川遊び

昨日イスラマバードから北の方へ向った。マリを越えてナティア・ガリに行って、そこで一泊してイスラマバードに戻るというだけの小旅行。この地域はヒマラヤ山系のふもとにあたり、標高が高いのでインド・パキスタンがイギリスの植民地だった頃、the Chief Commissioner の夏の本部が置かれていた。今でも、パキスタン軍の施設がたくさんある。

マリにはパキスタンでもっとも由緒正しいLawrence Collegeがある。19世紀、戦死した英軍兵士の子ども達のための施設としてつくられたそうだが、パキスタンが独立してからも存続し、パキスタンでもっとも優秀な子ども達が集まる学校になっている。広大な緑の敷地に伝統的イギリス風の建物が並ぶ。ケンブリッジ大学の一画のようなものを想像すればいいかもしれない。

ナティア・ガリは緑が美しく、濃い霧に包まれて神秘的な雰囲気をもっている。そして、寒い。標高2500メートルくらいらしい。ジャケットを持って行こうと考えていて、イスラマバードを出てくる時に忘れた。半袖のシャツ一枚で富士山に登るようなものだ。

イスラマバードから北へ続く道の西側はカシミールだ。妻の姉・妹もいっしょに行ったのだが、姉の方はカシミールで1年ほど地震被害の救援・復興の仕事していたので、その状況がいかに凄まじかったかを語っていた。アンジェリーナ・ジョリーとブラッド・ピットに会ったか、ときこうかと思ったがやめた。

北から南を目指してイスラマバードへ帰る途中、川沿いに車をとめて昼食をとることにした。そこにマスの唐揚げのようなものを名物にしてるお店がある。客が来ると合成樹脂のイスとテーブルを川の中に持ち出してくる。せいぜい20センチくらいの深さのところに置くのだが、靴をぬいではだしで足元だけ水の中ということになる。水の流れはかなり速く、しかもかなり冷たい。しかし、10分もすると何も感じなくなった。

子ども達は大はしゃぎしてる。特別にここに何かがあるわけでないが、早い流れの川の浅瀬で遊ぶのは楽しいに違いない。暑い地域から来たパキスタン人家族が他にもたくさんいた。大人も子どももおそろしく無邪気に水遊びをしている。水着などを着ている人は一人もいない。みんな服のまま川の中にどっぷりつかって、流れと格闘して大騒ぎしている。マンゴーをプラスチックの籠に入れて、その籠にひもをつけて川の流れの中でのんびり冷やしているお父さんらしき人もいた。小さい頃、キャンプに行った時、両親が同じようにスイカを川の中で冷やしていたのを思い出した。

洋風の服を着ているパキスタン人もいるし、あごひげボウボウで小さい円形の敷物のような帽子風のものを頭にのせているいかにも厳格イスラム教徒っぽいオヤジもいる。ほぼ全身黒づくめで目の部分しか見えないような女の人もやっぱり川遊びをしてる。

川の対岸にカシミールが見える。タバコをすいながら、プラスチックのイスにすわり足を川の中につけて、イスラム教徒たちの無邪気な川遊びを眺めていたら、ふと、みんなで川遊びすればどうだろう、と思った。パキスタン人とインド人とアフガン人とイラン人とイラク人とユダヤ人とアメリカ人とイギリス人と・・・等など。

イスラマバードに戻って、こっちに来て三日ほど前に買った"Occupational Hazards", Rory Stewart を読み終わった。思わず、その通りだっ、と一人でうなる場所が多々ある。レビューを一つだけ載せておこう。

This review is from: Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq (Paperback)
In the absence of an index, I can't easily verify whether Al Qaeda get only one solitary mention (and that as just one of a list of suspects) in all the 400-odd pages of this book. They are conspicuous by their absence throughout, and that strikes me as being one of the most significant aspects of the story. To this day I am hearing about the need to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq, and to this day I am puzzled as to what makes that so important. If we want to find their local operatives who actually plan the bombings in America and Europe we ought to be searching in Europe; and if we want to find their main leadership we should look in Afghanistan or Pakistan. However if the Al Qaeda presence in Iraq is as insignificant as it might seem from Stewart's narrative then it adds to the sense of confusion regarding the coalition's objectives.

Stewart served for a year as Deputy Governorate Coordinator in two provinces, often being left in effective charge. He was no more than a freelance contractor, but his previous experience ensured that his job-application was gratefully snapped up by HM Foreign Office, doubtless short of volunteers from within its own ranks. He restricts his narrative to what he saw at first-hand. He took up his post in a genuine attempt to make the ostensible coalition objective of a democratic and peaceful Iraq work, and he does not analyse or evaluate that and the other supposed objectives. However his direct involvement included reporting periodically to Bremer in Baghdad, and anyone able to put 2 and 2 together in such a manner as to make 4 and not 22 can easily read between the lines. Imagine the following pronouncement from the colonel in charge of strategic planning, for instance. 'What we are hoping to do is to lay out some philosophical underpinnings of a plan...to begin a journey of discovery for building a more cohesive implementation of plans and policies in the five core areas.' A fine time to be getting round to that in April 2004, Stewart seems to say. Elsewhere he notes Bremer's MBA from Harvard and it's not hard to read into what he says his exasperation at the know-all fatuity of Bremer's 7-point plans for privatisation and such like and at the ghastly gobbledegook ('best practice gaps analysis' etc) in which language seems to function not as a vehicle for thought but as a substitute for thought.

Back at the ranch Stewart was having to confront the realities of the situation. There were, he says and I believe him, some genuine successes before and independent of Gen Petraeus. The trouble was -- few if any Iraqis believed in the successes; or if they did it was not for long. Any seeds of improvement the coalition was sowing had roots too shallow to have much hope of permanence. Stewart's own despairing conclusion comes in his last sentence - however bad the native Iraqi movers and shakers might be, local loyalties always revert to one or other of these, and foreign-imposed improvements, some of them real others just speculative and hopeful, do not stand a chance in this culture. He was trying to make order out of chaos, but they preferred the chaos. He was trying to win hearts and minds, but the minds never stayed with him for long because the various men of power and influence had their own fluid and shifting agendas and alliances, and whether anyone's heart was ever with him is anyone's guess.

It stands to elementary reason that Stewart was in no way opposed to the occupation of Iraq. He went there at all because he believed that some good could come of it. As I read his account, he sees no prospect of success for it now, although he is not explicit about whether a totally different approach might have fared better. He was battling with bureaucracy, incompetence, ignorance, infighting, grandstanding and pretence from Bremer's outfit in Baghdad, opposition to his own role from his own coalition military let alone from the populace he was trying to help, and near-ludicrous ineptitude from the Italian component of such military day in and day out. He was improvising most of the time, and while he has no illusions that his snap decisions were always or even mainly right, the real truth of the matter seems to me to have been that in most cases he didn't rightly know whether he had been right or wrong, because there was no real criterion for judging of that.

The book has been put together from such notes as the author managed to take and retain, but in conditions of such pressure some of the material depends on his memory. I have no reason to suppose that any of these are unreliable, and mental honesty is shiningly apparent throughout, not least in his candour about the minor lies he felt he had better tell from time to time. Whether his own bravery was apparent to him I can't tell, but it's apparent to me. There is much quiet tongue-in-cheek humour, and the tongue comes right out of the cheek in his account of the exploits of the Italians, who were, in the homely Lancashire phrase, as much use as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking competition. His particular angle on the events is one that we don't often see recorded, let alone recorded as well as this. It does not purport to give the wider picture, but he is free of the temptation to blow his own trumpet, and I expect future historians will derive more solid benefit from Stewart than from, say, the memoirs of Gen Franks. He stayed his year's course, he had nothing more to stay for, and he leaves me wondering what the rest of them, even the admirable Gen Petraeus, can possibly hope to achieve. There were successes before and independent of him, they put down no roots, and it looks as if lasting successes will require divine intervention rather than human generalship.