Human rights expert focuses on U.S. policy in Afghanistan

As disparate as they may seem, Rory Stewart insists that U.S. policy in Afghanistan and a game of poker have a lot in common.

Stewart, director of Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, discussed this slightly quirky approach to global challenges and more when he spoke Monday night at Penn’s Global Forum.

The annual program — co-sponsored by the Student Committee for Undergraduate Education, Penn World Scholars, Penn International Development Coalition and the University Honors Council — aims to explore issues of both local and global importance, according to Penn Provost Vincent Price.

As poker players, Stewart explained in his talk, “we feel often, it is childish to match a bet.”

“Real men and women fold or raise,” he pronounced, “and that is what politicians prefer to do.”

In other words, politicians either give in or launch fierce assaults, especially when faced with foreign policy issues such as the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But instead of adhering to this policy, Stewart said now is the time to “call, because the Taliban’s cards are not that strong.” The only question left, he explained, is what to do next.

While Stewart did not propose a solution to the problems in the Middle East, he emphasized that either abandoning U.S. efforts in Afghanistan or toppling the Taliban would have disastrous humanitarian effects on the Afghan people — a people with whom he has become very familiar since walking from one end of the country to another in 2000.

During his two-year journey, he explained, he began to question America’s foreign policy system after listening to his hosts’ perspectives on the world. He realized that Afghanistan houses flourishing communities and a strong sense of pride, so foreign efforts need to be “rooted in the community’s values and virtues.”

With this realization in mind, Stewart launched Turquoise Mountain, an organization dedicated to regenerating Kabul while protecting its culture and empowering its citizens.

Since its inception, the foundation has cleared 15,000 truckloads of trash from the streets, improved the city’s sewage and water systems and created both an elementary school and a Higher Education Institute for Afghan Arts & Architecture in Kabul.

Stewart concluded that ultimately, he envisions Afghanistan “knitting together different powers within the national scene” so that the Taliban and the Karzai governments “are not the only colors dominating the quilt.”

College and Wharton junior Matt Eldridge, a SCUE member, said attending the event was inspiring.

“[Stewart] is acting from an academic position,” he said, but through his experience in Afghanistan, “he is still able to figure out how to bridge the gap and effect change.”

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