Crimes of War
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 for signs of trouble, and ...
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 ...
Los Angeles Times
March 1, 1998
(The following is a review of “The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience” by Michael Ignatieff” and “Unwinnable Wars: American Power and Ethnic Conflict” by David Callahan)
One of the nice things about the Cold War was ...
The Washington Post
August 20, 1997
(The following is a review of “Montenegro” by Starling Lawrence)
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 Paris hotel room by “the insufficiently ...
The New York Times
July 14, 1997
The last time I saw Simo Drljaca, he gave me a friendly pat on the back as I said goodbye. We had spent the better part of a day together, ending it with a beer and a toast to peace. Mr. Drljaca was a warlord in Prijedor, and he gave me a tour of his prison camps: Trnopolje. ...
The Washington Post
May 12, 1996
His name was Ibrahim. I was interviewing him at a refugee center in Croatia, in a cold room that smelled of stale cigarettes. It was late 1992. Ibrahim had just been released from Omarska, a Serb prison camp where he witnessed the worst of atrocities, including an episode ...
In Bosnia, soldiers keep an uneasy peace. In the Hague, an international war-crimes tribunal convenes. But neither courts nor armies can lay to rest the nightmare of the Bosnian Serb death camps. In an excerpt from his new book, Peter Maass finds that mass torture, rape, and murder are the face of an only too human evil.
In Bosnia, soldiers keep an uneasy peace. In the Hague, an international war-crimes tribunal convenes. But neither courts nor armies can lay to rest the nightmare of the Bosnian Serb death camps. In an excerpt from his new book, Peter Maass finds that mass torture, rape, and murder are the face of an only too human evil.
The Washington Post
February 25, 1996
At the start of the interview, my host politely offered me a Dutch cigarillo before lighting one for himself. While a waiter served orange juice and coffee, he made small talk about Los Angeles, my hometown. And when I decided to raise the issue of war crimes trials, ...
The Washington Post
April 20, 1994
BUDAPEST–When politicians and generals discuss Bosnia, they often have Vietnam on their minds. Their warnings about quagmires, mission creep and the shortcomings of air strikes relate to Vietnam and the lessons that we should have learned from it. But they are ...
The Washington Post
April 30, 1993
TUZLA, Bosnia – Jasmin Sejmenovic’s mother faced a wrenching dilemma. Which of her children should she save from hell?
A month ago, U.N. trucks were evacuating women, children and old people from the besieged Muslim town of Srebrenica, but there was not enough ...
