The Middle East, the part of Asia that Europeans see as the middle of what they see as the East. Sort of arbitrary, whatever we call it, the Middle East. This part of the world is literally where civilization started. Right here in modern-day Iraq. And over the years, the borders here have been redrawn many times as empires have ebbed and flowed through this region.

中东——亚洲的这一片，在欧洲人眼里，正好位于他们所说的「东方」的中间。这个叫法其实挺随意的，不过叫什么都无所谓，就叫它中东吧。这片土地，毫不夸张地说，就是文明的发源地，就在今天的伊拉克这里。千百年来，一个个帝国在这里此消彼长，这里的边界也被一遍又一遍地重新划定。

By the way, I didn't make this time lapse. A very talented YouTuber did, and he deserves a medal for it. Or perhaps just a new patron. Thanks, man. Anyway, the most recent carving up of this region happened by European powers, the French, the British, the Russians.

顺便说一句，这段延时动画不是我做的，是一位特别有才的YouTube博主做的，他真该拿块奖牌，或者至少该多一位赞助人。谢了，兄弟。言归正传，最近一次瓜分这片地区的，是欧洲列强——法国人、英国人、俄国人。

Are we surprised? No. Of course, of course it was the British. Of course it was the French. Of course it was Europeans.

意外吗？不意外。当然了，当然是英国人，当然是法国人，当然是欧洲人。

Of course, the lines they drew didn't really take into account language or ethnicity or regional identity. They just sliced it all up amongst themselves and said, "These are our new regions of power in the Middle East." Eventually, those European powers left, but the lines they drew stuck around and became the skeleton for what the borders look like today. And this is where our story starts. In the 1930s here in the modern Middle East. At this point, across the ocean, there was this growing superpower that had spent the last century moving west, taking over this whole continent and beyond deep into the Pacific Ocean.

当然，他们画的那些线根本没怎么考虑语言、民族或者地区认同。他们就是把这块地方在自己人之间切一切、分一分，然后宣布：「这些就是我们在中东的新势力范围。」后来，这些欧洲列强走了，可他们画下的线留了下来，成了今天这些边界的骨架。我们的故事，就从这里开始——20世纪30年代，现代中东。那时候，在大洋彼岸，有一个正在崛起的超级大国，过去一百年里一路向西扩张，吞下了整片大陆，还一直伸进了太平洋深处。

We've talked about that a bit, but things were changing. The world had just fought a brutal world war that was fought with new weapons that were powered by this new important substance, oil. Germany lost that war in part because they didn't have access to enough oil to keep up with this new style of warfare that relied a lot more on machines. The young superpower realized that access to this stuff would determine who would be powerful and who would not. So they stopped looking west for a moment and turned east with hopes of finding the fuel they needed to build their power.

这段历史我们之前聊过一些，不过当时世界正在起变化。人类刚刚打完一场惨烈的世界大战，这场仗用上了各种新式武器，而驱动这些武器的，是一种重要的新东西——石油。德国输掉那场战争，部分原因就在于他们弄不到足够的石油，跟不上这种越来越依赖机器的新打法。这个年轻的超级大国意识到：谁能拿到这东西，谁就能决定谁强谁弱。于是，他们暂时不再往西看，而是把目光转向东方，希望在那里找到壮大自身实力所需的燃料。

The US presence in the Middle East started with one little dot right here. But soon that dot would expand into a sprawling network of alliances, covert attacks, flows of weapons, money, and the building of innumerable bases, and eventually turning into full-on ground wars. This is how the US stole the Middle East, ready and willing to employ all means necessary. Okay, so it's the 1930s and the US doesn't have a significant presence in the Middle East at this point. But that's about to change because there's a company based in California that wants to explore this vast desert for oil. 11,000 m from San Francisco, there lies a primeval desert, a mass of drifting sand and sunbaked earth 1/3 the size of the United States.

美国在中东的存在，最早就是从这里的一个小点开始的。但很快，这个小点就会扩张成一张庞大的网络：结盟、秘密袭击、武器和金钱的流动、数不清的基地拔地而起，最后演变成全面的地面战争。这就是美国如何「偷走」中东的故事——为此，它愿意也随时准备动用一切手段。好，现在是20世纪30年代，这时候美国在中东还没有什么像样的存在。不过这马上就要变了，因为有一家总部设在加利福尼亚的公司，想在这片广袤的沙漠里找石油。「在距离旧金山11,000英里之外，有一片原始的荒漠，满是流动的沙丘和被烈日烤焦的土地，面积相当于美国的1/3。」

This was sort of a risky decision for the California company because first off, they had no idea if there was actually any oil here. They knew it would mean sinking into the desert the money of thousands of stockholders in a project that might well end in complete loss. And second off, this desert was a part of a very hardcore religious kingdom. The fact that Mecca is the source and the shrine of Islam gives Saudi Arabia a central place in the Islamic and therefore the Arab world. That was home to the holiest sites in Islam, run by a dogmatic royal family that did not like outsiders, especially non-believing Westerners.

对这家加州公司来说，这算是个挺冒险的决定。首先，他们根本不知道这里到底有没有石油。「他们知道，这意味着要把成千上万股东的钱砸进沙漠，投进一个很可能血本无归的项目。」其次，这片沙漠属于一个宗教色彩极其强硬的王国。「麦加是伊斯兰教的发源地和圣地，这一事实让沙特阿拉伯在伊斯兰世界、进而在阿拉伯世界占据了核心地位。」这里是伊斯兰教最神圣的地方，统治它的是一个教条森严的王室，不喜欢外人，尤其不喜欢不信教的西方人。

But even still, the king of the desert kingdom eventually gives the California company permission to explore almost a million square kilmters of this desert looking for oil. And after a few years, the bet paid off. And on March 3rd, 1938, in this little patch of coastal desert, they struck gold. Well, actually they struck oil, but it might as well have been gold. So throughout the 30s and 40s, American oil executives, workers, and their families started flocking to the Middle East, establishing the first significant American presence in the region.

但即便如此，这个沙漠王国的国王最后还是同意了，让这家加州公司在将近100万平方公里的沙漠里勘探石油。几年之后，这一把赌赢了。1938年3月3日，就在这片小小的海岸沙漠里，他们挖到了金子。好吧，其实挖到的是石油，不过跟金子也没什么两样了。于是，整个30年代和40年代，美国的石油高管、工人和他们的家属开始成群结队地涌向中东，美国在这一地区第一次有了相当规模的存在。

They set up little cities around the oil operation that were little slices of America, full of the deepest sinful behavior like allowing women to drive and the consumption of alcohol. Here is another American colony complete with air conditioned houses, two hospitals, and an outdoor movie theater. This is the sort of stuff that is very off limits in Saudi Arabia. It's literally illegal at this point. So you have a lot of Saudis who are not happy about their government letting the Americans in to behave however they want.

他们围着石油产业建起了一座座小城，每一座都是一小块美国，里面充斥着最深重的「罪孽」——比如允许女人开车，比如喝酒。「这是另一处美国聚居地，配有空调住宅、两家医院和一座露天电影院。」这些东西在沙特阿拉伯都是严格禁止的，在当时根本就是违法的。所以，很多沙特人对自己的政府很不满：凭什么放美国人进来，想怎么干就怎么干？

But the oil kept flowing and soon the US government goes to the royal family and says, "Listen, the oil is flowing better than ever. This is awesome. How about we build a little military base attached to our little oil city so that we can, protect you and protect us and protect the oil and stuff." And the Saudis are like, "Okay. Having the great Satan come to our country for oil is one thing, but letting them set up a full-on military base on our soil and especially when like everyone in our country is not happy with their presence in the first place. But said the royal family, all of this oil is really valuable and it's really nice and we're getting super rich.

可石油还是源源不断地流出来，没过多久，美国政府就找上王室说：「听着，石油现在出得比以往任何时候都顺，太棒了。要不我们在这座石油小城旁边再建个小小的军事基地吧，这样就能保护你们、保护我们、保护石油什么的。」沙特人心想：「好吧。让大撒旦为了石油跑到我们国家来是一回事，可让他们在我们的土地上建一个正儿八经的军事基地，又是另一回事了，更何况我们国内本来就人人都不待见他们。」但王室又说了，这些石油实在太值钱了，日子实在太舒服了，我们正在变得超级有钱。

So, they're like, "Yeah, sure. Set up the base." But there was one stipulation that the Saudis had for the Americans. You are not allowed to literally plant a flag. No flag poles of the United States. You cannot put your flag anywhere on this base.

于是他们说：「行，没问题，基地建吧。」不过，沙特人对美国人提了一个条件：你们不准真的插旗。不准竖美国的旗杆，基地里哪儿都不能挂你们的国旗。

Instead, you can put a little plaque on the side of the building so that your flag is not literally on our soil. And that was the deal. And that's exactly what happened. The US sets up its first military operation in the Middle East in the form of a landing strip that is right next to this oil field. Okay.

你们可以在建筑物侧面钉一块小牌匾，这样你们的国旗就不算真的立在我们的土地上。协议就这么定了，事情也就是这么办的。美国在中东的第一个军事据点，就是紧挨着这片油田的一条飞机跑道。好。

So, all of this infrastructure that the Americans were building required someone to build it. They needed a construction company. And there was one construction company that the Americans really liked that helped them build their oil city and their base. This company was founded and run by a guy named Muhammad. Now listen, do you think I'm really giving you the backstory on the construction company that built the air base in the oil city just because that's interesting and I like to talk about construction.

美国人建的这些基础设施，总得有人来施工，他们需要一家建筑公司。而有那么一家建筑公司，美国人特别中意，帮他们建起了石油城和基地。这家公司的创始人兼老板，是一个叫穆罕默德的人。听着，你以为我花这么多工夫跟你讲那家建空军基地和石油城的建筑公司的来龙去脉，只是因为这事有意思、我又爱聊建筑？

No, this is actually very relevant to the story and you will see why very soon. So, the Americans and the Saudis are having this forbidden oil bromance and it's going really well and they are just the oil is flowing. Everyone's getting rich and meanwhile the rest of the Middle East is looking at Saudi Arabia and they're like, "Dude, WTF, why are you like in bed with America and why are you letting them set up a landing strip in your country?" And the Saudi royals are like, "Do you realize how rich we're getting right now? Like if you were in our position, you would do the same thing. Egypt.

不是的，这其实跟整个故事关系很大，你马上就会明白为什么。总之，美国人和沙特人之间正上演着一段「禁忌的石油兄弟情」，处得非常融洽，石油哗哗地流，大家都在发财。与此同时，中东其他国家看着沙特阿拉伯，心想：「兄弟，你搞什么鬼？你怎么跟美国穿一条裤子，还让他们在你的国家修飞机跑道？」沙特王室回答：「你知道我们现在赚得有多爽吗？换了你们站在我们的位置，也会这么干。」埃及。

Okay, so it's the 1950s and let's get back to Muhammad, the construction guy. His company by this point is thriving. The American presence in oil land is just exploding and he is building all of the stuff for it. And so this guy is just has a giant business. And he starts to have children.

好，到了20世纪50年代，我们再回头说说那位建筑商穆罕默德。这时候他的公司已经如日中天。美国在这片石油之地的存在正在爆炸式扩张，而所有的东西都是他在建。所以这个人的生意做得非常大。他也开始生孩子了。

Well, in fact, he had a lot of children, like 54 children because he had 22 wives because that is a thing in Saudi Arabia to this day. Anyway, the point is, one of Muhammad's sons is named Osama. I told you this was going to be relevant. Okay, a reminder that Saudi Arabia is not the entire Middle East. So, I'm going to leave the Osama bin Laden cliffhanger for a moment to tell you what else was going on in the Middle East at this time.

事实上，他生了很多孩子，大概54个，因为他有22个妻子——在沙特阿拉伯，这种事直到今天都还存在。总之，重点是：穆罕默德有个儿子，名叫奥萨马。我早说过这事跟故事有关吧。好，提醒一下，沙特阿拉伯并不等于整个中东。所以，奥萨马·本·拉登这个悬念我先放一放，先跟你讲讲那个时候中东其他地方还发生了什么。

Remember that it was the hunt for oil that brought the US to Saudi Arabia originally. But now, in the ' 50s and60s, there was a new reason for the US to think about the Middle East. And that reason is because there's another big superpower that has nuclear weapons called the Soviet Union who is coming into the region and saying to everyone, "Come join team communism." And the US is like, "Hold my beer." So in addition to oil, the US is now involved in trying to not let the Soviet Union have any power in this region. Over in Iran, there was a democratically elected leader that the US didn't like. They thought he was maybe a little too friendly with the Soviet Union.

别忘了，当初把美国带到沙特阿拉伯的，是找石油。但到了五六十年代，美国关注中东又有了一个新理由：另一个拥有核武器的超级大国——苏联——正在进入这一地区，跟所有人说：「来加入共产主义阵营吧。」美国则是一副「看我的」的架势。所以除了石油，美国现在还要想方设法不让苏联在这一地区获得任何影响力。在伊朗，有一位民选领导人，美国不喜欢他。他们觉得，他可能跟苏联走得有点太近了。

So they worked together with the British to literally overthrow the government of Iran so that they could install a dictatorial leader that was more friendly to the United States. Little side note here, the airport that I fly out of here in DC is named after the guy who like gave the go-ahad for this coup in Iran, John Foster Doulles. So I'm reminded of the whole Iran thing every time I fly. So the US has its oil thing. It's now involved in trying to prop up a dictator in Iran.

于是，他们联手英国，实实在在地推翻了伊朗政府，好扶植一个对美国更友好的独裁领导人。插一句题外话，我在华盛顿常坐飞机的那个机场，就是以当年批准伊朗这场政变的那个人命名的——约翰·福斯特·杜勒斯。所以每次坐飞机，我都会想起伊朗这整件事。好，美国这边有石油的事，现在又卷进了在伊朗扶持一个独裁者。

There's another big thing happening that brings the US into the region, which is that the newly declared state of Israel is starting to piss off its neighbors and starting to look to the US for support. And the US gladly offers it, seeing Israel as a friendly nation in the region that could be a big proponent of US interests. So, the US starts to fund Israel with tons of money and fighter jets and all of these things to help them fight their wars against their Arab neighbors. There was a debate happening in the United States on whether or not they should actually do all of this to support Israel so intensely because they knew if they did, they were going to piss off all of the neighbors in the Middle East. And all of the neighbors are the ones who had the oil.

还有一件大事也把美国拉进了这个地区：刚刚宣布建国的以色列开始惹恼它的邻居们，并开始寻求美国的支持。美国很乐意提供支持，因为它把以色列看作这一地区的友好国家，可以大力推动美国的利益。于是，美国开始给以色列大笔大笔的钱、战斗机，以及各种各样的东西，帮它跟阿拉伯邻国打仗。当时美国国内其实有过一场争论：到底要不要这么大力地支持以色列？因为他们知道，一旦这么做，就会把中东所有的邻国都得罪了。而这些邻国，恰恰是手里握着石油的那些国家。

In the end, the US did decide to support Israel. And with that came a major backlash from all of these oil producing countries in the neighborhood. There's a crisis of such proportion that we probably haven't even begun to grasp it yet as far as the country is concerned. Scenes like this are becoming all too common on both sides of the Atlantic. But for America, they are more ominous.

最后，美国还是决定支持以色列。随之而来的，是周边所有产油国的强烈反弹。「这场危机的规模之大，就整个国家而言，我们可能连理解都还没开始。」「这样的场面在大西洋两岸都已经屡见不鲜。但对美国来说，它们更加不祥。」

They tell the Arabs that their oil weapon is wounding America, the country that supports and supplies their enemy Israel. Eventually, this backlash against supporting Israel kind of calmed down. There was some peace talks. Anyway, let's get back to Muhammad the construction guy and his son Osama because this is where it really starts to heat up. We decided to put together this compilation of all our Middle East videos because there are transformative events happening in the Middle East right now.

「它们告诉阿拉伯人：他们的石油武器正在重创美国——这个支持并武装他们的敌人以色列的国家。」后来，这股因支持以色列而起的反弹算是慢慢平息了，有过一些和谈。总之，我们回到建筑商穆罕默德和他的儿子奥萨马，因为从这里开始，事情才真正升温。我们之所以把所有关于中东的视频汇编在一起，是因为此时此刻，中东正在发生一系列翻天覆地的大事。

The recent attacks on Iran from the US and Israel have reshaped the Middle East and are doing that right now as I'm recording this. And hopefully these videos are providing some context. But keeping up with the headlines is proving to be really difficult because every source comes at it with a different angle and a different bias. This is why I have partnered with Ground News. They are the sponsor of this compilation and I've been using Ground News for over a year now.

美国和以色列最近对伊朗的打击已经重塑了中东，而且就在我录这段视频的时候，这种重塑仍在进行。希望这些视频能提供一些背景。但要跟上新闻实在太难了，因为每个信息源都有各自的角度、各自的偏向。这就是我跟Ground News合作的原因。他们是这部汇编的赞助商，我自己用Ground News已经一年多了。

They've been a partner of the channel and I'm really grateful they exist. Ground News is an app and a website that allows you to very quickly and thoroughly compare thousands of headlines from all around the world. It organizes them and breaks them down by what their biases are, their reliability, their factuality, and even tells you who these outlets are owned by. They've been recognized by the Nobel Peace Center for Advancing Media Literacy. And let me just show you how this works and why it matters.

他们一直是我们频道的合作伙伴，我真心庆幸有这么个东西存在。Ground News是一个App，也是一个网站，能让你非常快速、全面地对比来自世界各地的成千上万条新闻标题。它会把这些报道整理归类，按照偏向、可靠性、事实准确度逐一拆解，甚至告诉你这些媒体背后的老板是谁。他们因推动媒体素养而获得了诺贝尔和平中心的认可。我来给你演示一下它怎么用，以及为什么这很重要。

Take one event, like the story about Iran's next Supreme Leader. The strikes on Iran and the killing of the Supreme Leader in Iran was covered by over 800 outlets, all with different angles. With ground news, you're able to quickly compare and see how the left and the right are covering it differently. For example, a left-leaning outlet emphasizes the human response from the Iranian diaspora in Washington. The right represented by Fox News focuses on the political backlash of the attack framing the critics of these strikes as siding with Iran or in their words rooting for the Ayatollah.

拿一件事来说，比如关于伊朗下一任最高领袖的报道。对伊朗的打击以及伊朗最高领袖被杀一事，有800多家媒体做了报道，角度各不相同。用Ground News，你能很快对比出左派和右派的报道有什么不同。比如，一家偏左的媒体着重报道华盛顿的伊朗侨民社群的人性化反应；而以福克斯新闻为代表的右派，则聚焦于这次袭击引发的政治反弹，把批评这些打击的人描绘成站在伊朗一边，用他们的话说，就是在「为阿亚图拉加油」。

Every news outlet chooses their narrative. So do we. This is impossible to avoid. What Ground News does is it helps make that visible by allowing you to quickly compare lots of different headlines. I've used the app for years and I'm grateful it exists.

每家新闻媒体都会选择自己的叙事，我们也一样，这是不可能避免的。Ground News做的，就是让你能快速对比大量不同的标题，从而把这一点摆到明处。这个App我已经用了好几年，我很庆幸有它。

It's a kind of comparison that I can't get elsewhere. It's an important part of being a critical consumer of the news and it's completely subscriberfunded. There's no like rich billionaire back there deciding what you see. It's completely funded by all of us who pay for it. If this is interesting to you, you can get in on the Vantage plan, which is the plan I use.

这种对比是我在别处得不到的。要做一个有批判力的新闻读者，这是很重要的一环。而且它完全靠订阅用户出钱，背后没有什么有钱的亿万富翁在决定你看到什么，完全是由我们这些付费用户撑起来的。如果你感兴趣，可以订阅Vantage方案，我自己用的就是这个。

You can get 40% off if you go to ground.news/jny harris. You can also scan the QR code here on screen. You get that 40% off. It ends up being like five bucks a month for you to get the whole picture on the events shaping the world. With that, let's dive into our next video about the modern Middle East.

访问ground.news/jny harris，就能享受40%的折扣。你也可以扫屏幕上的这个二维码，同样能拿到40%的折扣。算下来大概每个月5美元，就能全面了解正在塑造这个世界的种种事件。好，接下来我们进入下一个关于现代中东的视频。

And it is this world of religious authority and deeply rooted traditions that is now being challenged by the wealth of oil and the western invasion it has brought. So, it's now the '7s and Muhammad bin Laden, the construction guy, is now insanely rich. His construction company is giant. His 54 children are also rich. And his son Osama is growing up and he's in his 20s and is looking around at all of this stuff happening in Iran and in Israel and is starting to feel really uncomfortable with the notion of his family being so supportive of American presence in the Middle East and his government this religious kingdom home of Mecca and Medina being so okay with the US so embedded in the Middle East at this point.

「正是这个由宗教权威和根深蒂固的传统构成的世界，如今正受到石油财富以及随之而来的西方入侵的挑战。」好，现在是70年代，建筑商穆罕默德·本·拉登已经富得流油。他的建筑公司规模庞大，他的54个孩子也都很有钱。他的儿子奥萨马渐渐长大，二十多岁了，看着伊朗和以色列发生的这一切，心里越来越不是滋味：他的家族这么支持美国在中东的存在，而他的政府——这个坐拥麦加和麦地那的宗教王国——竟然也对美国如此深地嵌入中东这么坦然。

These are ancient holy lands. Why is my government and my family supporting this great Satan superpower coming in and becoming so involved in the Middle East? So, Bin Laden sets out on a lifelong quest to fight back against these superpowers, not just the US, but also the Soviet Union invading the Middle East. He heads to Afghanistan where the Soviet Union is invading Afghanistan, trying to take it over. Bin Laden wants to fight back.

「这些是古老的圣地。为什么我的政府、我的家族，要支持这个大撒旦超级大国跑进来，在中东插手这么深？」于是，本·拉登踏上了一场终其一生的征途，要反击这些超级大国——不只是美国，还有入侵中东的苏联。他去了阿富汗，当时苏联正在入侵阿富汗，想把它拿下。本·拉登要反击。

By the way, the same year in Iran, that dictator that the US put in gets overthrown in a giant religious revolution that gets rid of the old dictator that the US liked and puts in a religious government headed by this guy, Ayatollah Khomeini. This new government takes a bunch of Americans hostage and starts off hating the United States. And I mean, can you blame them? If someone overthrew the person I elected, I would be pretty pissed, too. So, anyway, back to Bin Laden.

顺便说一下，同一年在伊朗，美国扶上台的那个独裁者在一场声势浩大的宗教革命中被推翻了。这场革命赶走了美国喜欢的老独裁者，建立了一个宗教政府，领头的就是这个人——阿亚图拉·霍梅尼。新政府扣押了一批美国人质，一上台就对美国充满敌意。说真的，这能怪他们吗？要是有人推翻了我选出来的领导人，我也会相当火大。好了，说回本·拉登。

He arrives to Afghanistan with a few things. Number one, a bunch of money. Remember, his family is like super rich. He also comes with construction infrastructure because he's like a construction guy. Like his family knows construction and infrastructure building.

他来到阿富汗的时候，带了几样东西。第一，一大笔钱——别忘了，他家可是超级有钱。他还带来了建筑方面的家底，因为他算是个搞建筑的，他们家懂施工，懂基础设施建设。

But most importantly, he comes with an obsessive dedication to fighting back against any superpower that is invading the Middle East. So Osama joins in with all of these rebel fighters who are fighting back against the Soviet Union and they fight a long brutal war. By the way, the US was secretly loving this, loving that the Soviet Union was getting like beat back by these like rebel fighters. So they end up sending loads of weapons and money and support to these fighters. Something that will come back to bite them a few decades later.

但最重要的是，他带来了一股近乎偏执的决心：要反击任何入侵中东的超级大国。于是，奥萨马加入了那些抗击苏联的反抗军战士，他们打了一场漫长而残酷的战争。顺便说一句，美国私底下对此乐见其成，看着苏联被这些反抗军打得节节败退，心里别提多高兴了。所以他们给这些战士送去了大量的武器、金钱和支持——这件事在几十年后会反过来咬他们一口。

Eventually, Osama and the Afghan fighters beat back the Soviet Union. It was 10 brutal years of war, and by the end, these fighters were battleh hardened. Osama was now completely dedicated to his cause of fighting back against superpowers who were coming into the Middle East. So, he returns back to Saudi Arabia where he starts raising money and awareness for his new group that he started while he was in Afghanistan. It's called Al-Qaeda.

最终，奥萨马和阿富汗战士们打退了苏联。那是整整10年的残酷战争，到最后，这些战士个个久经沙场。奥萨马此时已经全身心投入他的事业：反击那些进入中东的超级大国。于是他回到沙特阿拉伯，开始为他在阿富汗时创建的新组织募集资金、扩大影响。这个组织叫「基地组织」。

And the mission of the group is to protect Islam through violently striking back against big superpowers coming into the Middle East. And Saudi Arabia is like, "Os, do you have to do this, dude? Do you realize how rich we're getting? Like Saudi princes are living on yachts in the south of France and flying in their private jets." And they're like, "Dude, chill. It's fine.

这个组织的使命，是通过暴力反击进入中东的超级大国来保卫伊斯兰教。沙特阿拉伯的反应是：「奥萨马，你非得这么干吗，兄弟？你知道我们现在赚得有多爽吗？沙特的王子们住在法国南部的游艇上，坐着私人飞机飞来飞去。」他们说：「兄弟，冷静点，没事的。

We get it. We don't the United States, but can you like maybe chill? Our partnership with the United States is actually turning out to be really great." And I know, yeah, they're really into Israel and they're really bad and everything, but they buy our oil and they give us weapons and we're like doing just fine over here. Osama doesn't chill and the Saudi government eventually takes away his passport, not letting him leave and told him to hush up with all the anti-American holy war talk. So Osama finds another plan to maybe win back the heart of the royals.

我们懂，我们也不喜欢美国，但你能不能冷静一点？我们跟美国的合作其实挺不错的。」我知道，没错，他们特别偏袒以色列，他们很坏，什么都坏，但他们买我们的石油，给我们武器，我们在这边过得好好的。奥萨马没有冷静下来。沙特政府最终没收了他的护照，不让他出国，还叫他别再满嘴反美圣战。于是，奥萨马想了另一个办法，或许能重新赢回王室的欢心。

Saudi Arabia has a nextoor neighbor named Iraq who is run by Saddam Hussein who Osama sees as a really bad Muslim. Totally secular and brutal and he's just like not a good guy. Saddam is also cashing in on the oil boom. He's building big palaces and statues of himself all over the country. Oh yeah, and he also used the oil money to build a giant army, like the fourth biggest in the world.

沙特阿拉伯有个邻居叫伊拉克，统治者是萨达姆·侯赛因。在奥萨马眼里，萨达姆是个很糟糕的穆斯林：彻头彻尾的世俗派，手段残暴，就是个坏人。萨达姆也在石油热潮里大捞一笔，在全国各地修建豪华宫殿和自己的雕像。对了，他还用石油的钱建起了一支庞大的军队，规模大概排世界第四。

With this massive army, Saddam decided that he could maybe multiply his oil reserves if he popped down to invade this little tiny country of Kuwait, where there's also loads of oil. This sort of freaked the Saudis out. If Saddam with his giant army could grab Kuwait, what would stop him from marching right across this desert into Saudi Arabia? So there's this moment that like it's like the moment of infamy of this whole thing where Osama goes to the Saudis and he says I volunteer as tribute. He doesn't actually say I volunteer in tribute.

手握这支庞大的军队，萨达姆觉得，要是南下入侵那个小小的科威特——那里同样有大量石油——他的石油储量或许就能翻上好几倍。这可把沙特人吓坏了：如果萨达姆凭他的大军能拿下科威特，那还有什么能阻止他直接穿过这片沙漠，打进沙特阿拉伯？于是就有了这么一个时刻——可以说是整件事里最「臭名昭著」的一幕：奥萨马去找沙特人，说：「我自愿成为贡品。」当然，他并没有真说「我自愿成为贡品」。

That was uh Hunger Games. I believe we have a volunteer. But he effectively says I have me and my battleh hardened men who like can go in and fight against Saddam and defend the kingdom. And the Saudis are like, "Um, no, we're not going to like let this rag tag group of like rebel fighters fight off the fourth largest army in the world." And Osama's like, "Well, we beat the Soviets. They're a big army with nuclear weapons and everything." And the Saudis are like, "Yeah, because you hid in the hills in caves in Afghanistan." Prince Sultan literally told Bin Laden verbatim, quote, "There are no caves in Kuwait." And then he asks them, "What will you do when he lobbs the missiles at you with chemical and biological weapons?" Osama's response, "We will fight them with our faith." And the Saudis are like, "Um, awkward.

那是《饥饿游戏》里的台词：「看来我们有一位志愿者。」但他的意思实际上就是：我有我自己，还有我手下那些身经百战的弟兄，我们可以上阵跟萨达姆打，保卫王国。沙特人说：「呃，不行，我们可不会让这么一帮乌合之众的反抗军去对抗世界第四大军队。」奥萨马说：「可我们打败了苏联啊。那也是一支大军，还有核武器什么的。」沙特人说：「是啊，那是因为你们躲在阿富汗山里的洞里。」苏尔坦亲王一字不差地对本·拉登说：「科威特可没有山洞。」然后他又问：「当他用装着化学和生物武器的导弹打你们的时候，你们怎么办？」奥萨马的回答是：「我们会用我们的信仰跟他们作战。」沙特人：「呃，好尴尬。

Sorry, dude." Instead, the king met with somebody else that he thought would make a much better fit than Bin Laden and his faith fighters.

抱歉了，兄弟。」国王转而去见了另一个人，在他看来，这个人比本·拉登和他那帮「信仰战士」合适得多。

Dick Cheney had flown to Saudi Arabia the day after Saddam had invaded Kuwait. At this point, the bromance between the US and Saudi Arabia had cooled a little bit as Saudi had gotten more and more flak for being in bed with the US. But even despite this, he told Cheney to come with as much force and as quickly as he could. And that is exactly what Dick Cheney did. Ready and willing to employ all means necessary.

萨达姆入侵科威特的第二天，迪克·切尼就飞到了沙特。那时候，美沙之间的这段「兄弟情」已经稍微冷了一点——沙特跟美国走得太近，挨的骂越来越多。可即便如此，国王还是对切尼说：能派多少兵力就派多少，越快越好。迪克·切尼也正是这么做的，摆出一副不惜一切手段的架势。

The US went insane here. They recruited 37 other countries and then they sent more firepower in terms of ships and bombers and troops and all this stuff than you and I could ever imagine. It was insanity. And they totally crushed Saddam. Within a few weeks, they had pushed Saddam back and completely won over the hearts of the royals.

美国这回简直疯了。他们拉上了另外37个国家，然后派来的军舰、轰炸机、部队，还有各种各样的装备，火力之猛，你我根本想象不到。真的是疯狂。他们把萨达姆打得落花流水。短短几周之内，就把萨达姆赶了回去，也彻底赢得了沙特王室的心。

The bromance is back in business. So now you have these Saudis that are beaming at the Americans for helping them fight off Saddam. And you have a bunch of bases that the US set up to mount this attack way more than before. The US came with all of this firepower and manpower and bases and artillery and then they just sort of never left. Something that really pissed off a lot of Saudis who were very uncomfortable with US presence to begin with.

「兄弟情」又重新开张了。于是你看，一边是沙特人对着美国人笑逐颜开，感激他们帮忙击退了萨达姆；另一边，美国为了发动这场攻势建起了一大堆基地，规模远超从前。美国带着这么多火力、兵力、基地和火炮开了进来，然后就好像再也没走。这让很多沙特人非常恼火，他们本来就对美国驻军浑身不自在。

But the guy who was most pissed off than anyone in the Middle East at this point, Osama bin Laden, who had not only been rejected by his own country, but then who got chosen instead? But the great Satan, the United States, a power that Osama had built his entire life fighting against. So Osama bin Laden starts to double down on his original mission. He leaves Saudi Arabia and begins coordinating very precise attacks that could really only be coordinated by a guy who was good at technical details of a construction company and who had lots of money to fund it. He carries out attacks against the United States all around the world.

但此时整个中东最恼火的人，是奥萨马·本·拉登。他不光被自己的国家拒之门外，而且国家最后选了谁？偏偏是那个「大撒旦」——美国，一个他毕生都在与之对抗的强权。于是本·拉登开始加倍投入他最初的使命。他离开沙特，开始策划一系列极其精密的袭击，这种袭击，大概也只有一个精通建筑公司技术细节、又有大把钱来资助的人才组织得起来。他在世界各地对美国发动袭击。

And by the late 90s, he starts planning the attack that would change our world forever. So, this is just the first half of the story. What happens next is something that we're all kind of familiar with. In fact, I think we're all still kind of processing the US presence in the Middle East today and how that all went down. But it deserves taking a look at, and I'm not going to do that right now.

到了90年代末，他开始策划那场将永远改变我们这个世界的袭击。所以说，这还只是故事的前半段。接下来发生的事，我们大家多少都有点熟悉。事实上，我觉得直到今天，我们都还在慢慢消化美国在中东的存在，以及这一切是怎么演变过来的。这段历史值得好好看一看，不过我现在先不展开。

I want to make a separate video for Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel and Iran and dive into each of these cases to show how the US presence in the Middle East is not just about oil. In fact, oil is becoming less and less of a vital aspect of the US presence as we have alternative sources of this sort of energy. Instead, our presence in the Middle East has become a fixture of how we think about foreign policy and how we think about the map. It's become so embedded in our military doctrine and in our foreign policy doctrine that it's proving to be really hard to think about how we could ever get out. One of the most important wars of the last 50 years is one that we don't hear about much.

我想单独做几期视频，分别讲伊拉克、阿富汗、以色列和伊朗，一个个深入剖析，让大家看到美国在中东的存在并不只是为了石油。事实上，随着我们有了这类能源的替代来源，石油在美国中东存在中的重要性正在越来越低。相反，我们在中东的存在，已经成了我们思考外交政策、思考世界地图时的一个固定组成部分。它深深嵌进了我们的军事学说和外交政策学说里，以至于事实证明，我们很难去想象自己究竟要怎样才能抽身。过去50年里最重要的战争之一，却是我们很少听人提起的一场。

When in 1980, two of the Middle East's most powerful countries, Iran and Iraq, waged 8 years of some of the worst trench and chemical warfare since World War I, leaving both countries devastated. This is the war that fractured the Middle East into lines that still play out in nearly every conflict there today. It set the US and Iraq on a path that ultimately led to the American invasion. And it defined Iran's often hostile relationship with the wider world. This is the Iran Iraq war.

1980年，中东两个最强大的国家——伊朗和伊拉克——打了整整8年，堑壕战和化学战之惨烈，堪称一战以来之最，两国都被打得满目疮痍。正是这场战争，把中东撕裂成一道道界线，直到今天，那里几乎每一场冲突都还在沿着这些界线上演。它让美国和伊拉克走上了一条最终通向美军入侵的道路，也定下了伊朗与外部世界之间那种常常充满敌意的关系。这就是两伊战争。

It's 1979 and Iran is in the middle of a revolution. The country is coming off of decades of being ruled by the Shah, a king that the US and UK had installed in the 50s after covertly overthrowing Iran's democratically elected leader. But after years of the Shah's corrupt autocratic rule, a mass uprising violently overthrows him, creating what becomes an Islamic republic headed by an Ayatollah named Rouola Khomeini. Khomeini and a group of Shia religious scholars want to impose fundamentalist rule on the country and are hostile to both the Western powers and the neighboring Soviet Union. They establish a military force called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which is meant to protect their hold on the revolution and to suppress the other groups who helped overthrow the sha.

时间是1979年，伊朗正处在一场革命之中。在此之前的几十年里，这个国家一直由沙阿统治——这位国王是美英两国在50年代秘密推翻伊朗民选领导人之后扶上台的。但在沙阿腐败专制地统治了多年之后，一场大规模起义以暴力推翻了他，建立起后来的伊斯兰共和国，由一位名叫鲁霍拉·霍梅尼的阿亚图拉领导。霍梅尼和一群什叶派宗教学者想给这个国家强加原教旨主义统治，他们既敌视西方列强，也敌视邻近的苏联。他们组建了一支名为伊斯兰革命卫队的武装力量，用来守住他们对这场革命的掌控，并镇压当初一起帮忙推翻沙阿的其他派别。

The US is watching all of this in shock. Their biggest ally in the region and a major oil producer has just turned from friend to fierce enemy. But the biggest tremors of this revolution are felt in the rest of the Middle East. Iran sends out radio broadcasts to Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Iraq, calling for people to rise up and overthrow their own rulers. They're trying to export their revolution to their neighbors to gain new allies in the region.

美国眼睁睁看着这一切，震惊不已。它在这个地区最大的盟友、一个重要的产油国，就这样从朋友变成了死敌。但这场革命最强烈的震波，是在中东其他地方感受到的。伊朗向沙特、黎巴嫩、科威特和伊拉克这些阿拉伯国家播送电台广播，号召那里的人民起来推翻自己的统治者。他们想把革命输出到邻国，在这个地区争取新的盟友。

Neighboring leaders, most of them Sunni Muslim, don't this. Saudi Arabia's king fears being overthrown just like the Shah was. And in Iraq, Saddam Hussein sees this Shia religious revolution on his eastern border and worries that the Shia majority that he rules over will rise up against him, too. But he also sees this as an opportunity. Iran and Iraq have been fighting over this border territory for years.

周边国家的领导人大多是逊尼派穆斯林，他们可不喜欢这一套。沙特国王害怕自己也像沙阿一样被推翻。而在伊拉克，萨达姆·侯赛因看到东部边境上发生了这场什叶派宗教革命，担心自己统治下占多数的什叶派也会起来反对他。但他同时也把这看成一个机会。伊朗和伊拉克为这片边境领土已经争了好多年。

This waterway is a critical access point to the Persian Gulf where both countries export their oil to the rest of the world. In a treaty between the two back in 1975, Saddam had to give up full control of this waterway as well as access to oil richch regions in what was now Iran. Saddam hates this treaty and is considering taking the waterway back by force. The Iranian revolution has left the country weak and fractured. Khomeini and his revolutionary guard are still fighting other political factions for control.

这条水道是通往波斯湾的关键出入口，两国都要经由这里把石油出口到世界各地。早在1975年两国签订的一项条约里，萨达姆被迫放弃了对这条水道的完全控制权，也失去了进入如今归属伊朗的那些富油地区的通道。萨达姆恨透了这份条约，正在考虑用武力把水道夺回来。伊朗革命让这个国家变得虚弱而分裂，霍梅尼和他的革命卫队还在跟其他政治派别争夺控制权。

The Iranian military, which used to be funded and trained by the United States, is now weak. Its leaders having been jailed or executed after the Iran's military would normally be able to crush Iraq in an invasion. But maybe not anymore. Saddam sees this as an opportunity to weaken a major rival. Saddam is also riding on a delusion that he himself is going to unify the Arab world under his leadership.

伊朗军队过去由美国出钱、由美国训练，如今却虚弱不堪，它的将领们在革命之后不是被关进监狱就是被处决。照常理，伊朗军队足以在对方入侵时把伊拉克碾碎，但现在也许不行了。萨达姆把这看作削弱一个主要对手的机会。萨达姆还抱着一个妄想：他觉得自己将会在自己的领导下统一整个阿拉伯世界。

If he invades Iran, maybe the rest of the Middle East will rally behind him against this new common enemy. He thinks it'll be a quick victory. So, in September of 1980, he decides to prepare 10,000 Iraqi troops to cross the border to invade Iran. What's about to happen here isn't just the start of a new war. Saddam is kicking off a dynamic that will dominate the Middle East for more than 40 years.

如果他入侵伊朗，也许中东其他国家都会团结到他身后，一起对付这个新的共同敌人。他以为这会是一场速胜。于是在1980年9月，他决定集结1万名伊拉克士兵，准备越过边境入侵伊朗。接下来要发生的，可不只是一场新战争的开端。萨达姆开启的是一种将主宰中东40多年的格局：

The fight between revolutionary change and status quo power. The war officially starts when Saddam sends his air force over the border in a surprise attack on Iranian air bases. His 10,000 soldiers cross from Basra into southern Iran. Further north, Saddam opens a second front to seize strategically located border towns and put pressure on his enemy. These air attacks mostly fail, and Iran responds with air strikes of their own into Iraqi territory, hitting oil facilities.

革命性变革与维持现状的势力之间的较量。战争正式打响，是萨达姆派空军越过边境，突袭伊朗的空军基地。他的1万名士兵从巴士拉越境进入伊朗南部。在更北边，萨达姆开辟了第二条战线，去夺取几座位置关键的边境城镇，给敌人施压。这些空袭大多以失败告终，伊朗则以牙还牙，对伊拉克境内发动空袭，打击石油设施。

Iran still has sophisticated jets that the United States had given the previous regime. This gives them an edge in the air. The war quickly sucks in the rest of the region. Israel is among the first. It wants to keep these two adversaries occupied, fighting with each other, keeping both sides weak.

伊朗手里还有美国当年送给前政权的先进战机，这让他们在空中占了上风。战争很快就把整个地区卷了进来。以色列是最早卷入的国家之一。它想让这两个对手忙于互相厮杀，让双方都保持虚弱。

So, almost immediately, Israel secretly sells supplies and parts to Iran. This helps the Iranian air force keep planes in the air. Now, Iran and Israel are not friends, but Israel sees Iraq as a greater threat here, so they're willing to support. Iran needs to get its military organized if they're going to fight this war. So, they release military officers that they had jailed during the revolution.

所以，几乎是一开战，以色列就秘密向伊朗出售物资和零部件，帮伊朗空军让飞机继续飞得起来。要知道，伊朗和以色列并不是朋友，但在这件事上，以色列认为伊拉克的威胁更大，所以愿意出手支持。伊朗要想打这场仗，就得把军队组织起来。于是他们释放了革命期间关押的那些军官。

War tends to unify a nation. And in this case, the fractured country of Iran is unifying around Iraq's invasion, creating this irony that Saddam is the one who actually cements Khomeini's hold on power. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait also step in here, giving billions of dollars to fund Iraq's war efforts. They want to weaken Iran and turn back its revolution. The Middle East is now dividing between on one side Arab states who are ruled by aging Sunni monarchies and strong men who fear change and on the other side a Shia Iran bent on revolution on remaking the region in its image.

战争往往会让一个国家团结起来。在这件事上，四分五裂的伊朗正围绕着伊拉克的入侵团结起来，于是出现了这样一个讽刺：恰恰是萨达姆，巩固了霍梅尼对权力的掌控。沙特和科威特这时也介入了，拿出数十亿美元资助伊拉克的战争。他们想削弱伊朗，让它的革命倒退回去。中东如今一分为二：一边是由年迈的逊尼派君主和害怕变革的强人统治的阿拉伯国家；另一边是一心闹革命、想按自己的模样重塑整个地区的什叶派伊朗。

China is also watching this war. They say they will maintain strict neutrality, but they take the opportunity to sell weapons to both sides of the conflict. They eventually become Iran's top supplier of weapons. For most of 1981, the two armies are in a stalemate with Iraq holding small but important stretches of border territory. The global powers see this stalemate and try to negotiate a ceasefire, hoping that this conflict that threatens so much of the global oil supply will end soon.

中国也在关注这场战争。中国表示将保持严格中立，却趁机向冲突双方出售武器，最终成了伊朗最大的武器供应国。1981年的大部分时间里，两国军队陷入僵持，伊拉克占据着几段面积不大但很重要的边境领土。世界大国看到这种僵局，试图斡旋停火，希望这场威胁到全球大量石油供应的冲突能早点结束。

What they don't know is that this is really just the beginning. Saddam agrees to the ceasefire, but Khomeini does not. This war has become so useful to his goals, unifying the country and keeping the military occupied so that it doesn't become a rival to his power. Khomeini needs the war to continue. So Iran demands that Saddam Hussein step down.

他们不知道的是，这其实才刚刚开始。萨达姆同意停火，霍梅尼却不同意。这场战争对他的目标太有用了：它让国家团结起来，也让军队忙于打仗，不至于成为威胁他权力的对手。霍梅尼需要这场战争继续下去。于是伊朗要求萨达姆·侯赛因下台。

They say the war will continue until his rule is ended. Saddam, of course, refuses. So Iran goes on the offensive. Their forces are now organized. Their officers have been freed from jail, and they're able to recapture the territory that Saddam had taken, even pushing into Iraq.

他们说，不结束他的统治，战争就不会停。萨达姆当然拒绝了。于是伊朗转入进攻。他们的部队如今已经组织起来，军官们也从监狱里放了出来，他们得以夺回萨达姆占去的领土，甚至还打进了伊拉克境内。

Saddam's hopes of a quick victory and a gain of some valuable territory are now dead. So he turns to the United States for support and the US agrees to help. They hope to weaken Iran and its call for anti-American Islamic revolution across the region. So the US starts giving Saddam intelligence and satellite imagery on Iranian troop movement. Iraq also gets another big backer, the Soviet Union.

萨达姆速战速胜、捞到一块宝贵领土的希望，现在彻底破灭了。于是他转向美国求援，美国也答应帮忙。美国希望削弱伊朗，压住它在整个地区号召的反美伊斯兰革命。于是美国开始向萨达姆提供有关伊朗部队调动的情报和卫星图像。伊拉克还得到了另一个大靠山——苏联。

The Soviets are at war in neighboring Afghanistan, trying to suppress another religious uprising, but they also have allies in this region. So over the course of the war, the Soviets become a top supplier of weapons to Iraq. Now remember the situation between these two. It's a tense moment in the Cold War and the United States and Soviet Union are suddenly supporting the same side of this Middle East conflict. Both backing the country that will support the status quo.

苏联当时正在邻近的阿富汗打仗，试图镇压另一场宗教起义，但它在这个地区也有自己的盟友。于是在整场战争期间，苏联成了伊拉克最主要的武器供应国之一。现在请记住这两国之间的局面：那是冷战中一个紧张的时刻，而美国和苏联突然在这场中东冲突中站到了同一边，都在支持那个会维护现状的国家。

Nothing changing, allowing their great power struggle to continue as it has. But by the summer of 1982, Iran is now pushing into Iraqi territory. Much of their campaign focused on the city of Basra. If Iran can take Basra, it will cut off Iraq from the Persian Gulf, preventing them from shipping out their oil. Iraqi forces are outnumbered here, so they start to dig in and build trenches, erecting barbwire barriers, planting landmines, and surrounding the city to stop Iran from taking it.

什么都不变，好让它们之间的大国角力照旧进行下去。可到了1982年夏天，伊朗已经在向伊拉克境内推进。他们的攻势大多集中在巴士拉这座城市。如果伊朗能拿下巴士拉，就能切断伊拉克通往波斯湾的出路，让它没法把石油运出去。伊拉克军队在这里寡不敌众，于是开始掘壕固守，修建战壕、架设铁丝网、埋设地雷，把整座城市围起来，阻止伊朗攻占。

The fighting starts to resemble the brutal warfare of World War I. Waves of artillery strikes and the Iranian military resorting to human wave attacks where thousands of boys and men charge over open fields leading to huge numbers of casualties. Iran is not successful in taking the city, but this attack does weaken Saddam, showing that he's vulnerable. And this is where we need to look to the north to talk about the Kurds. The Kurds are a minority group in the north of Iraq.

战斗开始变得像一战那种残酷的战争。一轮又一轮的炮击，伊朗军队还采取了人海战术，成千上万的男孩和男人冲过开阔地，造成了大量伤亡。伊朗没能拿下这座城市，但这次进攻确实削弱了萨达姆，表明他是可以被撼动的。说到这里，我们得把目光转向北方，谈谈库尔德人。库尔德人是伊拉克北部的一个少数族群。

They've been long suppressed by Saddam Hussein and they see this moment as an opportunity to break away from Iraq to make their own country. So Kurdish forces start fighting with the Iraqi army, taking towns and villages. So now Saddam is fighting two different armies, one of which lives in his own country. Iran starts sending support to the Kurds who have a presence in this mountainous oil richch part of Iraq. If the Kurds can hold it and keep Saddam's regime away from all of this oil, it would have a major effect on this war.

他们长期受到萨达姆·侯赛因的压制，把眼下这个时刻看成脱离伊拉克、建立自己国家的机会。于是库尔德武装开始跟伊拉克军队交战，攻占了一些城镇和村庄。这下萨达姆要同时对付两支不同的军队，其中一支还就生活在他自己的国家里。伊朗开始向库尔德人提供支援，库尔德人的势力分布在伊拉克这片多山又富藏石油的地区。如果库尔德人能守住这里，让萨达姆政权碰不到这些石油，那将对这场战争产生重大影响。

This is a big deal for Saddam, and he switches tactics to make sure he can control this northern area. He escalates by using chemical weapons against the Kurds as well as the Iranians. Shells filled with mustard gas, weapons that cause extreme burning and blindness. A weapon that is illegal under international law. But even still, the global powers who are supporting him mostly look the other way.

这对萨达姆来说可是大事，于是他改变战术，确保自己能控制住北部这片地区。他把冲突升级，对库尔德人和伊朗人都动用了化学武器——装满芥子气的炮弹，这种武器会造成极其严重的灼伤和失明，是国际法明令禁止的。但即便如此，支持他的那些世界大国大多选择了视而不见。

The US starts sending technology and money to Saddam, even restoring official diplomatic ties with Iraq. This allows Iraq to buy technology from the United States that helps them develop their weapons programs, including the horrific chemical and biological weapons that he will soon be using on the battlefield. They need him to keep fighting because this war has changed. It went from protecting Saddam from revolution to now using Saddam to weaken Iran. So, they keep supporting him, showing him that he can use chemical weapons without being punished.

美国开始向萨达姆输送技术和资金，甚至恢复了与伊拉克的正式外交关系。这让伊拉克得以从美国购买技术，帮助他们发展武器项目，其中就包括他很快将在战场上使用的那些骇人的化学和生物武器。他们需要他继续打下去，因为这场战争已经变了味：从保护萨达姆免遭革命冲击，变成了现在利用萨达姆去削弱伊朗。所以他们继续支持他，等于告诉他：用化学武器也不会受到惩罚。

The chemical attacks help push back Iranian forces, and the war reaches a new stalemate. 1984 is the year that the oil war begins in this conflict. Iraq starts attacking Iranian oil tankers in the Persian Gulf using new jets provided by France, a new entrant to this conflict. Saddam warns that he'll also attack any ship going into Iranian ports. Iran retaliates by attacking oil tankers carrying Iraq's oil. The oil that the entire globe relies on is now at the center of this increasingly brutal conflict.

化学攻击帮伊拉克击退了伊朗军队，战争又陷入新的僵局。1984年，这场冲突中的石油战争开始了。伊拉克动用法国提供的新式战机，在波斯湾攻击伊朗的油轮——法国是这场冲突的新玩家。萨达姆警告说，任何驶往伊朗港口的船只他都会攻击。伊朗则进行报复，攻击运载伊拉克石油的油轮。全世界赖以为生的石油，如今成了这场日益残酷的冲突的中心。

Hundreds of commercial ships are attacked by both sides, resulting in the death of over 400 civilian sailors. The US has to send in two frigots and a guided missile destroyer into the Persian Gulf to escort US ships, hoping that their presence will stop these attacks. Meanwhile, Iran is making progress on the ground, slowly taking territory from Iraq and continuing attacks on the vital port city of Basra. It's 1985 and Saddam is about to escalate to a new extreme. He starts shooting missiles and dropping bombs on Iranian cities all over the country, including the capital.

数百艘商船遭到双方攻击，400多名平民船员因此丧生。美国不得不派出两艘护卫舰和一艘导弹驱逐舰进入波斯湾，为美国船只护航，希望自己的存在能制止这些袭击。与此同时，伊朗在地面战场上取得进展，慢慢从伊拉克手中夺取领土，并继续进攻至关重要的港口城市巴士拉。时间来到1985年，萨达姆即将把战争升级到一个新的极端。他开始向伊朗全国各地的城市发射导弹、投掷炸弹，连首都也不放过。

This kills 16,000 people and leaves many homeless. Iran responds, striking Iraqi cities, firing these massive missiles primarily at the capital of Baghdad. These strikes hit civilian targets like a school in a bus station with hundreds of casualties. Civilians on both sides are now caught in the crossfire of this brutally escalating war. Their cities and their homes are not safe, so many flee.

这造成1.6万人死亡，许多人无家可归。伊朗随即还击，打击伊拉克的城市，发射的这些巨型导弹主要瞄准首都巴格达。这些打击命中了学校和汽车站这样的民用目标，造成数百人伤亡。两边的平民如今都陷入了这场残酷升级的战争的交火之中。他们的城市、他们的家园都不再安全，于是许多人逃离。

These events leave an entire generation scarred by the trauma of war and a disdain for the outside powers that have ripped their country apart. And speaking of outside powers, this is when the US starts double dealing. They start selling missiles to Iran, which gives Iran an edge against Iraqi forces, who the US is also supporting. Behind all this is President Ronald Reagan, who wants to use the money from this deal to fund an anti-communist militia group in Nicaragua. It's all supposed to be a secret, but will eventually come out and be known as the Iran Contra scandal.

这些事件让整整一代人背负着战争创伤，也让他们对那些把自己国家撕得四分五裂的外部势力心怀鄙夷。说到外部势力，美国就是从这时开始玩起了两面手法。他们开始向伊朗出售导弹，这让伊朗在对付伊拉克军队时占了上风——而伊拉克军队同样是美国在支持的。这一切的幕后是罗纳德·里根总统，他想用这笔交易赚来的钱，去资助尼加拉瓜的一支反共民兵组织。这一切本该是秘密，但最终还是曝了光，这就是后来所说的「伊朗门」丑闻。

Meanwhile, Kuwait is asking the US to be more aggressive to protect their oil tankers. Iranian attacks on their ships have started to take a toll. The US is getting more involved in the war. Their presence in the Persian Gulf is growing. They start putting American flags on Kuwaiti tankers to deter Iran from attacking them.

与此同时，科威特要求美国采取更强硬的行动，保护他们的油轮。伊朗对科威特船只的攻击已经开始造成损失。美国越来越深地卷入这场战争，在波斯湾的存在也越来越多。他们开始给科威特油轮挂上美国国旗，以震慑伊朗，让它不敢攻击。

And then in March of 1988, Iran partners with the Kurdish fighters to take over the Iraqi town of Halabja. The Kurds know that this is going to set Saddam off, and they brace themselves for a brutal retaliation. But what comes next is worse than anyone could have prepared for. The Iraqi army drops bombs and artillery shells containing deadly chemicals, blanketing the entire town with a cloud of deadly gas that sinks into homes and buildings and the underground shelters where many were hiding for protection. It's a brutal attack that kills over 5,000 Iraqi Kurds, mostly unarmed civilians.

然后在1988年3月，伊朗联手库尔德武装，攻占了伊拉克的哈拉布贾镇。库尔德人知道这会激怒萨达姆，已经做好了迎接残酷报复的准备。但接下来发生的事，比任何人所能预料的都要可怕。伊拉克军队投下装有致命化学品的炸弹和炮弹，一团致命的毒气笼罩了整个小镇，渗进住宅、楼房，还有许多人躲藏避难的地下掩体。这次残忍的袭击造成5000多名伊拉克库尔德人死亡，其中大多是手无寸铁的平民。

And it was a part of a broader campaign that Saddam was now waging to wipe out the Kurdish people entirely. He now had what he believed was a justification. So the Iraqi army starts going village to village, dropping chemical weapons on civilians and executing any survivors.

而这只是萨达姆当时发动的一场更大规模行动的一部分，他要把库尔德人彻底消灭。现在他有了自认为的正当理由。于是伊拉克军队开始一个村庄接一个村庄地扫荡，向平民投放化学武器，并处决任何幸存者。

This resulted in an estimated 50 to 100,000 deaths in what has now been deemed as a genocide. One of the many war crimes committed by Saddam Hussein. The US knows this is happening. And yet, according to now public documents, the official government line was to turn a blind eye to blame everything on Iran. Saddam's horrific war crimes project a new fear onto the civilians in Iran, who now worry that a missile loaded with deadly gas could land on their cities.

据估计，这场屠杀造成了5万到10万人死亡，如今已被认定为种族灭绝，是萨达姆·侯赛因犯下的众多战争罪行之一。美国对此心知肚明。然而，根据现已公开的文件，美国政府的官方口径却是视而不见，把一切都推到伊朗头上。萨达姆这些骇人听闻的战争罪行，也让伊朗平民陷入了一种新的恐惧：他们担心，装满致命毒气的导弹随时可能落在自己的城市里。

Many flee to take shelter in the mountains. And by now, after eight years of devastating war, Iran's economy and social order is frayed. Their leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, is feeling the pressure to end this war. More than a million lives have been lost in this war. All sides are looking for a way out, and the UN Security Council is pressuring the parties to accept a ceasefire.

许多人逃进山里避难。到这时，八年的毁灭性战争已经让伊朗的经济和社会秩序千疮百孔。伊朗领袖阿亚图拉霍梅尼承受着结束战争的巨大压力。这场战争已经夺走了超过100万条生命。各方都在寻找出路，联合国安理会也在向交战双方施压，要求他们接受停火。

Then in July of 1988, a US ship in the Persian Gulf shoots down an Iranian passenger jet, killing all 290 civilians on board. The US shakes it off as an unfortunate accident, saying that they mistook the airliner for a hostile F-16 fighter jet. They pay compensation to the victim's families, and President Reagan sends a letter apologizing, but the government never formally apologizes. And the captain of the ship who did this later received a medal which fed a deep suspicion in Iran that this attack was deliberate. That it was a scheme to coers them into accepting peace.

就在这时，1988年7月，一艘部署在波斯湾的美国军舰击落了一架伊朗客机，机上290名平民全部遇难。美国轻描淡写地称之为一场不幸的意外，说他们把这架客机误认成了敌方的F-16战斗机。美方向遇难者家属支付了赔偿，里根总统也寄去了一封致歉信，但美国政府始终没有正式道歉。而下令击落客机的那位舰长，后来居然还获得了一枚勋章。这让伊朗人更加深信：这次袭击是蓄意为之，是一场逼他们接受和平的阴谋。

Fear of more American attacks along with a new offensive by Iraq pushes the Iranian forces to withdraw from the country and both sides finally accept a ceasefire. The war is finally over. And after all of this, the borders were unchanged from before the fighting. But in some ways, this was really just the first round in a larger conflict that has continued through to today. A war for the future of the Middle East.

一方面担心美国发动更多袭击，另一方面伊拉克又发起了新一轮攻势，伊朗军队被迫撤出伊拉克，双方终于接受停火。这场战争总算结束了。可打了这么多年，边界却和开战前一模一样，分毫未变。但从某种意义上说，这其实只是一场更大冲突的第一回合，而这场冲突一直延续到了今天——那是一场争夺中东未来的战争。

One that the United States is deeply involved in, but that most expresses itself as a cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who now fuel civil wars around the region in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, backing their own proxy fighters and making these conflicts worse. But another major takeaway here is that this war defined Iran's relationship to the rest of the world, especially the United States. Iranian hardliners came to feel confirmed in their belief that they could never trust an outside world bent on Iran's destruction and seemingly unconstrained in their violence, leading some leaders to conclude that only nuclear weapons could stave off disaster from the outside. Saddam Hussein's Iraq emerged battered by this war. Humiliated by this failure against Iran, he faced growing internal resistance from his people, which he suppressed with more and more violence.

美国深深卷入其中，但这场战争最主要的表现形式，是沙特阿拉伯与伊朗之间的一场冷战。如今，两国在黎巴嫩、叙利亚和也门等地的内战中煽风点火，各自扶植代理人武装，让这些冲突愈演愈烈。不过，这里还有一个重要启示：这场战争定义了伊朗与外部世界、尤其是与美国的关系。伊朗强硬派认为，自己的信念得到了印证——外部世界一心要毁灭伊朗，而且动起武来似乎毫无顾忌，因此永远不能信任它。这也让一些领导人得出结论：只有核武器才能抵御来自外部的灭顶之灾。至于萨达姆·侯赛因治下的伊拉克，则被这场战争打得遍体鳞伤。对伊朗的失败让萨达姆颜面尽失，国内的反抗声浪也越来越大，而他的回应是越来越残暴的镇压。

He also came out of this with huge war debts to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Angry that his allies had build him to fight a war on their behalf. A few years later, Saddam invades Kuwait, seeking its oil, taking the spoils that he felt he was owed. And this is when his one-time backer, the United States, quickly turns against him, expelling him from Kuwait and beating him back in a swift 43-day victory, cutting him off from the world economy and turning him into a pariah, an enemy. A decade after Saddam had gassed his own people, the US finally blamed him for it, turning it into a byword for his cruelty and the centerpiece for their demand that he step down.

战争结束时，他还欠下了科威特和沙特阿拉伯一大笔战争债务。他满腹怨气：这仗明明是替盟友打的，账却要算到他头上。几年后，萨达姆入侵科威特，觊觎那里的石油，想拿走他自认为应得的战利品。也正是在这个时候，他昔日的靠山美国迅速翻脸，把他赶出科威特，只用了43天就速战速决将他击退，并切断他与世界经济的联系，把他变成了一个人人唾弃的国际弃儿、一个敌人。在萨达姆用毒气屠杀本国人民十年之后，美国终于把这笔账算到了他头上，让这件事成了他残暴的代名词，也成了美国要求他下台的核心理由。

A few years later, George W. Bush would cite these weapons of mass destructions, the ones that he would never find, as a reason to invade the country, to topple Saddam. Bush's war room was filled with the same officials who had covered for Saddam and his war crimes in the first place, and making it so crystal clear that even though this war between Iran and Iraq ended decades ago, the Middle East we see today is built off of what happened during those eight brutal years. Before we go into the next video, I just want to remind you that this is all made possible because of Ground News, the sponsor of this compilation. Ground News helps me do these deep dives by helping me compare lots of headlines and revealing the different biases and reliability of the facts in those headlines.

又过了几年，小布什以这些大规模杀伤性武器为由——也就是那些他始终没能找到的武器——入侵伊拉克，推翻了萨达姆。而布什作战室里坐着的，恰恰是当初替萨达姆及其战争罪行打掩护的那批官员。这一切再清楚不过地说明：尽管两伊战争在几十年前就已结束，我们今天看到的中东，正是建立在那残酷的八年之上。在进入下一个视频之前，我想提醒一下：这一切之所以能够实现，要感谢本合集的赞助商Ground News。Ground News帮我做这些深度调查，它能让我对比大量新闻标题，揭示这些标题背后的不同偏向，以及其中事实的可靠程度。

You can go to ground.news/jny Harris to get 40% off their vantage plan and start comparing headlines and seeing clearly into the news that you're consuming. In the summer of 2002, the director of the British intelligence agency MI6, Richard Deerlov, traveled to Washington DC to meet with the director of the CIA, George Tennant. The topic of the meeting was Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein. In the meeting, the CIA director shared classified information with his British counterpart, who then traveled back to London to 10 Downing Street, the home of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Dear Love told his prime minister everything about what was really happening behind the scenes in the United States, how the US was planning to invade Iraq no matter what.

你可以访问ground.news/johnnyharris，订阅Vantage套餐立减40%，开始对比各家标题，把你接收的新闻看个清楚。2002年夏天，英国情报机构军情六处（MI6）局长理查德·迪尔洛夫（Richard Dearlove）前往华盛顿，与中央情报局局长乔治·特尼特（George Tenet）会面。会谈的主题是伊拉克及其领导人萨达姆·侯赛因。会上，中情局局长向这位英国同行透露了机密情报。迪尔洛夫随后返回伦敦，来到首相托尼·布莱尔的官邸唐宁街10号，把美国幕后的真实动向原原本本告诉了首相：美国无论如何都要入侵伊拉克。

It was a highly classified meeting, but notes were taken and classified and put into a memo. That memo was later leaked to British author and journalist Michael Smith who published it in 2005. And that's what we're looking at, a secret meeting. And the memo it produced meant only for the eyes of top British officials. It was an explosive leak.

这是一次高度机密的会议，但会上做了记录，记录被列为机密，整理成了一份备忘录。后来，这份备忘录被泄露给英国作家、记者迈克尔·史密斯（Michael Smith），他在2005年将其公之于众。这就是我们现在要看的东西：一场秘密会议，以及由此产生的一份只供英国最高层官员过目的备忘录。这次泄密引起了轩然大波。

What we see is that Dear Love tells his prime minister everything he heard in Washington a few days earlier, and that this was a very different story than the one the Bush administration was telling to the public. That an American invasion was inevitable. That Bush's people were fixated on removing Saddam Hussein from power no matter what, and that the US government was blatantly cooking up intel and facts to help sell their invasion. This document shows us how power really works in our world. How a small group of people decided to topple a dictator, to occupy a country, and then invented a story to support their plan.

我们从中看到，迪尔洛夫把几天前在华盛顿听到的一切都告诉了首相，而这与布什政府对公众讲的说法截然不同：美国入侵伊拉克已不可避免；布什的人一门心思要把萨达姆·侯赛因赶下台，不惜一切代价；美国政府还在明目张胆地炮制情报和事实，为入侵造势。这份文件让我们看到，权力在我们这个世界上究竟是如何运作的——一小撮人决定推翻一个独裁者、占领一个国家，然后编出一套说辞来为自己的计划背书。

It was a false story, but it helped them sell a horrifying war. It's a story that is revealed in detail by the Downing Street memo. States like these constitute an axis of evil. One last chance to avoid war. The entire world must know that we will take whatever action is necessary.

那是一套虚假的说辞，却帮助他们兜售了一场可怕的战争。这个故事的来龙去脉，在《唐宁街备忘录》中有详细的揭示。「这样的国家构成了一个邪恶轴心。」「避免战争的最后一次机会。」「全世界都必须知道，我们将采取一切必要行动。」

On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. The United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Let's start by looking at another document from the fall of 2001 when Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolawitz created this memo for his boss Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense. This was just 10 weeks after the attacks that changed the course of history. But this document wasn't about that.

「9月11日，自由的敌人对我们的国家发动了一场战争行为。」「美军已开始打击基地组织在阿富汗的恐怖分子训练营。」我们先来看另一份文件。那是2001年秋天，国防部副部长保罗·沃尔福威茨为他的上司、国防部长唐纳德·拉姆斯菲尔德准备的一份备忘录。这时距离那场改变历史进程的袭击才过去10周，但这份文件说的却不是那件事。

It was about Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Rumsfeld reviewed the document before meeting with an army general. He marked it up with his notes, giving us insight into what the Secretary of Defense of the United States was really thinking about after 9/11. How this group of military leaders were set on quote building momentum to topple Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein to decapitate the government. A government that was no longer useful to them.

它说的是伊拉克——一个与9·11毫无关系的国家。拉姆斯菲尔德在会见一位陆军将领之前审阅了这份文件，还在上面写满了批注。这让我们得以窥见，9·11之后美国国防部长脑子里真正在想什么：这群军方领导人如何下定决心，用他们的原话说，要「积聚势头」推翻伊拉克独裁者萨达姆·侯赛因，将这个政府斩首。一个对他们已经不再有用的政府。

Saddam Hussein had been a useful client to the United States, especially in the 80s when he was waging a war against Iran, an enemy of the United States. But those days were now over. Saddam had turned into just a troublemaker in the region, creating instability that could threaten the US's easy access to oil. Two hours ago, Allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. This conflict started August 2nd when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor.

萨达姆·侯赛因曾经是美国的得力附庸，尤其是在80年代，他与美国的敌人伊朗交战的时候。但那样的日子已经一去不返。萨达姆变成了地区里的一个麻烦制造者，他制造的动荡可能威胁到美国轻松获取石油的通道。「两小时前，盟军空军开始对伊拉克和科威特境内的军事目标发动攻击。这场冲突始于8月2日，当时伊拉克的独裁者入侵了一个弱小无助的邻国。」

And in many ways, Iraq was an old mess in need of cleaning up. A mess that Bush Senior had failed to resolve during the First Gulf War. Iraq was supposed to disarm itself after that war, but had kicked out the UN weapons inspector teams. But that wasn't the main reason why right after 9/11, these guys were talking about invading Iraq. A bigger reason is that these leaders wanted to remind the world who the global superpower was.

从很多方面看，伊拉克都是一个需要收拾的老烂摊子——老布什在第一次海湾战争期间没能解决的烂摊子。按照规定，伊拉克在那场战争后本应自行解除武装，可它却把联合国武器核查小组赶了出去。但这并不是9·11刚过，这些人就在讨论入侵伊拉克的主要原因。更重要的原因是，这些领导人想提醒全世界，谁才是全球超级大国。

They needed to after being brutally attacked on their own soil. A non USfriendly regime like Iraq couldn't be allowed to stand in a post 911 world. Or in the words of Rumsfeld himself, hours after the towers fell, quote, "We need to bomb something else to show that we're big and strong and not going to be pushed around. Iraq and its leader was that something else." And now Bush and his advisers were looking at a plan to make it a reality. But how to start the war?

在本土遭受了如此惨烈的袭击之后，他们需要这么做。在后9·11时代，像伊拉克这样对美国不友好的政权，绝不能允许它继续存在。用拉姆斯菲尔德本人在双子塔倒塌几个小时后的话来说就是：「我们需要再炸点别的什么，来显示我们强大有力，不会任人摆布。」而伊拉克和它的领导人，就是那个「别的什么」。如今，布什和他的顾问们正在研究一个把这件事变成现实的计划。可这场仗要怎么开打呢？

Could they tie Saddam Hussein to something that Americans feared like 9/11 or anthrax? Or could they tell a story about weapons of mass destruction? What other countries could they bring in to support their invasion? And of course, the most important consideration, Rumsfield jotss it here at the end, they would need an influence campaign. They would need to sell the war.

能不能把萨达姆·侯赛因跟美国人害怕的东西挂上钩，比如9·11或炭疽？或者，能不能讲一个关于大规模杀伤性武器的故事？还能拉哪些国家来支持入侵？当然，最重要的一点，拉姆斯菲尔德在最后草草记了下来：他们需要一场舆论宣传攻势。他们需要把这场战争推销出去。

And when should they begin? How about right away? Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. 3 months later, the president was telling the world that Iraq was one of a group of evil countries that the US must oppose in the global fight against good and evil. States like these constitute an axis of evil. The price of indifference would be catastrophic.

那什么时候开始？不如马上就开始？「伊拉克继续公然炫耀其对美国的敌意，并支持恐怖主义。」3个月后，总统向全世界宣布，伊拉克属于一群邪恶国家，在这场全球性的正邪之战中，美国必须与之对抗。「这样的国家构成了一个邪恶轴心。」「漠不关心的代价将是灾难性的。」

By the summer of 2002, this idea that Bush's advisers had scratched down after 9/11 was developing into an official policy. That handwritten influence campaign to sell the war was now in full swing. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi regime has been free to pursue the development of weapons of mass destruction. We know they have weapons of mass destruction.

到了2002年夏天，布什的顾问们在9·11之后随手记下的这个想法，正在逐步成为官方政策。那个手写下来的、推销战争的舆论攻势，此时已经全面铺开。「毫无疑问，萨达姆·侯赛因现在拥有大规模杀伤性武器。」「伊拉克政权一直肆无忌惮地发展大规模杀伤性武器。」「我们知道他们拥有大规模杀伤性武器。」

There isn't any debate about it. And this is exactly what the head of MI6 told Prime Minister Tony Blair at his house in the summer of 2002 after meeting with the CIA in Washington. It's what we see in the Downing Street memo that there was a perceptible shift in attitude in Washington and that the US invasion of Iraq was now seen as inevitable and that they were now fixing intelligence around a decision that they had already made and that the US wasn't really planning to work with the UN. They didn't want weapons inspections or getting UN approval for military force. And crucially, the head of the MI6 tells the prime minister that these Bush people aren't really thinking much about the aftermath of such an invasion.

「这一点没有任何争议。」而这恰恰就是2002年夏天，军情六处局长在华盛顿会见中情局之后，在首相官邸对托尼·布莱尔说的话。这也正是我们在《唐宁街备忘录》中看到的内容：华盛顿的态度出现了明显的转变；美国入侵伊拉克如今被视为不可避免；他们正在围绕一个早已做出的决定来「修正」情报；而且美国其实并不打算与联合国合作，他们既不想要武器核查，也不想为动武寻求联合国批准。关键的是，军情六处局长还告诉首相，布什的这帮人并没怎么考虑入侵之后的局面。

What is inevitable is not regime change. It is disarmament of weapons of mass This memo wasn't supposed to be seen by anyone but just a few. And that's why we can learn from it. It serves as one of the most potent pieces of evidence that the Bush administration was maneuvering two very different stories. Their private story about the need to remove a dictator to project US power, which was in stark contrast to the public story that they had to tell to sell the invasion, their influence campaign.

「不可避免的不是政权更迭，而是解除大规模杀伤性……」这份备忘录本来只该让寥寥几个人看到。正因如此，我们才能从中有所收获。它是最有力的证据之一，证明布什政府在同时操弄两套截然不同的说辞：一套是私下的说法——需要除掉一个独裁者，以彰显美国的实力；另一套则是为了推销入侵而不得不对公众讲的说法，也就是他们的舆论攻势。两者形成了鲜明的反差。

Any country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Because they knew that if they were really going to sell this war, they would need to convince not only the American public, but also Congress and at least partially the international community. What we learn in the Downing Street memo is that they had settled on two main focus points for their story. That Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that they're also working with the masterminds of 9/11. Not long after this meeting between MI6 and the CIA, Bush and his allies ramp up their influence campaign to sell their war.

「地球上任何一个拥有活跃情报项目的国家都知道，伊拉克拥有大规模杀伤性武器。」因为他们清楚，如果真要把这场战争推销出去，他们不仅得说服美国公众，还得说服国会，至少还要部分说服国际社会。我们从《唐宁街备忘录》中了解到，他们已经为这套说辞定下了两个主要着力点：伊拉克拥有大规模杀伤性武器；伊拉克还在与9·11的幕后主谋勾结。军情六处与中情局的这次会面过后不久，布什和他的盟友们就加大了舆论攻势，全力推销他们的战争。

We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making, poisons, and deadly gases. The sales pitches to the American people for an invasion of Iraq were made with absolute certainty. Certainty that Iraq had WMDs. He had agreed and the UN had agreed that they would he would not have a WMD program. We know he does have one.

「我们获悉，伊拉克曾在炸弹制造、毒药和致命毒气方面培训基地组织成员。」向美国人民兜售入侵伊拉克的那些说辞，全都带着十足的笃定。笃定伊拉克拥有大规模杀伤性武器。「他曾经同意过，联合国也曾达成一致，他不会拥有大规模杀伤性武器项目。我们知道他确实有一个。」

Certainty that they wanted to use them against Americans and American allies. Simply stated, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Certainty that Iraq was harboring terrorists and al-Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq. And certainty that Iraq was working on obtaining nuclear weapons. And Iraq's state controlled media has reported numerous meetings between Saddam Hussein and his nuclear scientists, leaving little doubt about his continued appetite for these weapons. And these speeches were working.

笃定他们打算用这些武器对付美国人和美国的盟友。「简而言之，毫无疑问，萨达姆·侯赛因现在拥有大规模杀伤性武器，他正在囤积这些武器，用来对付我们的朋友、我们的盟友，以及我们自己。」笃定伊拉克在窝藏恐怖分子。「从阿富汗逃出来的基地组织恐怖分子，已知就在伊拉克。」还笃定伊拉克正在设法获取核武器。「伊拉克的官方媒体报道了萨达姆·侯赛因与其核科学家的多次会面，这几乎毫无疑问地表明，他仍然对这类武器念念不忘。」而这些演讲确实奏效了。

By the fall of 2002, Americans were in favor of an invasion of Iraq by just a narrow majority. But there was just one problem. That all of these statements were lies. Indeed, this was already known in the secret rooms of Downing Street that the US was fixing their facts and their intel to match their alreadymade decision. Iraq's supposed links to al-Qaeda were based on one interrogation of a guy whose testimony lacked quote specific details and who was intentionally lying about it to mislead his interrogators.

到2002年秋天，支持入侵伊拉克的美国人已经以微弱多数占了上风。但问题只有一个：这些说法全都是谎言。事实上，在唐宁街的密室里，人们早就知道美国正在修改事实和情报，以迎合他们早已做出的决定。所谓伊拉克与基地组织的联系，依据的只是对一个人的一次审讯，而此人的证词用原话说「缺乏具体细节」，而且他是在故意撒谎，误导审讯人员。

Bush and his allies knew this. It was clearly documented back in February of 2002. And yet publicly, the scary story about al-Qaeda being in Iraq continued to be sold by Bush and his people. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. The case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was equally thin, and senior officials knew it.

布什和他的盟友们对此心知肚明，早在2002年2月就有明确的记录。然而在公开场合，布什和他的人仍在继续兜售基地组织藏身伊拉克这个吓人的故事。「十多年来，伊拉克政权一直图谋发展炭疽、神经毒气和核武器。」至于伊拉克拥有大规模杀伤性武器的论据，同样站不住脚，而高级官员们对此心里有数。

Like in September 2002 when Donald Rumsfeld received this report from the Joint Chiefs assessing what real evidence there actually was for WMD in Iraq. The report is shockingly honest and it says that the conclusion that Saddam has WMD quote relied heavily on analytic assumptions and judgments rather than hard evidence. That's word salad for it was speculation and conjecture. The report goes on to say that they didn't have anything solid on nuclear weapons related facilities and concludes that they don't know of any facilities where Saddam may be producing or testing biological weapons. And so we know now that they had almost no evidence for their story about why the US should invade Iraq.

比如2002年9月，唐纳德·拉姆斯菲尔德收到了参谋长联席会议的这份报告，评估伊拉克拥有大规模杀伤性武器到底有多少真凭实据。这份报告坦率得令人震惊。报告写道，萨达姆拥有大规模杀伤性武器这一结论，用原话说，「在很大程度上依赖于分析性的假设和判断，而不是确凿的证据」。说白了，这一堆绕来绕去的词就是在说：这全是猜测和臆想。报告接着说，在与核武器相关的设施方面，他们没有掌握任何确凿的东西，并得出结论：他们不知道萨达姆有任何可能在生产或试验生物武器的设施。所以我们现在知道，对于美国为什么应该入侵伊拉克，他们讲的那套故事几乎拿不出任何证据。

And yet even knowing this, they kept selling the same story, convincing the American people. There's no doubt in my mind he wants to have a nuclear weapon and he's got some capacity. Wherever threats are forming against our country, we will respond. But they couldn't go on like this forever. They knew that if they were really going to sell this war, they were going to need to show real convincing evidence, not to the people, but to Congress.

可即便心知肚明，他们还是继续兜售同一套说辞，说服美国人民。「在我看来，毫无疑问，他想拥有核武器，而且他具备一定的能力。」「无论哪里正在形成针对我们国家的威胁，我们都将做出回应。」但他们不可能永远这样下去。他们知道，如果真要把这场战争推销出去，就得拿出真正令人信服的证据——不是给民众看，而是给国会看。

And this is where we get another instance of fixing the intelligence to fit the policy. It came in September 2002 when President Bush asks Congress to give him the authority to invade Iraq. In response, Senate leaders requested an immediate national intelligence estimate, which is a report from the entire intelligence community meant to help Congress make informed decisions. This could be really bad for Bush and his allies. So, he and the CIA get hard at work pulling together a report that fits their story, intelligence to back up all their public statements and speeches.

这就引出了又一次「让情报迁就政策」的操作。时间是2002年9月，布什总统要求国会授权他入侵伊拉克。参议院领袖们随即要求立刻出一份《国家情报评估》——这是由整个情报界联合出具的报告，用来帮助国会做出知情的决定。这对布什和他的盟友来说可能相当不妙。于是，他和中央情报局（CIA）连忙埋头赶工，拼凑出一份契合他们说法的报告，用情报来给他们此前所有的公开表态和演讲撑腰。

They come out with this highly redacted report that they deliver in October of 2002. The report makes some very strong claims. They claim that Iraq has been building more WMD, that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. And to congressional leaders, this appeared rock solid. Here was the entire intelligence community coming together, saying that Iraq had horrific weapons and that they wanted to get more.

2002年10月，他们交出了这份大段涂黑的报告。报告里的论断非常强硬：伊拉克一直在制造更多大规模杀伤性武器，手里有化学武器和生物武器，而且在这个十年之内就会拥有核武器。在国会领袖们看来，这简直铁板钉钉——整个情报界齐聚一堂，异口同声地说伊拉克握有骇人的武器，还想弄到更多。

Saddam Hussein has composed a scarlet chapter of terror. Our only responsible option is to confront this threat before Americans die. There is no such thing as a Democrat or Republican war. So in that same month, based on this report and all of these public speeches, Congress gives the green light for war. But this national intelligence estimate was deeply flawed.

「萨达姆·侯赛因写下了一部血腥的恐怖篇章。我们唯一负责任的选择，就是在美国人丧命之前直面这个威胁。」「战争不分民主党还是共和党。」就这样，在同一个月里，凭着这份报告和这一连串公开演讲，国会为战争亮了绿灯。可这份《国家情报评估》本身漏洞百出。

It was a perfect example of the fixed intelligence described in the Downing Street memo. It was put together in less than a month, totally rushed. The report had been plagued by group think and directed by political pressure with the Bush administration pushing analysts to deliver a report that matched their conclusions that they had already come to months earlier. And they did this using very old intelligence. The CIA hadn't had any human assets on the ground for years.

它恰恰就是唐宁街备忘录里所说的那种「被修饰过的情报」的完美样本。整份报告不到一个月就攒出来了，仓促至极。报告从头到尾被群体思维所困，又受政治压力左右——布什政府逼着分析人员交出一份报告，去迎合他们几个月前就已经认定的结论。而他们用的还是非常陈旧的情报：CIA在当地已经好几年没有任何线人了。

So their report wasn't even based off of anything after 1998. But it didn't matter. Bush and his allies had successfully sold the war to Congress and the American people. But there was one last hurdle. It was the international community, which would mean they would have to face the UN process that they apparently had no patience for.

所以这份报告用到的材料，甚至没有一条是1998年以后的。但这已经无所谓了。布什和他的盟友成功地把这场战争推销给了国会和美国民众。只剩最后一道坎：国际社会。这意味着他们必须走联合国的程序，而他们对这套程序显然毫无耐心。

Iraq has answered a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance. So, it's November 2002, and in response to the rising tensions between Iraq and the US, the UN Security Council passes this resolution 1441. It was a measure that was meant to give Iraq a final opportunity to comply with weapons inspections to show the world that they had fully disarmed and had no weapons of mass destruction. Bush and his allies saw this as an opportunity. If they could somehow show that Iraq wasn't complying with this new inspection process, this resolution implied that they would be justified in invading the country.

「十年来，伊拉克用十年的抗拒来回应联合国的要求。」于是到了2002年11月，面对伊拉克与美国之间不断升级的紧张局势，联合国安理会通过了第1441号决议。这项决议的本意，是给伊拉克最后一次机会配合武器核查，向全世界证明它已经彻底解除武装、没有任何大规模杀伤性武器。布什和他的盟友把这看作一个机会：只要能想办法证明伊拉克没有配合这轮新的核查，按照这项决议的意思，他们入侵这个国家就算师出有名了。

Their long-desired war would be on. But they had a problem, which is that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were complying with the weapons inspections. Over the course of four months, UN weapons inspectors searched Iraq from top to bottom. They were led by Hans Blicks, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. They conducted over 900 inspections at over 500 locations and they didn't find anything.

他们盼了许久的战争就能打起来了。可问题来了：伊拉克和萨达姆·侯赛因偏偏在配合武器核查。在四个月的时间里，联合国武器核查人员把伊拉克从上到下翻了个遍。带队的是汉斯·布利克斯，国际原子能机构的前任总干事。他们在500多个地点进行了900多次核查，结果一无所获。

No WMD, no biological weapons, no nuclear weapons programs. Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well. Access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect, universities, military bases, presidential sites, and private residences. Hans Blicks did find two things that were important. First, they did find some ballistic missiles that the UN says have an effective range that makes them illegal, so they would need to be destroyed by Iraq.

没有大规模杀伤性武器，没有生物武器，也没有核武器计划。「总体而言，伊拉克配合得相当好。凡是我们想核查的地点都向我们开放了，包括大学、军事基地、总统府邸和私人住宅。」不过，汉斯·布利克斯确实发现了两件要紧的事。第一，他们找到了一些弹道导弹，联合国认为其有效射程已经超标、属于违禁武器，因此伊拉克需要将其销毁。

And second, there were some chemical weapons that the Iraqi regime said cannot be accounted for. But Blicks insists that this does not mean that they have these weapons. It just means that they need more time to work out the accounting situation. But this error was exactly what the Bush circle needed to justify their invasion. I call now on the distinguished Secretary of State of the United States of America.

第二，有一些化学武器，伊拉克政权说无法说清下落。但布利克斯坚持认为，这并不代表他们手里就有这些武器，只说明需要更多时间去把账目理清楚。可恰恰是这个疏漏，正是布什圈子为入侵找理由所需要的。「现在我请尊敬的美利坚合众国国务卿发言。」

They sent their most respected cabinet member to the UN, Secretary of State Colon Powell. He came equipped with photos of what he says are mobile weapons facilities. Sodam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass He plays tapes that he says prove that the Iraqis are hiding their weapons. We evacuated everything to make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up. And then he says that this is solid evidence that shows that Iraq is violating the UN resolution that told them to disarm.

他们把内阁中威望最高的成员——国务卿科林·鲍威尔派到了联合国。他带来了一些照片，说那是移动式武器设施。「萨达姆·侯赛因和他的政权正在掩盖他们制造更多大规模……的行径。」他还播放了几段录音，说这些录音证明伊拉克人在藏匿武器。「我们把所有东西都撤走了，确保核查人员来的时候什么都不在。」然后他说，这就是确凿证据，表明伊拉克违反了要求其解除武装的联合国决议。

This whole thing contradicts what the UN weapons inspectors had found in their hundreds and hundreds of inspections. They bulldoze the process and say they have justification to invade. My colleagues, we have an obligation to see that our resolutions are complied with. They've got the American public on board. They've got Congress on board.

这一切，都跟联合国武器核查人员在成百上千次核查中的发现背道而驰。他们硬生生碾过了这套程序，宣称自己有理由入侵。「各位同僚，我们有义务确保我们的决议得到遵守。」美国公众已经被他们争取过来了，国会也被争取过来了。

And now the UK is in lock step. This is the time for this house to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right. To show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk. The Bush administration abandons the UN process. And that March, his people do what they set out to do 18 months earlier when they were looking for something else to bomb to show who's really in charge on the world stage.

如今，英国也亦步亦趋。「此时此刻，本院应当表明，我们会为我们所认定的正确之事挺身而出；表明我们会直面那些危及我们生活方式的暴政、独裁者和恐怖分子。」布什政府抛开了联合国的程序。那年3月，他的人终于做成了18个月前就打定主意要做的事——当时他们正在另找一个可以轰炸的目标，好让世界舞台上的所有人看清，到底谁说了算。

My fellow citizens, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. America faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality. Bush's war took the life of an estimated half million Iraqis and thousands more who fought for their country. And over the course of a decade occupying Iraq, no weapons were found, no nuclear facilities, no mobile weapons labs. In fact, it seemed like Iraq had dismantled its nuclear program back in 1991 and the rest of its chemical and biological weapons just a few years later.

「同胞们，美国及联军部队正处于军事行动的初期阶段，目的是解除伊拉克的武装，解放其人民，保护世界免受严重威胁。」「美国面对的敌人，既不顾战争公约，也不顾道德准则。」布什的这场战争夺走了估计50万伊拉克人的生命，还有数以千计为国而战的人。而在占领伊拉克的十年里，没有找到任何武器，没有核设施，也没有移动武器实验室。事实上，伊拉克似乎早在1991年就拆除了核计划，几年之后又处理掉了剩下的化学和生物武器。

After the invasion, the US never allowed the UN inspectors back into the country to help with their search. The US would never find a way to link the Iraqi regime to al-Qaeda or to anthrax. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, who played a major role in selling this war to the international community, would later say that he regrets his part in starting the war. I deeply regret that some of the information I presented, which was multissource, was wrong. Hans Blicks, the chief weapons inspector for the UN, would comment later that year that it is sort of fascinating that you can have 100% certainty about weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty about where they are.

入侵之后，美国再也没有允许联合国核查人员重返伊拉克协助搜查。美国也始终没能把伊拉克政权和基地组织或炭疽扯上关系。国务卿科林·鲍威尔在向国际社会推销这场战争时出力甚多，他后来说，自己对参与发动这场战争感到后悔。「我深感遗憾，我当时提交的部分信息——虽然来自多个信源——是错误的。」联合国首席武器核查官汉斯·布利克斯在那年晚些时候评论说：有点耐人寻味的是，你可以对大规模杀伤性武器的存在百分之百确定，却对它们在哪儿零把握。

We may never know what was in the heart and minds of these senior leaders, whether they truly believed their own lies, whether they felt justified in the choices they made. But what we can learn from this story is how these leaders behaved when they thought no one was watching. When they thought they could tell a compelling story to the public while having a totally different set of motivations, and how with enough fear and enough deception, you can lead an entire society into an unprovoked war. Changing the course of history in the process. Up in the Zagros Mountains have long lived a people called the Kurds.

这些高层领导人心里到底怎么想，我们也许永远无从得知——他们是否真的相信自己的谎言，是否觉得自己做的选择问心无愧。但从这个故事里，我们能看清的是：当这些领导人以为没人在看的时候，他们是怎么行事的；当他们以为可以给公众讲一个动听的故事、背地里却怀揣完全不同的动机时，又是怎么做的；以及只要有足够的恐惧、足够的欺骗，你就能把整个社会领进一场无端的战争，顺带改写历史的走向。在扎格罗斯山脉的高处，世代居住着一个叫库尔德人的民族。

There are people with a centuries long history of fighting back against invaders who have crossed through their lands, resisting conquest in the name of defending their shared cultural identity. Some living as nomads, a people with no friends but these mountains. Eventually, the Ottoman Empire did take over all of this territory, but even then, the Kurds maintained large amounts of autonomy and freedom in their land. Then came World War I when the European powers defeated the Ottoman Empire and conquered all of this. The winners got together and discussed how they would carve it up between them.

这个民族几百年来一直在反抗那些穿越他们土地的入侵者，以捍卫共同文化认同之名抵御征服。有些人过着游牧生活——一个「除了大山，再无朋友」的民族。后来，奥斯曼帝国确实把这一整片土地都纳入了版图，但即便如此，库尔德人在自己的土地上仍保有很大程度的自治和自由。接着第一次世界大战爆发，欧洲列强打败了奥斯曼帝国，把这片地方全部收入囊中。战胜国们凑到一起，商量着怎么把它瓜分掉。

If you look back at old European maps, you'll see that all of this area would be labeled Kurdistan, an area where the Kurdish people lived and had some self-ruule. So, while drawing these lines, the British wanted to mark all of this as Kurdish territory, paving a way for an independent country for the Kurds. But the new leader of Turkey opposed this plan. He didn't want to give all this land and resources to the Kurds. So, he pushed the European forces out of Turkey.

翻开旧时的欧洲地图，你会看到这一整片区域都被标作「库尔德斯坦」——库尔德人居住、并享有一定自治的地方。所以英国人在划线的时候，想把这一大片都标为库尔德领土，为库尔德人建立独立国家铺路。可土耳其的新领导人反对这个方案。他不想把这么多土地和资源交给库尔德人，于是把欧洲势力赶出了土耳其。

They gave up on this plan to give the Kurds their own land. And in the end, instead of drawing borders around the Kurds, the Europeans drew borders through them. What could have been Kurdistan was now five different territories. The Kurds split between them. But at first, these were just lines on a map, and the Kurds continued to move through this region.

欧洲人就放弃了给库尔德人一块自己土地的计划。到头来，欧洲人没有沿着库尔德人的聚居区划出边界，反而让边界从他们中间穿了过去。本可以成为库尔德斯坦的地方，如今被分成了五块不同的领土，库尔德人也被分隔其间。不过起初，这些只是地图上的几条线，库尔德人依旧在这一带来去自如。

Eventually the Europeans left and these became independent countries with leaders who wanted to consolidate and centralize power. So these lines hardened restricting the Kurds movement and their livelihood in this region. But even still across this region the Kurds didn't give up on their idea of someday gaining independence, self-ruule, or maybe even a country of their own. Throughout the 1900s, the Kurds in each of these new countries took different approaches to fight for an independent Kurdish state. Some Kurds would use politics, others would use violence.

后来欧洲人撤走了，这些地方成了独立国家，新领导人们一心要巩固和集中权力。于是这些线越来越硬，限制了库尔德人在这一带的迁徙和生计。即便如此，在整个地区，库尔德人始终没有放弃那个念想：有朝一日获得独立、实现自治，甚至也许拥有一个属于自己的国家。整个20世纪，这几个新国家里的库尔德人各自采取不同的方式，为建立一个独立的库尔德国家而斗争。有的库尔德人走政治路线，有的则诉诸暴力。

The early uprisings were crushed by the leaders of these new countries who saw the Kurds as a threat to their efforts to unify their country around a common language and culture. Like in Iran, where the Kurds had some political rights, but they fought for more. They wanted autonomy and independence. The government of Iran wouldn't have any of this. They would crack down with violence on the Kurds, often supported by Western powers.

早期的起义都被这些新国家的领导人镇压了下去。在他们眼里，库尔德人威胁到了他们以共同语言和文化来统一国家的努力。比如在伊朗，库尔德人有一些政治权利，但他们争取的更多——他们要自治，要独立。伊朗政府对此一概不容，常常在西方大国的支持下，用暴力镇压库尔德人。

By the 1970s, Iran was going through a revolution, and the Kurds tried again to rise up. But this new regime had no tolerance for a group that would challenge the leadership of the ruling religious leader. So once again, they were put down. Over in Iraq, Kurdish fighters fought hard against the government throughout the 20th century until the 1970s when this new regime came in and made a deal with the Kurds, saying that they would be recognized as an ethnic group and would be guaranteed political representation. It seemed like a huge deal for the Kurds, but it turned out to be a false promise.

到了1970年代，伊朗正经历一场革命，库尔德人又一次试图揭竿而起。可新政权容不下任何一个敢挑战执政宗教领袖权威的群体，所以他们再一次被镇压了。再看伊拉克，整个20世纪，库尔德武装一直在与政府苦战，直到1970年代新政权上台，和库尔德人达成了一项协议：承认他们是一个民族，并保证他们享有政治代表权。这对库尔德人来说似乎是件天大的事，结果却是一纸空头承诺。

The Iraqi regime, now led by Saddam Hussein, would continue to repress the Kurds, eventually dropping deadly chemical weapons on Kurdish towns in Iraq, systematically killing thousands of Kurdish civilians in a genocide supported by Americanmade supplies that were sold to Saddam. Over in Syria, the Kurds were treated decently under the French controlled government. They were citizens and had some rights. But after the French left in the ' 40s, the regimes that came after oppressed the Kurds and by the 1970s, the Syrian government was arresting and deporting them, taking their land and giving it to Arabs. In total, the Syrian government would remove 140,000 Kurds from the country.

如今由萨达姆·侯赛因领导的伊拉克政权继续压迫库尔德人，最终向伊拉克境内的库尔德城镇投下了致命的化学武器，有计划地杀害了数以千计的库尔德平民——在这场种族灭绝中，用的是卖给萨达姆的美国制造的物资。再看叙利亚，在法国控制的政府治下，库尔德人受到的待遇还算过得去：他们是公民，享有一些权利。但40年代法国人撤走之后，后来的历届政权都压迫库尔德人；到了1970年代，叙利亚政府开始逮捕和驱逐他们，夺走他们的土地，分给阿拉伯人。叙利亚政府前后一共把14万库尔德人赶出了这个国家。

Decades later, Syria and the United States would both find the Kurds in Syria useful for their political goals. But first, let's talk about Turkey. There's more Kurdish people here than in any other country. The same government that had fought against a Kurdish state early on continued to oppress the Kurds, denying them citizenship, outlawing their language, and keeping them out of politics. All with the goal of wiping out their culture from Turkey.

几十年后，叙利亚和美国都会发现，叙利亚的库尔德人对实现各自的政治目标很有用处。不过我们先来说说土耳其。这里的库尔德人比其他任何国家都多。当初反对建立库尔德国家的那个政府，此后一直在压迫库尔德人：不给他们公民身份，禁止他们使用自己的语言，把他们挡在政治之外。所有这一切，目的都是要把他们的文化从土耳其抹掉。

As a part of this Turkification campaign, which tried to unify Turkey under one culture, targeting the Kurds and other ethnic minorities, some Kurds fought back against this in the early years, but were quickly crushed by the Turkish state, leading to the creation of an armed insurgent group with communist ideology.

这是「土耳其化」运动的一部分——这场运动试图用单一文化统一土耳其，矛头对准的是库尔德人和其他少数民族。早些年，有些库尔德人奋起反抗，但很快就被土耳其政府镇压下去，由此催生了一个奉行共产主义意识形态的武装叛乱组织。

They're called the Kurdish Workers Party or PKK and it would become one of the biggest Turkish resistance movements. The PKK would use violence like suicide bombings and improvised explosives as well as youth militia fighters against the Turkish government. Tactics that they say are the only way to fight back against such oppression. And as a result, Turkey and most Western powers consider the PKK a terrorist group. So that's how the Kurds in these four countries became locked in a conflict with their governments.

他们叫库尔德工人党，简称 PKK，后来成了土耳其规模最大的反抗运动之一。PKK 对土耳其政府动用暴力：自杀式爆炸、简易爆炸装置，还有青年民兵武装。在他们看来，面对这样的压迫，这是唯一能还手的办法。也正因如此，土耳其和大多数西方大国都把 PKK 列为恐怖组织。就这样，这四个国家的库尔德人，都跟各自的政府陷入了冲突，脱不开身。

They all have different struggles, but they're all unified by the dream of some version of Kurdish independence. But it doesn't take long for these regimes to see that they could use the Kurds as a tool, as a weapon. One of the earliest examples of this happens at the end of World War II when the Soviet Union sees an opportunity to gain land and access to oil by supplying and arming the Kurds in Iran, allowing them to rise up against the government and declare their own country supported by the Soviet Union. But it didn't work. The US pressures the Soviets to leave.

他们各有各的抗争，但把他们拧在一起的，是同一个梦想：某种形式的库尔德独立。可没过多久，这些政权就发现，库尔德人可以拿来当工具、当武器用。最早的例子之一出现在二战结束时：苏联看到了扩张领土、拿到石油的机会，于是给伊朗境内的库尔德人送物资、发武器，让他们起来反抗政府，宣布建立一个由苏联撑腰的国家。但这条路没走通。美国施压，逼苏联撤了出去。

And now without support, the government of Iran, which is backed by the US and UK, go on to crush this movement of Kurds in their country. The Kurds are back to being repressed by the government. In the 1980s, Syria uses the Kurds as a weapon against its rival, Turkey, when it allows the PKK to start operating within Syria, giving them money and weapons so that they can hurt Turkey. Syria is doing this in spite of having spent years removing hundreds of thousands of Kurds from its own country. This escalates the conflict between these two and Turkey threatens to invade Syria.

失去靠山之后，有美英撑腰的伊朗政府转手就把境内这场库尔德运动镇压了下去。库尔德人又回到了被政府压制的老路上。到了 1980 年代，叙利亚拿库尔德人当武器，对付它的对手土耳其：它允许 PKK 在叙利亚境内活动，给钱给枪，好让他们去打击土耳其。而就在此前，叙利亚自己花了好些年，把几十万库尔德人从本国清走。这下两国矛盾激化，土耳其扬言要入侵叙利亚。

So Syria backs down and kicks the PKK out to avoid being invaded, showing once again how the Kurds willingness to fight can easily become a pawn in the geopolitics of the region. Discarded once they aren't useful anymore. In the 1980s, Iran and Iraq both use the Kurds at the same time as a weapon to hurt each other. Even as both countries are cracking down on Kurds in their own country, Saddam Hussein funds and arms the Kurds in Iran, while Iran funds the Kurds in northern Iraq. Both sides hoping to spark a Kurdish uprising that will distract and weaken their enemy.

于是叙利亚服软了，为了不被入侵，把 PKK 赶了出去。这再一次说明，库尔德人敢打敢拼的劲头，很容易沦为这一地区地缘政治里的一枚棋子，一旦没用了，随手就被丢掉。1980 年代，伊朗和伊拉克也同时拿库尔德人当武器互相伤害。两国一边在国内打压库尔德人，一边又在对方那里做文章：萨达姆·侯赛因出钱出枪支持伊朗的库尔德人，伊朗则资助伊拉克北部的库尔德人。双方都指望在对方境内点燃一场库尔德起义，拖住、削弱自己的敌人。

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein retaliates against the Kurds in his country with that genocidal chemical attack we talked about earlier that killed at least 50,000 Kurdish people and probably much more. Once again, the Kurdish dream of independence was used by outsiders as a weapon and the Kurdish people paid heavily for it. The US would get involved when in the '90s they would come to this region fighting against Saddam Hussein for the first time. The US rallies the Kurds calling for them to overthrow Saddam. George Bush Senior literally calls them to action with television and radio broadcasts throughout the country.

在伊拉克，萨达姆·侯赛因对本国库尔德人展开报复，就是我们前面讲过的那场种族灭绝式的化学武器袭击，至少有 5 万库尔德人遇难，实际人数很可能还要多得多。库尔德人的独立梦，又一次被外人当成了武器，而代价由库尔德人自己来扛。美国也卷了进来：90 年代，美国第一次来到这一地区跟萨达姆·侯赛因开战。美国鼓动库尔德人起来推翻萨达姆。老布什真的通过电视和电台，向伊拉克全国喊话，号召他们行动起来。

That the Iraqi people should put him aside and that would facilitate uh uh the resolution of all these problems that exist and certainly would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq back into the family of peaceloving nations. And it seems to work. It sparks an uprising that looks successful at first. The US had instigated this uprising and they have forces in the region that they could send to support the Kurds, but they do nothing. This allows Saddam to reather his forces and crush this coup and to increase this oppression, ensuring that nothing like this ever happens again.

「伊拉克人民应该把他赶下台，这将有助于，呃，呃，解决现存的所有这些问题，当然也会有助于伊拉克重新被接纳进爱好和平的国家大家庭。」这招看起来奏效了。一场起义被点燃，一开始似乎还挺成功。起义是美国煽动起来的，美国在这一地区也有部队，完全可以派去支援库尔德人，可他们什么也没做。这就给了萨达姆重整兵力的机会，他把这场政变镇压下去，还变本加厉地加强压迫，确保这种事再也不会发生。

Now, the US and UK do eventually step in to create this nofly zone meant to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south. This gives the Kurds some autonomy over their region and protects them from further air strikes by the Iraqi army. Soon, the US is back in Iraq. It's 2003 and the Bush administration decides to invade and remove Saddam from power. The Kurds in Iraq hope that the US presence in this region will mean finally they will get their own state.

后来，美英两国最终还是出手了，设立了禁飞区，用来保护北部的库尔德人和南部的什叶派。这让库尔德人在自己的地区获得了一定的自治，也让他们不再遭受伊拉克军队的空袭。很快，美国又回到了伊拉克。那是 2003 年，布什政府决定入侵伊拉克，把萨达姆赶下台。伊拉克的库尔德人寄希望于美国在这一地区的存在，觉得这下终于能有自己的国家了。

They will be independent. They join the US in fighting against Saddam and his loyalists, battling insurgents and later against ISIS. The Kurds would even go on to hold a vote showing that 92% of the population was in favor of independence. But the US won't support this. Worried that it might destabilize this new Iraqi state that the US just propped up.

终于能独立了。他们跟美国并肩作战，打萨达姆和他的死忠，打叛乱武装，后来又打 ISIS。库尔德人甚至还举行了一次公投，结果显示 92% 的民众支持独立。可美国并不支持。美国担心这会搅乱自己刚刚扶起来的这个伊拉克新政权。

Even when the Kurds fight on the side of the US and their interests, US support for their cause still remains very limited. They still look the other way as Turkey bombs their towns in Iraq hunting for the PKK. This same pattern has continued in recent years in the country of Syria, a country that descended into civil war around 2011. This chaos looked like an opportunity for the Kurds in Syria, a chance to establish real control over what they see as a part of Kurdistan. The PKK in Turkey helps create a new Kurdish militia called the People's Protection Unit or YPG.

哪怕库尔德人站在美国这边、为美国的利益打仗，美国对他们诉求的支持依然非常有限。土耳其为了追剿 PKK 轰炸伊拉克境内的库尔德城镇，美国照样视而不见。近些年，同样的套路又在叙利亚上演。叙利亚大约在 2011 年陷入内战，这场乱局在叙利亚库尔德人看来是个机会，可以真正掌控这片他们视为库尔德斯坦一部分的土地。土耳其的 PKK 帮助组建了一支新的库尔德民兵，叫人民保护部队，简称 YPG。

They seize large swaths of land in the north and they declare self-governance. Around this same time, the terrorist group ISIS is taking huge swaths of territory in the north and east of the country, creating their so-called caliphate. And here comes the US once again asking the Kurds for help, hoping that they will fight against ISIS on the ground for them. But because this group is allied with the PKK, which they consider a terrorist group, the US asks this militia to rebrand themselves to the Syrian Democratic Forces, which obscures their connection to the PKK. The US then trains, funds, and arms them to fight ISIS.

他们占领了北部大片土地，宣布自治。差不多同一时间，恐怖组织 ISIS 在叙利亚北部和东部攻城略地，建立起他们所谓的「哈里发国」。这时美国又来了，再次请库尔德人帮忙，希望他们替美国在地面上跟 ISIS 作战。但这支队伍跟 PKK 是盟友，而美国把 PKK 视为恐怖组织，于是美国让这支民兵改头换面，更名为「叙利亚民主力量」，把他们跟 PKK 的关系遮掩起来。随后美国给他们培训、出钱、发武器，去打 ISIS。

The Kurds are once again the US's weapon. This plan works, and with help from US air strikes, this Kurdish militia kicks ISIS out of more and more land. But Turkey hates this. All they see is a potential Kurdish state right on their southern border, a safe haven for the PKK that will allow more attacks against the Turkish military. But Turkey can't attack this branch of the Kurds while they're being supported by the United States.

库尔德人又一次成了美国手里的武器。这个计划成功了，在美国空袭的配合下，这支库尔德民兵把 ISIS 一块块地赶出了越来越多的地盘。可土耳其恨透了这件事。在土耳其眼里，这就是一个可能在自己南部边境冒出来的库尔德国家，是 PKK 的安全避风港，会让针对土耳其军队的袭击越来越多。但只要这支库尔德人还有美国撑腰，土耳其就没法动手。

Lucky for them, there's a new president in the White House, and he's promised to pull the US out of the war in Syria. And in 2019, to the dismay of the Kurds, he makes good on this promise. With the US out of the way, Turkey invades, launching air strikes and artillery against the Kurds in this border region, saying that their plan is to create a 32 km deep safe zone right here along the border and that no Kurdish forces are allowed to be here. The plan was to then resettle Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey. It's a brutal campaign that looks a lot like what Syria was doing to the Kurds in the 70s.

算土耳其走运，白宫换了新总统，而他承诺要让美国撤出叙利亚战争。2019 年，他兑现了这个承诺，库尔德人大失所望。美国一让开，土耳其就打了进来，对边境地区的库尔德人发动空袭和炮击，声称他们的计划是在边境沿线这里建立一个纵深 32 公里的安全区，任何库尔德武装都不许待在这里。接下来的打算是，把目前住在土耳其的叙利亚难民安置过来。这是一场残酷的军事行动，看上去跟叙利亚在 70 年代对库尔德人做的事非常相似。

The US completely abandons the Kurds even after using them to fight their enemy ISIS. Turkey, a NATO and US ally, continues to bomb them, using weapons from the United States. They spend the next four years sending drone strikes and air strikes into Syria and Iraq, anywhere they think the PKK has a presence. This map shows all of their attacks during this time. You can see that it's not just against the Kurds in Turkey, but across this whole region.

美国彻底抛弃了库尔德人，哪怕在利用他们打完自己的敌人 ISIS 之后。土耳其，这个北约成员、美国的盟友，用美国的武器继续轰炸他们。接下来的四年里，凡是他们认为有 PKK 存在的地方，无论在叙利亚还是伊拉克，土耳其都派无人机、发动空袭。这张地图标出了这段时间他们发动的所有袭击。可以看到，打击对象不只是土耳其境内的库尔德人，而是覆盖了整个地区。

Today, the Kurdish groups in this region vary more widely than ever, each with different values and visions for the future, forged from each of their unique struggles and traumas. Kurdish groups still fight the government in Iran with the goal of creating their own state. The Kurds in Iraq did gain some autonomy from the US in the new Iraqi constitution, but it doesn't seem like this autonomy will last. As recently, the Iraqi army is fighting with the Kurds to maintain control over the oil resources in this area to keep the Kurds economically dependent on the central government so that they never break away. Once again, the US is not supporting the Kurds in this fight.

如今，这一地区的库尔德团体比以往任何时候都更加五花八门，各自在独特的抗争和创伤中形成了不同的价值观和对未来的设想。在伊朗，库尔德团体仍在跟政府作战，目标是建立自己的国家。伊拉克的库尔德人确实借美国之力，在伊拉克新宪法中争取到了一定的自治，但这份自治看起来恐怕长久不了。因为最近，伊拉克军队正跟库尔德人交战，要牢牢控制这一地区的石油资源，让库尔德人在经济上依附中央政府，永远脱离不了。而在这场较量中，美国又一次没有站在库尔德人这边。

Turkey continues its offensive against the PKK and other Kurdish groups in the region, and they continue to crack down on the Kurds politically, arresting Kurdish politicians and activists, censoring journalists to intimidate the Kurdish people from participating in the election. The Kurds in Syria face a new and uncertain future. They do have some autonomy up here in the north, but are surrounded by enemies, no longer counting on any support from the US. The story of the Kurds is the story of a people who are willing to fight like few others, all in the name of their culture and identity. That willingness to fight has presented a threat to regional governments, bent on control of their people and the resources within their borders.

土耳其继续对 PKK 和这一地区的其他库尔德团体发动攻势，也继续在政治上打压库尔德人：逮捕库尔德政治人物和社运人士，审查记者，恐吓库尔德人不敢参加选举。叙利亚的库尔德人则面临一个全新而又难以预料的未来。他们在北部这里确实拥有一定的自治，但四面都是敌人，也不再指望能从美国那里得到任何支持。库尔德人的故事，是一个为了自己的文化和身份认同、敢于像极少数民族那样去拼命的民族的故事。正是这股敢拼的劲头，对这一地区的各国政府构成了威胁，因为这些政府一心要掌控自己的人民和境内的资源。

That willingness to fight has also been hijacked by outside powers, turning the Kurds into a pawn to fulfill geopolitical objectives. Each time showing how willing these powers are to use the Kurds and then abandon their cause. Do the Palestinians have a right to a separate state? No, I don't think they do. In 2007, the head of military intelligence for the Israeli army had a meeting with the US ambassador in Tel Aviv.

这股敢拼的劲头也被外部大国劫持了，库尔德人被变成一枚棋子，用来实现他们的地缘政治目标。每一次都说明，这些大国是多么乐于利用库尔德人，然后又抛弃他们的诉求。「巴勒斯坦人有权拥有一个独立的国家吗？」「没有，我不认为他们有。」2007 年，以色列国防军军事情报局局长在特拉维夫跟美国大使见了一面。

We're looking at the classified cable that summarizes what was talked about in this meeting. The topic of discussion was Iran, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and Hamas. Hamas had just won the Palestinian elections which kicked off a fight with the other Palestinian group which ended in Hamas taking over Gaza completely. They controlled it. And if you're an Israeli citizen or the US government, this is a terrible set of events.

我们现在看的，是一份机密电报，概述了这次会面谈了些什么。讨论的话题是伊朗、叙利亚、加沙地带和哈马斯。哈马斯刚刚赢得巴勒斯坦选举，随后跟另一个巴勒斯坦派别爆发冲突，最终哈马斯彻底接管了加沙。加沙归他们控制了。如果你是以色列公民，或者是美国政府，这一连串事态简直糟透了。

A Hamas is a violent extremist group known to commit heinous violence against civilians in Israel and they were now in power. They controlled the Gaza Strip an hour away from Tel Aviv. But look at this leaked document. In this leaked cable, you see that the Israeli official says that Israel would be happy if Hamas took over Gaza because it would mean that Israel could now treat Gaza like a hostile country. 3 days post the ceasefire and there's unrelenting bombing in Gaza. This document is a view into a strategy that right-wing factions within the Israeli government have used for decades in an effort to win one of the most divisive conflicts in the world today in which two groups are fighting over one piece of holy land.

哈马斯是一个暴力极端组织，以对以色列平民施加令人发指的暴力而闻名，而他们现在掌了权。他们控制了加沙地带，离特拉维夫只有一个小时。但看看这份泄露的文件。在这份泄露的电报里，你能看到那位以色列官员说，如果哈马斯接管加沙，以色列会很高兴，因为这意味着以色列从此可以把加沙当作一个敌对国家来对待。「停火结束三天后，加沙遭受了接连不断的轰炸。」这份文件让我们得以窥见一种策略：以色列政府内部的右翼派系几十年来一直在用这套策略，想要赢下当今世界上最撕裂的冲突之一。在这场冲突里，两群人在争夺同一片圣地。

And one side is winning by using a very specific tactic. One that the world says is illegal and immoral. And one that worked for a short time, but that recently has been shown to be a recipe for even worse violence and conflict and suffering. In this video, I want to lay out what this strategy looks like and show you how it failed. I know this is a topic that is full of deep emotions that has real stakes in people's lives.

而其中一方正靠着一种非常特定的手段占据上风。这种手段被全世界认为既违法又不道德。它曾在短时间内奏效，但最近的事实已经表明，它是酿成更惨烈的暴力、冲突和苦难的配方。在这期视频里，我想把这套策略是什么样子讲清楚，并让你看看它是怎么失败的。我知道这个话题牵动着极深的情绪，关系到很多人实实在在的生活。

Please know that I am earnest in my effort to tell this story with clarity and with accuracy. And also, please note that this is not a full account of the conflict between Israel and its neighbors, but I do hope that it sheds light on a view of the conflict that sometimes gets lost in all of the yelling. It's a gadget. For 2,000 years, Jewish people around the world have been persecuted and segregated and ostracized from society. That is a fact.

请相信，我是真心诚意地想把这个故事讲得清楚、讲得准确。也请注意，这并不是对以色列与其邻国之间冲突的完整叙述，但我确实希望，它能照亮看待这场冲突的一个视角，这个视角有时会被淹没在各种争吵声中。这是个小玩意儿。2000 年来，世界各地的犹太人一直遭受迫害、隔离，被社会排斥。这是事实。

By the time the 1800s came around, it became clear that wherever the Jews went, persecution would follow. This is when a movement emerged calling for Jews to come together and to create a country for themselves where they could govern themselves and be free from all of this racist hatred. The creation of a Jewish country would have at the top of its priority list the security of the Jewish people. But the big question was where? Several places floated around in proposals.

到了 19 世纪，情况已经很清楚：犹太人走到哪里，迫害就跟到哪里。正是在这个时候，兴起了一场运动，号召犹太人团结起来，为自己建立一个国家，在那里自己管理自己，摆脱所有这些种族主义仇恨。一个犹太国家一旦建立，头等大事就是保障犹太人的安全。但最大的问题是：建在哪里？当时有好几个地方被提了出来。

Argentina, even modern-day Kenya, which back then was Uganda. But most people in this movement wanted the Jews to return to their historic homeland, a place called Palestine, where Jews built their temple and their culture 3,000 years ago, but then were exiled. And now there was this call to return so that Jews could feel safe after 18 centuries of Jewish suffering. So as the 1900s came around, tens of thousands of Jews, mostly from Europe, flocked to Palestine, which eventually came under control of the British. The British were getting ready to leave this region and were struggling to contain the growing conflict between native Arabs and all these Jewish immigrants.

阿根廷，甚至还有今天的肯尼亚，当时叫乌干达。但这场运动里的大多数人，都希望犹太人回到自己历史上的家园，一个叫巴勒斯坦的地方。3000 年前，犹太人在那里修建圣殿、创造文化，后来却遭到放逐。如今有了这样的号召：回去吧，在经历了 18 个世纪的苦难之后，让犹太人能感到安全。于是进入 20 世纪，数以万计的犹太人，大多来自欧洲，纷纷涌入巴勒斯坦，而巴勒斯坦后来落入了英国的控制。英国人当时正准备撤离这一地区，对于当地阿拉伯人和这些犹太移民之间日益激化的冲突，已经快要压不住了。

Then in the 1940s came a horrific genocide against the Jewish people in Europe, led out by Hitler and his Nazi regime. This created a wave of international support for this idea of giving the Jewish people a homeland where they could be safe. Before they left, the British asked the UN to determine what would replace them in Palestine. And the UN decided that Palestine would become two new countries. One for the Jews and one for the Palestinian Arabs that had already been living in this region.

接着到了 1940 年代，希特勒和他的纳粹政权在欧洲对犹太人发动了一场骇人听闻的种族灭绝。这在国际上掀起了一波支持浪潮，支持给犹太人一个能让他们安全生活的家园。英国人在撤离前，请联合国来决定由谁接手巴勒斯坦。联合国决定，把巴勒斯坦分成两个新国家：一个给犹太人，一个给早已生活在这片土地上的巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人。

The Jewish state colored light, the Arab state dark. Jaffa to go to the Arabs, Jerusalem internationalized. But as happens when outsiders draw lines on old land, there was a problem here. Within these borders that were meant for the new Jewish country, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were living who would soon have to leave their homes to move to their side of the line. Okay, wait.

「浅色是犹太国，深色是阿拉伯国。雅法划归阿拉伯人，耶路撒冷实行国际共管。」可是，外人在古老的土地上划线，总会出问题，这次也不例外。在这些本该划给新犹太国家的边界之内，住着几十万巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人，他们很快就不得不离开家园，搬到属于自己那一侧的地方去。好，等一下。

I'm going to pause there because, as I said, this is not a full history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. We actually just made a video on our new channel, Search Party, which focuses on what happens next, the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. You can go watch that. Links in the description. It'll give you some useful context.

我要在这里暂停一下，因为就像我说的，这不是阿以冲突的完整历史。其实我们刚在新频道 Search Party 上做了一期视频，讲的正是接下来发生的事，也就是以色列和它的阿拉伯邻国之间的冲突。你可以去看看，链接在简介里。它会给你提供一些有用的背景。

For now, just know that this led to a horrific conflict. Jewish militias forced over 700,000 Arabs out of their homes, turning them into refugees. The proposed borders shifted around, turned into ceasefire lines, and after all was said and done, the Jewish people did indeed get their own country, the state of Israel.

现在你只需要知道，这引发了一场惨烈的冲突。犹太民兵把超过 70 万阿拉伯人赶出了家园，让他们沦为难民。原先提议的边界几经变动，变成了停火线。等一切尘埃落定，犹太人确实有了自己的国家：以色列国。

And the two important points here are that number one, the very foundation of the Israeli country is for security of the Jewish people after nearly 2,000 years of persecution. And number two, the location they chose to set it up was becoming, as a result of this conflict, not much safer than Europe. That's a tension that follows this whole story. Okay, so now let's fast forward to 1967. Israel has its country and they fight a short war with their Arab neighbors and they win that war and they take over all of this land.

这里有两点很关键。第一，以色列这个国家立国的根本，就是要给饱受近2000年迫害的犹太人一个安全的保障。第二，他们选定的这块地方，恰恰因为这场冲突，变得并不比欧洲安全多少。这种矛盾贯穿了整个故事。好，现在我们快进到1967年。以色列已经有了自己的国家，他们和阿拉伯邻国打了一场短暂的战争，打赢了，然后把这一大片土地全都拿了下来。

It's a huge victory for them. I'm going to take away the Sinai Peninsula from here because they did give that back to Egypt as part of a peace deal a few years later. Israel now controls important pieces of land that enlarged their Jewish country. Many saw this victory as a sign from God that they were actually entitled to be here. But once again, Palestinians, nearly a million of whom had been kicked out of their homes, were living here in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israel now controlled.

这对他们来说是一场大胜。西奈半岛这块我先拿掉，因为几年后以色列在一份和平协议里把它还给了埃及。如今以色列控制了几块重要的土地，犹太国家的版图随之扩大。很多人把这场胜利看作上帝的启示，证明他们确实有权待在这里。可问题又来了：将近100万被赶出家园的巴勒斯坦人，就生活在约旦河西岸和加沙地带，而这两块地方如今都落到了以色列手里。

But they weren't really sure what to do with it. And it's this territory that would become the stage for the strategy that is the topic of this video, where over time this land would be sliced up with roads and checkpoints, walls, and other military infrastructure that would control the movement and lives of the Palestinians. Soon, even Israeli citizens would start to move out here in large numbers, building full-on towns and further dividing up this territory. Moving citizens into occupied territory like this is something that the world has deemed illegal and immoral. So this occupation starts in 1967 and it goes on for decades till eventually the Palestinians living here can't handle it anymore and they start fighting back.

但以色列其实也没想好该拿这些地方怎么办。正是这片土地，后来成了本片要讲的那套策略的舞台：随着时间推移，道路、检查站、隔离墙以及其他各种军事设施把这片土地切得七零八落，用来管控巴勒斯坦人的行动和生活。没过多久，连以色列公民也开始大批搬过来，盖起一座座完整的城镇，把这片领土进一步分割开来。像这样把本国公民迁入占领区，在国际社会看来是既违法又不道德的。于是，这场占领从1967年开始，一持续就是几十年，直到住在这里的巴勒斯坦人终于忍无可忍，开始反击。

This is known as the first uprising or inifat. It started with boycott, but escalated into mass protests where Palestinians of all ages would throw stones and sometimes Molotov cocktails at much better equipped Israeli soldiers. It was Palestinian rage exploding against Israeli occupation and it went on for years. The Israeli government would respond by cracking down, killing many Palestinians. Another important thing that happens around the same time down in the occupied Gaza Strip is that a new movement forms promising to fight back against this occupation, calling for the destruction of Israel.

这就是所谓的第一次起义，也就是第一次「因提法达」（Intifada）。它从抵制运动开始，后来升级成大规模抗议：各个年龄段的巴勒斯坦人朝装备远比他们精良的以色列士兵扔石头，有时还扔燃烧瓶。这是巴勒斯坦人对以色列占领的怒火大爆发，而且一闹就是好几年。以色列政府的回应是强力镇压，杀死了很多巴勒斯坦人。差不多同一时期，南边被占领的加沙地带还发生了另一件大事：一个新的运动成立了，誓言要反抗占领，并呼吁消灭以色列。

The group is called Hamas. The first inifat showed that this wasn't going to work. Chopping up Palestinian land, oppressing them, keeping them in this occupation was only going to produce more violence. Wasn't going to fulfill Israel's promise to provide security and safety for the Jewish people. They had to switch course.

这个组织叫哈马斯。第一次因提法达说明，这条路是走不通的。把巴勒斯坦人的土地切得支离破碎、压迫他们、让他们一直活在占领之下，只会招来更多暴力，也根本兑现不了以色列要给犹太人带来安全与保障的承诺。他们必须改弦更张。

The security of the Israeli people will be reconciled with the hopes of the Palestinian people and there will be more security and more hope for all. So in the 1990s they start getting serious about peace talks with the Palestinians and they come to this agreement called the Oslo Accords which for the first time establishes a Palestinian government authority and giving it power to govern pockets of land in the West Bank. It also gave the Palestinians some authority over almost all of the Gaza Strip, though there were still settlements in all of these places. This was a big deal for this conflict. Like both sides were talking to each other and coming to agreements that was giving like authority to the Palestinians.

「以色列人民的安全，将与巴勒斯坦人民的希望达成和解，所有人都会拥有更多的安全、更多的希望。」于是到了1990年代，以色列开始认真和巴勒斯坦人进行和谈，最后达成了一份叫《奥斯陆协议》的协定。这份协议第一次设立了巴勒斯坦政府权力机构，授权它管理约旦河西岸的一块块飞地；协议还让巴勒斯坦人对几乎整个加沙地带拥有了一定的管辖权，尽管这些地方仍然散布着定居点。对这场冲突来说，这可是件大事——双方居然在对话，还达成了协议，实实在在地把一些权力交给了巴勒斯坦人。

But another theme of the story is that hardliners can use violence to derail peace. And that's exactly what happened here. Right-wing Israelis start holding rallies calling their prime minister a traitor and a Nazi for giving land to the Palestinians. Some of these rallies are led by a now familiar character, Benjamin Netanyahu. The people of Israel want a real peace.

但这个故事还有另一条主线：强硬派可以用暴力让和平脱轨。这里发生的正是如此。以色列右翼开始举行集会，骂他们的总理是叛徒、是纳粹，因为他把土地给了巴勒斯坦人。其中一些集会的领头人，就是我们现在都很熟悉的一个人物——本雅明·内塔尼亚胡。「以色列人民想要的是真正的和平。」

And real peace means peace with security, peace they can trust, with a partner they can trust. And they don't feel they have it here. We want a real peace, not a fake one. But the peace talks continue with all our neighbors, a comprehensive peace. And shortly after signing the second part of this deal to give Palestinians some land, the prime minister Yeetszak Rabbin is assassinated by a far-right Israeli.

「真正的和平，是有安全保障的和平，是值得信任的和平，是和一个值得信任的伙伴达成的和平。而他们觉得眼下并没有这样的和平。我们要的是真和平，不是假和平。」「但我们与所有邻国的和谈仍在继续，这是一场全面的和平。」就在签署这份把部分土地交给巴勒斯坦人的协议的第二部分之后不久，总理伊扎克·拉宾被一名以色列极右翼分子刺杀身亡。

Hamas conducts bus bombings and the next year Benjamin Netanyahu is elected as the prime minister of Israel. Netanyahu is a key figure in this story because his worldview embodies a way of thinking that has taken root in Israel in recent years. The idea that the only way to give true security to the Jewish people is by doing whatever is necessary to stop the Palestinians from having a state anywhere in these borders. Look, I'm 28 years old. I've had to defend my country in two wars and in many battles.

哈马斯发动了公交车爆炸袭击，第二年，本雅明·内塔尼亚胡当选以色列总理。内塔尼亚胡是这个故事里的关键人物，因为他的世界观代表了近些年在以色列扎下根来的一种思维方式：要想真正保障犹太人的安全，唯一的办法就是不惜一切代价，阻止巴勒斯坦人在这片疆域内的任何地方建国。「听着，我今年28岁，我已经为保卫我的国家打过两场战争、经历过许多场战斗。」

Nobody wants peace more than Israel. But the stumbling block to the road for peace is this demand for a PLO state, which will mean more war, which will mean more violence in the Middle East. And I think I sincerely believe if this demand is abandoned, we can have real and genuine peace. So that was Netanyahu when he was a 28-year-old. But when he becomes the prime minister a couple decades later, he spends his terms sabotaging the peace accords that his predecessor had worked so hard to create, claiming that the occupation of all this land and its people wasn't actually conquest, but rather the key for security of the Jewish people.

「没有人比以色列更渴望和平。但通往和平之路上的绊脚石，就是建立一个巴解组织国家的要求，那只会意味着更多的战争、中东更多的暴力。我认为——我真心相信——只要放弃这个要求，我们就能拥有真正的、实实在在的和平。」这就是28岁时的内塔尼亚胡。可几十年后他当上总理，整个任期都在破坏前任呕心沥血促成的和平协议，声称占领这一大片土地和上面的人民其实算不上征服，而是保障犹太人安全的关键。

They had to do this. Security was the one and only justification for all of this. So under his watch, settlers continue to move into the West Bank. We found this leaked video of Benjamin Netanyahu talking to some settlers in the West Bank. The cameraman does turn off the camera for a moment, but then turns it back on moments later.

他们非这么做不可。安全，是这一切唯一的理由。于是在他任内，定居者源源不断地搬进约旦河西岸。我们找到了一段泄露出来的视频，是本雅明·内塔尼亚胡在约旦河西岸跟一些定居者谈话。摄像的人中途关了一下机，但没过一会儿又打开了。

He is admitting to sabotaging the peace accords that the Israeli government had signed with the Palestinians that because he disagreed with them, he wanted to sabotage them because he was so against a Palestinian state or any form of Palestinian autonomy in this land. And then he goes on to explain what his real thinking is on the situation. Netanyahu is a fantastic politician and statesman and he's able to sort of cover up a lot of these policies in the name of security. But here we see what he really thinks as he's talking to these settlers thinking he's not being recorded. So unsurprisingly, the appetite for peace breaks down on both sides.

他在视频里承认，自己破坏了以色列政府与巴勒斯坦人签署的和平协议——因为他不认同这些协议，所以就想破坏掉，他太反对巴勒斯坦建国了，也反对巴勒斯坦人在这片土地上拥有任何形式的自治。接着，他又讲起自己对局势的真实想法。内塔尼亚胡是个极其出色的政客和政治家，很擅长打着安全的旗号，把许多这样的政策掩盖过去。但在这里，他以为没人在录，对着这些定居者说话，我们才看到他真正是怎么想的。所以不出意料，双方对和平的意愿都垮掉了。

Palestinians come to the conclusion that the Israelis aren't really serious about giving them any kind of autonomy in the West Bank or Gaza. That their situation will never change. And once again, they rise up in a second inifat. This one much more violent, much more coordinated. Hamas becomes a major player in the violence with suicide bombings and attacks.

巴勒斯坦人得出的结论是：以色列人根本没打算真心给他们在约旦河西岸或加沙任何形式的自治，他们的处境永远不会改变。于是他们再一次揭竿而起，发动了第二次因提法达。这一次暴力程度高得多，组织也严密得多。哈马斯靠自杀式爆炸和各种袭击，成了这场暴力中的一股主要力量。

Israel responds with great force and during the fighting, a thousand Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians are killed. At this point, the Netanyahu way of seeing the world is starting to look a lot better. Peace talks didn't work. All they did was produce more violence. And so maybe the only way to ensure security is to go back to full-blown occupation of controlling every move of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

以色列以强大的武力回击，在冲突中，1000名以色列人和3000名巴勒斯坦人丧生。到了这个时候，内塔尼亚胡看待世界的那套方式开始显得越来越有道理了：和谈不管用，带来的只有更多暴力。所以，也许确保安全的唯一办法，就是回到彻头彻尾的占领，把约旦河西岸和加沙地带巴勒斯坦人的一举一动都牢牢管住。

So at this point, the occupation gets more and more suffocating. More walls, more barriers, more checkpoints, more settlements. Then in 2005, Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip, letting the Palestinian Authority have total control there. They turn their attention entirely to their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria, which is the West Bank. The next year, an election is held in the Palestinian authorities and the winner surprised the world and would create a new chapter for this conflict.

于是从这时起，占领变得越来越令人窒息：更多的墙，更多的路障，更多的检查站，更多的定居点。接着在2005年，以色列撤出加沙地带，让巴勒斯坦权力机构在那里全权掌控。以色列把注意力完全转向了他们历史上的故土「犹地亚和撒玛利亚」，也就是约旦河西岸。第二年，巴勒斯坦权力机构举行选举，结果让全世界大吃一惊，也为这场冲突开启了新的篇章。

The winner of these elections was Hamas. This is a very, very bad result for the Palestinians and for Israel. The incumbent Palestinian party that had lost the election tried to forcibly hold on to power and soon the two Palestinian parties were fighting with each other and it results in this split between the two Palestinian governments. It turns into violence and when the dust settles there's suddenly a bitter divide between these two Palestinian groups. Hamas completely taking over the Gaza Strip.

赢得这次选举的是哈马斯。这对巴勒斯坦人、对以色列来说，都是一个非常非常糟糕的结果。输掉选举的巴勒斯坦执政党企图强行把持权力，很快两个巴勒斯坦政党就打了起来，最后形成了两个巴勒斯坦政府分庭抗礼的局面。事态演变成暴力冲突，等尘埃落定，这两个巴勒斯坦团体之间突然出现了一道深深的裂痕。哈马斯彻底接管了加沙地带。

And this gets us back to our leaked document that we started this video with where an Israeli official is saying that they would actually be happy if Hamas took over the Gaza Strip because now they can treat Gaza like a hostile country. Now that they're not occupying it, they're not responsible for the 2 million civilians who are living there. They can impose a blockade to control anything coming in and out of the Gaza Strip. People, food, medicine, money, building supplies. But there was another reason why Israel was happy that Hamas now controlled the Gaza Strip.

这就回到了我们在视频开头提到的那份泄露文件：一位以色列官员在里面说，如果哈马斯接管加沙地带，他们其实会很高兴，因为这样一来就可以把加沙当成一个敌对国家来对待。既然不再占领加沙，他们也就不用对住在那里的200万平民负责了。他们可以实施封锁，管控进出加沙地带的一切——人员、食物、药品、资金、建筑材料。不过，以色列乐见哈马斯掌控加沙，还有另一个原因。

The Palestinian government was now deeply divided. Hamas ruling Gaza and the West Bank being run by a more moderate secular Palestinian faction. And crucially, neither considered the other to be legitimate, which weakened their ability to negotiate for any kind of state, or any kind of country, especially when Hamas still refused to recognize Israel's right to even exist. This division played right into the hands of the Israeli right. And this gets us back to Benjamin Netanyahu, that enemy of the earlier peace talks.

巴勒斯坦政府此时已经严重分裂：哈马斯统治加沙，约旦河西岸则由一个更温和、世俗的巴勒斯坦派别管理。关键在于，双方都不承认对方的合法性，这就削弱了他们为建立任何形式的国家去谈判的能力，更何况哈马斯至今仍拒绝承认以色列有生存的权利。这种分裂正中以色列右翼的下怀。这又把我们带回到本雅明·内塔尼亚胡身上——当年那位和谈的死对头。

He gets elected once again in 2009, declaring himself Mr. Security and promising to provide safety to Israeli citizens who are still shaken from the second Intifada and are now worried that Hamas now controls the entirety of the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu's playbook was already made clear. He had said it point blank to what he had been doing for years, sabotaging peace talks that would give Palestinians any kind of authority over this land and continuing to build settlements while continuing, in his words in that leaked tape, to hit the Palestinians hard, to make it unbearable for them. A complete assault on the Palestinian government, dividing and slowly conquering the Palestinian people, making life hard and desperate for them, controlling their lives, watching their every move.

2009年他再次当选，自封「安全先生」，承诺要保护以色列公民的安全。这些公民还没从第二次因提法达的阴影里走出来，如今又担心哈马斯控制了整个加沙地带。内塔尼亚胡的套路早就摆在明面上了。他自己就直截了当地说出了他多年来一直在做的事：破坏任何会让巴勒斯坦人对这片土地拥有一点权力的和谈，同时不停地修建定居点，并且用他在那段泄露录像里的原话说，要「狠狠打击巴勒斯坦人，让他们难以承受」。这是对巴勒斯坦政府的全面进攻：分化巴勒斯坦人民，再一点点把他们征服，让他们的日子艰难而绝望，掌控他们的生活，盯紧他们的一举一动。

And this is where we get to this paradoxical alignment, almost alliance, between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, the enemy of Israel. As long as Hamas held control over the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian cause would remain weak and divided, Netanyahu would feel justified in imposing this crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip, which in turn gave Hamas legitimacy among the people of the Gaza Strip, showing that their armed struggle against Israeli oppression was justified, provoking them to launch rockets into Israel to show that they were actually doing something, unlike the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which in turn bolstered Netanyahu's narrative that The Palestinians actually don't want peace. They want violence in the destruction of Israel. And the only way for security is more occupation, more oppression. So instead of try to take Hamas out, Netanyahu overtly supported them by approving huge transfers of untraceable cash, literally delivered in suitcases, into the Gaza Strip.

说到这里，就出现了一种吊诡的同盟关系，几乎可以说是结盟——一边是本雅明·内塔尼亚胡，一边是以色列的敌人哈马斯。只要哈马斯控制着加沙地带，巴勒斯坦的事业就会一直软弱、分裂；内塔尼亚胡就觉得自己有理由对加沙实施这种令其瘫痪的封锁；而封锁反过来又让哈马斯在加沙民众中获得了正当性，证明他们反抗以色列压迫的武装斗争是有道理的，也刺激他们向以色列发射火箭弹，以显示自己确实在做点什么——不像约旦河西岸的巴勒斯坦权力机构；这又反过来强化了内塔尼亚胡的说法：巴勒斯坦人其实根本不想要和平，他们要的是暴力，是消灭以色列，而通往安全的唯一道路，就是更多的占领、更多的压迫。所以，内塔尼亚胡非但没有设法除掉哈马斯，反而公开支持他们，批准向加沙地带转入巨额无法追踪的现金，真的是一箱一箱送进去的。

Cash that would inevitably end up in the hands of Hamas to be used against Israel. He legitimized Hamas by negotiating with them, releasing a thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli. The Israeli soldier held captive by Palestinian militants for 5 years is expected to be freed within days. The more Netanyahu could keep Hamas in power in Gaza, but keep them contained, the more he could ensure that Palestinians remain divided. He could keep peace talks from ever happening, which in turn gave him time to continue to pursue his expansionalist project in the West Bank.

这些钱最终不可避免地落到了哈马斯手里，被用来对付以色列。他还通过和哈马斯谈判，让哈马斯获得了合法地位——用1000名巴勒斯坦囚犯换回了1名以色列人。「这名被巴勒斯坦武装分子扣押了5年的以色列士兵，预计将在几天内获释。」内塔尼亚胡越能让哈马斯在加沙掌权、同时又把它圈住，就越能确保巴勒斯坦人一直处于分裂状态。这样他就能让和谈永远无从开启，反过来又给了他时间，在约旦河西岸继续推进他的扩张计划。

And indeed, since 2009, when Netanyahu became the prime minister, the number of settlements in the West Bank has only gone up. And if you look at this map, you can see how these settlements just weave through and carve up this land, making it impossible to even fathom what a Palestinian state could look like, which is precisely the point of the strategy. I actually reported out here visiting the settlements back when I was at Vox. Considered a series talking to the settlers trying to understand why they live out there, what it's like to live in these settlements that are strangely peaceful and benol and just mundane. People living their lives because they're protected by the army.

事实也确实如此，自2009年内塔尼亚胡出任总理以来，约旦河西岸的定居点数量只增不减。看看这张地图，你就能看到这些定居点是如何穿插其间、把这片土地切得四分五裂的，让人连巴勒斯坦国可能长什么样子都无从想象——而这恰恰就是这套策略的目的。其实我还在Vox工作的时候，就来这里采访过、走访过这些定居点。我做了一个系列，和定居者聊天，想弄明白他们为什么住在那里，住在这些定居点里是什么感觉。那里出奇地平静、平淡，甚至可以说平庸——人们过着自己的日子，因为有军队保护着他们。

If you want a deeper dive on settlements, you can go watch that series. But if you're Netanyahu over the last 16 years, you think your plan is working. Like you see all these settlements going up, the international community can't do anything about it. They keep supporting you. Every once in a while, there's some flare up in the West Bank where Palestinians get into a fight with Israeli soldiers, but it gets contained.

如果你想更深入地了解定居点，可以去看那个系列。但如果你是过去16年里的内塔尼亚胡，你会觉得自己的计划很成功。你看着这些定居点一个个建起来，国际社会对此无可奈何，还一直支持你。约旦河西岸时不时会爆发一些冲突，巴勒斯坦人和以色列士兵打起来，但很快就被压下去了。

Every few years, Hamas fires some rockets, which then gives Israel the excuse to go, as they put it, cut the grass by conducting a short, swift, violent military campaign to keep Hamas at bay. And every day that goes by, the notion of a Palestinian state becomes less and less feasible. This is one reason why a far-right Israeli lawmaker called Hamas an asset. So divide and conquer has been the name of the game in Israel for a long time, but especially in the last 16 years under Netanyahu. And again, to the people in charge, they think it's working.

每隔几年，哈马斯就发射一些火箭弹，这又给了以色列一个借口，按他们的说法去「割草」——发动一场短促、迅猛而暴力的军事行动，把哈马斯压制住。日子一天天过去，巴勒斯坦建国的设想就变得越来越不可行。这也是为什么一位以色列极右翼议员会把哈马斯称为一笔「资产」。所以，分而治之在以色列已经是很长时间以来的主旋律了，在内塔尼亚胡执政的这16年里尤其如此。我再说一遍，在掌权的人看来，这一套是管用的。

Maybe this violent status quo, this equilibrium can hold and the far right can get exactly what they want, security for the Jewish people and expansion into all of this land. And maybe the occupation will break the Palestinian spirit and they would give up on their dream of having a state. But that's not what happened. On October 7th, 2023, we saw how wrongheaded this theory of security was. In an unprecedented surprise attack, the militant Hamas rulers of Gaza sent dozens of fighters into Israel by land, sea, and air.

也许这种充满暴力的现状、这种平衡能够维持下去，极右翼就能得到他们想要的一切：犹太人的安全，以及向这整片土地的扩张。也许占领会摧垮巴勒斯坦人的意志，让他们放弃建国的梦想。但事情并没有这样发展。2023年10月7日，我们看到了这套安全理论错得有多离谱。「在一次史无前例的突袭中，统治加沙的武装组织哈马斯从陆地、海上和空中向以色列派出了数十名武装人员。」

This deadly attack launched by Hamas showed us that while Netanyahu's strategy of divide and conquer might be good for taking over more land. What it's not good for is making good on the original promise of Israel, which is ensuring the security of the Jewish people. In fact, his strategy has produced exactly the opposite. [singing] Now, the responsibility for what happened on October 7th lies with the people who committed those acts of terror, Hamas fighters and their leaders. There is no excuse or justification for their actions. But the point I'm trying to make with this video is that there's also others that need to stand accountable here.

哈马斯发动的这场致命袭击让我们看到：内塔尼亚胡分而治之的策略也许很适合用来占领更多土地，但它做不到的，恰恰是兑现以色列最初的承诺——确保犹太人的安全。事实上，他的策略带来的结果正好相反。[歌声] 当然，10月7日所发生的一切，责任在于实施这些恐怖行为的人，也就是哈马斯武装分子及其领导人。他们的所作所为没有任何借口，也没有任何正当理由。但我想通过这部视频说明的是，这里还有其他人也必须被追责。

Those who used Hamas as a pawn to continue this divide and conquer policy, who are now engaged in a campaign of mass bloodshed on civilians. They deserve to stand accountable as well to the Israeli people and to the countries that support Israel. I believe in the need for a Jewish state. I do. I think that's a very reasonable proposal that Jewish people should feel safe somewhere in this world.

那些把哈马斯当作棋子、借此延续分而治之政策的人，那些如今正对平民展开大规模流血行动的人，他们同样应该被追究责任——向以色列人民负责，也向支持以色列的国家负责。我相信犹太国家是有必要存在的，我真的相信。我认为这是一个非常合理的主张：犹太人应该在这个世界上的某个地方感到安全。

And yet what we're looking at isn't it. The Israeli project, the way that it's been wielded in its current form produces the exact opposite of security for the Jewish people.

然而，我们眼前看到的并不是这样一个国家。以色列这项事业，以它目前被运用的方式，给犹太人带来的恰恰与安全背道而驰。

Look at this map. This map shows the thousands of attacks that have occurred right here on this border just over the past year in this fight between Israel and one of their biggest regional enemies, Hezbollah. Hezbollah is one of the biggest armed groups in the world that isn't a nation's military. They have tens of thousands of trained soldiers and hundreds of thousands of missiles and rockets capable of reaching targets all across Israel. This threat led Israel to conduct a massive set of attacks against Hezbollah.

看看这张地图。图上标出的，是仅仅过去一年里，就在这条边境线上发生的数以千计的袭击——交战双方是以色列和它在这一地区最大的敌人之一：真主党。真主党是世界上规模最大的非国家武装组织之一。他们手里有数万名受过训练的武装人员，还有几十万枚导弹和火箭弹，射程覆盖以色列全境。正是这种威胁，促使以色列对真主党发动了一轮大规模打击。

This large explosion was seen near Beirut's international area in which they killed almost all of the group's top leaders, weakening Hezbollah immensely, followed by a full-on invasion by Israeli troops to denigrate this group even further. This has been a massive escalation that is now spilling over into this entire region. And to understand how we got here, you really have to understand where Hezbollah came from and what this group's fierce 40-year struggle tells us about how the modern Middle East came together and how it's now coming apart. The story of Hezbollah really starts when the vast Ottoman Empire broke apart in the early 1900s. Europeans came in and sliced all of this up.

贝鲁特国际机场一带附近，人们目睹了这场大爆炸。以色列在这轮打击中几乎杀光了真主党的最高领导层，让这个组织元气大伤；紧接着，以军又发动全面地面入侵，要把它进一步削弱。这是一次巨大的升级，如今正蔓延到整个地区。要弄明白事情是怎么走到这一步的，你就得真正搞懂真主党从何而来，以及这个组织长达40年的激烈斗争，能告诉我们现代中东是怎样拼合起来的，又是怎样正在分崩离析的。真主党的故事，其实要从20世纪初庞大的奥斯曼帝国解体说起。欧洲人进来，把这一大片土地切得七零八落。

France taking all of this territory. But then they drew a line here to carve out this little mountainous region, one that was populated mostly by Marinite Christians. But the border didn't include just Christians. The French made sure to include this area to the east and this area to the south. Areas that contained large populations of Shia Muslims who were now forced into this new country where they were made a minority to the Christians along with a few other religious groups.

法国拿下了这一整片领土。可随后，他们在这里划了一条线，单独切出一小块山区，这里住的大多是马龙派基督徒。但这条边界圈进来的，并不只有基督徒。法国人特意把东边这一块和南边这一块也划了进来。这些地方住着大量什叶派穆斯林，他们就这样被硬塞进了这个新国家，和另外几个宗教群体一起，成了基督徒之下的少数派。

We're going to focus a lot down here on this Shia heartland that would eventually become one of the most important regions in the whole In 1943, Lebanon gains its independence from France. It creates a constitution meant to balance the power between all of these religious groups. But that balance wouldn't last, mostly thanks to what started happening down here, where another set of borders were being carved into the Middle East. The British had controlled this, but in 1948 they left and the UN helped draw these new lines, creating a new Israel and Palestinian state. Decades of war forced out millions of Palestinians, many of whom ended up here in Lebanon.

接下来我们会把很多注意力放在南边这片什叶派腹地上，它最终会成为整个……最重要的地区之一。1943年，黎巴嫩脱离法国独立，制定了一部宪法，想在这些宗教群体之间搞权力平衡。可这种平衡并没能维持多久，主要原因就出在南边这里——中东的另一组边界线正在被划出来。这片地方原本由英国人控制，但1948年英国人撤走了，联合国帮忙划出了新的界线，造出了一个新的以色列国和一个巴勒斯坦国。几十年的战争把数百万巴勒斯坦人赶出了家园，其中很多人最后落脚在了黎巴嫩。

These Palestinians are mostly Sunni Muslim, so this upsets the carefully laid power balance in Lebanon and further marginalizes the Shia Muslims who were fighting for their place in the country. Then in 1971, an armed militia made up of Palestinians called the Palestinian Liberation Organization moves to Lebanon and they turn this whole region, which again was made up of mostly Shia, into their own little mini state. You start to see that Lebanon is descending into division between the different militias and powers controlling parts of the country. And in the mid70s, it all breaks down into a full-fledged civil war between a dizzying number of religious factions. It's a war that will pull in much of the Middle East.

这些巴勒斯坦人大多是逊尼派穆斯林，于是黎巴嫩苦心搭建的权力平衡被打破了，原本就在为自己在这个国家争一席之地的什叶派穆斯林，被进一步边缘化。到了1971年，一支由巴勒斯坦人组成的武装——巴勒斯坦解放组织——转移到黎巴嫩，把这一整片地区变成了他们自己的“国中之国”，而这里，再说一遍，住的大多是什叶派。你会看到，黎巴嫩开始陷入分裂，各路民兵和势力各自控制着国家的一块地盘。到了70年代中期，一切彻底崩盘，演变成一场全面内战，交战的宗教派系多到让人眼花缭乱。这场战争会把大半个中东都卷进来。

And it's a war whose most important region is down here in this border zone between Israel and Lebanon, the place that will soon give rise to Hezbollah. Now, let's talk about Syria. They're here right next door and they're watching this civil war. And they decide to invade to prop up the Marionite Christian ruling class who have become Syria's allies. They want to do this to prevent the civil war from spilling over into their territory.

而这场战争最关键的地区，就在南边以色列和黎巴嫩交界的这片边境地带——真主党很快就会在这里诞生。现在，我们来说说叙利亚。它就在隔壁，一直盯着这场内战。叙利亚决定出兵入侵，为已经成了自己盟友的马龙派基督徒统治阶层撑腰。他们这么做，是为了防止内战外溢到自己境内。

At this point, Syria also considers annexing the entire country of Lebanon, making it a part of Syria. But eventually, the relationship between Syria and Marinite Christians breaks down and Syria continues to occupy this part of the country. Meanwhile, to the south, Israel fears that Syria is growing too powerful. It also wants to wipe out the PLO, who is attacking them across the border from Lebanon. So in 1978, Israel enters the fry, invading from the south and driving deep into the country.

这时候，叙利亚还一度考虑把整个黎巴嫩吞并，变成叙利亚的一部分。但后来，叙利亚和马龙派基督徒的关系破裂了，叙利亚则继续占领着这个国家的这一部分。与此同时，在南边，以色列担心叙利亚变得太强大。它还想铲除巴解组织，因为巴解组织一直从黎巴嫩越境袭击以色列。于是在1978年，以色列也加入混战，从南边入侵，一路深入黎巴嫩腹地。

Israel succeeds in temporarily suppressing the PLO, but in the process, it displaces hundreds of thousands of locals, most of them Shia Muslims. It eventually withdraws after a UN resolution. But then in 1982, after more PLO attacks, Israel invades again. This time pushing all the way to Beirut, fighting both the PLO and Syria. And this is where the conflict takes on a new dimension.

以色列成功地暂时压制住了巴解组织，可在这个过程中，几十万当地人流离失所，其中大多是什叶派穆斯林。在联合国通过一项决议后，以色列最终撤军。可到了1982年，巴解组织又发动了几次袭击，以色列再次入侵。这一回，以军一路打到了贝鲁特，同时和巴解组织、叙利亚交战。也正是在这里，这场冲突有了一个全新的维度。

It's 1979 and over in Iran, the people have risen up against the USbacked dictator in this Islamic revolution led by a Shia Muslim cleric who wants to spread this revolution throughout the region. He's looking for allies and in 1982 they find their perfect match here in southern Lebanon. It's a militia that rose to defend against outsiders trampling their heartland. It's called Hezbollah, which means party of God. Iran picked this group in particular because it shares its goals of Islamic revolution and a deep distrust and disdain for Israel.

时间来到1979年，在伊朗，民众奋起反抗美国扶植的独裁者，掀起了一场伊斯兰革命。领导这场革命的是一位什叶派穆斯林教士，他想把革命输出到整个地区。他在寻找盟友，而在1982年，他们在黎巴嫩南部找到了最完美的搭档。这是一支为抵御外来者践踏自己家园而兴起的民兵组织，名叫真主党，意思是「真主的党」。伊朗之所以偏偏挑中这个组织，是因为它和伊朗目标一致，都追求伊斯兰革命，也都对以色列怀有深深的不信任和鄙视。

Iran starts providing Hezbollah with money, weapons, soldiers, training, and leadership. And in return, Hezbollah proclaims loyalty to the Iranian revolution and its supreme leader. What started as Lebanon's civil war is now a regional war that is heating up. So the United States enters leading an international peacekeeping mission to try to calm these tensions. But of course Hezbollah and Iran hate this.

伊朗开始给真主党提供资金、武器、兵员、训练和领导层。作为回报，真主党宣布效忠伊朗革命和伊朗的最高领袖。原本是黎巴嫩的一场内战，如今成了一场不断升温的地区战争。于是美国介入，牵头组织了一支国际维和部队，想让紧张局势降温。可想而知，真主党和伊朗对此恨之入骨。

They now have two prime targets in their backyard. Israel and these Western powers led by the US. So in 1983, they launch a series of terrorist attacks. A truck bomb detonated in front of a US and French barracks in Beirut that kills over 300 people. Most of the world blames not only Hezbollah, but also its backer, Iran.

现在，他们家门口有了两个首要目标：以色列，以及以美国为首的这些西方国家。于是在1983年，他们发动了一系列恐怖袭击。一辆卡车炸弹在贝鲁特的美军和法军营房前引爆，炸死了300多人。世界上大多数人不仅把矛头指向真主党，也指向了它背后的金主——伊朗。

The fighting continues until 1989 when the many groups fighting this civil war come to a peace agreement, one that bans all militias and requires them to give their weapons back to the government. But there's a big catch here. Israel still occupies what they call this security buffer zone in southern Lebanon. So, the peace agreement makes an exception specifically for efforts that resist the Israeli occupation. Aka, they allow Hezbollah to continue to exist, turning them into something more than just one of these militias fighting for their group.

战事一直持续到1989年，这场内战中的各路派系终于达成了和平协议。协议规定取缔所有民兵组织，要求他们把武器交还给政府。但这里有个很大的“但是”：以色列仍然占领着黎巴嫩南部一块他们称之为“安全缓冲区”的地方。所以，和平协议专门开了个口子，给抵抗以色列占领的行动留了例外。说白了，就是允许真主党继续存在，这也让它不再只是众多为本群体而战的民兵组织之一。

It gives them a kind of official status to continue acting as a defender of southern Lebanon, the country's bull work against Israel. They also develop into more of a political party that gains seats in Lebanon's legislature, kind of serving as a parallel government, providing social services in the areas that it controls. So, let's look at Hezbollah in this moment because they find themselves in the middle of shifting power games in the Middle East, balancing their mandate to defend their Shia heartland, which was their founding motivation, but also trying to gain further influence in the region, while also appeasing the demands of their major supporter, Iran. In 2005, Lebanon's prime minister is assassinated, and most Lebanese blame Hezbollah along with its other foreign supporter, Syria. Lebanese people rise up in mass protest, and Syria eventually withdraws its forces that have occupied Lebanon for 28 years.

这给了真主党一种官方身份，可以继续充当黎巴嫩南部的守护者，成为这个国家抵御以色列的屏障。它还逐渐发展成一个更像样的政党，在黎巴嫩议会里拿到了席位，某种程度上成了一个平行政府，在自己控制的地区提供社会服务。那我们就来看看此时的真主党，因为它正身处中东不断变化的权力博弈之中：一方面要履行保卫什叶派腹地的使命——这是它成立的初衷；另一方面又想在地区内扩大影响力；同时还得满足它最大的靠山伊朗的种种要求。2005年，黎巴嫩总理遇刺身亡，大多数黎巴嫩人把账算在了真主党和它的另一个外国后台叙利亚头上。黎巴嫩民众掀起了大规模抗议，叙利亚最终撤出了已经占领黎巴嫩28年的部队。

Hezbollah is disgraced. Its legitimacy is supposed to come from resisting foreign meddling, and it's becoming clear that they have become a pawn in the geopolitical game of regional powers, Syria and Iran. But the group is able to turn Syria's withdrawal into their advantage. The Syrian occupation had kept Lebanon somewhat stable. So as soon as they left, it creates this power vacuum and allows Hezbollah to take more territory, ramping up attacks across the border against Israel and leading to another brief war with the IDF.

真主党声名扫地。它的合法性本应来自抵抗外国干涉，可现在越来越明显的是，它已经沦为叙利亚和伊朗这两个地区大国地缘政治博弈中的一枚棋子。不过，真主党还是把叙利亚撤军变成了对自己有利的局面。叙利亚的占领在某种程度上维持了黎巴嫩的稳定，所以叙军一走，就出现了权力真空，让真主党得以占据更多地盘，加紧越境袭击以色列，并由此和以色列国防军又打了一场短暂的战争。

Hezbollah continues to be a useful proxy for Iran, and Iran continues to fund them and arm them. And by 2011, Iran and Syria pull Hezbollah into another unpopular conflict, Syria's civil war. But this hurts Hezbollah's reputation. Because now they're fighting on behalf of Syria's brutal Iran-backed regime. These once liberators have turned into foot soldiers of oppression, doing the bidding of outsiders.

真主党一直是伊朗手里一个好用的代理人，伊朗也一直在给它钱、给它武器。到了2011年，伊朗和叙利亚又把真主党拖进了另一场不得人心的冲突——叙利亚内战。但这损害了真主党的名声，因为它现在是在替伊朗支持的叙利亚残暴政权卖命。昔日的解放者，变成了压迫者的马前卒，听命于外人。

But its last source of legitimacy continues to be its resistance to Israel. Something that Lebanon's own government is too weak to do. This remains their source of legitimacy today. So on October 7th, 2023, when Hamas and Israel descended into this most recent war, Hezbollah jumped in, launching more attacks against Lebanon's southern border. This is meant to support Hamas in the Gaza Strip and to threaten Israel with a war on two fronts.

不过，真主党最后的合法性来源，始终是抵抗以色列——这是黎巴嫩政府自己太虚弱、做不到的事。直到今天，这仍是它合法性的来源。所以在2023年10月7日，哈马斯和以色列陷入最新这场战争时，真主党也跳了进来，在黎巴嫩南部边境一线发动了更多袭击。这么做，是为了声援加沙地带的哈马斯，同时让以色列面临两线作战的威胁。

At first, it seemed to be working. Tens of thousands of Israelis have had to evacuate the towns and villages in northern Israel. So, Israel started firing back across the border, forcing 90,000 people in southern Lebanon from their homes. This, in addition to Israeli strikes on Iranian proxies and military officials, led Iran to fire its first ever direct strike on Israel, trying to deter it from going any further. But it didn't work.

一开始，这招似乎奏效了。数万名以色列人不得不撤离以色列北部的城镇和村庄。于是，以色列开始越境还击，迫使黎巴嫩南部9万人离开家园。再加上以色列对伊朗的代理人和军方官员发动的打击，伊朗有史以来第一次直接对以色列动手，试图阻止它再往前走。但没能奏效。

In September of 2024, Israel escalated, surprising Hezbollah with a series of attacks that killed a large part of the group's top leadership, including their decadesl long leader. A few days later, Israel sent troops across this border with the goal of further weakening Hezbollah, trying to make the situation safe for Israelis to return home to the north of the country. And now, with Hezbollah in shambles, its sponsor, Iran, felt compelled to act. Oh Jesus. We're seeing what we are all seeing with our own eyes is a major attack from Iran.

2024年9月，以色列升级行动，发动一系列袭击打了真主党一个措手不及，杀死了该组织很大一部分最高领导层，其中包括执掌真主党几十年的领导人。几天后，以色列派兵越过这条边境，目标是进一步削弱真主党，好让以色列人能安全返回北部的家园。而现在，真主党已经一片狼藉，它的资助者伊朗觉得不得不出手了。「天哪。我们看到的——我们所有人亲眼看到的——是来自伊朗的一次大规模袭击。」

It's a major attack, Dana, and it's an escalation. It's an escalation. So even if Hezbollah eventually begins to rebuild itself, it's unclear what role they will play in Iran's proxy network. But what is clear is that the clash between these two Middle East powers remains the central force animating this region towards more and more violence. And these recent events show us clearer than ever that Hezbollah was just one foot soldier in this growing conflict between these two powers.

「这是一次大规模袭击，达娜，这是升级。这是升级。」所以，即便真主党最终开始重建，它将在伊朗的代理人网络中扮演什么角色，目前还不清楚。但清楚的是，这两个中东大国之间的对抗，仍然是推动这个地区走向越来越多暴力的核心力量。而最近这些事件也比以往任何时候都更清楚地告诉我们：在这两个大国之间不断升级的冲突中，真主党不过是一名马前卒。

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最后再插一句，提醒大家：这个视频能做出来，要感谢这部合集的赞助商 Ground News。Ground News 是我平时用来深挖各种新闻标题的工具。我非常、非常认同他们的使命——帮大家看清报道世界新闻的那么多标题背后各自的叙事。如果你想拿到他们 Vantage 套餐——也就是我在用的那个——的4折优惠，可以去 ground.new/jny Harris 领取折扣，顺便支持一下这个非常实用的服务。好，我们进入下一个视频。

Along the banks of the most important waterway on Earth sits the country of Yemen. A place that was two countries for decades until the year 1990 when it was unified into one. A fragile patchwork of groups all with different tribal backgrounds, religious beliefs, and political aspirations. The story I want to tell starts in the '90s when one group forms up in the northern mountains of Yemen. It started by a group of religious Yemenes who called themselves the believing youth who were members of a Shiite Muslim sect called the Zedi.

在地球上最重要的水道沿岸，坐落着也门这个国家。几十年来，这里一直是两个国家，直到1990年才统一成一个。这是一块脆弱的拼布，由部落背景、宗教信仰和政治诉求各不相同的群体拼凑而成。我要讲的故事始于90年代，一个组织在也门北部山区成立了。发起它的是一群虔诚的也门宗教人士，自称“青年信仰者”，他们属于什叶派穆斯林的一个教派——宰德派。

Zedi Muslims used to be the majority when the country was split in two. But in the new unified Yemen, they became a minority and felt neglected and discriminated against. At first, the group focuses on rebuilding the Zedi religious identity, hosting summer camps for young men and offering religious education. But in the late 1990s, the group starts to change in important ways. A member of Yemen's parliament resigns in protest and joins the believing youth.

在国家一分为二的年代，宰德派穆斯林曾经是多数派。可在统一后的新也门，他们成了少数派，觉得自己被冷落、受歧视。起初，这个组织专注于重建宰德派的宗教认同，为年轻男子办夏令营，提供宗教教育。但到了90年代末，这个组织开始在一些关键方面发生变化。一名也门议员辞职以示抗议，加入了青年信仰者。

He felt that the government of Yemen was corrupt and far too influenced by Yemen's neighbor to the north, Saudi Arabia. Al- Houthi blamed outside influence for many of the country's problems. So as he leaves the government, Alhouthi uses his wealth and family connections in the Zedi community to become the leader of the believing youth. He wants an Islamic revolution modeled after the one in Iran, one that kicks out any foreign influence and restores Islamic values. With Al Houthi's influence, this group of young men in the mountainous region of Yemen starts to change.

他认为也门政府腐败，而且太受北边的邻国沙特阿拉伯左右。胡塞把这个国家的许多问题都归咎于外部势力的影响。于是，离开政府后，胡塞凭借自己的财富和在宰德派社群中的家族人脉，当上了青年信仰者的领袖。他想要一场以伊朗为模板的伊斯兰革命，把一切外国影响赶出去，恢复伊斯兰价值观。在胡塞的影响下，也门山区这群年轻人开始变了。

They begin protesting Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Soon they start taking up weapons, taking over territory, and eventually setting up their own security checkpoints in their region. The believing youth are starting to look a lot less like a summer camp and a lot more like a militia, like a rebellion. President Salet, who had previously supported the believing youth, is starting to get worried. And then in 2001, the entire Middle East would change forever.

他们开始抗议也门总统阿里·阿卜杜拉·萨利赫。没过多久，他们就拿起了武器，开始攻城略地，最后还在自己的地盘上设立了安全检查站。青年信仰者越来越不像夏令营，越来越像一支民兵，像一场叛乱。萨利赫总统此前曾支持过青年信仰者，这下也开始担心了。接着到了2001年，整个中东将从此彻底改变。

After 9/11, the US launches a war on terror. They ask President Cai for help and he cooperates, taking military aid and allowing American special forces to operate inside Yemen, where the terrorist group al-Qaeda has a presence. 18 months later, the US presence in the region would balloon even more when the American military invades and occupies Iraq. For Alhouthi and his group of young men, this crosses a red line and deeply radicalizes the movement. Alhouthi criticizes the president publicly for pandering to what he sees as American imperialism in Muslim lands and many in Yemen agree joining the movement and bolstering their numbers. Al Houthi adopts the violent slogan that sits on the flag of his movement to this day.

9·11之后，美国发动了反恐战争。他们请萨利赫总统帮忙，他也配合了，接受军事援助，并允许美国特种部队在也门境内行动——恐怖组织基地组织在也门有据点。18个月后，美军入侵并占领伊拉克，美国在这一地区的存在进一步急剧膨胀。对胡塞和他那群年轻人来说，这越过了红线，让这场运动急剧激进化。胡塞公开批评总统，说他在迎合他眼中美国对穆斯林土地的帝国主义；也门很多人认同这个说法，纷纷加入运动，壮大了他们的人数。胡塞采用了一句暴力口号，这句口号直到今天还印在这场运动的旗帜上。

God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse on the Jews. Victory to Islam.

真主至大。美国去死。以色列去死。诅咒犹太人。伊斯兰必胜。

President Cai feels threatened by the growth of this increasingly radical movement that is taking control of territory in the north. He issues an arrest warrant and a bounty for Alhouthi and brutally cracks down on their protests. In response, the believing youth launch an armed rebellion in the north of Yemen, leading to counterattacks by the Yemeni military. Shortly after the fighting begins, Al-Huti is killed in a cave in the north. The rebels he leaves behind fight on with new conviction, and the world would know them by the name of their martyr, a symbol of imperial resistance that would soon be firing rockets at Israel and hijacking cargo ships in the Red Sea.

萨利赫总统感到这场日益激进、正在北方夺取地盘的运动对自己构成了威胁。他对胡塞发出逮捕令并悬赏捉拿，还残酷镇压他们的抗议。作为回应，青年信仰者在也门北部发动武装叛乱，引来也门军队的反攻。战斗打响后不久，胡塞在北部的一个山洞里被打死。他身后留下的叛军带着新的信念继续战斗，而全世界将以这位殉道者的名字来称呼他们——一个反抗帝国的符号，很快他们就会向以色列发射火箭弹，在红海劫持货船。

By 2004, the Houthis have morphed into a full-blown rebellion, fighting against Yemen's government from their northern strongholds. They know this land well, and they have local support, allowing them to fight a guerilla campaign against the government forces, blending in with civilians, hiding in mountains and caves, and allowing them to resist the much better equipped Yemen army. As the conflict turns more violent, more tribes in the region would feel that the military is being overly brutal, leading them to join the Houthis. And it's at this time that the conflict goes international. The Houthis say that Saudi Arabia is letting the government of Yemen position troops right across this border.

到了2004年，胡塞武装已经演变成一场全面叛乱，从北部的据点出发与也门政府作战。他们熟悉这片土地，又有当地人的支持，因此能对政府军打游击：混在平民当中，藏身于山区和洞穴，靠这些顶住了装备好得多的也门军队。随着冲突越来越暴力，这一地区更多的部落觉得军队下手太狠，于是纷纷投向胡塞武装。也正是在这个时候，冲突国际化了。胡塞武装说，沙特阿拉伯允许也门政府把部队部署在这条边境线紧挨着的地方。

So they invade into Saudi Arabia, killing Saudi soldiers and taking hostages. This pulls Saudi Arabia into the conflict as they respond with air strikes and troops and push the Houthis out of their territory, punishing them for this invasion. Now over here, Iran is watching this war and they see an opportunity. The Houthis are now fighting directly against their biggest rival, Saudi Arabia. So they start secretly sending weapons to the Houthis.

于是他们入侵沙特阿拉伯，打死沙特士兵，还抓了人质。这把沙特阿拉伯拖进了冲突：沙特以空袭和地面部队回击，把胡塞武装赶出自己的领土，为这次入侵惩罚他们。而在这边，伊朗一直在观望这场战争，并从中看到了机会。胡塞武装如今正和伊朗最大的对手沙特阿拉伯正面交锋。于是伊朗开始秘密向胡塞武装输送武器。

At least that's what Saudi Arabia claims, saying that they intercepted an Iranian ship filled with weapons and military trainers on their way to the Houthis. It looks like Iran is directly supporting the Houthis. Now, though, how much support they provide behind the scenes will always be intentionally unclear. As the conflict between the Houthis and the government continues in the north, Saudi Arabia has been fighting their own war on terror against a branch of al-Qaeda operating in Saudi Arabia. Seeing that their days are numbered, this branch of al-Qaeda flees south over the border into Yemen, where they merge their forces with the Yemen branch of al-Qaeda.

至少沙特阿拉伯是这么说的：他们声称拦截了一艘伊朗船只，船上满载武器和军事教官，正要开往胡塞武装那里。看起来伊朗在直接支持胡塞武装。不过，伊朗在幕后到底给了多少支持，永远都会被刻意弄得模糊不清。就在胡塞武装和政府在北方继续交战的同时，沙特阿拉伯也在打自己的反恐战争，对手是在沙特境内活动的基地组织分支。眼看末日将至，这个基地组织分支向南越境逃进也门，和基地组织的也门分支合兵一处。

They create al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, one of the most dangerous and well-funded versions of the group to ever exist. The group's goal is to create a strict Islamic State across the whole region while violently waging holy war against foreigners in Muslim lands. This puts them at odds with both the Yemen government and the Houthis. The conflict is getting more complicated. Around 2011, the region starts to change in big ways.

他们组建了阿拉伯半岛基地组织（AQAP），这是该组织有史以来最危险、资金最雄厚的分支之一。这个组织的目标，是在整个地区建立一个严格的伊斯兰国家，同时对穆斯林土地上的外国人发动暴力圣战。这让它和也门政府、胡塞武装都成了对头。冲突越来越复杂了。大约在2011年，这一地区开始发生巨变。

In one country after another, there's an outpouring of public anger on the streets demanding change from their government, removing old leaders. This is called the Arab Spring. It's upheaval that spirals the region into hope and chaos. Iran and Saudi Arabia see this as an opportunity to strategically choose sides in all of these countries in hopes that when the dust settles they will come out with a stronger hand of allies in the region. And one of their main focuses is Yemen, a country that is also rising up calling for President Saleh to step down.

一个国家接一个国家，民众的怒火涌上街头，要求政府改变，把老领导人赶下台。这就是所谓的“阿拉伯之春”。这场动荡让整个地区陷入了希望与混乱交织的漩涡。伊朗和沙特阿拉伯把这看作一个机会，在所有这些国家里有策略地选边站，希望等尘埃落定时，自己在这一地区手里能握有更强的盟友牌。而他们关注的重点之一就是也门——这个国家也有民众起来，要求萨利赫总统下台。

The corrupt dictator of Yemen is running out of time, which is something the Houthis have been fighting for for years. But Saleh refuses to step down, adding fuel to the uprising. Saudi Arabia sees this situation at their southern border and decides to step in with the help of the UN, convincing Saleh to transfer power to his vice president in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

也门这位腐败独裁者的时间不多了，而这正是胡塞武装多年来一直在争取的。可萨利赫拒绝下台，让起义的火烧得更旺。沙特阿拉伯看到自己南部边境上出现这种局面，决定在联合国的帮助下介入，说服萨利赫把权力移交给他的副总统，换取免于起诉的豁免权。

On his way out, Saleh takes the billions of dollars that he corruptly amassed during his time in office. And he also retains the loyalty of key parts of the military, fighters that are only loyal to him. But the people aren't satisfied with this new Saudibbacked president. The government remains weak and unorganized. Meanwhile, the Houthis are taking advantage of this infighting and only getting stronger, taking more and more territory from the government, adding to their forces, and receiving more support from their backer, Iran, who is supplying them with more training, missiles, drones, and other advanced weapons.

萨利赫下台时，把在任期间靠腐败敛来的几十亿美元一并带走了。他还保住了军队里关键部分的效忠——那些只听命于他一个人的武装人员。可老百姓对这位沙特扶持上台的新总统并不买账，政府依旧软弱涣散。与此同时，胡塞武装趁着这场内斗不断坐大：从政府手里夺下越来越多的地盘，队伍越拉越大，背后的金主伊朗也给了他们更多支持——更多的训练、导弹、无人机，以及其他先进武器。

They use these weapons in the fall of 2014 to march into southern Yemen, taking over large swaths of territory. Now that the Houthis have momentum, the former president Saleh joins them in an alliance of convenience. In fact, Saleh's forces are critical in helping the Houthis take the capital city of Sana. Saleh is now working with his former enemy against his own vice president, the man he had to give power to when he stepped down. President Hadi and his government flee south as the Houthis take over.

2014年秋天，他们就拿着这些武器挥师南下，进军也门南部，拿下了大片土地。眼看胡塞武装势头正盛，前总统萨利赫转身和他们结成了权宜联盟。事实上，胡塞武装之所以能攻下首都萨那，萨利赫的部队功不可没。这下，萨利赫跟昔日的死敌联手，矛头对准的却是自己的副总统——也就是他当初下台时不得不把权力交出去的那个人。胡塞武装接管首都，哈迪总统和他的政府只好往南逃。

But the Houthis are right behind them. So Hadi has to flee to Saudi Arabia trying to govern Yemen from there. But the Houthis just keep gaining momentum. By the middle of 2015, they now control the capital city completely where they create their own government and take control of the government's military weapons, helping them expand even further into the south. Now that the Houthis are in power, they run an oppressive regime that silences free speech, crushes descent through arrest and torture, and recruits children as soldiers.

可胡塞武装紧追不舍。哈迪只得逃到沙特阿拉伯，试图在那里遥控治理也门。但胡塞武装的势头有增无减。到2015年年中，他们已经彻底控制了首都，在那里成立了自己的政府，还接管了政府军的武器，借此进一步向南扩张。胡塞武装掌权之后，建立起一个高压政权：压制言论自由，用逮捕和酷刑镇压异见，还招募儿童当兵。

All while imposing strict religious laws that undermine women's rights. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is getting nervous. Their southern neighbor is now controlled by a group that is funded by their biggest enemy. So, they recruit the support of countries around the region and invade Yemen with the goal of removing the Houthis from power. The war is led by Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's upand cominging leader and defense minister.

与此同时，他们还推行严苛的宗教法律，侵蚀女性的权利。另一边，沙特阿拉伯坐不住了。自己的南方邻国，如今落到了一个由头号死敌出钱供养的组织手里。于是沙特拉拢了地区内多个国家，出兵入侵也门，目标是把胡塞武装赶下台。领导这场战争的，是王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼——沙特冉冉升起的新一代掌权者，同时也是国防大臣。

He starts with a widespread bombing campaign and a naval blockade that prevents shipping in and out of the country with the goal of trying to cut off support coming in from Iran. The crown prince turns to the United States in need of more weapons for this war. While the US leaders are reluctant to get involved in another Middle East conflict, they also want to maintain a good relationship with Saudi Arabia, who is their major security and energy partner in the region. They also have an interest in weakening al-Qaeda's growing presence in Yemen. So, in addition to supporting this war with logistics and intelligence, President Obama approves billions of dollars of weapons, planes, tanks, and even weapons banned by most of the world for how dangerous they are for civilians, like cluster munitions.

他一上来就发动了大范围空袭，再加上海上封锁，切断进出也门的航运，为的是掐断从伊朗运进来的援助。为了这场仗，王储向美国求援，需要更多武器。美国领导人其实不太情愿再卷入一场中东冲突，可他们又想和沙特保持良好关系——沙特是美国在这个地区最重要的安全和能源伙伴。此外，美国也有意削弱基地组织在也门日益扩张的势力。所以，除了在后勤和情报上支持这场战争，奥巴马总统还批准了价值几十亿美元的武器、战机、坦克，甚至包括因为对平民危害太大、已被世界上大多数国家禁用的武器，比如集束弹药。

This quickly turns Saudi Arabia into the largest importer of American weapons for the next 4 years. So, it's 2015 and Yemen is in a full-blown war between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia and their coalition. This is when al-Qaeda, who's not on either side, takes advantage of this chaos and makes a land grab in the middle of Yemen. They take major cities and clash with government forces. Also taking advantage of the instability is the terrorist group ISIS who come to Yemen and fight the Houthis and al-Qaeda at the same time, though their attacks are scattered and they don't control significant territory.

这让沙特阿拉伯很快成了此后4年里美国武器的最大进口国。所以，时间来到2015年，也门已经陷入胡塞武装与沙特及其联军之间的全面战争。就在这时，不站在任何一边的基地组织趁乱在也门中部大肆抢地盘，拿下了几座主要城市，还和政府军交上了火。同样趁着局势不稳钻空子的，还有恐怖组织ISIS。他们来到也门，同时跟胡塞武装和基地组织开战，不过他们的袭击比较零散，也没能控制多少像样的地盘。

The US then gets more involved by launching air strikes at al-Qaeda and ISIS targets to stop them from gaining any more territory. They try to kill their leadership, but the US has to do this carefully because they don't want to engage the Houthis. Their fight is with al-Qaeda and ISIS. In May of 2015, the Houthis attack a city just across the border in Saudi Arabia, killing two and taking hostages, forcing an airport to shut down. The crown prince doesn't take being attacked on his own soil lightly, especially by Iran's proxies.

随后美国进一步介入，对基地组织和ISIS的目标发动空袭，阻止他们继续扩张地盘，还试图除掉他们的头目。但美国下手必须小心，因为他们不想跟胡塞武装交手——他们要打的是基地组织和ISIS。2015年5月，胡塞武装袭击了沙特境内一座紧挨边境的城市，造成2人死亡，还劫持了人质，迫使一座机场关闭。在自家领土上挨打，王储绝不会善罢甘休，更何况动手的还是伊朗的代理人。

So over the next 24 hours, the Saudis launch 130 air strikes in Yemen, hitting homes, schools, and hospitals. Thousands are forced to flee from their home. Hundreds are reported dead, though we'll never know the real death toll. These strikes are almost immediately called war crimes. But the crown prince doesn't back down.

于是在接下来的24小时里，沙特对也门发动了130次空袭，炸到了民宅、学校和医院。数以千计的人被迫逃离家园。据报道有数百人死亡，不过真实的死亡人数我们永远无从得知。这些空袭几乎立刻就被指为战争罪。可王储并没有退让。

His coalition then sends in ground troops from the south, pushing back the Houthis and taking back the city of Aden. He's behaving as if he's fighting his greatest enemy, Iran. It's a vicious cycle that is common in proxy wars like this, and it lands the people of Yemen in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The international community tries to intervene with diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting. But over the next 6 years, those efforts would fail and Saudi Arabia would continue its brutal campaign, all using American weapons.

他的联军随后又从南边派出地面部队，把胡塞武装打退，夺回了亚丁市。他表现得就好像自己是在跟头号大敌伊朗交战。这种恶性循环，在这类代理人战争里司空见惯，结果就是把也门人民推进了全世界最严重的人道主义危机。国际社会试图通过外交斡旋来平息战火。可在接下来的6年里，这些努力统统落空，沙特继续着它残酷的军事行动——用的全是美国武器。

The Houthis continue to fight to show that they are legitimate, that they are the government of Yemen. They aren't just doing Iran's bidding. The war continues to destroy cities and land. And the blockade continues to keep trade out. The Saudis continue to bomb indiscriminately.

胡塞武装则继续打下去，为的是证明自己是正当的，证明他们才是也门政府，而不只是替伊朗卖命。战争继续摧毁着城市和土地，封锁继续把贸易挡在门外，沙特继续不分青红皂白地狂轰滥炸。

And with time, 2 million Yemenes are displaced, forced to leave their homes to flee this violence. 50,000 civilians have had no But this doesn't stop the Houthis from escalating their offensive. They start attacking Saudi Arabia directly with missiles and drones in their capital city and their civilian airports using weapons that most believe are coming from Iran. In December of 2017, the Saudis and the UAE convinced President Saleh to break his alliance with the Houthis and return to power as president of Yemen. They hope that Saleh, the former dictator, might be able to hold on to power and rule more effectively. So takes the deal and changes sides yet again, breaking with the Houthis and joining the Saudiled coalition.

日子一长，已有200万也门人流离失所，为了躲避暴力被迫背井离乡。5万名平民已经没有——但这挡不住胡塞武装把攻势升级。他们开始用导弹和无人机直接袭击沙特阿拉伯，打击沙特首都和民用机场，所用的武器，大多数人认为来自伊朗。2017年12月，沙特和阿联酋说服萨利赫总统撕毁与胡塞武装的同盟，重新出山担任也门总统。他们指望萨利赫这位前独裁者也许能坐稳权位，治理得更有效一些。萨利赫接受了这笔交易，又一次改换门庭，跟胡塞武装决裂，加入了沙特领导的联军。

Fighting breaks out between the Houthis and Salet's militias and Salet is killed just 2 days later. Meanwhile, in the United States, there's a new president. President Trump orders increased drone strikes and raids against al-Qaeda, helping government forces take back large amounts of territory. Despite the war crimes committed using American weapons, Trump approves more weapon sales to Saudi Arabia to wage this war. And then in 2018, the conflict takes on a new dimension.

胡塞武装和萨利赫的民兵随即爆发冲突，仅仅2天后，萨利赫就被打死了。与此同时，美国换了一位新总统。特朗普总统下令加强对基地组织的无人机打击和突袭行动，帮助政府军夺回了大片土地。尽管美国武器被用来犯下了战争罪，特朗普还是批准向沙特出售更多武器，让它继续打这场仗。接着到了2018年，冲突又多出了一个新的层面。

The UAE, who is a part of this Saudiled coalition, is starting to lose faith in the direction this war is going. They don't the current government of Yemen, and they're losing soldiers on the ground. It's damaging their reputation on the world stage. So, the UAE leaves the coalition, but they still want to influence who will ultimately control Yemen. So they start backing a new group in the south called the Southern Transitional Council or STC.

阿联酋本是沙特领导的联军的一员，但它对这场战争的走向越来越没有信心。他们不……也门现政府，而且在地面上不断折损士兵，这还损害了他们在国际舞台上的声誉。于是阿联酋退出了联军，但他们依然想左右最终由谁来掌控也门。所以他们开始扶持南方的一个新组织，名叫「南方过渡委员会」，简称STC。

This group isn't aligned with the government or the Houthis. They're calling for a separation of the southern part of Yemen. They want their own state. They want their own country. So the UAE starts to withdraw their troops from the south of the country and the STC separatists start taking control of southern provinces.

这个组织既不跟政府一条心，也不站胡塞武装那边。他们呼吁让也门南部分离出去——他们要建立自己的国家，要有自己的国度。于是阿联酋开始从也门南部撤军，STC分离主义者则开始接管南方各省。

The Saudi coalition is fracturing and yet another group is jumping into the fighting, showing just how up for grabs Yemen has become. By the fall of 2019, the war has reached maximum complexity. You've got the Saudi coalition backing the former government of Yemen, mostly relegated to the east of the country. The UAE is now backing this separatist movement in the south, who are fighting against the former government of Yemen. The Houthis, backed by Iran, still maintain majority control of the major cities in the north.

沙特联军四分五裂，又有一个新组织跳进战局，足见也门已经乱成了人人都能来抢一把的局面。到2019年秋天，这场战争复杂到了极点。一边是沙特联军，支持着也门前政府，而前政府基本被挤到了国家东部；阿联酋如今扶持南方的分离运动，跟也门前政府打得不可开交；有伊朗撑腰的胡塞武装，仍然控制着北方大部分主要城市。

Al-Qaeda and its militia allies are still fighting to control small slices of the country, and the US continues to conduct air strikes against al-Qaeda and ISIS while supporting and selling more weapons to the Saudi coalition. Yemen is fracturing further, and if there's any hope for peace, power needs to be consolidated. So Saudi Arabia and the UAE make amends and then together they convince the government of Yemen and the separatists in the south to form a new coalition to fight against the Houthis together as a united front. But it doesn't stop the Houthis who are getting really good at fighting and are firing more Iranian missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia, hitting state-owned oil refineries and threatening to drive up oil prices globally. By January 2021, the Houthis, a group started to provide religious summer camps to young men, are now battleh hardened, and they control 70 to 80% of the population of Yemen.

基地组织及其民兵盟友仍在争夺国内的零星地盘，美国则一边继续空袭基地组织和ISIS，一边支持沙特联军、向它卖更多武器。也门进一步分崩离析，要想有一丝和平的希望，权力就必须整合起来。于是沙特和阿联酋重修旧好，两国一起说服也门政府和南方分离主义者组成新的联盟，结成统一战线共同对抗胡塞武装。可这依然挡不住胡塞武装——他们打仗越来越在行，向沙特发射了更多伊朗导弹和无人机，击中沙特国有炼油厂，还扬言要推高全球油价。到2021年1月，胡塞武装——这个当初只是给年轻男子办宗教夏令营的组织——已经身经百战，控制了也门70%到80%的人口。

Later that year, the UN announces that approximately 20 million of those people are dependent on humanitarian aid for their daily needs. And at this point, the war starts to settle in to an uncomfortable stalemate. In April 2022, the UN brokers a ceasefire and the fighting stops. Behind the scenes, Saudi Arabia and Iran have been in diplomatic talks sponsored by China. Regional tensions are cooling, which means that their proxy war in Yemen is also cooling.

同年晚些时候，联合国宣布，这些人里大约有2000万人的日常生活要靠人道援助维持。到了这个阶段，战争开始陷入一种令人难受的僵局。2022年4月，联合国促成停火，战斗停了下来。幕后，沙特和伊朗一直在中国的撮合下进行外交谈判。地区紧张局势在降温，这也意味着两国在也门的代理人战争也在降温。

Saudi Arabia has had enough of the fighting. President Hadi resigns and hands power over to a council meant to govern Yemen and manage the war. And both sides are tired of the fighting. So when that ceasefire is set to expire in October 2022, the conflict mostly stays quiet, even without a new agreement. By 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran have officially restored their diplomatic relations.

沙特已经打够了。哈迪总统辞职，把权力移交给一个委员会，由它来治理也门、主持战事。双方都打累了。所以到2022年10月停火协议即将到期时，即便没有签新的协议，冲突也基本保持平静。到2023年，沙特和伊朗正式恢复了外交关系。

Saudi Arabia hoping that this means Iran will stop supporting Houthis to attack their southern border. But the Saudis keep their maritime blockade around the country, making life in Yemen unlivable for millions. But at this point, the heaviest of the fighting on all sides has stopped. But then in the fall of 2023, the Houthis were back in the news. After the Palestinian group Hamas launches a brutal attack into Israel, the Israeli military invades the Gaza Strip, vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages that they took.

沙特希望这意味着伊朗会停止支持胡塞武装袭击自己的南部边境。不过沙特依旧维持着对也门的海上封锁，让数百万也门人的日子根本过不下去。但到了这个时候，各方最激烈的战斗都已经停了下来。然而在2023年秋天，胡塞武装又上了新闻。巴勒斯坦组织哈马斯对以色列发动了一场残暴的袭击，随后以色列军队攻入加沙地带，誓言要消灭哈马斯，救出他们劫走的人质。

The campaign leads to tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths, and it provokes a response from Iranian-backed groups all throughout the region. The Houthis are one of those groups. They launch drones and cruise missiles into southern Israel, vowing that their attacks won't stop until the invasion of Gaza stops. And then they start firing their missiles and drones at cargo ships that are traveling through the Red Sea, where 25% of container traffic travels, a major artery in our global economy. In the days after these missiles start flying, traffic through this Red Sea route declines by 73%.

这场军事行动造成数万名巴勒斯坦平民死亡，也激起了整个地区伊朗支持的各路武装的回应，胡塞武装就是其中之一。他们向以色列南部发射无人机和巡航导弹，扬言只要加沙的入侵不停，他们的袭击就不会停。接着，他们又开始用导弹和无人机攻击途经红海的货船——全球25%的集装箱运输都要走这里，这是全球经济的一条大动脉。导弹开始满天飞之后的几天里，这条红海航线的通行量下降了73%。

In response, the US and UK shoot down Houthi missiles and drop bombs on Houthi military targets in Yemen, pulling the US and its allies deeper into this enduring conflict. The reason I wanted to tell you the story of this conflict in Yemen because it represents the vicious cycle present in a lot of proxy wars where geopolitical rivals use their neighbors as battlefields instead of fighting each other directly. They fund and add fuel to local conflicts, escalating them to the entire country and often to the entire region, leaving violence and power vacuums in their wake, which are then filled by bad actors trying to take advantage of the instability. All of this changes borders, destroys cities, and ruins lives. It's the story of powerful countries and their cynical scramble for influence and power in vulnerable places, leaving behind them a wake of tremendous human suffering.

作为回应，美国和英国击落胡塞武装的导弹，并轰炸胡塞武装在也门的军事目标，这把美国及其盟友更深地拖进了这场旷日持久的冲突。我之所以想给你们讲也门这场冲突的来龙去脉，是因为它体现了许多代理人战争里都存在的那种恶性循环：地缘政治上的对手不直接交手，而是把邻国当成战场。他们给当地冲突出钱、火上浇油，把冲突升级到全国，往往还蔓延到整个地区，身后留下暴力和权力真空，再由那些想趁乱牟利的恶势力去填补。这一切改变了边界，摧毁了城市，毁掉了无数人的生活。这是一个关于强国的故事——它们在脆弱的地方犬儒地争夺影响力和权力，身后留下的是巨大的人间苦难。

Breaking news because Yemen's Houthi rebels, they could attack a commercial ship and could bog the straight up for weeks if not months. There is a part of the world that everyone is keeping an eye on right now. The joint military strikes were in response to nearly two months of attacks by the Iran-backed Houthy movement on cargo ships in the Red Sea. It is becoming more and more important for the global rivalries and tensions that are heating up on our globe right now. It is this choke point in the Red Sea.

「突发新闻，因为也门胡塞叛军可能袭击商船，可能让海峡堵上好几周，甚至好几个月。」世界上有一个地方，眼下所有人都在紧盯着。「这次联合军事打击，是对伊朗支持的胡塞运动近两个月来在红海袭击货船的回应。」对于眼下在我们这颗星球上不断升温的全球竞争和紧张局势来说，它正变得越来越重要。那就是红海上的这个咽喉要道。

It's pretty small. It's a few dozen km wide. But through this little choke point flows a lot of important things. The internet, millions of barrels of oil per day, 30% of all containers ships that connect global markets. And this choke point is surrounded by unstable situations, countries that are in civil wars, rebel militias, proxy wars, unstable governments, failed states, and pirates.

它很小，只有几十公里宽。可就是这么个小小的咽喉要道，流经的却是一大堆重要的东西：互联网、每天数百万桶石油，还有连接全球市场的所有集装箱船里的30%。而环绕这个咽喉要道的，全是不稳定的局面：陷入内战的国家、叛乱民兵、代理人战争、动荡的政府、失败国家，还有海盗。

In recent decades, pirates have hijacked thousands of ships here, extracting hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms, a topic we did a whole deep dive on in another video. And lately, as war has raged in the Gaza Strip, the fiercely anti-western Houthi rebels in Yemen have been firing rockets at cargo ships traveling through this water, leading the US and UK to strike back. A ship attacked by Iran-backed Houthi rebels last month sank in the Red Sea. The region is vital yet volatile all at once. And yet in the middle of all of this is this one beacon of stability.

过去几十年里，海盗在这里劫持了数以千计的船只，勒索了数亿美元赎金——这个话题我们在另一期视频里专门深挖过。最近，随着加沙地带战火肆虐，也门那支强烈反西方的胡塞叛军一直在向途经这片水域的货船发射火箭弹，招致美国和英国的反击。「上个月遭伊朗支持的胡塞叛军袭击的一艘船，已在红海沉没。」这个地区既至关重要，又动荡不安。然而就在这一切的中心，有一座稳定的灯塔。

A little piece of land that is easy to miss, but that is more important than you might think. It is the country of Djibouti. Djibouti is this small arid country right on the choke point and it is home to the militaries of the United States of several European powers of Japan Japan's only foreign military base by the way and right down the road from the American base China's first military base outside of its country. Qatar has peacekeepers here. The United Arab Emirates ran the biggest port.

那是一小块很容易被忽略的土地，可它比你想象的要重要得多。它就是吉布提这个国家。吉布提是个干旱的小国，正好卡在这个咽喉要道上。这里驻扎着美国的军队、几个欧洲强国的军队、日本的军队——顺便说一句，这是日本唯一的海外军事基地——而就在离美国基地不远的地方，还有中国在本国以外的第一个军事基地。卡塔尔在这里派驻了维和人员，阿联酋曾经运营这里最大的港口。

Eritrea seized some of its territory recently. And Ethiopia, one of the largest countries in Africa, runs almost all of its trade through Djibouti. Ethiopia is landlocked and this is their like gateway to the world. It's a lot. Djibouti is a lot.

厄立特里亚最近还占了它的一部分领土。而非洲最大的国家之一埃塞俄比亚，几乎所有贸易都要经过吉布提。埃塞俄比亚是内陆国，吉布提就相当于它通向世界的大门。东西太多了。吉布提真是事儿太多了。

There's a lot going on in Djibouti, which is why today we are talking about this place. I want to explore why so many powers want to be here. Why everyone is converging on this little tiny patch of land the size of New Jersey. And I want to ask if little Djibouti, one of the poorest countries in the world, can balance all these rival powers against each other without falling victim to them. You know, 10 to 15% of global trade moves through the Red Sea.

吉布提发生的事情太多了，所以今天我们就来聊聊这个地方。我想探究一下，为什么这么多大国都想来这里，为什么大家都往这块只有新泽西州那么大的弹丸之地扎堆。我还想问一个问题：小小的吉布提，世界上最穷的国家之一，能不能让这些相互竞争的大国彼此制衡，而自己又不沦为它们的牺牲品？「要知道，全球贸易有10%到15%要经过红海。」

We will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce. This little choke point is called the Bab al-Mandeb or Gate of Tears. It used to be nothing but a recipe for shipwrecks. It was known mostly for strong winds, unpredictable crosscurrens, and shallow reefs that made navigating it dangerous. And it wasn't very valuable because if you go through it, you just end up in the Red Sea, which was a dead end for most of history.

「我们将毫不犹豫地捍卫生命和商业的自由流通。」这个小小的咽喉要道名叫曼德海峡，意思是「泪之门」。过去，它不过是个注定要出海难的地方，最出名的就是狂风、难以预测的交叉洋流，还有浅浅的暗礁，让航行变得十分凶险。而且它也没多大价值，因为穿过去也只是进了红海，而在历史上的大部分时间里，红海都是一条死胡同。

That is until a French company miraculously cut a canal through this part of Egypt and changed the world forever. Nearly having the time that it would take for Europeans to get to Asia, where they were all racing each other to conquer, colonize, and bring back unfathomable wealth to their countries. The Suez Canal was a massive upgrade to this hunt for resources. Was this video kind of an excuse for me to buy these really old, beautiful books about the Suez Canal? Yes, it was.

直到一家法国公司奇迹般地在埃及的这片土地上凿出了一条运河，从此永远改变了世界。欧洲人前往亚洲所需的时间几乎缩短了一半——当时他们正你追我赶地去亚洲征服、殖民，把难以想象的财富运回本国。苏伊士运河让这场资源争夺大大升级。这期视频是不是有点被我拿来当借口，好买这些关于苏伊士运河的、又老又漂亮的书？没错，就是。

For France, this engineering miracle called the Suez Canal was their chance to beat out their big rival, the British Empire, who was clearly winning the race, dominating the routes to Asia before Suez opened. The canal was supposed to change that. So now you have a new front in this race, a scramble for control over this new route to Asia. This windy little choke point was no longer just the gate of tears. It was an important bit of water, one of the most important on Earth, at least for the empires.

对法国来说，苏伊士运河这项工程奇迹，是他们击败头号对手大英帝国的机会。在苏伊士运河开通之前，大英帝国显然在这场竞赛中遥遥领先，主宰着通往亚洲的航线。这条运河本应扭转这一局面。于是这场竞赛开辟了一个新战线：争夺这条通往亚洲新航线的控制权。这个狂风呼啸的小小咽喉要道，不再只是「泪之门」了。它成了一片重要的水域，地球上最重要的水域之一——至少对那些帝国来说是这样。

They had to keep an eye on it. So, the British take this little island right at the choke point. They put a lighthouse on it. They also take control of a port just south of the choke point. The Italians then show up and purchase this bit of coastline from local sultans, eventually taking over this whole stretch of coast called Eritrea.

他们必须盯紧它。于是英国人占下了正好位于咽喉要道上的这座小岛，在上面建了一座灯塔。他们还控制了咽喉要道以南不远处的一个港口。接着意大利人也来了，从当地苏丹手里买下了这一段海岸线，最终把这一整片名叫厄立特里亚的海岸都收入囊中。

And the French would start fixating on this strip of sparsely populated coast right on the banks of the choke point, the land that would become Djibouti. The sultans here told the French that yes, they could have a bit of this newly strategic land in exchange for protection. The locals here knew what was going on. The great empires were all scrambling and racing and they were going to use their prime real estate to get what they wanted to leverage the situation. Smart and totally a theme throughout this video.

法国人则开始盯上咽喉要道岸边这条人烟稀少的海岸地带——也就是后来成为吉布提的那片土地。这里的苏丹们告诉法国人：行，这块突然变得有战略价值的土地，可以分你们一点，条件是你们得保护我们。当地人心里清楚是怎么回事：各大帝国都在你争我抢，他们就要用自己手里这块黄金地段去换想要的东西，借势而为。聪明，而且这完全是贯穿这期视频的一个主题。

So the French set up their colony. They call it Kot Frances de Somali or French Somali land. This choke point would become a key base for projecting power and refueling on their way to carve up and plunder Asia. France would hold on to their little colonial invention for a long time. Even as the world would decolonize after World War II, France held on to this strategic colony along the choke point until eventually the locals rose up.

于是法国人建立了殖民地，命名为「法属索马里海岸」，也就是法属索马里兰。这个咽喉要道将成为他们投射力量、中途加油的关键基地，好让他们一路去瓜分、掠夺亚洲。法国对自己这个小小的殖民发明攥了很久。即便二战后全世界掀起去殖民化浪潮，法国仍然牢牢握着咽喉要道边上的这块战略殖民地，直到当地人终于起来反抗。

There were protests. They clashed with the local authorities and it led to an independence vote. And in 1977, Djibouti became a new country. Djibouti was independent, but they had a problem. In the words of some New York Times reporting from 1977, the tiny new nation had no army, less than one square mile of arable land, and no resources except for sand, salt, and 20,000 camels.

抗议爆发了，他们与当地当局发生冲突，最终促成了一场独立公投。1977年，吉布提成为一个新国家。吉布提独立了，可他们碰上了一个难题。用1977年《纽约时报》一篇报道里的话说，这个小小的新国家「没有军队，可耕地不到1平方英里，除了沙子、盐和2万头骆驼之外，什么资源都没有」。

Yeah, not good. So once again, they made a deal with France. Djibouti wouldn't be Frances anymore, but they would be allowed to retain a military base in the country in exchange for security and protection as well as economic aid. But this didn't change the fact that Djibouti had very little natural resources or arable land. Their economy fell into a crippling depression.

是啊，情况不妙。所以他们又一次跟法国做了笔交易：吉布提不再属于法国，但法国可以在这个国家保留一个军事基地，换来的是安全保障和保护，外加经济援助。可这改变不了吉布提几乎没有自然资源、也没有多少可耕地的事实。他们的经济陷入了一场毁灭性的萧条。

Eventually, there was a civil war and it wasn't looking good for Djibouti. Djibouti's salvation would eventually come when they realized that they should hearken back to the old days and start exploiting the thing that had made them valuable all those years ago, their location. Let's go. Come on. Go back.

后来又爆发了内战，吉布提的前景看起来很不妙。吉布提最终的救赎，来自他们意识到：应该回到过去，重新利用当年让他们身价倍增的那样东西——他们的地理位置。「走！快点！往回走！」

Go stop shooting. Has crashed into the world. Our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. 3 months after 9/11, the United States was about to come crashing into the Middle East in a new way. And they asked Djibouti if they could set up a base there and Djibouti says yes. Suddenly after the global war on terror, America realizes that it's one of the key locations.

「去，别开枪了！」「……撞向了世界。」「我们的自由本身，遭到了一系列蓄意而致命的恐怖袭击。」9·11事件3个月后，美国即将以一种全新的方式闯进中东。他们问吉布提能不能在那里建一个基地，吉布提答应了。「全球反恐战争之后，美国一下子意识到，这里是关键地点之一。」

It matters to be there. You had, al-Qaeda in Yemen. You had al-Qaeda in even horn of Africa. So they needed a base and Djibouti was one country which was willing to offer them. It would become America's only permanent military base on the continent of Africa, and it would be a key jumping off point for George Bush's war on terror.

「到那里去很重要。也门有基地组织，甚至非洲之角也有基地组织。所以他们需要一个基地，而吉布提是唯一愿意提供的国家。」这里将成为美国在非洲大陆上唯一的永久军事基地，也将成为乔治·布什反恐战争的一个关键出发点。

And reminder that it's now the 21st century. Things have changed in the world, and this little choke point was becoming more valuable again, but for different reasons than the old days. Number one, the world had become addicted to fossil fuels, oil and gas, which was the lifeblood of their economies. And most of that oil and gas was coming from over here from the land and waters of the countries around this Persian Gulf where it was then put on ships and sent around the world. A lot of it heading west through this vital choke point up the Red Sea into the Suez Canal and onto Europe.

提醒一下，现在已经是21世纪了。世界变了，这个小小的咽喉要道又变得越来越有价值，只不过原因跟过去不一样了。第一，世界已经对化石燃料上了瘾——石油和天然气，这是各国经济的命脉。而其中大部分石油和天然气，都来自这边，也就是波斯湾周边国家的陆地和海域，在那里装船运往世界各地。其中很多是往西走，穿过这个至关重要的咽喉要道，北上红海，进入苏伊士运河，再运往欧洲。

The world knew that their energy was vulnerable because Egypt in earlier decades had weaponized the canal by closing it, by blocking it. One time for eight years, inflicting immediate pain on the countries that rely on this constant flow of energy and goods. By the way, semi side note, this flow of energy becomes even more important when Europe almost entirely cuts ties with Russian natural gas after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. So, they have to get more natural gas from this region. Qatar was not sad about that.

世界知道自己的能源命脉很脆弱，因为埃及在前几十年里就曾把运河当作武器，把它关闭、堵死。有一次一关就是8年，让那些依赖这股源源不断的能源和货物流的国家立刻感受到切肤之痛。顺便说一句，算是半个题外话：2022年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后，欧洲几乎完全切断了与俄罗斯天然气的联系，这股能源流就变得更加重要了。所以他们不得不从这个地区获取更多天然气。卡塔尔对此可一点也不难过。

Let's put it that way. Anyway, we're getting off topic. Europe needs this route to stay stable. They need these little dots to keep flowing. So that's one reason that the choke point has become more vital than ever.

这么说吧。总之，扯远了。欧洲需要这条航线保持稳定，需要这些小点点源源不断地流动。所以这就是这个咽喉要道变得比以往任何时候都更关键的一个原因。

The other reason is China. China rose to become a manufacturing superpower. They make a lot of stuff and they send it to the west and a lot of that comes through this choke point. And all of this vital trade is happening in a region that is full of unstable governments, rising anti-western militias and Somali pirates, making this route precarious and dangerous and subject to problems. So Djibouti has become this vital place here at the choke point, an incredibly important strategic location in a sea of turmoil.

另一个原因是中国。中国崛起成了制造业超级大国，他们生产大量的东西运往西方，其中很多都要经过这个咽喉要道。而这些至关重要的贸易，都发生在一个遍布动荡政府、反西方民兵日益壮大、还有索马里海盗出没的地区，让这条航线岌岌可危、险象环生、随时可能出问题。所以吉布提就成了咽喉要道上这个至关重要的地方，在一片动荡之海中占据着极其重要的战略位置。

Okay, but there's more. In addition to all of this global economy importance, there's also regional importance to Djibouti. Notice Djibouti's neighbor, Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa and as you can see, one that is totally landlocked. It is not good to be a big country that is landlocked because the water is where we trade. So, Djibouti is the gateway to Ethiopia's millions of people to trade with the world. 95% of Ethiopia's trade passes through Djibouti.

好，但还不止这些。除了对全球经济的这些重要性之外，吉布提对地区也很重要。注意吉布提的邻国埃塞俄比亚——非洲人口第二多的国家，而且你也看到了，它完全是内陆国。一个大国没有出海口可不是什么好事，因为贸易靠的就是水路。所以，吉布提就是埃塞俄比亚数以百万计的人口与世界做贸易的大门。埃塞俄比亚95%的贸易都要经过吉布提。

So Djibouti, this colonial creation from France in the 1880s, is now once again an incredibly important place on the map. It's become once again a highly strategic location. And when there are highly strategic locations, superpowers start moving in. In 2011, Djibouti approved Japan, a pacifist sort of non-military country, to open a military base on Djibouti, their one and only foreign military base. Then you have Italy who set up a military base here in 2013.

所以，吉布提这个1880年代由法国一手造出来的殖民产物，如今再次成了地图上极其重要的地方，再次成了一个高度战略性的位置。而只要有高度战略性的位置，超级大国就会纷纷进驻。2011年，吉布提批准日本——一个奉行和平主义、某种意义上不搞军事的国家——在吉布提开设军事基地，这也是日本唯一一个海外军事基地。接着是意大利，2013年在这里建立了军事基地。

Spain and Germany also have a military presence here. They are not permanently hosted with a base. They're actually hosted by France. And the soldiers live in these hotels permanently. Okay, that's not weird at all.

西班牙和德国在这里也有军事存在。他们没有常驻的基地，实际上是由法国接待的。这些士兵常年住在这些酒店里。好吧，这一点都不奇怪。

But yeah, as you can see, the great powers are back.

不过没错，你也看到了，大国们又回来了。

They're back in Djibouti like the old days. Not to compete with one another, but to all band together to police this vital choke point so that the global economy that has brought prosperity to all of us can stay stable. Everything keeps flowing. Everyone is happy. And this solved a big problem for Djibouti who again didn't have a big industry or any kind of resource.

它们又回到了吉布提，就像过去那样。只不过这次不是为了互相争夺，而是联起手来，一起守住这个至关重要的咽喉要道，好让这套给我们所有人带来繁荣的全球经济保持稳定。一切照常流动，皆大欢喜。而这也替吉布提解决了一个大问题——前面说过，吉布提既没有大产业，也没有任何资源。

They make a lot of money off of these leases to foreign countries which has helped build their economy. And the old days, when one side shows up, the rival won't be far behind. China has agreed to set up a support base in Djibouti. So, the Chinese base is right here and they are going to be watching us as we're watching them. In 2016, Djibouti announces that they've been talking to China and that they've agreed to give them land to open their own military base, which was built and opened right down the road from the American base in 2017.

他们靠把土地租给外国赚了很多钱，这帮着撑起了他们的经济。而跟过去一样，一方来了，对手也就不远了。「中国已同意在吉布提设立一个保障基地。」「所以，中国的基地就在这儿，我们盯着他们，他们也会盯着我们。」2016年，吉布提宣布他们一直在和中国谈，已经同意给中国一块地，让中国开设自己的军事基地。这个基地2017年建成启用，就在美军基地那条路往前不远的地方。

So, China says they're there because of pirates. Pirates have been wreaking havoc in this area. So, they're there to stabilize their economic interests because of pirates. But, as we discovered in our deep dive on pirates, by 2017, the pirate issue was basically over. There was almost no hijackings in this region.

中国说他们来这里是因为海盗。海盗一直在这一带肆虐，所以他们来是为了因应海盗、稳住自己的经济利益。但我们在那期海盗专题里发现，到了2017年，海盗问题基本已经结束了。这个地区几乎已经没有劫船事件了。

Look at this graph. Oh, and the Chinese base has this big deep pier that is like large enough to handle an aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines. So, this isn't about pirates. China also did the most China thing when they moved in here, which was instead of just building a base, they also came with all of these big ticket infrastructure projects as like gifts to win the favor of the locals. We're talking railway, pipeline, port, all very expensive.

看看这张图。哦对了，中国基地还有一座又大又深的码头，大到差不多能停航空母舰和核潜艇。所以这根本不是海盗的事。中国进驻这里的时候，还干了一件最有中国特色的事：不光是建个基地，还带来了一大堆耗资巨大的基础设施项目，像是当作礼物，好赢得当地人的好感。铁路、管道、港口，样样都很贵。

All putting Djibouti into a lot of debt to China. They're doing this all over Africa, which we talk about in another deep dive video we did on the topic, mapping all of China's giant infrastructure projects in Africa and what that means. Man, a lot of shout outs to other videos today, huh? So, Djibouti is now the only place on Earth where the United States and China, these two rivals, have military bases right next to each other. And so far, everyone's been playing nice.

这一切都让吉布提欠了中国一大笔债。他们在整个非洲都在这么干，这个我们在另一期专题视频里讲过，把中国在非洲的所有超大型基础设施项目都标在了地图上，也讲了这意味着什么。天哪，今天给其他视频打的广告也太多了吧？总之，吉布提如今是地球上唯一一个美国和中国这两个对手的军事基地紧挨着的地方。到目前为止，大家都还相安无事。

There's been no shenanigans other than both sides accusing each other of spying on each other constantly. Oh, and there was the lasers. The US says that China was pointing lasers into the eyes of pilots while they were taking off, which like if they really did that, that's just like why why would you do that? Like why' you do that? Don't do that.

除了双方不停地互相指责对方搞间谍活动之外，没出什么幺蛾子。哦，还有激光那件事。美国说，中国在飞行员起飞的时候用激光照他们的眼睛。要是他们真干了这种事，那真是——为什么啊？你为什么要这么干？别这么干。

Okay, but Djibouti doesn't let every country in. Russia wanted to have their own base in Djibouti and Djibouti said no. It probably helped that the American National Security Adviser flew to Djibouti and told them that the US would double how much they're paying for their lease if Djibouti didn't let Russia in. Okay, but what about the people? Djibouti isn't just one big military base.

好，不过吉布提也不是谁都放进来。俄罗斯想在吉布提建自己的基地，吉布提拒绝了。这里头大概也有美国国家安全顾问的功劳：他飞到吉布提，告诉他们，只要吉布提不让俄罗斯进来，美国就把租金翻一倍。好，那这里的老百姓呢？吉布提可不只是一个大军事基地。

There's almost a million people who live here, and their dayto-day probably consists of a lot of jet engine sounds. We got to talk to my old grad school professor David Vine who is an expert on US military bases and how they affect the locals. So what we were talking about is a foreign government, foreign military occupying large swed off and hosting large amounts of weaponry, high-powered weaponry of many, many kinds. Because these bases are so close to like the big city, there have been accidents, especially with drones. The US used to take off their drones and some would fall and actually crash onto like civilian infrastructure.

这里住着将近100万人，他们的日常生活里大概充斥着喷气发动机的轰鸣。我们跟我读研时的老教授大卫·瓦因聊了聊，他是研究美国军事基地及其对当地人影响的专家。「我们说的是一个外国政府、外国军队占据着大片土地，囤放着大量武器，各种各样的高威力武器。」因为这些基地离大城市太近，出过一些事故，尤其是无人机。美国以前在这里起飞无人机，有些掉下来，真的砸到了民用设施上。

So, they had to open a separate air strip. Apart from occasionally running over cows, the soldiers mostly keep to themselves. US soldiers don't even go into the city to like buy stuff. All of it is flown in, creating a little slice of America right in Djibouti. Like they don't even drink the water from Djibouti.

所以他们不得不另开一条跑道。除了偶尔撞死几头牛之外，这些士兵基本上不跟外界打交道。美国士兵甚至都不进城买东西。所有东西都是空运进来的，在吉布提造出了一小块美国。他们连吉布提的水都不喝。

It's all flown in. Night and then there's the dictator. I want to welcome President and his delegation here today. The US base in particular, but also the French and Chinese bases, which are the largest of the collection are all helping to prop up undemocratic regime that has, been accused of widespread human rights abuses. Every time a foreign power makes a deal with Djibouti and pays them a lot of money in exchange for them being able to be there, they basically validate this terrible dictator who's been in power for 25 years.

全都是空运进来的。然后，还有那个独裁者。「我要欢迎总统和他的代表团今天来到这里。」尤其是美国基地，当然还有法国和中国的基地——这几个是所有基地里最大的——都在帮着撑起一个不民主的政权，这个政权被指控存在大范围侵犯人权的行为。每当有外国势力跟吉布提谈好条件、付一大笔钱换取驻扎的权利，基本上就等于给这个已经掌权25年的恶劣独裁者背书。

There's no real elections, free press, freedom of speech, plenty of human rights abuses. But on the other side, there's at least one way that regular people in Djibouti benefit from all of this. Fewer people go hungry today than at the conclusion of the civil war. And even though the economy is still poor, all of this foreign aid still does support it. Is that worth it to them?

没有真正的选举，没有新闻自由，没有言论自由，侵犯人权的事一大堆。但从另一面看，吉布提的普通人至少在某一方面从这一切中受益了：如今挨饿的人比内战结束时要少。尽管经济依然贫困，所有这些外援还是给了它支撑。这对他们来说值得吗？

I don't actually know. And another version of this video that I want to do someday is to go there and talk to the people and hear what their thoughts are about the bases in Djibouti and what that feels like to live so close to all of these foreign militaries. For now, we're talking about the geography, the history, the geopolitics. Okay, speaking of geopolitics, there is another angle to this story that is devilishly complicated to get into, and I'm not going to get into all the juicy details. You'll understand why when I start talking about it.

我其实不知道。我很想有一天做另一个版本的视频：去那里跟当地人聊一聊，听听他们怎么看吉布提的这些基地，住得离这么多外国军队这么近是什么感受。现在，我们先讲地理、历史和地缘政治。好，说到地缘政治，这个故事还有另一个角度，复杂得要命，我不打算把那些精彩细节全部展开。等我开始讲，你就明白为什么了。

It has to do with the regional geopolitics, the rivalries and the concerns and the issues of all of these countries that are right next to Djibouti, not just the outside powers. I want to just give you a little sampling of what this looks like because it's pretty wild. So, you have all these Gulf countries and some of them are not totally on the same team, but almost all of them are thinking about the future and they're realizing that oil is not going to be a big part of their future because oil is not going to be a big part of any of our future hopefully. And they're realizing that they're going to need to invest in the horn of Africa, this region here, which they believe is probably going to be the future of their food, their future bread basket. So, hold that for a second and then look at Ethiopia and Eritrea.

这跟地区地缘政治有关——不光是外部大国，还有紧挨着吉布提的这些国家之间的竞争、顾虑和各种问题。我想给你稍微举几个例子，看看这是什么样子，因为真的挺疯狂的。你有这么一群海湾国家，其中有些并不完全是一伙的，但几乎所有国家都在考虑未来。它们意识到石油不会是它们未来的重要组成部分，因为石油——但愿如此——也不会是我们任何人未来的重要组成部分。它们意识到自己需要投资非洲之角，也就是这片地区，它们认为这里很可能会是它们未来的粮食来源、未来的粮仓。先记住这一点，然后再看埃塞俄比亚和厄立特里亚。

Ethiopia, as we mentioned, uses Djibouti as their gateway to the world. They need it to feed their millions of people. All of this geopolitics is also playing out in Djibouti, this little country that has to navigate everyone's interests. So, here's a quick episode of this drama to give you an idea of what it looks like. The United Arab Emirates, UAE, used to be like best friends with Djibouti.

前面说过，埃塞俄比亚把吉布提当作通往世界的大门。他们要靠它来养活几千万人口。所有这些地缘政治也都在吉布提上演，这个小国得在各方利益之间周旋。下面讲一段这出大戏里的小插曲，让你感受一下是什么样子。阿拉伯联合酋长国，也就是阿联酋，以前跟吉布提是铁哥们。

It was like one of their most important partners. The UAE built and owned this giant port that basically runs Djibouti's entire economy. But then the UAE got really close to Djibouti's neighbor and kind of enemy, Eritrea. This was very worrisome because Djibouti doesn't want Eritrea to become the new Djibouti. They're a mortal threat.

阿联酋可以说是吉布提最重要的伙伴之一。阿联酋建造并拥有这座巨大的港口，吉布提整个经济基本上就靠它运转。但后来，阿联酋跟吉布提的邻国、某种程度上的敌人厄立特里亚走得非常近。这让人非常担心，因为吉布提可不想让厄立特里亚变成新的吉布提。那是对它生死攸关的威胁。

They don't want the UAE to just shut down Djibouti's like strategic offering. Okay, fast forward to like 2017. The UAE with their close friend Saudi Arabia are in a feud with Qatar, which also has a military presence in Djibouti right up here on this border. Now that Qatar and the UAE are fighting with each other, they turn to Djibouti and say, "Hey, you are too close with the UAE. We're out of here." Qatar takes their soldiers out of this border area and right away Eritrea takes some of this land from Djibouti.

他们可不想让阿联酋就这么把吉布提的战略价值给废掉。好，快进到大概2017年。阿联酋和它的密友沙特阿拉伯跟卡塔尔闹翻了，而卡塔尔在吉布提也有军事存在，就在这上面的边境地带。既然卡塔尔和阿联酋闹翻了，卡塔尔就转头对吉布提说：「嘿，你跟阿联酋走得太近了，我们走了。」卡塔尔把士兵撤出了这片边境地区，厄立特里亚马上就从吉布提手里拿走了一些土地。

This may seem like some petty border skirmishes, but remember where we are here. This is the vital choke point. Bab al-Mandeb, every inch of land matters. Every little conflict could be the spark that stops the global economy. And what this little flare up shows us is how Djibouti finds itself in the center of conflicts between other countries that it kind of doesn't want to be in the middle of, but has found itself in the middle of because it hosts all of their militaries.

这看起来也许只是些鸡毛蒜皮的边境摩擦，但别忘了我们说的是什么地方。这是那个至关重要的咽喉要道——曼德海峡，每一寸土地都很重要。每一次小冲突都可能成为让全球经济停摆的那颗火星。这次小小的冲突让我们看到，吉布提是怎样被卷进别国之间的冲突的：它其实不太想夹在中间，但因为它接待了所有这些国家的军队，就发现自己夹在了中间。

But wait, there's more. Djibouti is actually really good at this. They know how to play the game and to play all these powers off of each other and we'll see what happens next. So they're kind of beholden to the UAE. UAE has way too much leverage over them.

不过等等，还有呢。吉布提其实非常擅长这一套。他们懂得怎么玩这个游戏，懂得怎么让这些大国互相牵制，我们接着看下面发生了什么。他们算是受制于阿联酋。阿联酋对他们的筹码实在太多了。

So finally it all comes to a head and they kick the UAE out from this really vital port and they give a massive chunk of it to wait for it, China. The new arrival to Djibouti that no one wants to mess with. They now have the port and Djibouti is now on their side and the UAE can't do anything about it. Djibouti saved itself from one power by pleasing a bigger power. Do you see how this works?

于是事情终于摊牌了：他们把阿联酋赶出了这座极其重要的港口，然后把一大块交给了——猜猜是谁——中国。这个吉布提的新来客，谁都不想招惹。现在中国拿到了港口，吉布提站到了他们那一边，阿联酋对此毫无办法。吉布提靠讨好一个更大的势力，把自己从另一个势力手里救了出来。你看明白这是怎么运作的了吗？

Do you see what game they're playing here? So that is why this tiny country in East Africa is so important. It's kind of the definition of geopolitics. Politics happening because of geography to project legitimacy. This choke point is only going to become more important.

你看明白他们在玩什么游戏了吗？这就是为什么东非这个小小的国家这么重要。它几乎就是地缘政治的定义：因为地理而发生的政治，用来投射合法性。这个咽喉要道只会变得越来越重要。

Day by day we're seeing it happen. I mean like right now as I'm filming this, the Houthi rebels are like potentially cutting internet cables in this choke point. Three crew members have been killed in a Houthi. The first death since Houthi rebels began attacking shipping in the Red Sea after months of bombing merchant ships to punish the West for supporting the IDF war in Gaza. It's this kind of threat that Djibouti was set up to handle.

我们每天都看到这一点在发生。我是说，就在我拍这期视频的时候，胡塞武装可能正在这个咽喉要道切断海底网缆。「胡塞武装的一次袭击中有三名船员遇难。这是胡塞武装开始袭击红海航运以来的首次死亡事件。此前数月，他们一直轰炸商船，以惩罚西方支持以色列国防军在加沙的战争。」吉布提的这套布局，正是为了应对这类威胁。

That is why all these foreign militaries are here. And yet, for me, there is a subtler threat that is emerging here, which you can see when you just look at this map of bases. Djibouti hosts rival countries during a time when we are transitioning away from a rules-based order where all the great powers have an incentive to work together under one system that is dominated by the United States that deeply benefits the United States and its allies. But that works because the United States imposes and protects those rules. Those rules are being challenged and what is emerging is a system that is messier, more disruptive to these reliable rules that have kept everything stable, kept the United States on top.

这就是为什么这么多外国军队都在这里。然而在我看来，这里正在浮现一种更隐蔽的威胁，你只要看看这张基地分布图就能看出来。吉布提接待着彼此敌对的国家，而此时我们正在告别一种以规则为基础的秩序。在那种秩序下，所有大国都有动力在同一个体系内合作，这个体系由美国主导，让美国及其盟友深深受益。但它之所以行得通，是因为美国在制定并维护这些规则。现在这些规则正受到挑战，正在浮现的是一个更混乱的体系，对那些一直维持着稳定、让美国稳坐头把交椅的可靠规则更具破坏性。

And unfortunately, we know all too well what happens when great powers start competing with each other more and more over vital resources and vital geographies. In fact, most of the history of war is what happens when great powers are competing with each other. It's ugly. It's messy. It's violent.

不幸的是，大国为了关键资源和关键地理位置越来越激烈地相互竞争时会发生什么，我们再清楚不过了。事实上，战争史的大部分内容，就是大国相互竞争时会发生的事。很丑陋，很混乱，很暴力。

It provokes a zero someum way of thinking. Competition racing to secure and control and exploit vital geographies like strategic choke points that lead into the most important waterway on the planet. As this rivalry heats up, Djibouti's role is going to become more complex. Its government will continue to do what it's done, playing the big powers off each other, exploiting its great real estate to benefit itself. But I believe that there comes a point in every escalating conflict where you kind of have to choose sides.

它会激发一种零和思维。大家竞相争夺、控制和利用关键地理位置，比如通往地球上最重要水道的战略咽喉要道。随着这场竞争升温，吉布提的角色会变得更加复杂。它的政府会继续做它一直在做的事：让大国互相牵制，利用自己的黄金地段为自己谋利。但我认为，每一场不断升级的冲突，都会走到一个你多少得选边站的时刻。

I want Djibouti to continue to embody the positive some thinking that has kept the world relatively stable these last 70 years, but it's definitely playing with a very delicate balancing act and there's a chance that it could stumble. So, as you all know, I will be keeping an eye on the global order as well as Djibouti to try to see where this is going to see if the great powers can continue to cooperate and compete, but cooperate or if we're heading back into the old days where competition threatens to rip the world apart. I don't think it's inevitable, but it's going to take effort to avoid it. I've been sleeping every night in the desert. Up here in the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia, it's quiet up here.

我希望吉布提能继续体现那种正和思维——正是这种思维让世界在过去70年里保持了相对稳定。但它显然是在走一根非常微妙的平衡木，而且有可能会失足。所以，你们都知道，我会一直关注全球秩序，也会关注吉布提，看看局势会往哪里走，看看大国能不能继续在合作中竞争、在竞争中合作，还是我们正在回到过去那种竞争可能把世界撕裂的老路上。我不认为这是不可避免的，但要避免它需要付出努力。我每天晚上都睡在沙漠里。在沙特阿拉伯西北角的这片地方，非常安静。

All you can hear is the wind and the sand that it whips off these endless dunes. But not far from where I sleep, there's a new sound. For years, I've been hearing about this trillion dollar futuristic city that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is building at top this sand. They're calling it Neom. And they're investing a huge amount of their vast oil wealth into making it come to life.

你能听到的只有风声，还有风从这些无边沙丘上卷起的沙子声。但离我睡觉的地方不远，有一种新的声音。多年来，我一直听说沙特阿拉伯王国正在这片沙漠上建造一座耗资万亿美元的未来城市。他们管它叫NEOM（新未来城）。他们正把巨额石油财富中的一大笔投进去，要让它变成现实。

I've been hearing about all the reasons it can't work. How this is all just a mirage of royal ambitions. And yet, even from space, you can see that they're building it. They're building something. Why would anyone try to build a futuristic city in a barren desert?

我一直听到各种说法，讲它为什么行不通，说这一切不过是王室野心的海市蜃楼。然而，就算从太空看，你也能看到他们在建。他们确实在建些什么。为什么会有人想在一片不毛的沙漠里建一座未来城市？

That is a question I've had for a very long time and one I intend to get to the bottom of. So, I'm going into NEOM to see what it looks like, to get a sense of its scale. We're looking at this fleet of dump trucks. The amount of construction activity is insane and it hasn't stopped as we've been driving along the line. The magnitude I've never seen anything close.

这个问题我想了很久，也打算把它弄个水落石出。所以我要进入NEOM，看看它长什么样，感受一下它的规模。「我们眼前是一整队自卸卡车。施工的规模简直疯狂，我们沿着『线性城市』一路开过来，就没停过。这种规模我从没见过，连接近的都没有。」

They're building mountains out I'm joined by my friend who was born in a tent out here. He knows this desert better than anyone. Every dune, every valley, all the secret water spots hidden deep in red rock slot canyons. Oh my god. I asked Solemn to bring me out into the desert.

「他们在那边堆出了一座座山。」和我同行的是我的一位朋友，他就出生在这里的一顶帐篷里。他比任何人都更了解这片沙漠：每一座沙丘，每一条山谷，还有藏在红岩狭缝峡谷深处的所有秘密水源。「我的天哪。」我请Solemn带我进沙漠。

Not only to get up close on the construction of NEOM, but also to show me how people live out here, to introduce me to members of his tribe, how they've survived for centuries. Nomadic Bedouin who represent the origin story of this desert kingdom. I wanted to put a human face to this collision of worlds, old and new. I believe this little shape on the map represents the story of Saudi Arabia, where it came from, how it got here, and why it is attempting to build these cities in the sand. I'm officially in NEOM.

不只是为了近距离看看NEOM的施工，也是想让他带我看看人们在这里怎么生活，介绍他部落里的人给我认识，看看他们几百年来是怎么生存下来的。游牧的贝都因人，代表着这个沙漠王国的起源故事。我想给这场新旧世界的碰撞找一张人的面孔。我相信，地图上这个小小的形状，讲的就是沙特阿拉伯的故事：它从哪里来，怎么走到今天，以及它为什么要在沙漠里建这些城市。我正式进入NEOM了。

And let me tell you what I'm seeing so far. Trucks, trucks, trucks, dump trucks, cargo trucks, trucks carrying excavators, trucks carrying more trucks. I've never seen so many trucks in my entire life. Oh, and these roads, a lot of them are brand new. A lot of them don't even show up on Google Maps.

跟你说说我目前看到了什么。卡车，卡车，还是卡车。自卸卡车，货运卡车，拉着挖掘机的卡车，拉着更多卡车的卡车。我这辈子都没见过这么多卡车。哦，还有这些路，很多都是全新的，很多在谷歌地图上根本找不到。

I'm looking at my phone and I'm just sort of floating in no man's land because these are all brand new roads. This is new. Everything is popping up so quickly. There's so many trucks. All of the sudden, solemn turned off one of these pristinely new roads.

我看着手机，发现自己就飘在一片无人区里，因为这些全是新修的路。「这是新的。」一切都冒得太快了。卡车太多了。突然之间，Solemn从一条崭新的路上拐了出去。

Why do you deflate the tires? For the We're now going to start driving just into the desert. Wow, this car can go everywhere. Are we going up this dune? Yeah.

「你为什么要给轮胎放气？」「为了……」「我们现在要直接开进沙漠了。哇，这车哪儿都能去。我们要开上这座沙丘吗？」「对。」

Oh, wow. Yeah. Jeez, this is insane. Damn, it's gorgeous. Okay, now we're really in the desert.

「哦，哇。」「对。」「天哪，这太疯狂了。真美。」好，现在我们真的进沙漠了。

We found a little canyon to camp in. And while I thought we'd be eating granola bars or canned soup, solemn had other plans. Did you try camel meat before? You try hashi. Hashi is dian camel.

我们找到一个小峡谷来扎营。我本以为我们会吃燕麦棒或者罐头汤，但Solemn另有安排。「你以前吃过骆驼肉吗？你尝尝『哈希』。哈希就是小骆驼。」

Rice with camel meat. The evening tradition here is to wind down with a cup of coffee. Saudi coffee is unroasted and green, infused with cardamom. It's a different taste. I like it though.

骆驼肉配米饭。这里晚上的传统是喝一杯咖啡放松一下。沙特咖啡是没烘焙过的绿色咖啡豆，加了小豆蔻。「味道不一样。不过我挺喜欢的。」

But it's still very caffeinated. Oh, and then after the coffee comes, thank you. Which again is very delicious. But how can they drink so much coffee before bed? Yeah, I can't drink too much because I the caffeine I won't be able to sleep in the morning.

「但咖啡因还是很足。」哦，喝完咖啡之后又来了——「谢谢。」——这个也还是很好喝。可他们睡前怎么能喝这么多咖啡？「对，我不能喝太多，因为咖啡因，我会睡不着。」「早上……」

I'll drink a lot of it. Okay. Wow. M. Wow.

「我会喝很多。」「好的。哇。嗯。哇。」

So, until what age did you live in the desert? Maybe until 7. Till seven. Yeah. Do you like it?

「那你在沙漠里住到几岁？」「大概到7岁吧。」「到7岁。」「对。」「你喜欢吗？」

Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I like it. It's so rare to find families in real families living in desert. The people that we are going to, they are real. Yeah.

「对，我喜欢。对，我喜欢。现在很难找到真正住在沙漠里的家庭了。我们要去见的那些人，他们是真正的。」「嗯。」

But when we move to the city, I study I go back. Oh, you go back to the desert. Even for me, I like like to have a job in the city, but I want the bedin life. I want them to stay. Soon, we'll meet the Bedouin nomads who sleep under these stars every night.

「但我们搬到城市以后，我念书，然后我又回来了。」「哦，你又回到沙漠了。」「就算是我，我也喜欢在城市里有份工作，但我想要贝都因人的生活。我想让他们留下来。」很快，我们就会见到那些每晚都睡在这片星空下的贝都因游牧民。

Look at this night full of incredible stars. Wow. The Saudi desert is proving to be exceptionally peaceful. Despite the army of trucks that, by the way, are still working here in the dead of night. They don't ever stop and haven't for years. [sighs] It is so silent here.

看看这满天不可思议的星星。哇。沙特的沙漠格外宁静。尽管顺便说一句，那支卡车大军在这深更半夜里还在干活。它们从不停歇，已经好几年都没停过了。[叹气] 这里实在太安静了。

My brain doesn't know what to do about it. It's so silent. But as the sun rises and Solemn feeds me dates and green coffee, oh, and of course more tea, I'm thinking about my mission for today. My plan is to drive all throughout NEOM to all the big construction sites and show you what they're planning on building out here with their initial budget of $500 billion, which has since ballooned to an estimated $1.5 trillion. And you're about to see why.

我的大脑都不知道该怎么应付了。太安静了。太阳升起来，Solemn给我吃椰枣、喝绿咖啡——哦，当然还有更多的茶——我在想今天的任务。我的计划是开车把NEOM转个遍，去所有的大工地，给你看看他们打算在这里建什么。初始预算是5000亿美元，后来已经膨胀到估计1.5万亿美元。你马上就会明白为什么了。

So, I made it to the coast and I'm looking at the beautiful Red Sea, which is a very beautiful kind of blue. In fact, this is Oxyon, the place where ideas can change the world. Oxagon is planned to be their futuristic industrial city. Half of it built on the water. It'll be a port where shipping can connect the world to a bunch of high-tech manufacturing, research, and logistics.

我到了海边，看着美丽的红海，那种蓝真的很美。「事实上，这里是Oxagon（八角城），一个思想可以改变世界的地方。」Oxagon计划成为他们的未来工业城，一半建在水上。它将是一个港口，航运可以在这里把世界和一大批高科技制造、研发和物流连接起来。

And then there's Sindala, which is going to be right here on the Red Sea. It's going to be a luxury resort island with plenty of parking for yachts. Hello. We picked up a hitchhiker who has been working on Sindala for years. How's it looking in Sindala?

然后还有辛达拉，就在这片红海上。它将是一座豪华度假岛，有大量停游艇的泊位。「你好。」我们捎上了一个搭便车的人，他在辛达拉干了好几年了。「辛达拉那边怎么样了？」

Finished like 99%. Really? Sindala. And then there's Magna, which is actually the name of one of these coastal villages we've just been driving next to that is no longer a village. They've forcibly relocated thousands of people for this project.

「差不多完成99%了。」「真的吗？」辛达拉。然后还有马格纳——它其实是我们刚刚路过的一个沿海村庄的名字，现在已经不再是村庄了。为了这个项目，他们强制迁走了几千人。

A top the ruins of these villages, the kingdom is building 12 luxury coastal resorts and communities. Hey, just one quick clarification here. All of those visuals are 3D renders. They they are visualizations done by NEOM to see what they want this to look like. This stuff doesn't exist yet.

在这些村庄的废墟上，王国正在建造12个豪华海滨度假村和社区。嘿，这里快速澄清一下。所有这些画面都是3D效果图。它们是NEOM做的可视化，展示他们希望这里建成什么样。这些东西现在还不存在。

And I think that maybe is obvious, but it looks so real that I just want to just make crystal clear I'm showing a lot of this stuff from the hypy promo visuals that have come out from Neon. So, that's one thing. Also, check out some of this footage I got while I was on a dune. Was floating around on this dune. This is me shooting from the drone.

我想这也许很明显，但它们看起来太真实了，所以我想说得一清二楚：我放的很多东西都来自NEOM发布的那些炒作味十足的宣传画面。这是一件事。另外，看看我在一座沙丘上拍到的一些画面。我在这座沙丘上方飞来飞去。这是我用无人机拍的。

But suddenly on the other side of this massive dune, there are these green circles. When I was planning my trip to Saudi Arabia, I got really interested in these things, but that has nothing to do with NEOM. So, I hopped on the phone with my new colleague, Kristoff, and asked him to go down the deep dive rabbit hole of why there's a bunch of green circles in the Saudi desert. And he did so, and he made an entire video about what he learned. That video is live right now on our new channel, Tunnel Vision.

但突然之间，在这座巨大沙丘的另一边，出现了一些绿色的圆圈。我在计划沙特之行的时候，对这些东西特别感兴趣，不过它们跟NEOM一点关系都没有。所以我给新同事克里斯托夫打了个电话，请他去深挖一下，为什么沙特的沙漠里会有一堆绿色圆圈。他照做了，还把他了解到的东西做成了一整期视频。那期视频现在已经在我们的新频道Tunnel Vision上线了。

I think you're going to like it. Built on some pretty wild designs, ideas, and concepts, including a vast subterranean digital community inside a mountain. Magna, the coast of Neon. Yeah, right there. And then there's Trojana up here in the mountains.

我想你会喜欢的。「建立在一些相当疯狂的设计、想法和概念之上，包括在一座山里打造一个巨大的地下数字社区。马格纳，NEOM的海岸。」「对，就在那儿。」然后还有山区上面的特罗耶纳。

Yes, there are big mountains here. It's going to be a luxury tourist destination for adventure and wellness retreats complete with an artificial lake and outdoor activities like mountain biking and skiing. Yes, I just said skiing. Up here in the mountains, it gets kind of cold in the winter and snow falls. Definitely not enough for skiing, but enough for them to make fake snow and make ski slopes.

没错，这里有大山。它将成为一个豪华旅游目的地，主打探险和养生度假，配有一座人工湖，还有山地自行车和滑雪之类的户外活动。没错，我刚才说的是滑雪。这上面的山里冬天会挺冷的，也会下雪。肯定不够滑雪的，但足够让他们造人工雪、修滑雪道了。

They're building a man-made lake. In fact, they're doing it right now. I'm looking up at the mountain and seeing the plumes of smoke from the dynamite that they're using to do whatever they need to do to build an artificial lake. Oh, and by the way, that's the mountain where Moses talked to God and got the Ten Commandments like a few thousand years ago. There is no freedom without the law.

他们正在造一座人工湖。事实上，就是现在正在造。我抬头看着山，看到他们用炸药炸出的一股股烟尘，为了建人工湖，他们得做什么就做什么。哦，顺便说一句，那座山就是大约几千年前摩西和上帝对话、领受十诫的地方。「没有律法，就没有自由。」

Who is on the Lord's side? Welcome to Trojanna, the mountains of Neon. This is all so strange. And then of course the one you've maybe heard about and yes, it's being built. I've been driving along it all morning and I can't really fathom what I'm seeing.

「谁站在耶和华这一边？」「欢迎来到特罗耶纳，NEOM的群山。」这一切都太奇怪了。然后当然还有那个你也许听说过的项目——没错，它正在建。我整个上午都在沿着它开，实在没法理解我看到的东西。

I continue to have my mind blown at the scale of this. They say the line is going to be a futuristic city that stretches 170 km and run on renewable energy and artificial intelligence. They want 10 million people to come live here. Like a whole New York city of people inside of this line in the Just the digging alone, the amount of earth that they are moving is jaw-dropping. The magnitude is like they're building they're building mountains out there and moving so much earth.

它的规模一次又一次让我震撼。他们说，「线性城市」将是一座绵延170公里的未来城市，靠可再生能源和人工智能运转。他们希望有1000万人来这里生活。相当于一整个纽约市的人口住进这条线里。光是挖掘本身，他们移动的土方量就让人瞠目结舌。「这个规模，就像他们在那边堆出一座座山，挪动了那么多的土。」

Now, I thought I had seen a lot of trucks before, but as I drove along the line, I started to get slightly dizzy, having a hard time processing the scale of all of this. All of these machines working nonstop every hour of every day for years, moving sand, making mountains, and carving a straight line into the All of this seems impossible. So much of the reporting on NEOM has been focused on how implausible, expensive, and delusional this project is. And that's all well and good if that's what you want to focus on. But to me, that's not that interesting.

我原以为我之前已经见过很多卡车了，但沿着「线性城市」开下去，我开始有点头晕，很难消化这一切的规模。所有这些机器，年复一年，每天每个小时都在不停地干活，移沙子，堆山，在……上刻出一条直线。这一切看起来都不可能。关于NEOM的报道，很多都集中在这个项目多么不切实际、多么昂贵、多么异想天开。如果你想关注的是这些，那当然也没问题。但对我来说，那没那么有意思。

What I'm most interested in understanding is why we found a little cave last night and camped here. Soomn invited some of his friends out. Hey guys. Hi. How's it going?

我最想弄明白的是为什么——昨晚我们找到一个小山洞，在这里扎了营。Solemn邀请了他的几个朋友过来。「嘿，伙计们。」「嗨。」「最近怎么样？」

Good. This is so cool? Yeah, it is. We all sat around the fire, me listening while they laughed and joked in Arabic. And then began cooking yet another delicious meal.

「挺好的。」「这太酷了吧？」「对，确实。」我们都围坐在火堆旁，他们用阿拉伯语说说笑笑，我在一旁听着。然后他们又开始做另一顿美味的饭。

This time, goat. Cooked in goat milk with flatbread. Wow. This is awesome. Wow.

这次是山羊。用羊奶炖，配着大饼。「哇。太棒了。哇。」

Not good. I'm admittedly a little groggy after sleeping a few nights on the desert floor. We're just sledding down a massive dune in a car and it's as smooth as butter where they're making. That's going to be kind of crazy to have skiing in Saudi Arabia? Was like a hiking trail.

「不好。」我得承认，在沙漠地上睡了几晚之后，我有点迷迷糊糊的。「我们开着车从一座巨大的沙丘上往下滑，顺滑得像黄油一样，就在他们正在造……的地方。」「在沙特阿拉伯滑雪，那会挺疯狂的吧？」「以前就像一条徒步小道。」

Yeah, really. But with this Noah, this is new. Today, Soomn is introducing me to members of his tribe. Is this him? It'll be the polar opposite of yesterday's tour through Neam's construction.

「对，真的。」「但现在有了这个NEOM，这是新的。」今天，Solemn要带我去见他部落里的人。「是他吗？」这将跟昨天参观NEOM工地的行程截然相反。

He put on his traditional Saudi clothing so as not to surprise the members of his tribe that he has indeed become a modern city man. We arrive to a remote patch of desert where a few tents are set up. The elder of this family warmly invites me in Johnny. Hi to sit for coffee. And then of course more tea.

他换上了沙特传统服装，免得让部落里的人吃惊于他真的已经变成了一个现代城里人。我们来到一片偏远的沙漠，那里搭着几顶帐篷。这家的长者热情地请我进去。「约翰尼。」「嗨。」请我坐下喝咖啡。然后当然还有更多的茶。

And at this point I'm just embracing the caffeine. They tell me that the only Westerners they've ever seen out here are the ones looking for oil. That it's very strange to see me showing up to learn about their culture and especially with a camera. So, how how long have you lived here? This two months.

到了这会儿，我已经彻底拥抱咖啡因了。他们告诉我，他们在这里见过的西方人，只有来找石油的。看到我跑来了解他们的文化，而且还带着摄像机，他们觉得很稀奇。「那你在这里住了多久了？」「这里两个月了。」

Yeah. I got to meet their animals, extended members of this nomadic family. So, this family's been here in this site and um they'll move again when the season tells them to. They basically are here grazing their camels and their goats. And God, they've got a beautiful view.

「嗯。」我见到了他们的牲畜，它们也算是这个游牧家庭的成员。「这家人一直住在这个地方，嗯，等季节告诉他们该走了，他们就会再搬。他们在这里基本上就是放骆驼、放山羊。天哪，他们这儿的景色真美。」

My god, those So, wait, he's the shepherd. You're the shepherd? Wow, that's cool. Do you ever get lost in the desert? No, no, he's a pro.

「我的天，那些……」「等等，他是牧人？你是牧人？哇，真酷。你在沙漠里迷过路吗？」「没有没有，他是行家。」

He's a pro on that donkey. These people's lives depend on moving these animals through the desert in search for scarce food. A theme I hear from a lot of people who live out here is the just sense of peace and simplicity that they get that they realize that the city could never bring. What What do you like about out here that makes you stay? So when you go to the city city no this is a better life man this sunset is gorgeous.

「他骑驴可是行家。」这些人的生计全靠赶着这些牲畜穿越沙漠，寻找稀少的草料。我从很多住在这里的人那里反复听到一个主题：他们在这里得到的那种平静和简单，是他们意识到城市永远给不了的。「你喜欢这里什么，让你留下来？」「去城市的话……城市，不行，这才是更好的生活。」「伙计，这落日太美了。」

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. As the group faces east to perform their fourth of five prayers they do each day, I'm looking west.

「好。」「对。对。」「挺好的。」这群人面朝东方，做他们每天五次礼拜中的第四次，而我望向西方。

Just over those mountains, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is digging a giant line in the sand. Working day and night to reshape this desert. Building their high-tech eco city. For most of its history, this was the way of life out here on this peninsula. And it may have remained such to this day, but eventually the Bedouin on this peninsula united and unbeknownst to anyone was sitting at top a sea of black gold.

就在那片山的另一边，沙特阿拉伯王国正在沙子上挖出一条巨大的线，日夜不停地重塑这片沙漠，建造他们的高科技生态城市。在这个半岛的大部分历史里，这里的生活方式就是这样的。它本来也许会一直延续到今天，但后来，这个半岛上的贝都因人统一了，而谁也不知道，他们正坐在一片黑金之海上面。

Oil in commercial quantities averaging about 200,000 barrels a day. To handle this huge volume, the expanding program requires an increase of permanent personnel to a total of more than 15,000 AR. Oil changed everything. The kingdom rapidly modernized. The king sees the oil development as the greatest single means to modernize his country and improve the living standards of his people.

「商业储量的石油，平均每天约20万桶。为了处理这么大的产量，不断扩张的项目需要增加常驻人员，总数超过15000人。」石油改变了一切。王国迅速现代化。「国王把石油开发视为使国家现代化、改善人民生活水平的最重要手段。」

All while still maintaining a deep connection with Islamic law and the rules and norms of Bedouin life. And despite this rapid modernization, hundreds of thousands of people still maintain the nomadic lifestyle. It is a link to their past. They're talking They are talking about something that they they see it these days. The people travel by uh like by cycling.

与此同时，它依然和伊斯兰教法、和贝都因生活的规矩与习俗保持着深厚的联系。尽管现代化来得这么快，仍然有几十万人保持着游牧的生活方式。这是他们与过去的纽带。「他们在说……他们在说他们如今看到的一些事。人们出行，呃，比如骑自行车。」

The conversation goes into the night and I knew I had to ask them about Neil. Can you ask them what their thoughts are and all the all the building that's happening? I have to be sensitive here. Cuz I'm reminded where I am. Saudi Arabia isn't a place where citizens, nomads or not, can speak critically about their kingdom.

谈话一直持续到深夜，我知道我得问问他们对NEOM的看法。「你能问问他们怎么看，怎么看正在进行的这些建设吗？」我在这里得谨慎一点。因为我意识到了自己身在何处。在沙特阿拉伯，公民——不管是不是游牧民——都不能批评自己的王国。

I got nervous looks and vague answers. But one thing is for certain that the Saudi government has been paying and compensating anyone who has been affected by these projects. Out of respect, I decide not to push it. It's not worth it. We're sitting around a huge platter of camel meat and fragrant rice.

我得到的是紧张的眼神和含糊的回答。「但有一点是肯定的：沙特政府一直在给受这些项目影响的每个人付钱、给补偿。」出于尊重，我决定不再追问。不值得。我们围坐在一大盘骆驼肉和香喷喷的米饭旁边。

So, where I'm from, there's no camels. No, no camels. I've never seen a camel until yesterday. The elder generously showing his hospitality by finding the juiciest chunks of camel meat and fat and passing them to me. Thank you.

「我来的地方没有骆驼。」「没有，没有骆驼。」「我直到昨天才第一次见到骆驼。」长者大方地尽地主之谊，挑出最多汁的骆驼肉和肥肉块递给我。「谢谢。」

No. And I'm realizing that this moment is a glimpse into one of the oldest surviving cultures on Earth. The family invites us to sleep near their tent. Another night, another sky full of I'm really feeling it. Just how fast the change has come to this desert.

「不了。」我意识到，这一刻让我得以窥见地球上现存最古老的文化之一。这家人请我们睡在他们的帐篷附近。又一个夜晚，又一片满天的……我真切地感受到了，变化来到这片沙漠的速度有多快。

Where nomads whose movement and lifestyle hark back to the earliest civilizations and who are now living a stones throw away from the construction of a futuristic city that is attempting to define the next chapter of human civilization. It feels like too much to process. I couldn't help but feel worried for this link to the past. So oil transformed this desert but soon a problem began to arise. Slowly, the world has started coming to terms with the reality that burning oil to run our world is turning the planet into a place that's not conducive for human life.

这里的游牧民，他们的迁徙和生活方式可以追溯到最早的文明，而他们如今住的地方，离一座试图定义人类文明下一篇章的未来城市的工地，只有一箭之遥。这让人有点消化不了。我忍不住为这条与过去的纽带感到担忧。石油改变了这片沙漠，但很快，一个问题开始浮现。世界慢慢开始接受这样一个现实：烧石油来驱动我们的世界，正在把这颗星球变成一个不适合人类生活的地方。

The International Energy Agency predicts that the world will hit peak oil demand in 2030, at which time demand will start to fall. Other predictions say it'll take longer, but everyone agrees that the future of this world is not oil. This is bad news for Saudi Arabia, a country that has nothing but oil. Aramco, the stateowned oil company. Second quarter profits there, tumbling by more than a third from last year's record highs.

国际能源署预测，世界石油需求将在2030年见顶，届时需求将开始下降。也有其他预测说需要更长时间，但所有人都同意，这个世界的未来不是石油。这对沙特阿拉伯来说是个坏消息，这个国家除了石油什么都没有。「阿美公司，这家国有石油公司，第二季度利润较去年的历史高点下跌了超过三分之一。」

Oil transformed this desert kingdom into a modern, powerful country. And in order for them to retain that status, they're going to need to use the money from that oil to transform themselves again. Enter NEOM. Saudi Arabia wants to replace its oil economy with new economies, new industries, some of which they want to invent. This kingdom that has been historically closed is now open.

石油把这个沙漠王国变成了一个现代、强大的国家。而要保住这个地位，他们需要用石油赚来的钱再一次改造自己。NEOM登场。沙特阿拉伯想用新的经济、新的产业来取代石油经济，其中一些产业他们甚至想自己发明出来。这个历史上一直封闭的王国，如今开放了。

Welcoming tourists for the first time. Welcome to Arabia. Get your visa now. Let's go to Sund are here. Hoping to attract the world.

第一次欢迎游客。「欢迎来到阿拉伯。现在就办签证吧。」「我们去……」「来了。」希望吸引全世界。

This is something neighboring Dubai has done successfully. The spirit of Dubai, but Saudi Arabia plans to do it on a whole new level. I'll tell you one thing, the water here is beautiful. On that note, I was surprised at how welcome I felt here. Every person I met greeted me with kindness, an eagerness to show me their culture.

这是邻国迪拜已经做成功了的事。「迪拜精神。」但沙特阿拉伯打算把它做到一个全新的层次。「我跟你说，这里的海水真美。」说到这个，我很意外自己在这里感到这么受欢迎。我遇到的每个人都友善地招呼我，热切地想给我展示他们的文化。

But it's not just about tourism. Nom is manufacturing, sustainability, technology, sports, education, media, and even an attempt to reinvent cities themselves. They also want to use all this oil money to stay on top of global energy. All of this hot sun is great for solar energy. And while driving around, I saw endless fields of wind turbines.

但这不只是旅游的事。NEOM涵盖制造业、可持续发展、科技、体育、教育、媒体，甚至还试图重新发明城市本身。他们还想用这些石油钱继续稳坐全球能源的头把交椅。这里火辣辣的太阳非常适合太阳能。开车转悠的时候，我看到了一望无际的风力发电机阵列。

And they can use this to make new forms of hydrogen energy that they can ship around the world. And the reason why all these promo videos look like a Hollywood movie is because they can't do this without investors from the outside world. They need people to come live here. So my husband got offered a job for Nom in Saudi Arabia and we decided to make the move. They need them to play here, raise children here, somehow have a life here, and most crucially to invest in these projects.

他们可以用这些来制造新型氢能，运往世界各地。而所有这些宣传片之所以看起来像好莱坞大片，是因为没有外部世界的投资者，他们做不成这件事。他们需要人来这里生活。「我丈夫拿到了沙特阿拉伯NEOM的一份工作，于是我们决定搬过来。」他们需要这些人在这里玩，在这里养孩子，想办法在这里过日子，而最关键的是，投资这些项目。

And what are we calling it? The line. So, not unlike a startup, NEOM is pitching the world on this impossible sounding vision with the hopes that people will buy it, invest in it, and make some version of it a reality. So do you feel excited about Neo? Like yes.

「那我们管它叫什么？『线性城市』。」所以，跟一家创业公司没什么不同，NEOM正在向全世界推销这个听起来不可能的愿景，希望人们会买账、会投资，把它的某个版本变成现实。「那你对NEOM感到兴奋吗？」「算是吧，是的。」

Yeah. Why? I wouldn't do this this business without NEOM. Before NEOM. Everyone want to like check on internet what is NEOM.

「对。」「为什么？」「没有NEOM，我就不会做这门生意。在NEOM之前……现在每个人都想上网查查NEOM是什么。」

Then uh they need a tour guide. I have more than uh 30 tour guides working with me. Wow. So it's it's a big business now and it's all because of NEOM. So, while Soomn is seeing the benefits of this project, the effects for others in this region are less certain.

「然后，呃，他们就需要导游。我手下有超过，呃，30个导游。」「哇。」「所以现在这是一门大生意，全都是因为NEOM。」所以，Solemn看到了这个项目带来的好处，但对这个地区的其他人来说，影响就没那么确定了。

We're driving by some of the towns that have been demolished. The people forced to move to make way for the construction of NEOM. They were given money to rebuild their lives somewhere else. But some refused to leave, signing a petition to protest this forced eviction. One even posted to social media voicing his outrage.

我们开车经过一些已经被拆除的城镇。那里的人为了给NEOM的施工让路，被迫搬走。他们拿到了钱，去别的地方重建生活。但有些人拒绝离开，联名签署请愿书，抗议这次强制驱逐。其中一人甚至在社交媒体上发帖，表达他的愤怒。

A risky move in a place where freedom of speech isn't really a thing. Soon he was locked in a shootout with security forces that left him dead. This is when Saudi officials reportedly handed over the body of Abdul Rahim al-Hueti to his tribe. His family denies the official narrative that Abdul Rahim was a terrorist. At least 47 other villagers were detained on terror related charges and five of them are now on death row.

在一个言论自由基本不存在的地方，这是冒险之举。很快，他就跟安全部队发生了枪战，在枪战中身亡。「据报道，就在这时，沙特官员把阿卜杜勒·拉希姆·胡韦提的遗体交还给了他的部落。他的家人否认官方所说阿卜杜勒·拉希姆是恐怖分子的说法。」至少还有47名村民以恐怖主义相关罪名被拘留，其中5人如今在等待执行死刑。

The scale and riskiness of these projects speaks to the scale of Saudi Arabia's challenge. They need something to keep them afloat after oil goes away. So, they're betting the family farm on a few massive projects. Many will likely fail, but even if a few of these work out as planned, it could be their next oil. Lifting this kingdom into the future.

这些项目的规模和风险，说明了沙特阿拉伯面临的挑战有多大。石油没了以后，他们需要某样东西让自己继续浮在水面上。所以他们把全部家当押在了几个超大型项目上。很多项目可能会失败，但哪怕其中只有几个按计划做成了，它们就可能成为他们的下一个石油，托着这个王国走向未来。

That's the calculus here. But what's clear is that this kingdom isn't stopping anytime soon. Our economy is in recession and the civilized world faces unprecedented danger. Dangers. Yet the state of our union has never been stronger.

这就是这里的算计。但很清楚的是，这个王国短期内不会停下来。「我们的经济正陷入衰退，文明世界面临前所未有的危险。」「危险。」「然而，我们国家的状况从未如此强大。」