That Crush at Kosovo’s Business Door? The Return of U.S. Heroes

By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is in a bind. His country’s largest and most lucrative enterprise, the state telecommunications company, is up for sale. The jostling among buyers is intense. Narrowing the bidders has hardly helped.

One bid is from a fund founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. Lobbying for another was James W. Pardew, the Clinton-era special envoy to the Balkans. Both former diplomats are among the Americans who hold the status of heroes here for their roles in the 1999 intervention that separated Kosovo from Serbia and created one of the world’s newest states. Continue reading “That Crush at Kosovo’s Business Door? The Return of U.S. Heroes” →

Religion Class for Every 4th Grader in Russia

A class called the “Basis of Secular Ethics” is popular among the students. (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

This year Russia required fourth graders across the country to take a religion class. There are six choices: Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, secular ethics or world religions. Most Russians consider themselves Orthodox Christians, but most did not choose that class for their children. Matthew Brunwasser reports.

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Al RTV, Russia’s First Islamic TV Channel

It’s show time in the studio of the new Al RTV channel.

“Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh” says host Rustem Arifdghanov, a seasoned Azeri journalist who also heads the channel. He says the mission is to reconnect Russian Muslims with their faith after 70 years of enforced atheism during the Soviet era.

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Russia Remains Divided on the Pussy Riot Case

Despite 70 years of atheist Communist rule, Russia remains a deeply conservative society with traditional Christian values. Pussy Riot’s “punk rock prayer” was not received well by most Russians. But the way state and church officials handled the punishment did not go over well either. Continue reading “Russia Remains Divided on the Pussy Riot Case” →

In Turkey, President Obama in 55 Layers of Pastry

What is the size of a large cookie pan, made out of baklava, and looks like a lumpy version of the famous Hope portrait of Barack Obama? The “Baracklava”.

The idea was cooked up in the Gulloglu baklava shop in Istanbul. In the shop’s six decades in business, only three other historical figures, all Turks, have been so honored. Owner Nadir Gullu says the portraits require enormous craftsmanship. Continue reading “In Turkey, President Obama in 55 Layers of Pastry” →

Extremism Law Curbs Religious Freedom in Russia

This is what extremism sounds like, according to Russian law. At the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in St. Petersburg, worshippers start their bible study session with a song. No other religious group has been hit so hard by Russia’s controversial anti-extremism law. In the past three years, the church reports that state authorities have arrested or detained more than a thousand believers, searched 148 homes and buildings, and banned 68 publications. Continue reading “Extremism Law Curbs Religious Freedom in Russia” →

I am Woman, Hear Me Pray

ISTANBUL — There’s not a lot of female energy in the Directorate of the Istanbul Mufti. This large, blocky Ottoman-era building houses the state bureaucratic entity in charge of every aspect of Islam here, from hiring imams and writing their weekly sermons to paying their salaries and approving designs for new mosques.Much of what female energy there is comes from the small, tidy office of Kadriye Avci Erdemli, who three years ago became the first female deputy mufti of Istanbul and one of Turkey’s highest-ranking female religious officials.

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Black Metal Bassist Elected to Greek Parliament

The election to parliament of a bass player from the Greek Black Metal band Naer Mataron has the Greek media scrambling to find connections between facism and heavy metal.

Chaos, as Greeks like to say, is a Greek word. And Greeks might agree that the election of a Black Metal musician to a country’s legislature does not bode well for political stability. Continue reading “Black Metal Bassist Elected to Greek Parliament” →

Killings Heighten Ethnic Tensions in Macedonia

By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER

SOFIA, BULGARIA — On Orthodox Easter, one of the most sacred holidays for Christians here, Macedonians mourned the deaths of five Macedonian men amid speculation that their killers were ethnic Albanians, arousing fears of a new bout of intercommunal violence.

The men were fishermen, four were in their late teens or 20s and one was 40; they were found dead Thursday night on the shore of an artificial lake near the village of Smiljkovci outside the capital, Skopje. They were buried on Saturday. Continue reading “Killings Heighten Ethnic Tensions in Macedonia” →

Determined to Bring Out the Truth in Kosovo

By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER

PRISTINA, KOSOVO — She cut her journalistic teeth with the BBC as a 22-year-old fixer, helping television crews film in and around Kosovo during the 1999 NATO bombing war against Serbia.

Now 33, Jeta Xharra has continued the punchy public interest journalism she says she learned from the likes of Jeremy Paxman, the British broadcaster known as host of the television news program “Newsnight.”

In 1999, exposing wrongdoing seemed like an ideal common to most if not all Kosovo Albanians, united as they were by their fight against the authoritarian rule of Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. Continue reading “Determined to Bring Out the Truth in Kosovo” →