The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: governorate coordinator, new provincial council, bodyguard team, Prince of the Marshes, Abu Rashid, Seyyed Rory (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Soon after Stewart, a British diplomat and professional adventurer, traveled to Iraq late in 2003 to search for work, he was named a provincial governor. In characteristic understatement, he says of his new role: "I spoke little Arabic, and had never managed a shattered and undeveloped province of 850,000." His job was supposed to be easy: the province, Maysan, nestled along the Iranian border deep in Iraq's Shia south, was one of the country's most homogenous, and nearly all of its citizens had fought against Saddam. Stewart spent most of his time navigating through a byzantine and thoroughly unfamiliar political landscape of tribal leaders, Islamist militias, Communist dissidents and Iranian intelligence agents. When he asks an adviser in Baghdad what his goals should be, his friend responds that if, within a year, the province hasn't descended into anarchy and Stewart can serve him "some decent ice cream," he will be satisfied. Engrossing and often darkly humorous, his book should be required reading for every political commentator who knows exactly what to do in Iraq despite never having dealt with recalcitrant interpreters or an angry mob. In the end, Stewart prevails and is rewarded with an appointment to Dhi Qar, a much more dangerous province with less military support. 16 pages of photos. (Aug.)
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From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–At the age of 30, the author, a former soldier and diplomat, speaker of Farsi but not of Arabic, was appointed as one of the leading Coalition civilian officials in Maysan, acting as deputy commander first there and then in Nasiriyah during the final nine months of the Coalition's authority in Iraq. Stewart's tale, even more than his complex identity, gives insight into the new and unexpected situation into which the United States and its allies were thrust after toppling Saddam Hussein. His story is one of relations: with his civilian and military counterparts from different nations in the provinces; with the leaders of the Coalition in Baghdad; and with the Iraqis with whom he was trying to build a new order and to whom he was to leave the provinces' leadership in but a few months. He recounts all this in fascinating and stimulating detail. The knowledge and the ignorance, the past history and the present reality, and the effects that they have had and are having become better clarified for Americans at home from reading this book.–Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; First Edition. A in number line edition (July 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151012350
• ISBN-13: 978-0151012350
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #35,565 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

102 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do you REALLY want to know?, August 14, 2006

By	Daniel Myers (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Do you REALLY want to know what it's like in Iraq? Probably not - All the more reason to read this book. Rory or "Seyyed Rory" as he is called throughout most of the book has written a well-penned, deadpan account of his eleven months or so as an administrator: Governor, Deputy Governor etc., with the Brits in the South of Iraq. Early on in the book, he reflects:

"I had never believed that mankind, unless overawed by a strong government, would fall inevitably into violent chaos. Societies were orderly, I thought, because human cultures were orderly. Written laws and policy played only a minor role. But Maysan (the province to which he's assigned) made me reconsider." P.78

Thus, we have the quotes from Machiavelli at the beginning of each section bearing, in some way, on the Byzantine, disorderly, well, mess in which he finds himself in each particular situation, with Sheiks, militias, clerics, and divisions and sub-divisions and sub-sub-divisions of each.

Those with axes to grind on either side probably won't fancy this book. It doesn't have the headline grabbing title of "Fiasco" or "The End of Iraq" - Furthermore, he depicts good Brits and bad Brits, good Yanks and bad Yanks, good Iraqis and bad Iraqis, as well as some who are at some times courageous and kind and at others cowardly and corrupt.-In other words, the human condition, not some idealised vision of the (all too many) sides. - All the more reason for those with said axes to drop them and read this book.

Yes, I agree that this book does not have the emotional pull of The Places in Between, Rory's earlier book. But this lack goes pari passu with the situation he is in. He is not on an epic quest with a lovable dog he has adopted.-But, rather, trying to make sense of a political muddle.

I agree with the other reviewers that the droll, British understated humour is a saving grace here. - You will often find yourself laughing in spite of yourself, because this humour is based on not very pleasant facts, such as Rory's visit with the soi-disant "Prince of The Marshes" to a girls' high school refurbished by the CPA with Coalition funds, the contractor for which apparently has (as does almost everyone described herein) skimmed a bit of the funding for himself. The Prince turns to Rory and matter-of-factly says: "Now I need to find the contractor who did this work -tell me his name, and I will rip his tongue out."-End of chapter.

This is the first book I've seen on Iraq since the invasion that doesn't have some preconceived notion to pound into the reader's head. It is worth reading for that fact alone. As for what one should come away with from this book as far as notions about what to do or not do in Iraq, this book will be singularly (and delightfully) unhelpful. As the Oxford-educated student of history, Rory Stewart, puts it here:

"History has few unambiguous lessons." P.46

60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seyyed Rory Steps into a Swamp of Intrigue and Obfuscation, August 17, 2006

By	Lightman (New York) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

In August of 2003, Rory Stewart (known to the Arabs of southern Iraq as Seyyd Rory) "took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad to ask for a job from the Director of Operations". This was four months after the Coalition invasion. Shortly thereafter Stewart wound up as deputy governate coordinator of Maysan. He became, at age 30, the de-facto governor of a province of 850,000 in southern Iraq, in the immediate aftermath of the war. This is his story.

And an almost incredible story it is - engaging, compelling, and ultimately devastating.

Stewart refrains from analysis and simply tells it like it was, leaving it up to the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. I can't escape the word; the result is, well, simply devastating.

The author navigates two opposing worlds - on the one hand the intricate web of medieval tribal and religious affiliations in the local populations, on the other, the hapless and naïve bureaucracy of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The following description of the composition of the provisional council that Stewart negotiated into being conveys the flavor of the environment in the province: "I knew these people well. Most had killed others; all had lost close relatives. Some wanted a state modeled on seventh-century Arabia, some wanted something that resembled even older, pre-Islamic tribal systems. Some were funded by the Iranian secret service; others sold oil on the local black market, ran protection rackets, looted government property, and smuggled drugs. Most were linked to construction companies that made immense profits by cheating us. Two were first cousins and six were from a single tribe; some had tried to assassinate each other. This dubious gathering included and balanced, however, all the most powerful factions in the province, and I believed that if anyone could secure the province, they could".

And then there are the bureaucrats, dispensing pearls of misguided wisdom from their hardened position in the Green Zone. "An American Arabist governor who favored broad brimmed hats and was rumored to carry a pair of revolvers said `This is not just a military struggle. This is an ideological struggle. We need to engage with Islamicization and Arab socialism, otherwise we might just produce a well-furnished dictatorship'. Strategic Planning replied with a speech about `best practice gaps analysis and privatization'."

This sense of strategic disconnect, initially just eerie, approaches the level of black comedy as the action unfolds.

Through it all Stewart shows himself to be an elegant writer and a very keen observer. This is from his description of a meeting with a young Sadrist cleric: "The beard, which grew over his white starched collar, had tight curls as soft as adolescent down. His feet were half out of his clogs, revealing the hair around his pallid ankles. He was younger than me, and his high black turban seemed over-large. Not glancing at me but instead letting his large dark eyes drift over the cement floor, he talked quietly and slowly, as if he were contemplating not the words but deeper ideas, to which the words could only point".

Highly recommended reading for those seeking understanding as to what went wrong in Iraq.

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A witty, charming, humorous book, but it lacks the dazzle of "Places in Between"., July 28, 2006

By	Yesh Prabhu, author of The Beech Tree (Plainsboro, New Jersey) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This book was first published by Picador in London in June this year, with the title "Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq". It has now been published in the USA by Harcourt with a new title: "The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq".

The Prince of the Marshes is a tribal leader named Abdul Karim al Muhammadawi, who led a group of Shia men who opposed Saddam Hussein's reign over the marshy territory. This tribe fought with Saddam Hussein's army in the 1990s and until the fall of Saddam's regime. The marshes were drained by Saddam's army as a collective punishment to the tribe, to deprive the tribesmen of their source of food and trade. Writing about the marshes, Rory quotes Azzam Alwash, manager of the Iraq Foundation's New Eden project: "In a few short years, Saddam drained them to allow access for his tanks to establish control in the area. After they were dried, the marshes were burned and villages were destroyed."

The Prince is also known as Abu Hatim, "father of Hatim", even though he never had a son called Hatim.

After the invasion of Iraq by the coalition army, Rory Stewart, seeking employment, sent his resume to the occupying British army, but received no reply. Writes the author: "I had resigned from the Foreign Office, but when the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, I sent in my CV(Curriculum Vitae',resume). No one replied. So in August I took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad to ask for a job from the director of operations. A month later, the Foreign Office asked me to be the deputy governorate coordinator of Maysan, which lies in the marshes just north of the Garden of Eden."

This is how he describes Iraq as he saw it upon his arrival: "But the province on election day looks a little like a police state. There are armed men at checkpoints every few kilometres up the highway; policemen with vehicle-mounted machine-guns are checking IDs on almost every street corner; no civilian vehicles are allowed to move on the streets. This may be part of the reason `security has improved.' Yet despite the checkpoints, which are in place every day, there are still daily car-jackings and roadside bombs, and towards the Iranian border there's drug smuggling, looting, and kidnapping of children."

As in "Places in Between", the author's much acclaimed book, there are quite a few humorous passages in this book also. Writing about a reporter named James Astill, a reporter for the Economist, interviewing an Iraqi: "Astill's longest conversation with an Iraqi in Fallujah was with a man urinating against a wall with a suitcase on his head, and thus unable to move for twenty seconds." Here is an example of the author's wicked sense of humor: In a lounge the author decides to dance with an attractive woman to while away time, and talks with her in Bosnian as he dances. "But I must have bored her with my bad Bosnian, because she turned her back on me and went to join a group of women who, from their build, looked as though they were in the army".

If you wish to know one of the reasons why the invasion of Iraq has turned into a fiasco, you can gleam it from this minor episode. The military officers of the occupying army know very little about the Iraqi people and their culture, and even less about how to deal with and talk to the Iraqi men. They have only contempt for the Iraqi men. Soon after Rory's arrival in Iraq, this is what a British military officer says to a small group of new recruits at the airport, in case they are taken hostage by Arabs: "Since you will be taken hostage by Arabs, it is likely that they will male-rape you." Also, he says something so outrageous that it's quite unprintable in a decent website. Shocking, isn't it, that this is what the British military officers think of Arabs? And now you know why they failed so miserably in Iraq.

To place this book in context, however, I think it is appropriate to say a few words about the author's previous book, which I liked very much. In fact, I quite marveled at it. In the year 2001, the author walked across Afghanistan and wrote an extraordinary travelogue and memoir titled "The Places in Between". It received much acclaim and well-deserved rave reviews. This book, however, didn't grip me the way his "Places in Between" did. There are mainly two reasons for this, I think. Reason number one is that there is no Babur in this book. Babur was an affectionate, orphan mutt that Rory Stewart adopted as a traveling companion - a retired, burly, courageous fighting mastiff, unloved and much abused, earless and tailless, and as big as a "small pony", whose loyalty, affection and bravery gave the book an emotional depth. Babur is sorely missed. Reason number two is that Rory walked across Afghanistan like a pilgrim, visiting remote, barely accessible villages, and met many poor but kind and generous and proud and interesting people. In this book, however, the pilgrim has turned into a bureaucrat working for the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the change in his status reflects very clearly in his prose. (The generals expect Rory to show the Iraqis who is the real boss, and he is told: Do not promise them anything, deny their requests, and use authoritative voice.)And unlike in Afghanistan where he chose to walk, he now travels by taxis and military vehicles to meet corrupt politicians, crooked warlords, stupid generals, prejudiced and insensitive military officers, and tribal leaders and men with selfish motives.

On the whole, however, "The Prince of the Marshes" is written well. And even though it lacks the sheer dazzle of "The places in Between", it still manages to impress on the reader's mind.
Read it, please.