chapter 4 1.From snow mountain to sea of ​​fire

Only by being able to fly first can one have a pair of wings to soar. — Israeli paratroopers Throughout the spring and summer of 1990, I explored the roof of the world at an altitude of 5,000 to 6,000 meters.Live in a two-person nylon tent with Mickey Mouse Lingfeng, a photojournalist of "National Pictorial" and a senior brother from Beijing, eat military canned food, and drink iceberg melt water.At that time, I was as strong as a big animal, and my heart was higher than Mount Everest. The reason why I explored the Hoh Xil no-man’s land on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was entirely at the instigation of a female student at Peking University. She was my first love. , The scientific tradition.My friend, Chinese-American writer Professor Zhao Haosheng taught me that there are two things that can be very heroic in a person's life, one is falling in love, the other is making revolution, and the most heroic thing is to do both at the same time.I guess that's what I was at the time.Sure enough, my boss, the director of the photography department of Xinhua News Agency, was very dissatisfied with my utopian thinking at the time, and I was a good boy with an Oedipus complex.Since my boss thought that my life in Beijing would come to an end by the end of 1989, I left Beijing for Tibet in early 1990 without hesitation.I took the recruitment exam for the photography department of the agency, and I was treated as a kid who was "picked up from the street" and started my career as a reporter.I admire the adventurous and tragic heroes, Caesar, Rommel, Patton and Capa who stepped on a landmine and pressed the shutter again.I was by nature obsessively seeking experience, and I showed my courage by risking some kind of experience.

When I was 18 years old, I read a motto of the 202nd Brigade of Israeli Paratroopers, which was printed on the emblem of the flying snake with a green body and red wings: "Only when you can fly first, can you have the wings to soar." (Before you can earn your wings, you must learn howtof1y!) Life That's it, until I came back from the Gulf at the age of 30 and was hired as a colonel researcher at the Armored Corps Academy to qualify as a real armored soldier. A few days ago, Lin Chuan, deputy director of the photography department of Xinhua News Agency, who sent me to the roof of the world to do my best, brought me a box of film in the oil tank truck of the supplementary supplies, and unexpectedly, there was a Panasonic RF-10 short-wave radio in the middle. On August 3, Ling Feng, a photojournalist of "National Pictorial", and I were huddled in a tent to listen to the news. The dry voice of "Voice of America" ​​broadcast a news that made my soul escape: August 2, 1990 Middle East time At 1 o'clock in the morning, three divisions of the Iraqi Republican Guard crossed the border, and the Kuwaiti army with only 20,300 people resisted for a while before the whole army collapsed. Only 5,000 stragglers withdrew to Saudi Arabia, and the whole army was wiped out.Iraq annexed Kuwait!I held my breath for fear of missing a single word, until the broadcast of current affairs and latitude, I jumped out of the tent, rolled three times in the snow, and could not kneel in front of the snow mountain...

Mr. Mu, the president of Xinhua News Agency, compared "photography" to a wing of Xinhua News Agency. I would like to be the hard feather on the wing even in my dreams.Huddled in my eiderdown sleeping bag, I drafted my application to go to the bay with a flashlight. Dear Ministry Leaders: Xinhua News Agency is stepping into the ranks of world news agencies, and the Middle East is the best breakthrough point.The Middle East is located in a place surrounded by three continents and five seas. It integrates geography, history, religion, ethnicity, economy, politics, and cultural contradictions.The ancient river civilization, the pyramids, Babylon and the lifeline of oil are intertwined.The imperialist colonial economy is unpopular, and the white-faced Midland and Reuters are not as popular in the Arab world as China.

I graduated from the International Politics Department of Peking University in 1983. I taught the history of modern international relations and the history of world wars at China University of Political Science and Law for nearly four years and was awarded the title of lecturer. I graduated from the Thomson International Journalism Training Center of Xinhua News Agency in 1988. In 1990 Graduation sub police academy driving school.Physical fitness has reached Peking University's exercise standards.Walked the Great Wall in midsummer, climbed snow-capped mountains to catch pandas in severe winter, and explored the roof of the world. He has been engaged in emergency reporting in the News Center of the Photography Department for three and a half years, and has rich "blitz" experience.Without the burden of a wife, children and lovers, it is most suitable to fly to the Middle East to cover wars.I am determined to fight for the Xinhua News Agency and repay the kindness of the people for their upbringing.

It was this clear-coded telegram sent by the military "Little Bayi" radio station, which was later passed down as a blood book by bloodthirsty people.In fact, I am most afraid of seeing blood, not to mention that in the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at an altitude of more than 6,000 meters and at the foot of the 6,860-meter Buka Daban Peak, there is not enough oxygen and fresh water, so how can I squeeze out excess blood. I drafted two more telegrams overnight.One asked Wang Jianmin, the military branch of Xinhua News Agency, to help me prepare a bulletproof vest; the other asked Yuan Man, a facsimile officer from the Technology Bureau, to borrow books about the Gulf crisis from the Department of International Politics at Peking University.

After surviving a sleepless cold night, I seemed to have flown over the flickering Bukadaban Snow Mountain to the scorching Middle East desert. Western countries have historically centered on Europe and referred to the eastern regions from near to far as the "Near East", "Middle East" and "Far East". This concept of political geography has been used to this day.The scope of the Middle East has no clear boundaries. It generally refers to the vast area mainly in West Asia and across Europe, Asia, and Africa, including Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. , Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Turkey, Cyprus.

This vast and fertile land is about 7.4 million square kilometers. It is a communication throat between the East and the West. It has a very important strategic position and contains extremely rich oil resources. Its export volume accounts for about 2/3 of the world's total oil exports. Therefore: "Oil Ocean" said. The five-star general Dwight Eisenhower, President of the United States, bluntly declared that "only in terms of geography, there is no more important region in the entire world strategy than the Middle East."And the Gulf is the core of the Middle East. Located in the south of West Asia, the Gulf is an intercontinental sea where the Indian Ocean extends into the Arabian Peninsula and the Iranian Plateau.Iran calls it the Persian Gulf, Arab countries call it the Arabian Gulf, collectively the Gulf.The Gulf region includes Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar, commonly known as the Gulf countries, with a total area of ​​4.8 million square kilometers and a population of 91.596 million.

The Gulf region is located in the middle of the Middle East, bordering the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea in the north, the Arabian Sea in the south, the South Asian subcontinent in the east, and the Red Sea in the west. It is an important route connecting Asia, Africa and Europe.In addition, it has the most abundant and high-quality oil in the world, with shallow burial, high yield, good oil quality and large reserves.The proven reserves are 651.7 billion barrels, accounting for 65% of the global reserves.Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, the five largest oil-producing countries in the Middle East, are all in the Gulf.

The Middle East's extremely important strategic location and rich oil resources have kept it in intense turmoil.Since the end of World War II, there have been nearly 50 local wars and large-scale armed conflicts in the Middle East.The most notable of these are the five Middle East wars from May 1948 to June 1982 (i.e., the Palestine War, the Suez Canal War, the Sixth Five-Year War, the October War, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982) and The Iran-Iraq War lasted eight years.The Arab-Israeli dispute is an important source of turmoil in the Middle East, and the crux of it is the Palestine issue.In addition, the Cyprus issue and the civil war in Lebanon have also attracted people's attention.

The Middle East, which is full of changes and conflicts, has always been a turbulent area that has attracted worldwide attention, and it is also a hot spot followed by the international press.Although most people in China did not think that the Gulf was going to fight a big war at that time, according to my knowledge and intuition, a big war must be fought.I pray that the vast universe will facilitate my trip to the bay.