Morphet, David (10 June 2006). "Review: Occupational Hazards by Rory Stewart". the Guardian . Retrieved 2 November 2018.

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Jasanoff, Maya (5 April 2007). "One Enduring Trace of Our Presence". London Review of Books. pp.11–12. ISSN 0260-9592 . Retrieved 2 November 2018. In this context Stewart was appointed acting and then deputy head of the CPA office at Amara on the Tigris in the southern Iraqi province of Maysan, subsequently moving to a similar political post in the neighbouring province of Dhi Qar. Southern Iraq had changed enormously since Wilfred Thesiger lived among the Marsh Arabs 50 years earlier. Saddam crushed the local Shia who rose against him in 1991 following the first Gulf war, and drained the marshes that had given them refuge. Tribesmen moved to the towns, and tribal authority declined. But the structures remain, and Stewart encountered some of his greatest difficulties in dealing with tribal leaders. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Godwin’s production, however, has a hurtling energy and makes good use of the auditorium to confirm Stewart’s point that politics in Iraq is often a form of theatre. Henry Lloyd-Hughes admirably captures Stewart’s youthful mix – he was only 30 at the time – of outward confidence and inner uncertainty. There is strong support from Silas Carson as the lordly Karim and Johndeep More as his clerical antagonist, and from Vincent Ebrahim as a harassed professor and Aiysha Hart as his progressive daughter seeking to improve the lot of Iraqi women. The play heightens our awareness of the hazards of foreign occupation, but drama ultimately depends on the conflict of ideas as much as the recreation of actual events. Such is the helter-skelter rush of events, however, that there is no time to air the big issues. Can democracy be created by outside agencies? Do occupying forces inflame an already tense situation? What moral authority does the west have for nation-building? I appreciate that Stewart, in the heat of the moment, had little opportunity for abstract speculation. But, while Brown’s play effectively recreates the nightmarish conflicts Stewart faced, it would make better drama if it viewed his story in a wider historical perspective. It tells us what happened. It doesn’t explore its larger political significance. Lloyd-Hughes as Stewart and Silas Carson as Karim Mahood in Occupational Hazards. Photograph: Marc Brenner

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From 2005 to 2008 he was the Chair and Chief Executive of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation based in Kabul, which he built from one to three hundred employees, working to restore a section of the old city, establish a clinic, primary school, and Arts Institute, and bring Afghan crafts to international markets. A: At an individual level, military and civilian personnel were often helpful. But they have very different trainings, methods, and objectives. The military was often disappointed by what they perceived as civilian’s muddled thinking, political correctness, and inaction, and they were often forced to do jobs in economic reconstruction or politics that should have been done by civilians. The civilians were often impressed by the energy of the military but preferred a more cautious, bureaucratic approach. Neither group was comfortable with the skills, methods, or objectives required in my role, which were closer to those of a Chicago ward politician. Occupational Hazards is Rory Stewart's inside account of the attempt to rebuild a nation, the errors made, the misunderstandings and insurmountable difficulties encountered. It reveals an Iraq hidden from most foreign journalists and soldiers. Stewart is an award-winning writer, gifted with extraordinary insight into the comedy, occasional heroism and moral risks of foreign occupation. A: I believe that it is morally justified to invade another country and topple a tyrant. But the three real tests of intervention are pragmatic: Will the intervention benefit the people on the ground? Will it benefit the country that is doing the invading? And, is intervention actually possible? The lesson of Iraq is that invasions are intrinsically chaotic, bloody, and uncertain—it is almost impossible to predict the consequences of toppling a leader and turning society on its head. We should, therefore, set the bar for intervention much higher and be much more prudent. We should only intervene in cases of direct and terrible threat to our national interests or extreme humanitarian catastrophe, such as the Rwanda genocide, and in cases where either we are confident that the intervention will work or we prefer the consequences of failure to the consequences of not interceding. A fascinating insight into the complexity, history and unpredictability of Iraq from Rory Stewart, bestselling author of Politics on the Edge and host of hit podcast The Rest Is Politics.By September 2003, six months after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the anarchy had begun. Rory Stewart, a young Biritish diplomat, was appointed as the Coalition Provisional Authority's deputy governor of a province of 850,000 people in the southern marshland region. There, he and his colleagues confronted gangsters, Iranian-linked politicians, tribal vendettas and a full Islamist insurgency. Q: How well did the civilian authority and the military function as partners in Iraq during the time that you were there? In August 2003, at the age of thirty, Rory took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad. A Farsi-speaking British diplomat who had recently completed an epic walk from Turkey to Bangladesh, he was soon appointed deputy governor of Amara 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. A powerful follow up to Rory Stewart's remarkable debut, The Places In Between, which won the Royal Society of Literature Oondatje Award and the Spirit of Scotland Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Prize.