Judith Matloff - The War Is in the Mountains: Violence in the Worlds High Places

Impressive and necessary Matloff approaches her topic with a magic combination of wisdom and empathy, and it is impossible to not be moved

Booklist, starred review

This trip to some very different corners of the globe is recounted in clear, visceral language Matloffs investigation is a worthy read for foreign affairs and anthropology buffs alike

Publishers Weekly, starred review

A sobering account of why mountainous regions often engender violence a tightly focused study

Kirkus Reviews

Matloffs book is an indefatigable journalistic exploration of how mountains shape, sustain, and even determine war and culture around the world. Her argument, which her reporting makes undeniable, is at once obvious and original

Robert D. Kaplan, bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography

A vital, deeply revealing book of political travelogue and intrepid correspondence. Matloff is the ideal witness learned, dogged, skeptical, but always listening out for new and credible voices. This is classical international journalism of the highest order

Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars

Through thoughtful vignettes, [Matloff] weaves personal narratives alongside relevant historical and present-day circumstances to relate regional stories that consistently refer to and affirm the global tale she seeks to tell

Library Journal

Judith Matloffs book is a political geography of mountains, once the haunt of witches, now in many parts of the world strongholds of outlaws and rebels, told with a sense of drama by someone who has clearly done her fieldwork

Yi-Fu Tuan, author of Romantic Geography

Matloff a brave, engaging, keenly observant guide rides shuddering buses, boards decrepit helicopters, and hikes through mud and checkpoints in pursuit of answers and solutions reveals the rich, surprising and perplexing life of places too often diminished by the flat imagery of war

Sheri Fink, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Five Days at Memorial and War Hospital

Vistas, vainglory, vengeance and violence mark Judith Matloffs engaging voyage across mountainous terrains. She reports with empathy on religious charities, anthropologists, guerrillas, and state armies all attempting to pacify some of the worlds least governed spaces

David D. Laitin, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and author of Nations, States and Violence

A globe-hopping, more-often-than-not crushing investigation into mountain mayhem chromatic stories, which cant help but be chromatic as they are smeared blood red, from the Sierra Madre, the Caucasus, Jammu and Kashmir, the Himalayas, and the Andes

Christian Science Monitor

VIOLENCE IN THE WORLDS HIGH PLACES

JUDITH MATLOFF

To Anton and John
And to every mountain person who goes unheard

Here place and people seem to be

A world apart, alone;

Cut off from men by spate and scree

Henrik Ibsen, Mountain Life (1859)

The mountain seems no more a soulless thing,

But rather as a shape of ancient fear,

In darkness and the winds of Chaos born

George Sterling, Night on the Mountain (1914)

I met Jean Lassalle and Mario Conejo in a ballroom in the Pyrenees, at a concert of Andean pipe music in the baroque town hall of Pau, a city with a fairy-tale castle surrounded by majestic peaks. They were an incongruous pair, so I was surprised when they called each other brother. Lassalle wore a suit over a cuffed shirt, the uniform of the politician; a French parliamentarian, he represents shepherds in the region. At six feet seven inches and with an impressively craggy nose, he looms like a human cliff in business attire. Conejo, also an elected official, is at least two feet shorter, with a waist-length braid. He wore a bowler hat, and his white tunic identified him as an Indian of the Ecuador highlands, where he serves as mayor of the town of Otovalo. Pachamama, he called the Andes. Mother Earth.

Despite the dramatic height differencethe indigenous mans face just barely reached his friends chestthey professed to see eye to eye. Mountain people instantly understand each other, explained Lassalle. We dont view things like folks from the plains. Conejo gave a solemn nod, and they embraced fraternally. They addressed each other in labored Spanish, a second language for both.

Lassalle heads the World Mountain People Association (WMPA) a network of proud highlanders from seventy countries who meet on scenic ascents every year to discuss their commonalities and their grievances. The association was born out of a global forum organized by UNESCO in June 2000. Some nine hundred mountain dwellers from around the planet gathered in the French Alpine town of Chambry with a common mission: to pursue equitable and sustainable development and the continuity of mountain identity. The association survives on financing from French and Swiss authorities, organizations of native mountain groups, foundations, and private partners. Larger fears underlie the highlanders stated concernsfears about identity, and survival. Many members, like the Berbers and the Basques, aspire to self-determination.

WMPA meetings rotate among the worlds major mountain ranges, so that everyone can visit each others ancient communities. The gatherings call to mind the pointed multiculturalism of a Benetton ad, except the diversity here is genuine and unself-conscious. Turbaned Tuaregs and Bolivian coca growers in sandals sit alongside Sherpas from Nepal, all eagerly chatting away while sampling local sheep-milk delicacies. Much of the conversation, facilitated by teams of translators, focuses on shared concerns: How to gain control over the metals and water embedded in their traditional burial grounds? How, also, to prevent tourists from spoiling ancient pastures?

Sitting in this peaceful place, witness to the brotherly love flowing between the worlds mountain peoples, and mellowed by the ethereal yet earthy pipe music, it was easy to forget why I was there: to report on the prevalence of violence in mountainous regions. Mountains cover one-fourth of the earths surface and account for only 10 percent of its population. Yet they host a strikingly disproportionate share of its clashes. A 1999 United Nations report revealed that twenty-three of the twenty-seven major armed conflicts in the world were being fought in mountain areas, and that ratio remains roughly true today. The Sierra Madre, Afghanistan, the Caucasusthese and many other regions are plagued by drug violence, uprisings, Islamist extremists, and other dangers nurtured at high altitude.

The WMPA, for its part, focuses not on violence but on addressing the many challenges of life in the highlands. The organization is based in Oloron-Sainte-Marie, the picturesque stone town where Lassalles family was, at the time that I met him, encouraging shepherds to mobilize against the importation of Slovenian bears to ancient grazing lands. In recent years the central government had relocated two of the creatures to this mountainous corner, and now it was rumored that more were coming. The shepherds were concerned that the bears would decimate their flocks. The protests included blocking roads and planting broken glass in honey pots to injure marauding bears.