In the Financial Times today, I read something that got me
really excited. It was a full page article about Political Tours, a company run by a
former Balkans correspondent for the New York Times who runs tours to former
and current conflict zones such as North Korea, Bosnia and Libya. What also got my attention was the fact that the Bosnian tour described in the article was led by Kate Adie. For those of you
unfamiliar with her career, she was the BBC’s premier correspondent in conflict
zones such as Rwanda and Saravejo. British soldiers used to say that they knew
they were in big trouble when she arrived on the scene. In short, she is about as
serious and knowledgeable as it gets.
In the FT article War
Stories, the author Catherine Nixey makes the point that No Crowds has
been making for years. She writes, “Travel may broaden the mind, but so
homogenized is the international tourist experience, so perfectly do the
high-end hotels and galleries replicate one another, that often all I learn is
that I can be as bored in a museum in Istanbul as I can in London.” She goes on
to ask the question: Political Tours is offering a different kind of travel
experience, but is war tourism the right way to go?
And then she answers the question by describing the group’s visit
to the war crimes section of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina where one of
the judges insists that this kind of travel is valuable and makes a difference.
“If it’s not on the front page of the newspaper, people don’t see it”, he says.
“People should know.”
When I took a course
on Peacekeeping Operations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in
2009, I was amazed by how much I didn’t know about Bosnia and Sierra Leone and
the Congo and Kosovo and East Timor and Afghanistan. How so much could go on for so long with my only having a vague awareness, So I’m excited to know
that there is a serious travel company doing these kinds of tours to parts of
the world we should know more about. Conflict tourism may not be everyone’s cup
of tea, but what Political Tours is offering sure impressed me.
Political Tours
Tel: 0843 289 2349
Fantastic piece, Kate! Very cool.
ReplyDeletevery thoughtful, Kate. I wish there was a relatively safe way to get to these zones, unlike the intrepid reporters. I was perusing the Rwandair website the other day, thinking that Kigali really should be on my list before I leave the region.
ReplyDeleteGreat article!
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