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.

Back to Bosnia

The New Republic
A war correspondent returns.
October 12, 1998
A flashback: I heard the sniper’s shot before I saw Haris Bahtanovic fall to the ground. He was walking through a park-turned-shooting-gallery behind Sarajevo’s Holiday Inn. A few men rushed into the open and ... (Read more)

Moon at Twilight

The New Yorker
Amid scandal, the Unification Church has a strange new mission.
September 14, 1998
A little before dawn one day last April, a chauffeur-driven Mercedes sedan entered the grounds of an estate in Tarrytown, New York, and stopped in front of a brick carriage house that ... (Read more)

Destruction of Cultural Property

Crimes of War
Definition of a War Crime
August 1998
(The following was published in “The Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know,” a handbook about war crimes.)

The mosque was on death row. An execution date had not been pronounced, of course, but the Ferhad Pasha mosque was living on borrowed ... (Read more)

Willful Killing

Crimes of War
Definition of a War Crime
August 1998
(The following was published in “The Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know,” a handbook about war crimes.)

Slobodan was being a gracious host. Whenever we entered an exposed stretch of territory, he would stop, listen like a terrier ... (Read more)

Mission to Mars, 2008?

Wired
Urine shakes, sweat lettuce, fecal wheat bread sandwiches.
June 1998
The steel door swings shut on the chamber, sealing off the outside world. They feel no fear or regret, the four of them, just eagerness to get on with their new lives. After a stretch of hard work, Nigel Packham showers ... (Read more)

It’s Risky to Talk Tough on Kosovo

The New York Times
March 10, 1998
The Clinton Administration does not hesitate to express its moral outrage when a crisis unfolds in a place like Kosovo, a province of Serbia where 90 percent of the residents are ethnic Albanians.

“We are not going to stand by and watch the Serbian authorities ... (Read more)

The Fevers of Nationalism

Los Angeles Times
The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience. By Michael Ignatieff
March 1, 1998
By Michael Ignatieff
Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt
210 pp. $24.95

Unwinnable Wars: American Power and Ethnic Conflict.
By David Callahan
Hill & Wang
240 pp. $23

... (Read more)

Messages From Mir

The New Yorker
How the mistakes made on the Russian space station bring us closer to Mars.
October 20, 1997
It was ten at night, the day had been a long one, and before going to sleep Vasily Tsibliyev wanted to call Tamara Globa. She was turning forty, and there was a small party at ... (Read more)

Welcome to Silicorn Valley

Wired
Fairfield, Iowa is home to some of the wily callback companies that are now turning themselves into virtual phone companies to battle telco giants.
September 1997
The plane lands without incident at Chicago’s teeming O’Hare International Airport, where everyone’s on ... (Read more)

Love and Fury in the Balkans

The Washington Post
Montenegro. By Starling Lawrence
August 20, 1997
By Starling Lawrence
Farrar Straus Giroux. 306 pp. $23

Reviewed by Peter Maass

There is a passage in Rebecca West’s classic book about the Balkans, “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon,” in which she wrote of being waked in a ... (Read more)