Have you ever considered building an entire world from the ground up? As a child, I used to imagine governments, structures, economies, languages all based on various stories I’d read or heard. It was a great pleasure to imagine how this sphere might work. I could create smiths, merchants, travelers as well as magistrates, monetary systems and other aspects of the system.
It seems that the very idea of world-creation is being lived out in the Middle East. A civilization 5,000 years old lives in the ancient valley of Sumer, but have forgotten their roots. Time and influences have acted upon their identity, and now ‘nation’ is too strong a word to describe the conglomeration of tribes and family-groups who remain.
Now, imagine imposing order and a new identity on millions of disparate people. How would you go about it? What structures would be most needed. Power, health, tax, education… Think of every single item of civilization you encounter every day. Post in your letterbox, children in uniform waiting for a school bus, fresh fruit for lunch from New Zealand (insert another astonishingly-distant land here if you’re a Kiwi), music from America on the radio, traffic reports, car insurance, MOT… keep going.
Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between has written a journal account of his time as a ‘Governate Coordinator’ for Maysan province in Iraq. Occupational Hazards describes his personal role in the process of building a civilization upon the wreckage of peoples.
To my mind, Stewart’s most astonishing accounts are of his relationships with various representatives of the people-groups in the province. People who would share tea and praise his efforts in his person may spearhead a riot days later. He describes, from a personal perspective, the processes of creating systems to sustain civilization. Elections, electricity, education — all and more going through the small and under-equipped office of various foreign representatives.
My perspective on the Middle East has changed since reading this journal. I cannot imagine the arrogance or ignorance required to declaim or impose an opinion about the ‘Crisis’. After reading first-hand accounts, I could not offer an opinion beyond saying we, in the West, are so under-equipped for understanding that particular area of the world, that ignorance needs to be challenged before politics and opinion are debated.
