No friends but the mountains
Subtitle: dispatches from the world's violent highlands
By: Judith Matloff
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 253
ISBN-13: 9780465097883
Subjects: Uplands; Modern Military history; Social conflict; Mountains; Travel; Violence; Civil war; Ethnic conflict; Mountain life; History
Description: "A veteran war correspondent journeys to remote mountain communities across the globe--from Albania and Chechnya to Nepal and Colombia--to investigate why so many conflicts occur at great heights. Mountainous regions are home to only ten percent of the world's population yet host a strikingly disproportionate share of the world's conflicts. Mountains provide a natural refuge for those who want to elude authority, and their remoteness has allowed archaic practices to persist well into our globalized era. As Judith Matloff shows, the result is a combustible mix we in the lowlands cannot afford to ignore. Traveling to conflict zones across the world, she introduces us to Albanian teenagers involved in ancient blood feuds; Mexican peasants hunting down violent poppy growers; and Jihadists who have resisted the Russian military for decades. At every stop, Matloff reminds us that the drugs, terrorism, and instability cascading down the mountainside affect us all. A work of political travel writing in the vein of Ryszard Kapuscinski and Robert Kaplan, No Friends but the Mountains is an indelible portrait of the conflicts that have unexpectedly shaped our world"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-238) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : A Towering Problem; title: One for One : The Dinaric Alps; title: Our Land is Our Land : Sierra Madre; title: Holding the High Ground of Nothing : The Andes; title: The Dammed : Himalayas; title: Mountain Thistles : The Caucasus; title: On the Existential Border : Kashmir; title: The Gods of the Valleys Are Not the Gods of the Hills : Part I. The Green Mountains and the Hindu Kush ; Part II. Lyngen Alps; title: Cantonment (Contentment) : The Pyrenees and the Swiss Alps.