Rory原籍苏格兰, 今年才三十三岁. 他曾经当过兵, 做过英国的外交人员. 三年前, 他自己走到伊拉克去“找工作”, 结果被任命为一省之长, 管理一个与伊郎交界, 有855,000人口的极端落后的省. 他甚至不会阿拉伯文.

在他过往的外交使命中, 他曾经参与过西方国家对印尼, 刚果, 阿富汗等地的“重建”. 他说, 以他的经验, 当地的百姓都是欢迎这些西方的“干涉”的, 因为原来的政权太腐败黑暗. 然而, 在伊拉克, 他只感受到敌意和对抗, 绝大部分民众都视美英的联盟为侵略者.

Author of The Places in Between. Born in Hong Kong to a Scottish family, Stewart was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, before entering the Foreign Office.

He served in the British Embassy in Indonesia from 1997 to 1999, working on issues related to East Timor independence, and as the British Representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo campaign. From 2000 to 2002 he walked across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey of 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses. After the coalition invasion of Iraq, he was appointed the Coalition Provisional Authority Deputy Governor of Maysan and Senior Advisor in Dhi Qar, two provinces in southern Iraq.

He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his service in Iraq at the age of 31, and the Ryan Family Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and the Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.