Rory Stewart's Wonderland

On the Good and Bad of Adventure Literature on Afghanistan*

Khisraw Amini

عجبستان روری ستوارت: در باب خوب و بد سفرنامه های افغانستان / خسرو امینی

کتاب "سرزمین های میانه" نوشته روری ستورات، ماجراجوی انگلیسی یکی از جذاب ترین کتاب هایی است که در سال های پسین در باره افغانستان نوشته شده است. این کتاب حکایت سفر روری استورات با پای پیاده در زمستان از هرات به کابل از طریق مناطق مرکزی افغانستان میباشد. اما در این کتاب روری از خاطره نویسی فراتر رفته و در باب سیاست و جامعه افغانستان به شکل ضمنی نظریات مشخصی را انکشاف میدهد. عجیب نیست که روری ستوارت اکنون نماینده پارلمان بریتانیا است. این مقاله معرفی این کتاب ارزشمند و در عین زمان نقد آن میباشد.

Rory Stewart's bestseller, The Places in Between, was my reward in a winter when I was researching about Afghanistan, desperately looking for something genuine to read about the country. I found the book at the Barnes and Nobles and read much of it in the cafeteria upstairs; surprisingly engaging, full of genuine pictures and stories to be told. For me, who was in a few of those places by which Rory passed, this joy was double when looking back to those images and memories for a second time in a great travel narrative. I became interested in Rory's affairs and searched him on the internet and learned about his sympathy for Afghanistan and his activities in Kabul especially at the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. Running such a foundation which introduces a richer cultural image of Afghanistan to the Western audience and on the other hand rehabilitates the cultural life of the old Kabul in an economically viable way, and his taste for earth architecture was fascinating to me.

The "Imperative" of Regional Cooperation

Khisraw Amini

اصل همکاری منطقوی / خسرو امینی

فشرده: همکاری منطقوی اکنون به عنوان یک راه حل برای مشکل افغانستان بر سر زبان هاست. تمام جوانب درگیر در مساله افغانستان اکنون زبان جانب داری از این پالیسی را انتخاب نموده اند. یک دلیل آن، نمود اخلاقی این پالیسی است: اینکه همکاری کردن از همکاری نکردن در هر حال بهتر است. دلیل دیگر آن می تواند نمونه های موفق همکاری منطقوی در سطح جهان باشد، به خصوص پروسه همگرایی اروپا. با وجود این، در پس این نمود اخلاقی احساسات و سیاست های ملی قوی نهفته است که می خواهد از پروسه همکاری منطقوی نیز به عنوان صحنه تبارز خود استفاده نماید. الگوی همگرایی اروپا مانند پروسه شکل گیری دولت ها در اروپا از بنیاد با پروسه های موجود در منطقه ما تفاوت دارد. این مقاله کوششی است برای باز کردن این مسایل به خاطر یافتن راه حل های بهتر.

Among many solutions and policies that are being proposed for Afghanistan, regional cooperation is a popular one now. One reason for this is perhaps its plausibility of projecting a moral appeal: that to cooperate is better than not to cooperate. This moral form has made all parties involved in Afghanistan, from the Afghan government, to the regional countries, to the international community, choose a language in favor to this idea. A part from this moral connotation, successful models of regional integration, namely the European Union, has been another motivation for the prevalence of this concept.

Yet this disarming moral truth might also be an indicator of the poor content of this concept, i.e. there is little into the idea of regional cooperation to debate and divide about. Unlike the simplicity of this concept, the problem of Afghanistan is a sophisticated one. The diversity of the dimensions of the problem  seems sometimes to be beyond the capture of the policy makers. On one hand, we have the resilience of the regional and global terrorism, the structure of which seems also not that simple to put it in conventional models. On the other hand, we have the trouble making neighboring countries of Afghanistan and their uneasiness about establishing a stable order in this country. In a broader context, we have the influence of anti-Western sentiments which even goes beyond the region. Not the least, we have the ineffective, corrupt and undecided government of Afghanistan which continues to disappoint expectations.