Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74279 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

Before you buy this book - read the following
I bought this book along with 'Occupational Hazards'. I had looked carefully at both descriptions and although I was suspicious because the titles are so similar - since they had different ISBNs - I ordered both. The content of both books is identical. Please don't make the mistake I did - you only need one of these. Haven't read it yet so can't review it. I filled in the stars because I had to.

deceptive marketing
Unlike the previous reviewer, I only bought the UK edition. I now find this top of my list of recommended products from Amazon BECAUSE I bought the UK edition, despite the fact that they are exactly the same book in UK and US editions. I sincerely hope that Amazon will fix this. That said, the book is very readable.

No good deed goes unpunished
"... (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. But, 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 out to rule The Empire could administrate with both carrot and stick, the former being sacks of gold and the latter the act of shooting down malcontents gathered in front of the Residency. In Iraq, the CPA had only the carrot - bags of dollars and good intentions. Perhaps, in Stewart's narrative, the reader can discern a wistfulness for the approach of times past when serving the Queen involved simpler, more direct methods. The closest Rory 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."