Macedonia -- What It Takes to Stop a War
After five years of writing columns for the Columbia Tribune in her hometown of Columbia, Missouri, Heather Roberson headed west. In 2001, she found her way to the University of California at Berkeley and its Peace and Conflict Studies program. She began thinking, dangerously, that perhaps violence is not inevitable when disputes arise and—now it gets really dangerous--she should go somewhere to find proof. She didn’t go to the campus library and she didn’t go become a research assistant for one of Berkeley’s Great Minds. She went to Macedonia.
Unlike the people of other Balkan countries—Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Kosovo—the Macedonians didn’t reach for the gun to settle their differences during the breakup of Yugoslavia in 2001. For Roberson, finding out the reason why meant becoming a peace correspondent, in a region rife with war correspondents. For six weeks, in the fall of 2003 and the first of three stays in the next four years, she conducted interviews and research needed for her 300–page undergraduate thesis. Better, her findings would become a major addition to the growing literature of peace--“Macedonia: What Does It Take to Stop a War” published in July by Random House and illustrated by Ed Piskor. Roberson’s co-author is Harvey Pekar, the Cleveland writer best known for his autobiographical comic book series “American Splendor.”
I met Heather Roberson in Washington in August. What follows are excerpts from interviews at a playground across the street from my home and a follow-up by email.
Colman McCarthy
CM: What with running off to Macedonia, and I imagine bankrolled only by your savings, it’s obvious you have a taste for risk, adventure and a bit of controlled craziness. Am I right about that?
HR: Yes, I absolutely do have a need for adventure and action. There is nothing I love more than stepping into an unfamiliar country where I don’t speak the language and have no idea where I am going to spend the night. I was raised on this kind of thing. My mother took me to Vietnam a year before the US ended its embargo with the country. We traveled with a delegation of Vietnam veterans and met a number of veterans from the “other side” once we got there. Traveling like that, it’s like an explosion of learning. But I’m also naturally impulsive. I can’t bear to dream up something good and then not go through with it. I have a lot of half-baked ideas that I do nothing with but when I get a good idea I can’t wait to see it unfold.
CM: Pardon my ignorance—or don’t pardon it—but where exactly is Macedonia? And while we’re at it, where does the word come from?
HR: Oh, this is complicated! Let’s see, you’ve got the historic Greek region of Macedonia, the modern-day Greek province of Macedonia, and the modern-day Republic of Macedonia which came out of the former Yugoslavia in 1991. I write about the last one but all these other special definitions of Macedonia are important to its story because everything about the geography of Macedonia is contentious. It was actually the cause of the Balkan wars back at the turn of the century. First, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia went to war to drive the Ottomans out of Macedonia. Then they went to war with each other over who would get what parts of the country. Now the Republic of Macedonia comprises most of what Serbia got, some of what Bulgaria got, and some of what Greece got. See how that would make things a little contentious?
The Macedonians can still be heard referring to their neighbors—Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania—as ‘the four wolves.’ The part that’s most fascinating to me, though, is the northwest region of Macedonia that shares a porous border—and a large population of Albanians—with Albania and Kosovo. There are Albanians in Macedonia who actually feel more allied with Kosovo and you see overlapping conflicts there. That’s a lot of what I write about.
The name Macedonia comes from the Greek “Makedones” which means “tall ones” or “highlanders.” The highlander part makes a lot of sense to me. Macedonia is mountainous and people really take advantage of it. In Macedonia it’s always a good time to climb a mountain.
CM: You were a peace studies major at Berkeley, which probably put all kinds of idealistic notions into your head which guaranteed to keep you penniless and restless. What was the pull of Macedonia?
HR: I was 23 when I started at Berkeley. I had already been a writer for five years. I actually thought it paid okay and it suited my personality. I just wanted to write about new, different and important issues. That’s why I settled on Peace and Conflict Studies and why I settled on Macedonia. Here was a country that nipped war in the bud. And the best thing is, it’s still happening. I can’t tell you how energizing and inspiring it is to go there and talk to people about the work they are doing on behalf of peace.
CM: What exactly prevented an outbreak of violence? Was it instinctive or just mere mortals plodding along and getting lucky that the guns stayed holstered?
HR: It definitely wasn’t luck. That’s what I really try to show in the book, that people have to commit to peace. What you see in Macedonia’s story is a combination of Macedonia and international leaders all making conscious decisions and taking risks to prevent war. And you see them doing it on an ongoing basis. It started when Macedonia gained independence in 1991. Unlike Croatia and Bosnia, Macedonian leaders actually negotiated a peaceful secession from Yugoslavia. In exchange for letting it leave, the Yugoslav state took all of Macedonia’s military resources. This left Macedonia in an insecure position, as you can imagine, so its leaders requested what became the United Nation’s first-ever preventive peacekeeping mission. The U.N. arrived uncharacteristically quickly, stabilized Macedonia’s borders and eventually moved into working on Macedonia’s internal-inter-ethnic problems.
CM: I’m told you own a house in Columbia and now that you live in New York you rent it out. Not many peace activists are into real estate. You’re still somewhat short of Donald Trump, but I do admire your talents to generate income through property. It’s easy bucks. Did you plan it that way?
HR: It was another of those ideas that seemed too good not to do. My house is split up into three apartments and my plan was to live in one apartment and fix it up, while collecting rent from the others so that I could build equity and eventually income. It was pragmatic. I come to Peace from the same pragmatic place. I look at Peace and think “Wow, what an efficient way to solve problems and conduct one’s affairs!” War is so obscenely wasteful—of people, money and time. That grates on my every nerve.
CM: Stay calm. I enjoyed your book immensely. It’s a prime example of immersion journalism: settling into one place, digging, analyzing and reaching fact-based conclusions. What happens if the book becomes a best-seller? How will you spend all the money? More houses?
HR: I don’t think I’m going to make a lot of money. But if I do, I’ll spend it on plane tickets so I can go talk to high school and college students about peace studies and the options they have to make the world a more peaceful place. That’s what I really enjoy doing.
CM: How much do you charge for your lectures?
HR: Sometimes an honorarium of a couple hundred bucks.
CM: Go higher.
HR: How high should I go?
CM: When you have witless blowhards like Pat Buchanan raking in $10,000 or $15,000, or Dr. Ruth at $25,000, start thinking four or five figures.
HR: Okay, $4,000.
CM: That’s a start. And then get a greedy agent to get you $8,000.
HR: I’ll start looking. I will donate the money I make to charity or buy the next house.
CM: If it’s a donation, I suggest the National Catholic Reporter.
HR: Yes, and it’s in Missouri. The heartland, where I’m from.