No Friends but the Mountains: Dispatches from the World's Violent Highlands

by Judith Matloff

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465097883
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Judith Matloff teaches conflict reporting at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Her articles have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times Magazine, Economist, and Christian Science Monitor. Matloff lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

List of Maps viii

Introduction: A Towering Problem 1

1 One For One: The Dinaric Alps 13

2 Our Land is Our Land: Sierra Madre 35

3 Holding the High Ground of Nothing: The Andes 67

4 The Dammed: Himalayas 97

5 Mountain Thistles: The Caucasus 119

6 On the Existential Border: Kashmir 149

7 The Gods of the Valleys Are Not the Gods of the Hills

Part I The Green Mountains and the Hindu Rusk 169

Part II The Lyngen Alps 188

8 Cantonment (Contentment): The Pyrenees and the Swiss Alps 203

Acknowledgments 223

Bibliographic Essay 227

Index 239

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/16/2017
Determined to discover why violence flourishes in high-altitude areas, war correspondent Matloff (Fragments of a Forgotten War) investigates the cultures and ongoing conflicts of mountain ranges around the globe. She travels more than 72,000 miles to compile her survey, braving the mile-high battlefields of the ongoing Colombian civil war and the deadly Indian-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir, witnessing the destitution of the indigenous populations of Nepal and Mexico, and talking her way out of trouble with Russian police in Chechnya. Interviews with American veterans who fought in the high altitudes of Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush lead her to visit an Army mountain training center in Vermont’s (relatively small) Green Mountains; this excursion results in an even more intense journey to an Arctic NATO base in Norway. To cap off her journey, she focuses on Switzerland, a largely mountainous nation that outgrew its violent history to become a bastion of democracy and peace. This trip to some very different corners of the globe is recounted in clear, visceral language; vertigo sufferers may not enjoy some of the more harrowing moments, but Matloff’s investigation is a worthy read for foreign affairs and anthropology buffs alike, and her conclusion provides insight into current global affairs. 10 maps. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"No Friends but the Mountains is Matloff's globe-hopping, more-often-than-not crushing investigation into mountain mayhem. She has the experienced intrepidity to go get the story behind these murderous frays without coming across as a flake with a death wish."—Christian Science Monitor

"No Friends but the Mountains travels straight to the heart of eight mountainous regions as distinctive as their surrounding terrain... Matloff's lively writing keeps the dense subject matter from getting bogged down, and her accounts of perilous trips into hot zones are akin to an adventure novel... an essential work on the fundamentals of high-altitude warfare."—Shelf Awareness

"[A] chillingly enlightening account of those who live in mountain regions in order to elude or destroy authority, and whose blood feuds are handed down from one generation to the next."—Geographical (UK)

"This trip to some very different corners of the globe is recounted in clear, visceral language... Matloff's investigation is a worthy read for foreign affairs and anthropology buffs alike, and her conclusion provides insight into current global affairs."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"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

"Matloff is a skilled and courageous journalist, adept at sketching the realities - often grim, sometimes lyrical - of remote highland regions."—Ed O'Loughlin, Times Literary Supplement

"A tightly focused study."—Kirkus Reviews

"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

"Americans discount geography precisely because they have been the beneficiaries of it. People elsewhere know better. Judith Matloff's 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, author of The Revenge of Geography

"In No Friends But the Mountains, Judith Matloff has delivered a vital, deeply revealing book of political travelogue and intrepid correspondence. She 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, Dean of Columbia Journalism School and staff writer for The New Yorker

"Judith Matloff's 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

"The most spectacular heights on earth hold mysteries, not least why conflict so often shadows their vistas. Judith 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. Along the way, as history and present-day circumstances intertwine, Matloff 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 Matloff's engaging voyage across mountainous terrains. She reports with empathy on religious charities, anthropologists, guerrillas, and state armies all attempting to pacify some of the world's least governed spaces."—David D. Laitin, professor of political science at Stanford University and author of Nations, States and Violence

From the Publisher

03/15/2017
Drawing upon her professional experience as a conflict journalist, Matloff (journalism, Columbia Univ.; Home Girl) explores the connections between contemporary mountain regions prone to conflict and the ethos of the people who inhabit them. Through thoughtful vignettes, she 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. Seemingly influenced by fellow political travel writer Robert D. Kaplan's penchant for emphasizing geography to explain larger geopolitical, socioeconomic, and cultural phenomena, (e.g., his The Revenge of Geography and In Europe's Shadow), Matloff successfully ties together disparate mountain areas and cultures into a cohesive landscape of highlander have-nots that face both internal and external pressures affecting their homeland and way of life. VERDICT Not intended to be exhaustive or overly academic, this accessible read will appeal to those interested in geography's ability to alter the course of human events as well as its role in explaining global trends.—Matt Gallagher, Univ. of the Sciences, Philadelphia

Library Journal

2016-12-18
A veteran journalist drops into the highest hotspots across the globe for a sobering account of why mountainous regions often engender violence."From Kentucky to Kashmir," Matloff (Conflict Reporting/Columbia School of Journalism; Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block, 2009, etc.) finds that mountainous regions—with their tendency toward insularity and suspicion regarding outsiders—disproportionately make up the most warlike zones on the planet. The author, who has visited many of these fraught elevations over the years, presents nine journalistic accounts from the front lines: Albania's northern Dinaric Alps, the Sierra Madre of southern Mexico; Colombia's Andes, Nepal's Himalayas, the Northern Caucasus of Chechnya and Dagestan, Kashmir, Afghanistan's Hindu Kush; Norway's Lyngen Alps, and the Pyrenees and Swiss Alps. In the final chapter, which covers the Swiss Alps, Matloff offers a kind of reality check of the efficacy of the lofty Swiss in keeping peace and unity for hundreds of years—namely, a loose confederation of self-governing cantons. Long-running disputes between clans can start legendary strife, such as in Albania, where blood feuds endure for generations. The Zapatistas of the Sierre Madre, descendants of the ancient Maya, have been battling the central government for centuries over land rights and equal treatment. The indigenous Rai, only 2.8 percent of Nepal's population and who live in the highest mountains in the world, are fighting the damming of their precious glacial waters, which, writes the author, also supply "Asian rivers on which billions of people depend." Matloff interviewed many inhabitants of these highlands, recording their hardscrabble ways of life and the deep reverence they hold for the mountains. Moreover, she observed the American military training at the Army's Mountain Warfare School in Jericho, Vermont, as they prepared for the harsh conditions in Afghanistan as well as Norway's Arctic Allied Training Center, "where NATO trains its most hardened men for the high cold." A tightly focused study of mountain societies that hints at future conflicts.

Kirkus Reviews