The New York Times Magazine
Getting ready for the jihad.
September 30, 2001
If you happen to need ball bearings in Peshawar, Abdul Sattar Shah is your man. He runs a shop in the Khyber Bazaar that, as his business card states, “deals in all kind of Ball Bearings, Roller Bearings, ...
Author: Peter Maass
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.
Pakistan’s Everyday Dangers
Slate
The unnoticed perils of working in the Third World.
September 28, 2001
America sounds like a dangerous place. I don’t know for sure, because I was in Macedonia when the World Trade Center was attacked, and I have been in Pakistan since then. But friends in New York, where ...
A New Theory From Pakistan
Slate
The Mossad and 9/11. A dispatch from Peshawar.
September 23, 2001
The headbands were flimsy, just strips of white cloth tied across demonstrators’ foreheads with slogans written in black ink. The most popular slogan was “Long Live Osama,” though others said ...
Macedonia Diary
Slate
Dispatches from Skopje
September 13, 2001
Thursday, Sept. 13, 2001
At the main gate to the U.S. military base outside Skopje, Army soldiers in full battle gear offer visitors a crisp salute and an even crisper shout of their squad’s motto—”Strike To Kill.”
The motto predates the ...
Milosevic and the Beginning of Honesty
The New York Times
June 30, 2001
When Bob Stewart, who commanded the first regiment of British peacekeepers in Bosnia, was asked by the BBC for his reaction to the extradition of Slobodan Milosevic, he responded with one joyous word: “Hallelujah.”
Across Europe and America, similar words ...
Have It Your Way
The New Republic Online
Why the Bush administration should be thrilled about Macedonia.
June 29, 2001
In 1993, connoisseurs of government dithering heard Warren Christopher utter a delightful phrase that reflected his befuddlement with the war in Bosnia. The conflict, the secretary ...
Ayn Rand Comes to Somalia
The Atlantic
In the absence of government bureaucracy and foreign aid, business is starting to boom in Mogadishu.
May 2001
The headquarters of Telecom Somalia is filled with the sights and sounds of Mogadishu-style success. Customers pour through the entrance, funneling past machine-gun ...
Sin City
The New Republic
How the French became Puritans.
April 30, 2001
“I represent the Mitterrand name,” the former French president’s son said unhappily as we lunched not long ago at Les Comediens, a Paris restaurant near his lawyer’s office. Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, ...
This Space for Rent
The New Republic Online
Dennis Tito is the Neil Armstrong of our time.
April 27, 2001
If all goes as planned, at 3:37 tomorrow morning a new space age will dawn. At that moment, a Russian capsule will bear into the blue sky and beyond the strangest cosmonaut of all time–a balding, ...
Our Half-Baked Balkan Policy
The Washington Post
March 26, 2001
All too often the American government has, in its handling of Balkan affairs, pursued a policy of “Do as I say and not as I do.”
Last week Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was on the receiving end of this treatment during his visit to Washington. The ...