It’s a widely accepted fact that there are few places left on the planet that have yet to be penetrated by the great white explorer. Some hidden corners of New Guinea and Ecuador may still throw up hoards of xenophobic, stick-wielding natives, but no longer do our world maps still have uncharted territories marked as “there be dragons”.

So a different angle of thinking is required to find new and exciting ways to continue the great tradition of world exploration in the 21st century, and Tim Butcher, Middle East Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, did just that when he laid down his plans to follow in the footsteps of the great Henry Morton Stanley and his epic journey through The Congo in 1874-7.

For H M Stanley, his well-publicised greeting “Dr Livingston, I presume”, upon tracking down that other great explorer at Ujiji, on the shores of Lake Tanjanyika in 1871, became more famous than his actual expeditions and if anything, only succeeded in making his colleague a household name, with Stanley himself consequently becoming a short side note in that particular story. For the uninformed, Stanley was sent to find David Livingstone and that’s where his story ends.

But Tim Butcher is not the uninformed; not in matters of 18th century exploration at least, and in 2001 he started in earnest to research the possibility of retracing Stanley’s epic route from Lake Tanjanyika, through the Congo rainforest to the head waters of the mighty Congo River and thence to the West coast. A huge accomplishment back then, but no big deal in today’s age of satellite communication and detailed maps of every square inch of the planet, right? Wrong… Whether you know it as The Belgian Congo, Zaire or the D.R.C. it is still pretty much the most violent killing ground you might ever have the misfortune of finding yourself in, and to travel overland through this hell hole, with a backpack, clean clothes, white skin and a wad of cash is to court disaster of the worst kind.

Nevertheless, Butcher would appear to be possessed with a sense of adventure that drowns out his sense of survival, so it’s little surprise that he developed selective hearing when every rational soul that he spoke to of his plans warned him he was on a one way ticket to a very sticky demise; and in 2004, with all the “good advice” ringing in his ears, he boarded a flight to Lubumbashi in the far south of the D.R.C. and walked headlong into the darkest, filthiest, bloodiest, most corrupt, fetid region on earth, with no other aim than to follow the route some other guy took 130 years before, and live to tell the tale.

Blood River is that tale, and it’s a veritable litany of corrupt officials, murderous rebels, near misses, chance-encounters, impenetrable jungle, sickness and abject poverty. But it’s also a testament to the tenacious and undying spirit of man in the face of insurmountable odds: The old men that drag palm oil for hundreds of miles through the forest for a few lousy shillings; the folks that set up home on board the riverboats, waiting sometimes for months for the boat to depart downriver. These are the people that represent the beating heart of The Congo, even if the beating heart is regarded by many to be black as pitch.

The characters that Butcher meets along his journey are portrayed as one with the contrasts of the forest; the Mai Mai dark and menacing; the villagers full of colour and hope; and the Interahamwe uncompromising and omnipresent. And as he tells his account, we find the forest reveals overgrown, decaying remnants of its opulent colonial past, and we get the sense that a fading hope of a return to better days for the Congo becomes a parallel thread to Butcher’s own passage.

The reader is left in no doubt that Butcher is one of a rare breed of modern-day travelers, who take on every obstacle with quiet resolve and stay focused on the challenge in hand. But The Congo is an immense and ominous place, and even when Butcher left the dangers of the civil war in the east of the country far behind, the regular challenges of simply moving through a region with no infrastructure, other than a murky, foreboding river, remained as testing and arduous as anything he’d tackled before.

Whether you’re a seasoned world traveller, or just content to see the world through the eyes of others from the comfort of an armchair, Tim Butcher’s “Blood River” is essential reading. It’s impeccably written with great intelligence, insight and humour and offers a fantastically detailed view of the interior of this darkest and most forbidding of countries.

Order the book here

Book review by Lee Ridley.

PBs’ very own crackpot, the inimitable Dean Farisian, reviews the latest offering from the Bradt Guides collection – The Bradt Travelguide to The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

I come from downtown, born ready for you, with too many gin and tonics to remember, in a kind of blathering sense. Yeah, I drink these things for a reason – Bombay Sapphire might go on and on about botanicals but the cold hard reality is that I’ve had a few bouts of malaria and the only way to really forget about them is by staring down a saturated lime juxtaposed with a garish lion-print carpet somewhere in central Africa, Kinshasa preferably, but whatever shithole that has a bar will do just fine. Damnit.

So it was with great excitement that I heard someone had finally come around to publishing a guidebook on one of my favourite haunts when I feel like contracting malaria, that being the Congo, usually the “democratic” one, but on occasion I’ve found myself surrounded by shady hookers in Pointe Noire as well, pretending I enjoy their company but not totally up on doing anything nasty with them as everyone knows how easy it is to stow a knife upside a garter belt. Indeed, it could have been my sort of downfall coming back to these places, dealing with incessant bribes and rambling retards all obsessed with stripping me clean of all currency I may have been carrying, shambling me off to some shiny hotel in the city’s center of Kinshasa when all I really wanted was the noise and the ugliness of the “African” quarter, as if it wasn’t all African to begin with. Sure, the Congos are a wealth of contradictions, but we’ve heard that all that before. What it comes down to is that you’re drunk, you’re stuck in a town in a country you wish you weren’t in, but someone’s paying you a mint to be there. That’s where Sean Rorison’s guidebook comes in handy.

I used it a few times already while dodging disease-ridden prostitutes and filthy refugees from Liberia while rambling around Kinshasa, and on occasion I found an illegal pirogue over to Brazzaville where no one noticed I was just looking for some damned peace and quiet. It worked well – decent maps, decent hotel listings, along with some useful observations that simply don’t exist anywhere else. I guess all the other writers are afraid or something, but I found this nice restaurant, the Nuna-far or something, while running around Brazzaville. No one spoke English there, though, so I sort of had to smack it into their heads. You’d be surprised how well it works.

There was that one time I was stuck in the Congolese jungle, some chartered aircraft had dumped us off in Bana-wana-whatever-the-hell the name of the place was, and I was staring down this group of stout-faced folk while the sun set and I was running out of liquor. They’ve got these great cheap booze shops in Kinshasa, but damned if you can find some good edible petrol further inland. Later on, upon reading the guidebook, I learned that this place was called Basankusu and these people were called Pygmies, and usually don’t eat drunken retards. It kind of soothed me for awhile, until I needed a smoke.

I’m guessing for all the poor souls stuck in The Congo, or the other Congo, or that other Congo, for some extended period of time, it will be something of a gift from above to have a book to help them out. No one knows a god damned thing about the place, aside from the fact it’s at war, people are dying, and always use a condom, even when shagging goats. Bring lots of condoms. Malaria’s everywhere, but then again, it ain’t the same for everyone. I’ve met some hippy-dippy types who pray to the spirit world and do just fine, and I meet some United Nations types who are just choking to death on their own fluids because they don’t want to dip into their expense accounts and just buy some damned meds. But then again, I don’t get free hospital flights to Jo’burg, and they do.

Otherwise the book came in handy several times, especially when dealing with corrupt assholes – who knew you were supposed to be polite with them? Apparently there are also numerous parks around the country, with animals still remaining, and hippie backpackers are heading back to Goma, a kind of nice place with a nice Indian restaurant, but too many people who are friendly and speak english for my liking. It also goes into detail about Katanga, the mining province where all the business types go, and has plenty of useful information on the central part of the Kinshasa Congo with all their sort-of-above-the-table diamond operations there. You seen one open pit mine with kids mulling around inside of it, you seen one too many.

It’s a good read when there’s no power too. I don’t speak much French, so the dictionaries do well – especially the Ling-lala and She-lubes-up stuff, which apparently is hard to find. Not like I never looked anyways. Also good stuff on going north in Brazzaville Congo, lots of swamps and jungles and apes who are just right pissed off that us other drunken apes are coming in for a visit all too often.

Sure, I’d buy another copy, since I lost my first one. Think I left it in a cab in Kinshasa when I was running out, didn’t want to pay the fare, ran into the endless crowds around Place de la Victoire and into the deep, dark, Congolese night. Punched out a few drunken locals, ran through a pack of chickens, made some women scream, ended up wandering aimlessly along the banks of the Congo River for a few midnight hours until sobriety hit and I just camped out in the bushes until dawn. Lost all my worldly stuff that same night, too. Had to start again. If at another time I was again in the same situation, and if it was in either Congo, damn straight I’d buy this book.

-Dean

Bradt Rwanda Travelguide – Janice Booth and Philip Briggs.

The first time I picked up a Bradt Travelguide, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Another Rough Guide? Another Let’s Go? Footprint or Lonely Planet perhaps? What I found was a new style that had certain similarities to some of the others, but at the same time seemed to have a voice (and class) all of its own.“Only one way to know for sure”, I thought. So I put the Uganda guide through its paces, in Northern Uganda, in March 2006. The book held up, so a year later I found myself Africa bound again, this time destination Rwanda, with a glossy new copy of the Bradt Travelguide for Rwanda stuck in the side pocket of my rucksack.

Rwanda is a tiny Central African country with an immense history, not least the well-publicised genocide of 1994. With a backdrop of 2000 years of tribal, feudal and, more recently, colonial history, a visitor to Rwanda should at the very least know the rocky path that the people and their ancestors have trodden en route to today. This travelguide explains the complex history and the chronology of events leading up to the 6th April 2004 and the days since, in excellently researched detail, and lends the reader a true sense of understanding of Rwanda. The pages are thorough in their detail without being cluttered with extraneous passages and unnecessary paragraphs. In short, Booth is to be applauded for making such a complex and thorny subject so lucid.

Once the reader moves beyond the opening section and enters the travelguide proper, they’ll discover an easy-to-navigate compendium of pertinent information. The book is divided into multiple geographical sections with numerous maps. In previous Bradt reviews, I had commented on the rudimentary level of detail in the maps, which at times have caused me some confusion, and this appears to have been resolved in the latest edition (three) of this Travelguide. Indeed, I have the 2nd and 3rd editions of the Rwanda Travelguide and it’s clear to see the notable improvements from one to the other.

The information provided on each town/village I have always found to be complete and accurate, although prices quoted are often slightly out due to inflation, but the margin of error is consistent throughout, making it very easy to plan ahead and forecast expected costs. Having said that, edition three is so current that prices are pretty much spot on. Even bus departure times I found to be generally accurate, something quite unusual when dealing with African public transport. However, I found bus journey times to be generally underestimated, which caused itinerary problems before I learned to add on an hour or two to what the book was saying. Rwanda has among the best roads in Africa, so I’m not sure where these inaccuracies came from. It seems as though the information in the book is consistent with the information that one might get from the locals, and this is rarely, if ever, going to be accurate.

Hotel information, along with places to eat, is as good as you’ll find in any travelguide, and enabled me to travel in relative comfort without ever having to stretch my expenses. Of course, there are places that aren’t in the book that should be, I found one such live music restaurant/bar in Kigali, but that has to be the province of the traveller to find these places and let the Bradt authors know.

Rwanda has three national parks and I found the information provided on these areas, along with instructions how to maximise your experience – be it an hour with the Mountain Gorillas, a trek to the Chimpanzees or a classic big game safari – to be concise and well-articulated. Nevertheless, Africa is the continent of misinformation, and it is all too easy to be misled, regardless of what the Bradt Travelguide says. I found the information contained within the pages, along with what other travellers pass on, to be generally more reliable that what locals might tell you. Bear this in mind.

The Rwanda Travelguide also contains a small section on commonly encountered wildlife. I thought this information appeared a little on the sparse side, but I appreciate that there is no substitute for a proper field guide if you are there to spot African beasties. Even so; a section on birds really should be included too. As a keen ornithologist, I would have loved the book to have contained a few pages on the more commonly seen avifauna.

All things considered, I would recommend this book as the definitive guide to Rwanda. The ORTPN Tourist Office in Kigali appears to concur with that, although they’re still selling off their stocks of the 2nd edition. If you go there looking to buy a copy of the guide, be sure to ask for the latest. They may not oblige but at least you’ll have asked. In any event, the 2nd edition will still most certainly see you right.

To the best of my knowledge no other Rwanda guidebook comes close, a view evidently shared by a traveller that I met in Cyangugu, who, upon seeing my Bradt guide, put her Lonely Planet back in her pocket and attempted to read the Bradt from cover to cover in one go. Another convert as the Bradt machine rolls on.

Author – Lee Ridley.

Guidebooks for the world’s dark places? – Lee Ridley reviews the Bradt Travelguide to Uganda.

Bradt Travelguides target the extreme adventure-travellers’ market and in doing so set themselves a hefty challenge. By the very nature of the places that their target audience prefer, researching and producing a comprehensive guidebook of any worth, in these far-flung and often troubled corners of the globe, is no small feat. But from what I’ve seen of the Bradt Travelguides so far, not only are they doing it, but doing it very well indeed.

One thing that distinguishes Bradt Travelguides from some of their counterparts is that the less-travelled destinations still warrant their own full-volume guidebook, rather than just a short chapter in a multiple country-one book approach. Africa is an excellent example of this, where Bradt produce 28 individual guides, covering unusual destinations such as Eritrea, Benin, Sudan and Rwanda. This is a very welcome approach for those who intend to travel in specific, localised areas. Obviously, for those who are planning an extended trip taking in multiple countries, carrying a separate guidebook for each border crossing is out of the question, so, to cover all eventualities, an all-in-one is also available in the form of the Bradt Africa Overland Travelguide.

For anybody intending to spend time in Uganda, the Bradt Travelguide to Uganda (Author – Philip Briggs) is an essential item, not only for planning tours, accommodation, transport etc., but also as a compendium for well-researched and well-written background information on all aspects of the country’s history and culture. The book is well laid out and specific information is easy to locate among the pages, although the maps are decidedly sparse and could be much better. A few more photo pages wouldn’t go amiss, too.

It’s fair to say that with Uganda’s current problems in the north, 99% of tourists are likely to stay in the south of the country, only heading north for the Kidepo and Murchison Falls National Parks, and although Philip Briggs covers these national parks, and getting to them, in appropriate detail; by his own admission, he is no stranger to the north and so could easily have provided more information on the towns of Lira, Apac, Gulu, Kitgum, Arua etc. Notwithstanding the dangers posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a substantial number of photographers and reporters travel in these areas and would greatly benefit from a reliable guidebook with accurate and up-to-date information on bus routes, journey times, accommodation etc.

When it comes to Uganda, Briggs obviously knows his subject well and has included numerous information boxes and ‘asides’ throughout the book that enable the reader to build up a very useful knowledge of the country, its past and its culture. Furthermore, information on the relatively inaccessible parts of the country, such as the Ruwenzoris, is covered by first-hand accounts from people that have made the journey and have the cuts and bruises to show for it, making this guidebook more than just a directory of hotels, restaurants and bus timetables – Making it a book you can actually enjoy reading on those long bus rides.

Things change in Africa at an alarming rate, and it would be an impossible task to keep all information up-to-date at all times. Ferry services are suspended; hotels close down; new hotels open, and ferry services recommence etc. But Briggs has achieved an impressive level of accuracy that can only be found by doing the research and treading the streets. Inevitably, I found parts of the guidebook to contain invalid phone numbers, although perhaps it would be a harsh call to pull Briggs up for these minor discrepancies.

All things considered, I found the Bradt Travelguide to Uganda to be well balanced, useful, informative and highly readable. This book deserves a place on any kit list belonging to someone who plans to explore this vibrant corner of darkest Africa.

Author – Lee Ridley

Few people know the main players in Red October, the Russian parliamentary siege of 1993 and even fewer people know why in 1994 the Hutu Tribe went on a killing rampage of Tutsi civilians. The fact is that few people in the wider world really care. Jon Steele, however was at both of these places as well as several other world hotspots and tries to make small inroads into our wider ignorance by letting us know what it was actually like on the ground. The book is billed as “One Man’s addiction to the worst places on earth,” and for all intents and purposes it seems to live up to this rather vulgar publicist’s hype.

By way of background, the author was a cameraman for a major British broadcaster at the time of the conflicts at hand. Having lived in Russia (and presently Jerusalem according to the cover) he was sent on assignment to some quite interesting places. It was for this reason and not the over-hyped and overdone “adrenalin junkie” cliché that was being pushed by the promotion surrounding the book, that I found myself reading it.

A first person account of dangerous places at dangerous times often makes for an exciting read and this book certainly seems no exception. Gunfights, drugs, sex – this book has all the ingredients of a non-fiction Wilber Smith novel. It does however, lack any deeper attempt to give the reader an understanding of the places involved and why they had come to such perilous predicaments. Steele is obviously an experienced and adept traveler and he employs his experience well to give an exciting account of the “worst places on earth,” often mixed in with the black humor that only travel to such places can foster. His account at being left at the mercy of a crowd of pissed off civilians in Rwanda is genuinely terrifying and is laced with the kind of funniness that could only be realised after such a frightening experience.

Nor is the genuine tragedy of the people living in such places lost in the writing of the author. Steele doesn’t miss too many opportunities to remind the reader of the almost comically despairing situations of the people living in these places. The child dead by the handy-work of a sniper in Bosnia while playing on the street or the bodies upon bodies rotting in the heat of Africa. Each place has its own personal tragedies. But once again a more thorough understanding of how they all came to be in these predicaments would have been a great asset to the story.

War Junky is not without its drawbacks. The opening chapter detailing Steele’s own mental breakdown comes across as a superfluous way to start the book. It is also an indicator of the style of reflection that comes later in the prose with intermittent monologues at timely intervals of the story. I must admit to having stopped reading the book after a few chapters as I was finding it difficult to stomach the author’s self-reflection though this is certainly a personal bias. Once I resumed reading, I regretted having put the book down, as Steele saves his better writing for the second part of the book.

His accounts of these places is, at most times, quite engrossing, even if the adrenalin junkie thing is a tad overdone. However, for anyone who has in interest in travel to dangerous destinations, this is certainly a book that deserves a read.

(Oxford University Press – 252 pages)

Reviewer – Luke Brown

Having seized power of Russia in the 1917 Revolution and being subsequently disappointed that it didn’t have a snowballing effect on Europe, the murderous, tyrannical, communist dictator Lenin decided that it was through the East that he could hope to conquer the West. As Britain was considered his biggest rival for power, British India was his initial target for fomenting revolution that he hoped would then sweep the region in order that his vision of total control could be achieved throughout the world. Setting The East Ablaze is primarily concerned with this attempt, and the opposition to it by the British.

Like his other works, Peter Hopkirk ensures that the characters who populate this story receive the greatest attention, at rightly so. The most intriguing one, Colonel Frederick Bailey, whom had previously visited the holy Tibetan city of Lhasa with the legendary Francis Younghusband, was to play a vital role in combating the Russian threat. A master of disguise and a skilled operative (who, in a bizarre set of events, to effect his escape from the hands of the Bolsheviks, managed to get himself hired by their secret services to track himself down), he was a constant thorn in the side of the Bolsheviks. M.N. Roy, an Indian revolutionary, who became a member of the Comintern, was also, at times, a thorn in the side of the British, as he schemed to spark off a revolution in British India, and throw off the yoke of India’s British colonial masters. In addition, a brutal civil war was under way in Russia and beyond, between the Red Bolsheviks and the White Russian counter-revolutionaries. One such counter-revolutionary was Paul Nazaroff who had a torrid time escaping from the clutches of the likes of the Cheka, the secret police. Further east, a psychopathic and brutal White Russian baron, Ungern-Sternberg, with his visceral hatred of Bolsheviks and Jews, was attempting to take control of Mongolia (he was under the delusion that he was a re-incarnated Genghis Khan) for its use as a base to bring about a Greater Mongolia, and also from which to attack the Bolsheviks.

Aside from an extraordinary cast of characters, this period of intrigue was characterised by enough misinformation, psy-ops and treachery to fill a multitude of spy novels, and these are detailed expertly. All in all, Setting The East Ablaze is highly recommended, principally for throwing light on this little-known aspect of 20th century history, all in Hopkirk’s trademark witty and discerning style

(Oxford University Press – 562 pages)

Reviewer – Luke Brown

Posted: 15 September, 2003

Although the phrase “The Great Game” was immortalised in Rudyard Kipling’s turn of the century adventure novel, Kim, it originated decades earlier, its source Captain Arthur Conolly, one if its early players. The phrase refers to that period in Central Asian history, mainly in the 19th century, when Russia and Britain were engaged in a power struggle for the region. In the expert hands of Peter Hopkirk, this story and its main characters are brought to life.

Although the game only really began in the first half of the 19th century, Hopkirk begins his story with the Mongol hordes that attacked Russia in the 13th century, the ensuing destruction scarring her enormously. Determined to strengthen herself, she expanded her existing territories (using the natural resources of some of these territories to do so) over the centuries. Eventually an imperial rival, Britain, with territorial conquests of its own, felt that its sphere of influence was under threat, in particular the jewel in the Crown, British India.

So both imperial powers sent forth a series of spies, explorers and political agents to map and research areas considered of vital importance to both Russia and Britain, as well as to form political alliances with the attendant tribesmen and chieftains. From a seemingly safe distance of 2,000 miles between the two of them at the beginning, Russian outposts, in the end, were as close as 20 miles away from India.

The beauty of Hopkirk’s book is his ability to successfully lay out a narrative of the strategic thinking behind the various moves of Russia and Britain (in areas such as Iran, Afghanistan, China, modern-day northern Pakistan, Bokhara, Tashkent, Khiva) and detailing the action being played out, all in broad enough strokes so as not to become bogged down in intricate details, but not vague enough for the story to become incoherent. As with most good stories, it is the existence of a mix of interesting and colourful characters that makes this a gripping read. A panorama of adjectives only begins to describe the cast: colourful, brave, foolhardy, idealistic, ruthless and eccentric.

While one would have to read up autobiographies and biographies of such legendary figures in the Great Game as Henry Pottinger, Arthur Conolly, Francis Younghusband, and Alexander Burns to gain a more complete picture of their personalities and exploits, Hopkirk does a good job of gleaning the relevant aspects of their characters to explain their different drives and motivations, all in his own discerning way. The Great Game is a highly recommended work.

(Crown Publishers – 284 pages)

Reviewer – Luke Brown

The momentous failure of intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA, to prevent the horrors of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon is obvious, certainly with the benefit of hindsight. For Robert Baer, an ex-CIA field officer in its Directorate of Operations division from 1976 to 1997, that it was able to occur was not so surprising. Along with recounting the career of a spy who would go on to recruit agents in such places as India, Lebanon, Sudan, France and Tajikstan, See No Evil also details, in Baer’s opinion, the CIA’s decline from an agency that would do whatever was felt necessary to achieve its goal of eliminating security threats to the United States, into a toothless, politically correct organisation run by bureaucrats.

The strength of the book is the interesting and dangerous nature of the experiences he is able to relate to the reader, in his engaging storytelling style. Conversely, its weakness, quite naturally, is what he is not able to tell us. Due to his employment contract with the CIA, there are operations he isn’t allowed to divulge the details of, some he cannot acknowledge and even places where he operated that he cannot reveal. Undoubtedly the secretive nature of his job has also contributed to his personal life not receiving more than a superficial airing, resulting in only a modest insight into his personal motivations and drive.

What we do know is that ever since the age of nine, Baer lived a relatively adventurous life. His divorced mother took him to Europe for a couple of years, where he would travel extensively, ski, learn about politics and philosophy from his mother, and get a taste for the exotic. Moving back to the United States he went to school, doing so badly that he was sent on to military school. Next was University and then, as a “prank,” he applied to and was accepted in the CIA. It was then onto spy school, to learn such things as how to use weapons, use explosives (“By the end of the training, we could have taught an advanced terrorism course”), survive deserts and mountains, jump out of planes, as well as evade surveillance. His first assignment was India, then under the sphere of influence of the Soviets, where after a couple of nerve-racking and aborted agent-recruitment attempts, he finally found his feet. It was in Beirut, Lebanon several years later, that it seems he really came into his own, arriving right after the bombing of the US embassy. It was the mystery surrounding this attack that drove Baer to undertake his own investigation of the attack, as well as to become frustrated by the bureaucratic nature of the CIA and the direction it was taking.

It was in the mid-nineties, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where Washington’s unwillingness to support efforts to overthrow Saddam Hussein, that he concluded his last foreign mission for the CIA. He was called back to Washington and was by this time rather disillusioned. In his view, the CIA had a near complete lack of interest in the human intelligence side of spying, in favour of technology-driven surveillance. This combined with their unwillingness to get their hands dirty and deal with unsavoury types, its see no evil-hear no evil-speak no evil attitude (hence the title of the book), and the politics of Washington, finally took their toll, causing Baer to resign.

Of course, the CIA has also had its external critics, but for different reasons. Its involvement with coups, funding of armed opposition groups in sovereign countries, and the like, has brought about calls for its reigning in or downright scrapping, whether it be due to concern over human rights abuses or its critics’ ideological differences. While that side of things (documented elsewhere) does not really get a mention in Baer’s book (the closest he gets is in recalling his Beirut embassy bombing investigation, where he had the opportunity to have a terrorist suspect assassinated, but turned it down; regretting it later) that is not a reason to ignore this particular work, with its insight into a true believing ex-spy.

(Penguin – 193 pages)

Reviewer – Luke Brown

Sometimes a book is published that is virtually unreviewable. Not because it is a mess, but rather because one can not do it justice. Published in 1979 and still being reprinted, Karma Cola is one such work. Recommended to me by someone who had just left India, the subject of the book, I was handed a passage to read. It detailed the story of an English aristocrat who had heard about a guru in the mountains who was reported to be able to turn urine into scented rose water. And so this Englishman went out to find the guru and sampled his wares, which, it turned out, smelt and tasted remarkably like urine.

Although the book is widely known for its collection of stories of western disciples seeking out mystical gurus and their tailor-made truths, it is its study of how India discovered that they were quite hip after all (in the eyes of some westerners) while they were turning to western culture, makes it a must read. Although the times have changed since it first came out, its biting and well-observed satire mixed with Gita Mehta’s electric writing style (on occasions reminding me of Tom Wolfe) stand out. But I’ve said too much. Here is an early passage from this most funny and insightful work that will give a taste of where she is coming from and where her book is going:

“American mass-marketing had penetrated so fast to the Indian interior that its experts were invited by our government to popularize contraceptives with the same panache. While population control and pop culture raced hand in hand through the Indian countryside, we of the cities and the universities were getting restless, too. But just when the accelerator seemed within our reach, the unthinkable happened.
The kings of rock and roll abdicated.
To Ravi Shankar and the Maharishi.

As the sitar wiped out the split-reed sax, and mantras began fouling the crystal clarity of rock and roll lyrics, millions of wild-eyed Americans turned their backs on all that amazing equipment and pointed at us screaming,
“You guys! You’ve got it!”
Well, talk about shabby tricks. We had been such patient wallflowers and suddenly the dance was over. Nobody wanted to shimmy. They all wanted to do the rope trick.
The lines were kept open in spite of the political static.
“Excuse me, operator, what did they say? What have we got?”
“Hello, India, my party is saying you have the Big Zero.”
Mao had lost out to Maya. The revolution was dead.

So we tagged along with the Americans one more time. Not because of right thought, right speech, right action. But because of the rhythm section. Never before had the Void been pursued with such optimism and such razzle dazzle. Everyone suspected that whatever America wanted, America got.
Why not Nirvana?”

Ryszard Kapuscinski (Vintage Books – 152 pages)

Reviewer – Luke Brown

The reporter studies a photo of a group of men standing on a street in Teheran, waiting for a bus to arrive. Nothing really unusual at first glance; a typical scene full of weary and tired people, that could be of anywhere. Our reporter is encouraged to take a closer look. Look at the angle of the shot, taken from a hidden position, from a window across the street. See a guy standing near three others who are talking, his ear deliberately bent towards them?

On another occasion our reporter is told a story of a sickly old man who, sapped of strength, on a particularly hot day, stumbled up to the bus stop and remarked how oppressive the day was, how he couldn’t catch his breath. A man near him moved in close. “So it is,” this man replied, “it’s getting more and more oppressive and people are fighting for air.” The old man concurred: “Too true, such heavy air, so oppressive.” For this, the other man, an agent of Savak, the secret service that operated under the Shah of Iran, whisked the old man away, his crime being that of saying the word “oppressive” to a stranger. The crowd around the old man had listened in dread, aware of the dangers of any allusions to public criticism of the Shah, however slight. But was not this old man just feeble and tired, oblivious to his own naivety?

“For a moment, for just an instant, a new doubt flashed through
the heads of the people standing at the bus stop. What if the sick
old man was a Savak agent too? Because he had criticized the
regime (by using “oppressive” in conversation), he must have
been free to criticise. If he hadn’t been, wouldn’t he have kept
his mouth shut or spoken about such agreeable topics as the fact
that the sun was shining and the bus was sure to come along any
minute? And who had the right to criticise? Only Savak agents,
whose job it was to provoke restless babblers, then cart them off
to jail.”

So Ryszard Kapuscinski brilliantly captures the paranoia and fear that existed in Iran under the reign of the Shah of Iran, before he fled the country in 1979 and the Islamic Revolution began, with the previously exiled Ayatollah Khomeini as its leader. Through the use of literary set pieces that create a patchwork of themes, moments in history, conversations with ordinary Iranians and his own observations as an outsider, he paints a compelling picture describing the circumstances that led to the downfall of the Shah.

The book begins after the Revolution has taken place, with Kapuscinski, the only guest left, sitting in his hotel room in Teheran, examining front covers of various newspapers. He looks at one edition announcing that the Ayatollah has left and later ones proclaiming his return. As he notes in parentheses:

“And between that departure and that return, what heights of
emotion and fervor, rage and terror, how many conflagrations!”

His own situation is not too dissimilar:

“On the floor, chairs, table, desk lie heaps of index cards, scraps of
paper, notes so hastily scrawled and chaotic, I have to stop and think
where I jotted down the sentence “He will deceive you and make
promises to you, but don’t let yourself be fooled.” Who said that?
When? To whom?
Or, covering a whole sheet of paper in red pencil: “Must call
64-12-18.” But so much time has passed, I can’t remember whose
number it is or why it was so important to call.
Unfinished letter, never mailed. I could go on at length about what
I’ve seen and lived through here, but it is difficult to organise my
impressions…”

He ponders the mess:

“Now, at the very thought of trying to put everything in order
(because the day I’m to leave is approaching), I am overcome by
both aversion and profound fatigue. When I stay in a hotel (which
is quite often) I like the room to be a mess because then the
ambience has the illusion of some kind of life, a substitute warmth
and intimacy, a proof (though illusory) that such a strange uncozy
place, as all hotel rooms in essence are, has been at least partially
conquered and tamed. In a room arranged into antiseptic order, I
feel numb and lonely, pinched by all the straight lines, corners of
furniture, flat walls, all that indifferent, stiff geometry, a strained,
meticulous arrangement existing only for its own sake, without a
trace of human presence. Fortunately, within a few hours of my
arrival, influenced by my unconscious actions (the result of haste
or laziness), the existing order breaks down, disappears, objects
come to life, begin moving from place to place, and enter into
ever changing configurations and connections; things take on a
cramped, baroque look, and, all at once, the room’s atmosphere
becomes friendlier and more familiar. Then I can take a deep
breath and relax.”

Before the clean up, he goes down to sit with some hotel staff who play cards and drink tea, a television on in the background. On the television can be seen the visage of the Ayatollah Khomeini, in the holy city of Qom, as exultant crowds gather to see and hear him. Khomeini exhorts the crowd and the people of Iran to stay strong, that things will be different from now on, an Iran freed of foreign influence. Later, pictures are shown of missing people, along with the pleas of their distraught parents who wish to find out the fate of their children who went missing, because they dared to struggle against the Shah. Following on are pictures of those, who in all likelihood, as the officials of the Shah, ordered these disappearances, with an accompanying list of their crimes. Soon these people will disappear as well, victims of the backlash of the Islamic Revolution.

So what caused this entire furore? We must take a trip back in time for the answers. Iran had always been a country caught between the power plays of more powerful and ambitious nations and empires, particularly Russia and Britain in modern times. Using photos as a starting point, Kapuscinski skilfully weaves Iran’s modern history.

He begins with a photo of two men; one being a man in chains, who was responsible for assassinating Shah Nasr-ed-Din in 1896; the other his capturer, a soldier who is the grandfather of the last Shah. Next is a photo of a young officer named Reza Khan, the son of the soldier in the previous photo, who, later with the help of the British, stages a coup and proclaims himself Shah. We then move onto a photo of Reza Khan with his young son, the last Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Reza Khan was a brutal man and was determined to modernise Iran, particularly the army, any opposition being crushed; his son was taught well. Reza Khan, however, was not to last forever, backing the wrong side during WW2. The British and the Russians invaded Iran in 1941 and gave Reza Khan no other option but to abdicate his throne in favour of his 22-year old son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

We come across Prime Minister Mossadegh, who attempts a more independent policy for his country. He makes the mistake of nationalising the oil industry. He is disposed with the help of the British and the United States in 1953. The Shah left before this and returned after the coup was completed; Mossadegh being replaced with General Zahedi, the Western oil companies compensated, gaining a 50% stake in the oil industry.

The Shah sees oil as a means to fast track his country into modernity. So begin various economic reforms, with the army budget being boosted and massive industrial works commissioned. However, as Kapuscinski notes, “Oil, though powerful, has its defects. It does not replace thinking or wisdom.” The attempt to create the second United States, The Great Civilization, through the White Revolution, is flawed. Massive orders of goods and equipment are placed, but their ports are not big enough to handle these imports, nor do they have the transport to move them where needed. Foreign experts are called in. Meanwhile the locals are ignored and miss out in the direct participation of the wealth that is generated by the oil production, while the Shah and his friends live in luxury. Furthermore, it is the secularised vision of Iranian society that causes more discontent, which rumbles underneath the surface, the future Ayatollah Khomeini a key player. Fearing this threat, Khomeini is exiled. Through his secret police, Savak, the Shah cracks down on dissent, forcefully suppressing any attempts at real democratisation; citizens are coerced into supporting his political party; censorship is harsh, and holding gatherings, no matter how innocent they may be, is banned. Offenders are interrogated and tortured. This cannot surely last. Public protests become bolder and the Shah’s grip on power and, ultimately, on reality, slips. The spiral is contagious and despite attempts at appeasement and superficial reforms, it is ultimately too much to control.

But this was not just, as mentioned, a mass political revolution, but an Islamic one, by the majority Shiite Iranians. Turmoil and persecution was something that the Shiites had experienced since their birth. And only through an understanding of the history of Shiite Islam and the subsequent conversion to it by the majority of Iranians, can the Islamic Revolution be fully explained. Kapuscinski is more than capable in outlining the Shiite struggle from their origins out of the split with the Sunnis, and the attending slaying of Hussein that forever marked the Shiites feeling that life is a struggle and sad, as they embarked upon their own diaspora. With Iran yet again under threat from another foreign invader, this time the Sunni Muslim Arabs in the 7th century AD, the Iranians were filled with dread. But this new threat coincided with the arrival of the pious Shiites, with their tales of persecution from the Sunnis and their view that the Sunnis had lost sight of the more humble aspects of Islam. The Iranians empathised with these Shiites and eventually were converted from their Zoroastrian faith. History violently repeated itself in the 20th century; Kapuscinski describes a Shiite as being a “rabid oppositionist” and it is too true.

Shah of Shahs is a masterful work of literary journalism made richer due to the personal experience of the author (he has witnessed 27 revolutions or coups). Not a word seems wasted. The descriptions and characterisations are tight, yet poetic, the tone non-judgemental. What Kapuscinski has achieved is a fascinating and timeless portrait of an untenable situation coming to its inevitable and natural conclusion.

One may ask what lessons can be drawn from the events of 1979 described in this book and be applied to the current situation where the repressive conservative leadership is out of step with what the populace is aching for. What I brought away from this account is that reform, not revolution, will be the nature of the continued existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It would be prudent for Western Policymakers to learn and act on this lesson, a lesson that interference in Iran through force is not just morally the wrong thing to do, but born out by history to be ultimately disastrous. Kapuscinski puts it best when describing the results of the overthrow of the Shah:

“Seldom does a people live through such moments! But just then
the sense of victory seemed natural and justified. The Shah’s Great Civilization lay in ruins. What had it been in essence? A rejected
transplant. It had been an attempt to impose a certain model of life
on a community attached to entirely different traditions and values.
It was forced, an operation that had more to do with surgical success
in itself than with the question of whether the patient remained alive
- or equally important – remained himself.”