A Dirty War

"Yes. Politkovskaya’s book A Dirty War is about the way the Russians conquered Chechnya in 1999-2000. It’s a really powerful account written in the immediate aftermath of the events, bringing to life the brutal mistreatment of Chechens and the destruction of Grozny by Russian forces. Politkovskaya was a very brave woman to write the book at the time and deserves a great deal of respect for what she did. It is pretty unambiguous that the Russian treatment of the Chechens was extremely violent. No matter how bad the Chechen terror attacks in Beslan and Moscow were, what happened in Chechnya was a hundred times worse and people sometimes lose sight of that. There has been a bit of a tendency in the international media to demonise the Chechens but the day-to-day trickle of horrors in Chechnya terrified and horrified far more people than the bigger scale Chechen attacks on Russia. The cumulative picture of attacks on Chechens means that they’re a traumatised nation. People rather forget that."