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| The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq | 
 enlarge | Author: Rory Stewart
Publisher: Harvest Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (61 reviews)
Sales Rank: 24015
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0156032791
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.704431
EAN: 9780156032797
ASIN: 0156032791
Publication Date: April 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In August 2003, at the age of thirty, Rory Stewart took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad. A Farsi-speaking British diplomat, he was soon appointed deputy governor of Amarah and then Nasiriyah, provinces in the remote, impoverished marsh regions of southern Iraq. He spent the next eleven months negotiating hostage releases, holding elections, and splicing together some semblance of an infrastructure for a population of millions teetering on the brink of civil war.
The Prince of the Marshes tells the story of Stewart?s year. As a participant, he takes us inside the occupation and beyond the Green Zone, introducing us to a colorful cast of Iraqis and revealing the complexity and fragility of a society we struggle to understand. By turns funny and harrowing, moving and incisive, this book amounts to a unique portrait of heroism and the tragedy that intervention inevitably courts in the modern age.
(08/08/2006)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 56 more reviews...
 On the Ground November 22, 2008
Having read "Places in Between" and this book I have a pretty simple thing to say about this author; he writes about what he lives through and what he lives through is worth writing about. I'm his reader. That's the least I can do.
-- Mike Yinger
Personal Depiction of Governing Post War Iraq October 18, 2008
Rory Stewart, who is currently head of an NGO in Afghanistan, was hired at the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, to be a regional Governor Coordinator, representing the Coalition Provincial Authority in southern Iraq. Stewart, like many CPA administrators outside of the Green Zone, tells a tale of having a huge mandate, little guidance from Baghdad, little money to execute plans, a huge security vacuum, and a multitude of competing interests among the Iraqis he dealt with.
This is an exciting book, and a great depiction of the difficulties of trying to create a success in the first year of the occupation of Iraq.
For historical perspective, this is a great book.
No good deed goes unpunished October 17, 2008
"... (Provincial governorate coordinator) Molly (Phee) would open her office door and step back at the sight of dozens of fat flies lazily circumnavigating her desk ... We tried blue bowls of poison paste and, when that failed, military fogging spray sent by the British Battle Group. These methods made us sick but had little effect on the flies." - Author Rory Stewart
Perhaps the above quote from THE PRINCE OF THE MARSHES could just as well represent the overall experience of the nations of the Allied Coalition during their presence in Iraq since the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
In September 2003, Brit Rory Stewart took up position as the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA) deputy governorate coordinator in the Iraqi province of Maysan at the behest of the British Foreign Office; British troops occupied Maysan subsequent to Saddam's downfall. Young Rory was offered the position on the strength of his twenty previous months in Asia, including Afghanistan, and his knowledge of Farsi (though little Arabic).
My description of Stewart as "young" is only supposed as his age goes unrevealed. However, contemporary photos of him in Iraq suggest he was twenty at the time going on fifteen. But never mind, personal gravitas isn't conditional on years, apparently at least when dealing with radical Muslim clerics and quarrelsome Arab tribal sheikhs.
Rory manned his position in Maysan until March 2004, when he assumed the same in the adjoining province of Dhi Qar, this one occupied by the Italians.
Stewart's mandate on both assignments was to help the CPA's governorate coordinator prepare the locals for the resumption of self-government in June 2004. Presuming that Stewart volunteered out of idealism, his own narrative in THE PRINCE OF THE MARSHES may be eloquent argument that no good deed goes unpunished. In any case, he's a better man than I.
The book includes a section of sixteen black and white photographs that only haphazardly relate to the text. Creating a photographic record of his time in-country was understandably not high on Stewart's list of priorities, especially when literally under siege in the governorate's compound. Oddly, however, there's not even one photo of the Maysan strongman for whom the volume is titled, The Prince of the Marshes, Abu Hatim.
As the United States remains mired in Iraq, THE PRINCE OF THE MARSHES stands as a testament to the untenable position of Western reasonableness when confronted with the Middle-Eastern stewpot of long-standing tribal and religious rivalries and hatreds. (True, there's tribalism in the West also. Just go to any city council meeting holding public discussions on a divisive topic. At least in my home town, once the final vote is taken, shooting doesn't break out; the battles shift to the courts. I can't speak for, say, Texas.)
And a simmering Afghanistan, a past thorn in the side to both the British and Soviet empires, can apparently expect a further escalation of Western military involvement. If Iraq is Dubya's War, Afghanistan will be Obama's or McCain's Interminable War. They, and the American public, just don't know it yet.
After finishing THE PRINCE OF THE MARSHES, one must at least stand in awe of Saddam Hussein's ability, brutal thug that he was, to keep the lid on. One is tempted to believe that the country got what it deserved. On the other hand, in reference to his responsibilities in Iraq, Rory makes the point that he and his fellow CPA administrators weren't there as colonial officers in the traditional sense. The young men 19th century Britain sent forth to rule the Empire could persuade with both carrot and stick, the former being sacks of gold and the latter the shooting down of troublesome natives brandishing weapons at the gates of the Residency. In Iraq, the CPA had only the carrot - bundles of dollars and good intentions. Perhaps, in Stewart's narrative, the reader can discern a wistfulness for times past when serving the Queen involved simpler, more direct methods of stern but paternalistic control. After all, the Empire lasted for well more than a century, but dodgy stability, as witnessed by Rory in Iraq, was usually measured in days. The closest he comes to hindsight is his statement in the Epilogue:
"The job of an administrator on the ground in Iraq was not the job of a diplomat, a development worker or a soldier: it was the job of a 1920s Chicago ward politician."
A troublesome perspective October 10, 2008
The author tells us his experience while never giving his opinion. At the end, it is very difficult not to have a very sad picture of how our intervention in Irak is going to end. It is easy to read, it is important to read it.
Highly opinionated, politically incorrect and not at all "big picture" September 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Fascinating read about Stewarts's stint as an "assistant provincial governor" of sorts for the Coalition, running from Sept 2003 to Aug 2004, IIRC.
It reminded me of The Assassins' Gate in its focus on individual Iraqis. Stewart has some experience dealing with Muslim societies from the bottom up and is certainly opinionated about the good and bad points of both the Coalition and the Iraqis. Much of his writing is both sympathetic and paternalistic towards Iraqis.
Basically, his oft-stated point of view goes somewhat like this: Iraqis respect strength, can be back-stabbing when they see weakness, yet are oddly honor-bound and sentimental as well. Saddam's state was a nanny socialist state and Iraqis just don't get that the Coalition can't and won't wave magic wands to run the country. Corruption is supreme.
On the Coalition side, in the Green Zone, unrealistic idealism reigns and very little is done that applies to a post-Saddam Islamic state. The Coalition is depicted as out of touch with the common folk, incapable of knocking heads together politically, cheap on small budgetary items but capable of wasting huge sums of money. Additionally, it is depicted as too reluctant to use force in political affairs (keeping in mind that the US army in 2003-2004 was pretty bomb happy during terrorist hunting).
Many, too many, of the protagonists on both sides die as well.
According to Stewart, too much emphasis is placed on woolly Western civic notions and picking just the "right" Iraqi partners. The most politically successful Iraqis seem to be those who manage to stay distant from the Coalition. Stewart's viewpoint is that colonial officers were infinitely more competent at managing client states than today's globe-trotting, short-rotation technocrats. Yet, he also thinks that delaying elections till things were "just right" was a huge mistake. His ideal occupying power would: a) not hesitate to be tough on civil disorder, b) not try to graft foreign notions (yep, like women's rights in Iraq - I said it wasn't PC), c) really care for the Iraqis' well-being. The Coalition fails on all counts, according to Stewart.
Most chapters are prefixed with quotations from Machiavelli which meshes well with the Prince of the title, who is depicted as an opportunistic political animal that never does anything useful. Maybe honoring that famous Italian is meant to make up for the general scorn Stewart heaps on the Italian army's contributions in Iraq?
This book is opinionated, and not scholarly but it remains a fascinating insight into Iraqi society and the challenges faced by the Coalition in 2003 and 2004 - the message is pretty much that it was never going to be easy and it's made me a little more cautious about second-guessing what was done. I would really rather give it 4.5 stars rather than 5 because there is little in the way of references and it remains a bunch of strung together anecdotes. But just read it and take with a grain of salt.
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