Occupational Hazards
A fascinating insight into the complexity, history and unpredictability of Iraq from Rory Stewart, bestselling author of Politics on the Edge and host of hit podcast The Rest Is Politics.
‘Devastating’ - The Sunday Times
‘Absolutely absorbing’ - Ken Loach
By September 2003, six months after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the anarchy had begun. Rory Stewart, then a young British diplomat, was appointed as the Coalition Provisional Authority's deputy governor of a province of 850,000 people in the southern marshland region. There, he and his colleagues confronted gangsters, Iranian-linked politicians, tribal vendettas and a full Islamist insurgency.
Occupational Hazards is Rory Stewart's inside account of the attempt to rebuild a nation, the errors made, the misunderstandings and insurmountable difficulties encountered. It reveals an Iraq hidden from most foreign journalists and soldiers, a rare and compelling insight that remains just as important today.
‘An extraordinarily vivid tale’ - The Guardian
‘Wonderfully observed, wise, evocative’ - The Observer
Rory Stewart served in the UK Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development, and before that as Prisons Minister, Minister for Africa, Minister for Development, Environment Minister and Chair of the Defence Committee. He ran against Boris Johnson for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2019. Earlier in his career he was briefly in the British Army, before serving as a diplomat in Indonesia, the Balkans and Iraq, establishing and running a charity in Afghanistan, and holding a chair at Harvard University. His books include Occupational Hazards, The Marches and Politics on the Edge.
Stewart is now the president of the non-profit organization GiveDirectly, a visiting fellow at Yale’s Jackson School and the co-host, with Alastair Campbell, of the UK’s leading podcast The Rest is Politics.