Etherington, Mark

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Etherington, Mark

PERSONAL:

Education: Attended University of York, University of Cambridge, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

CAREER:

Member of European Community's Monitor Mission to Yugoslavia, 1992-95; later worked in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan; Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Governate Coordinator for Wasit Province, Iraq, 2003-04. Military service: Served in Great Britain's Army Parachute Regiment for six years, including tours in Northern Ireland.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Named Commander of the British Empire, 2004.

WRITINGS:

Revolt on the Tigris: The Al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mark Etherington is a former paratrooper in Great Britain's Army Parachute Regiment. Raised primarily in Kuwait and Qatar, Etherington returned to England for his education, attending the University of York, the University of Cambridge, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. As part of the British Army Parachute Regiment, Etherington participated in a number of missions over a six-year period, including two separate tours through Northern Ireland. From 1992 to 1995, during the war in what was then Yugoslavia, Etherington served with the European Community's Monitor Mission. The work kept him in war zones, and he went on to serve in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan over the next decade. In 2003, he was asked to step in as the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Governate Coordinator for Wasit Province, Iraq, a position he held until late 2004, when he finally left the country. In December 2004, Etherington was named Commander of the British Empire (CBE). His book Revolt on the Tigris: The Al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq, based primarily on what he learned during his time serving in Iraq, was published in 2005.

Revolt on the Tigris analyzes how Etherington served as a conflict manager in Iraq shortly after the start of the Iraq war. He was sent into the southern part of the country, an area with a population of approximately 900,000 people, most of whom practice the Shi'a Islam religion. The region was extraordinarily poor; the situation was only exacerbated by the influx of war, and on a social level, the area was also stagnated. There appeared to be no laws, as the local police were either entirely overwhelmed or too corrupt to enforce what regulations they could. Likewise, a functioning, low-level administration or government did not exist there, municipal services were all but nonexistent, and the people were barely functioning in what could only be referred to as a chaotic situation. Etherington took over the region for nine months, in a position that not only entailed managing its social and political aspects and attempting to instill a sense of self-government in the people, but also required military prowess, as violent attacks were a constant challenge and danger. A major uprising becomes the focal point of Revolt on the Tigris, illustrating how even peaceful periods were tenuous. Critical analysis of the book was mixed, with some reviewers praising Etherington's up-close depiction of the situation, and others finding him too close to and personally involved with the subject matter to provide an accurate analysis. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly stated that "anyone seriously interested either in the future of that beleaguered nation or the possibilities of intelligent diplomacy would do well to read this." Michael Rubin, in a review in the Middle East Quarterly, pointed out that "questions over Etherington's objectivity as narrator … undercut[s] his recounting the CPA's governance of Al-Kut[, Iraq]." Rubin concluded, however, that "historians will find value in Etherington's account, though, in that it illustrates the isolation of the CPA as it consumed itself with its own bureaucracy."