Fred Smith on The Dust of Uruzgan

Fred Smith is no ordinary Australian diplomat. In postings served in the Uruzgan Province of Afghanistan, he built relationships with tribal leaders while continuing his side-career as a folk musician. Smith, who has written about his experiences in a book, The Dust of Uruzgan, tells Michelle Grattan for the first three or four months he stashed his guitar under the bed. “You know, I wanted to be taken seriously as a political officer and not seen as a folk singer. But eventually as I became more comfortable on the base, I got the guitar out and started writing songs and put together bands … and of course there wasn’t much going on on a Saturday night in Tarin Kowt so a lot of people would come,” he says. “Then they would hear me singing stories about things that had happened a couple of weeks beforehand and it resonated, you know. And that’s sort of in the very finite emotional and intellectual information economy of that base. It opened up doors and built a sense of community.” Mentioned in this episode:Your support mattersSupport non-profit journalism you can trust. Donations 2025The Making of an AutocratSearch: "The Conversation Weekly" for our new series. Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.