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December 1, 2002
REVIEW: Weaving a book out of carpets
Carpets, politics, wars, travel. This is not an easy mix to combine, but Christopher Kremmer, an Australian writer, has set out to do this and in the end produced a book that is extremely readable, but which skims superficially over many very complicated issues in our part of the world.
From Kabul’s main rug bazaar, the reader is taken to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Central Asia, and Kashmir and introduced to several interesting personalities. The writer’s love for carpets is endearing and his knowledge of them formidable.
There is also a chapter entitled “The Pashmina controversy” which should prove informative for many readers. Kashmiri shawls, we are told, are woven from two main types of wool — pashmina and shahtoosh. The first comes from the Changra mountain goat in Ladakh and the second is combed from the breast hair of the Tibetan antelope known as the chiru. Both animals are endangered species because of the rich international market for pashmina and shahtoosh shawls, stoles and scarves.
There are also glimpses into the life of the nomadic tribes that Kremmer has met during the course of his travels, and the author certainly has a journalist’s eye for the quaint.
When he talks politics, he displays fairly standard western attitudes, but even here he has managed to interweave some interviews that have a different feel. On Iraq and weapons inspections, subjects that again dominate the news, for instance, Kremmer recounts a meeting with Eric Fournier, who was a member of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) staff that conducted the inspections in the aftermath of the Gulf war. He met Fournier at the French embassy in New Delhi.
“‘Why did the bombings occur in December 1998 (Operation Desert Fox, after the inspectors were withdrawn)?’ he (Fournier) asked, repeating my question. ‘Well, because Richard Butler (who headed UNSCOM at the time) reported that the Iraqis had not cooperated with inspections, even though more than 300 had taken place in a few weeks and only a handful had been a problem. Three out of three hundred did not go perfectly smoothly. Yet Butler’s report was very critical. The report did not say, ‘On the whole, the trial has gone smoothly for three months.’ It said Iraq has never cooperated with us .... The report, drafted like that, was a good excuse for some members of the Security Council to take action. But the cooperation of Iraq in that period was better then ever.’”
The scenario is being more or less repeated today. America is starting with the presumption that Iraq will not cooperate with UN inspections and that, therefore, the best way is to attack and get rid of Saddam Hussein. This time the military operation will not be limited in scope, as Operation Desert Fox was, but aim to take over Iraq completely.
Kremmer went to Afghanistan during the Taliban rule, and found Pakistanis involved “up to their necks” in the fighting between Kabul and the Northern Alliance of Ahmad Shah Massoud. He met some of the Pakistanis in Massoud’s jails. They reflected a combination of the starry-eyed and the misguided. But, reports Kremmer, “officers of Pakistan’s army were also alleged to be directing battlefronts and logistics”.
Thus, reading the book will refresh your memory of many things even if it may not greatly add to your understanding of them.
The carpet wars: ten years in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq
By Christopher Kremmer
HarperCollins Publishers Available in Pakistan at Paramount Books, 152/O, Block 2, PECH Society, Karachi-75400
Tel: 021-4310030.
Email: paramount@cyber.net.pk
ISBN 0-00-714239-0
448pp. Rs1295
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