Rory Stewart walks from Herat to Kabul, Afghanistan in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban and chronicles his experience in "The Places in Between." His book provides an excellent first hand account of the diverse cultures in Afghanistan, as well as an introduction to the local cultures and languages.
The book is essentially a cleaned up publication of his journal and lacks story and character development. The nail-biting parts of the book include his encounters with corrupt government officials, belligerent soldiers and his battle with the elements crossing the high mountain passes in central Afghanistan.
"The Places in Between" is worth reading to understand more about Afghanistan and the impact of the arrival and exit of the Taliban. In addition to the daily travel experiences, several deeper themes emerge Stewart's book.
His Purpose
When asked why he was risking his life (as the only foreign tourist in Afghanistan at the time) to walk across Afghanistan, Stewart replies:
"...Afghanistan was the missing section of my walk, the place in between the deserts and the Himalayas, between Persian, Hellenic, and Hindu culture, between Islam and Buddhism, between mystical and militant Islam. I wanted to see where these cultures merged into one another or touched the global world.
I talked about how I had been walking one afternoon in Scotland and thought: why don't I just keep going? There was, I said, a magic in leaving a line of footprints stretching behind me across Asia."
Stewart is a journalist and historian, specializing in Asia. He previously walked in India and Nepal, among other countries before taking on this journey in Afghanistan. He is armed with the diary of Babur, a Mughal emperor from Central Asia who founded the Mughal Dynasty in South Asia. Stewart follows the path of Babur's trek across Afghanistan in the 1500's and compares notes with his experience throughout the book.
On Western Policy and Islam
Stewart comments on the West's ignorant and dangerous attitude towards Islam in 2001:
"Blair's confidently casual handling of the (Koran) was not supposed to be patronizing or presumptuous, but to display his sensitivity to Islamic culture. He seemed to assume the Koran resembled the Protestant Bible, which can be translated without problem, easily understood; freed of apocrypha; opened to interpretation by laypeople; and physically handled much like any other book. This assumption may be shared by other Christian commentators such as Bush. In November 2001, a photograph showed Bush casually dragging a Koran across a table with his unclean left hand, while the mullah who presented the book struggled to smile.
Much of the British media followed Blair in defining Islam almost exclusively in terms of the Koran without reference to the text's cultural context. They might not have been as quick to reduce the Catholic Church to the gospels. But perhaps they were more interested in changing Islam than in describing it. On September 16, 2001, the Guardian remarked that the houris the Koran promises for sexual services, and implied the suicide bombers had been misled. A month later, the Observer wrote of one version of the faith, "This is not Islam any more than the Ku Klux Klan is Christianity." Commentators rarely described the variety of Islamic beliefs and practices. This may have been because their comments were primarily intended to calm anti-Muslim sentiment in Britain (and perhaps, in the case of Tony Blair, appeal to Muslim coalition partners)."
On the U.S.-led Campaign in Afghanistan
Stewart's primary criticism of the U.S. post-military effort in Afghanistan is the hiring of people with little or no experience in Afghanistan to shape the country's future.
"...I now had a half dozen friends working in Afghanistan in embassies, think tanks, international development agencies, the United Nations, and the Afghan government, controlling projects worth millions of dollars. A year before, they had been in Kosovo or East Timor and a year later they would be in Iraq or offices in New York and Washington.
Their objective was (to quote the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) "the creation of a centralized, broad-based, multi-ethnic government committed to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law." They worked twelve- or fourteen-hour days drafting documents for heavily funded initiatives on "democratization," "enhancing capacity," "gender," "sustainable development," "skills training," or "protection issues." They were mostly in their late twenties or early thirties, with at least two degrees - often in international law, economics, or development. They came from middle-class backgrounds in Western countries, and in the evenings, they dined with each other and swapped anecdotes about corruption in the government and the incompetence of the United Nations. They rarely drove their SUVs outside Kabul because their security advisers forbade it."
Rory Stewart walks from Herat to Kabul, Afghanistan in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban and chronicles his experience in "The Places in Between." His book provides an excellent first hand account of the diverse cultures in Afghanistan, as well as an introduction to the local cultures and languages.
The book is essentially a cleaned up publication of his journal and lacks story and character development. The nail-biting parts of the book include his encounters with corrupt government officials, belligerent soldiers and his battle with the elements crossing the high mountain passes in central Afghanistan.
"The Places in Between" is worth reading to understand more about Afghanistan and the impact of the arrival and exit of the Taliban. In addition to the daily travel experiences, several deeper themes emerge Stewart's book.
His Purpose
When asked why he was risking his life (as the only foreign tourist in Afghanistan at the time) to walk across Afghanistan, Stewart replies:
"...Afghanistan was the missing section of my walk, the place in between the deserts and the Himalayas, between Persian, Hellenic, and Hindu culture, between Islam and Buddhism, between mystical and militant Islam. I wanted to see where these cultures merged into one another or touched the global world.
I talked about how I had been walking one afternoon in Scotland and thought: why don't I just keep going? There was, I said, a magic in leaving a line of footprints stretching behind me across Asia."
Stewart is a journalist and historian, specializing in Asia. He previously walked in India and Nepal, among other countries before taking on this journey in Afghanistan. He is armed with the diary of Babur, a Mughal emperor from Central Asia who founded the Mughal Dynasty in South Asia. Stewart follows the path of Babur's trek across Afghanistan in the 1500's and compares notes with his experience throughout the book.
On Western Policy and Islam
Stewart comments on the West's ignorant and dangerous attitude towards Islam in 2001:
"Blair's confidently casual handling of the (Koran) was not supposed to be patronizing or presumptuous, but to display his sensitivity to Islamic culture. He seemed to assume the Koran resembled the Protestant Bible, which can be translated without problem, easily understood; freed of apocrypha; opened to interpretation by laypeople; and physically handled much like any other book. This assumption may be shared by other Christian commentators such as Bush. In November 2001, a photograph showed Bush casually dragging a Koran across a table with his unclean left hand, while the mullah who presented the book struggled to smile.
Much of the British media followed Blair in defining Islam almost exclusively in terms of the Koran without reference to the text's cultural context. They might not have been as quick to reduce the Catholic Church to the gospels. But perhaps they were more interested in changing Islam than in describing it. On September 16, 2001, the Guardian remarked that the houris the Koran promises for sexual services, and implied the suicide bombers had been misled. A month later, the Observer wrote of one version of the faith, "This is not Islam any more than the Ku Klux Klan is Christianity." Commentators rarely described the variety of Islamic beliefs and practices. This may have been because their comments were primarily intended to calm anti-Muslim sentiment in Britain (and perhaps, in the case of Tony Blair, appeal to Muslim coalition partners)."
On the U.S.-led Campaign in Afghanistan
Stewart's primary criticism of the U.S. post-military effort in Afghanistan is the hiring of people with little or no experience in Afghanistan to shape the country's future.
"...I now had a half dozen friends working in Afghanistan in embassies, think tanks, international development agencies, the United Nations, and the Afghan government, controlling projects worth millions of dollars. A year before, they had been in Kosovo or East Timor and a year later they would be in Iraq or offices in New York and Washington.
Their objective was (to quote the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) "the creation of a centralized, broad-based, multi-ethnic government committed to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law." They worked twelve- or fourteen-hour days drafting documents for heavily funded initiatives on "democratization," "enhancing capacity," "gender," "sustainable development," "skills training," or "protection issues." They were mostly in their late twenties or early thirties, with at least two degrees - often in international law, economics, or development. They came from middle-class backgrounds in Western countries, and in the evenings, they dined with each other and swapped anecdotes about corruption in the government and the incompetence of the United Nations. They rarely drove their SUVs outside Kabul because their security advisers forbade it."
More info from Amazon: The Places In Between