2 thoughts on “Final Blog Posts Due April 30”

  1. In part 1 of Rory Stewart’s lecture “The Places in Between”, he brings up several points about Afghanistan life that will allow America to better understand the situation in the country. Stewart does a good job of giving clear examples of why Afghanistan struggles politically. His goal is to turn the negative stereotypes of Afghanistan into a message of hope.

    Central to the problems in Afghanistan are problems of security. Stewart alludes to the fact that security in the area does not just deal with the Taliban but also with normal forms of crime that we see in America. He addresses how Afghanistan’s current economic advantage lies in heroine, which corrupts the government. This trade gets 4 billion dollars of national assistance a year. To transport the drugs, local Afghani’s have to pay people (government, police etc) off.

    Clearly Stewart is making a point that we should rethink aiding the heroine trade because it is merely leading to increased crime and corruption in the country and further hurting the quest to improve national security. In conclusion, he mentions a fellow who has been a senior advisor in the Afghan government for about 2 decades, despite several toppled administrations. This certain individual is known to have fought for the Taliban and is now an education director in the region. Somehow this individual remains in power…this needs to change!

    Stewart’s point brought up that sometimes we think we are helping but instead are making things worse. By providing international aid to Afghanistan for their poppy trade (heroine), the international community thinks they are helping their economy out. This may be the case, but it is further jeopardizing and hindering Afghanistan’s effort for better national security.

    In the second video, Stewart talks about experience. Experience matters and you need to have individuals tackling the problem who know the context of the region and who have studied the region extensively for a long time. The group he is a part of aims to solidify state building and deal with human rights issues. Stewart and his colleagues take a realistic approach to what they can do. Obviously they cannot start with a complete transformation of the region at a national level, but instead, can influence change at a local level first. If nation-building committees/strategists feel they can make large scale national changes in places like Afghanistan before first making local changes, they are doomed to fail and will certainly hold pessimistic feelings about what can be done.

    Stewart is starting at a local level and due to the results, have a reason to be optimistic. There message is that the question is not only what “ought we do” but what “we can do”. We are not going to turn Afghanistan into a clone of America, but we need to focus on what is achievable and what best helps Afghanistan gain stability and prosperity. Such changes can only start at a local level.

  2. Rory Stewart’s assesment of Afghanistan and essentially why it has become different in the eyes of the world int erms of the methods and humanitarian goals of the effort are interesting. He comments, in the beginning of the first clip, on the experience factor that this program brings to the table; a level of experience that has not been seen in the region to this date. With “30 years of experience” in many cases, Stewart believes these people will give volumes to the aid effort and to turning the tide on the opinion of efforts there. One question I had, however, is that he first points out how DIFFERENT this situation is and that being the reason for why the stereotypes have started about the effort, but all of the experience, therefore, that these people would have is in those different scenarios. How would they help any more than the next person, citing their experience specifically? I understood this question to be cynical but not eliminated from my mind as he speeches went on.

    That question aside, his fundamental mindset or question that he thinks is central to the effort, that of “What CAN we do?” instead of the ever so thought out “what should we do?” is a very interesting contrast. I think he is right on point that this mindset is missing from our otherwise grandiose and widespread desire to help those that are suffereing in these types of nations. However, what is realistic? If it is not realistic to completly replace the government that exists with democracy, why should we be the ones to fail at that? Can we not moderate and help them in specific aspects instead? I think, in many ways, this mindset stems from the arrogance of certain thinking that our expertise on democracy somehow makes it possible to manifest it everywhere. Hwoever, I also think it is simply not listening to those that are on the ground telling us, that have lived there forever, that this just is not possible with the ethnic and cultural ties that exist.

    Finally, I think that Rory Stewart’s program and the fundamental goals of it are very worthwhile. How realistic they still are is still questionable to me. However, his effort seems to be one of the most intelligently thought out and researched ways of approached the very unique area of Afghanistan. It seems to me that the structure of Afghanistan and how money circulates is something that Stewart understands to be a large problem. As long as the dependence on heroin and other goods is prevalent within Afghanistan’s culture, political power that is at all morally sound and in the best interest of the nation will be hard to come by. Therefore, working centrally, from the local establishments and out, will systematically confront these structural problems. It will take time and money but Stewart believes that this is the only real way to defeat corruption and truly make a humanitarian change in the society. I completely agree and appreciate his effort to actually make a change and not just make the news.

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