James Astill

Saturday

James Astill

A disaster waiting to happen

A few days after Baghdad fell to American soldiers, CNN aired footage of a harassed marine wrestling to contain an unruly mob, and yelling, ‘We’re here for your fucking freedom! Now back up!’ The occupation was already in trouble. Looters had grabbed their freedom with greedy hands, ransacking almost every state building left unbombed, stripping them of police records, Babylonian antiquities and porcelain urinals. And America had no plan, and no clue, of what to do with the broken and bitter country.

Saturday

James Astill

Overpowered but not overawed

Researching her second book, I Didn’t Do It for You, Michela Wrong says she learned something that shocked her. Very often, no one around her had even heard of Eritrea, the nation in question, let alone anything of its agonising 100-year history. This cannot be true. A shrewd Africa correpondent for the Financial Times and others, and author of a superb book about Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, Miss Wrong must have known what little interest Eritrea held for the average European or American. This makes the book’s excellence, her fair and thorough rendering of such unknown characters and events, all the more admirable.