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.

The War Is Over. We Won.

That’s the message, though with greater complexity and shading, of a new book, “Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam,” by Gilles Kepel. Although ... (Read more)

Why I’m Glad I Own PeterMaass.com

Anyone checked out ChristopherHitchens.com lately?

Afghanistan’s Black Hawk Down

Today’s Washington Post has a detailed reconstruction of the March battle in which seven American soldiers were killed during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. An excellent story.

A Bosnian Anniversary

It’s hard to believe, but ten years ago to this day I filed my first story about the war in Bosnia. Feels like yesterday, and a lifetime ago.

The Best Foreign Affairs Columnist

When I was an intern at The Washington Post, the foreign editor was Jim Hoagland, a Francophile who treated me well, perhaps because I lived in Paris for a year and he assumed I loved the French as much as he did (I did not). Hoagland is now the Post’s principal ... (Read more)

Required Reading in Pakistan

One of the delights of reporting in Pakistan—or India, for that matter—is that English-language newspapers are prevalent and important and, in many cases, enjoyable reads (both the truth and the English language are stretched in exciting ways). The crisis between Pakistan ... (Read more)

The Long Arm Of The Hague, Cont.

Ed Vulliamy, who filed the first eyewitness dispatches about Serb-run prison camps in Bosnia, writes in The Observer that journalists should testify at war crimes trials. “I believe there ... (Read more)

Thomas Friedman’s Chutzpah

Why can’t Thomas Friedman say “I was wrong”? His column on Sunday argues, rightly, that President Bush’s war on terrorism fails to embrace non-military strategies that would help ... (Read more)

The End Is Not Near, Cont.

Can the United Nations do anything right? The surprising answer, in light of the U.N.’s failures in Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda during the 1990s, may be “yes.” East Timor’s new government takes over from the U.N. on Monday, and as The ... (Read more)

The End Is Not Near

Two years ago Sierra Leone was a symbol of everything that was wrong in Africa. It was suffering through a civil war that was notable, in its brutality, for the prevalance of men, women and children whose arms were chopped off by doped-up rebels wearing tutus and wigs. U.N. ... (Read more)