Insights about Afghanistan and Iraq - a 2008 talk by (and discussion with) Rory Stewart

I chanced on this 25 minute March 2008 talk at Google by Rory Stewart, who at the time was running the Kabul-based NGO the Turquoise Mountain Foundation (but is now a prospective Tory MP). The focus of the talk is on Stewart's walk from Herat to Kabul, with pictures that will be familiar if you've read The places in between and on the work of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation.

The talk is followed by a very wide-ranging and informative 25 minute discussion, which is relevant in the context of current plans to "talk with the Taliban" and which has many insights, for example on the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, and on the politics of international aid.

The final section on the theory of state-building and the (absurd) 10 preconditions for state-building (47 minutes into the video) is worth waiting for.

As an aside the piece is also a great illustration of the message-multiplying effect of video: there looked to be less than 20 people present for the talk, but over 7000 people have viewed (or started to view) the video.