Scottish author and diplomat Rory Stewart has packed a lifetime of fascinating experiences into his 33 years. In this interesting interview tucked into the weekend Wall Street Journal ($), the WSJ’s Jeffrey Trachtenberg talks with Stewart, who has become one of the foremost authorities on the day-to-day problems involved in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan after years of brutal totalitarian governments.
Born in Hong Kong, Stewart went on to receive undergraduate and master’s degrees in Modern History and Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford University, and has written for the New York Times Magazine, Granta and the London Review of Books. After college, Stewart served in the British Army and Foreign Office in a variety of capacities before electing in 2000 to set off on a two-year, 6,000 mile walking journey through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal. He chronicled his journey through Afghanistan during the the winter of 2002 in The Places in Between (Picador/Macmillan 2004), which Harcourt Harvest published this past May in paperback.
Stewart returned to public service in late 2003 as Deputy Governorate Coordinator (Amara/Maysan) and Senior Adviser and Deputy Governorate Coordinator (Nasiriyah/Dhi Qar) in which Stewart established the governance structures of Maysan province, resolved tribal disputes to restore security and consolidate the authority of the Iraqi government and the police, set up NGOs and civil society organizations, ran municipal elections, inaugurated a new Provincial Council in Dhi Qar and saw the province through to the transfer of sovereignty in June 2004. Stewart was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by the British Government for his service in Iraq.
Last week, Harcourt published Stewart’s second book — The Prince of the Marshes — in which Stewart describes his recent experiences in Iraq, including the troubling problem of persuading the Iraqis to embrace the Coalition’s mission there and the abject failure of a Coalition military unit from Italy to come to Mr. Stewart’s rescue when his compound came under a brutal mortar attack. During the WSJ interview, Stewart provides many insights into the practical problems involved in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, including the following:

Q: Did you expect to find the Afghanistan you describe in your first book — poor, hungry and feudalistic?
A: No, I was surprised. I wasn’t prepared for how poor and remote from the rest of the world Afghanistan turned out to be.
Q: Is Afghanistan going to be a perpetual war zone?
A: For the next generation it will be fragile and unstable. You’re unlikely to have much government control of the tribal areas. People have a very strong sense of honor and admiration for courage. Particularly young men can become quite excitable and sympathetic towards violence. The older generation would like peace. But half the population is under 18, and that’s where a lot of the trouble is coming from.
Q: Very few people you met [in Afghanistan] seemed opposed to the Taliban. Does this suggest that fundamentalism is part of the country’s culture?
A: Rural communities are much more conservative in their Islamic beliefs than we acknowledge. If they had problems with the Taliban it had to do with burning their village, or stealing a donkey. But they were in favor of the social codes. In Kabul, there is a lot of unhappiness that people are allowed to drink alcohol. Outside the urban areas you’ll find people are surprisingly xenophobic.
Q: Near the end of book, you describe a mortar and small arms attack on your compound in Nasiriyah. Is Iraq the new Yugoslavia, a country that only a tyrant could govern?
A: I don’t know the answer to that question. Certain Iraqis seem to want a more authoritarian government. We were pushing for gentler policing, but a lot of Iraqis were suspicious of that. Iraq probably needs a very firm government to restore security. What it needs above all are good politicians flexible enough to restore a sense of national identity.
Q: In light of the behavior of the Italian Quick Reaction Force when your compound was attacked, what chance is there that a multinational armed force can successfully serve as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon?
A: This is a real problem. I don’t believe in multinational armed forces except as a symbol. As a fighting force they are often inadequate militarily. Their strength is political; their presence spreads the blame. A coalition says a broader section of the international community is involved. The interesting thing is that the Nasiriyah province is looking better than some other parts of Iraq. Perhaps the Italian approach of doing very little turned out to have positive consequences, in that the Iraqis sorted themselves out rather than relying on foreigners.

Jonathan Tepperman, deputy managing editor of Foreign Affairs, has more on the folly of relying on a multinational force to resolve the ongoing Hezbollah-Israeli conflict.