rory stewart may know afghanistan better than any other westerner. a professor and director of the carr center for human rights policy at harvard university, stewart is a former british soldier and foreign service officer. his expertise on the region has gained him the ear of secretary of state hillary clinton, u.s. special envoy richard holbrooke, and the u.s. senate, where last week he testified before the senate foreign relations committee. back in 2002, shortly after the start of the war in afghanistan, stewart traveled the entire country by foot, a death-defying, 6000-mile trek chronicled in his book "the places in between." rory stewart, welcome to the journal. >> thank you very much. >> sherr: let me start by asking, what in heavens name made you decide to walk across afghanistan, at a time when there was a war on? >> i didn't... i really believe that in order to talk about a country you need to spend time in villages, because this is a country where 80%, 90% of the population live in villages, and if you spend your time in an embassy compound

finally, rory stewart challenged key assumptions of the administration's policy. of escalation, he recommended that we maintain a small counter terrorism capacity to deny a safe haven to al qaeda and continue providing development aid on a low key but long term basis. he argued that we need not physically block al qaeda from returning to afghanistan, we just have to keep afghanistan from providing al qaeda with the security that they couldn't get in pakistan. , sow malia, yemen, or elsewhere. he argued that pakistan would stand or fall on its own, regardless of events across the border. listening to these distinguished experts argue their cases and listening to the important an i think very penetrating questions of my colleagues, it was obvious that there are fundamental disagreements that need to be resolved in order to try to build a consensus around the policy for going forward in afghanistan. despite the differences, i believe there are some central truths on which we can all agree. first, we need a winning civilian strategy. i've said repeatedly that we will