Disquiet on the Chechen Front

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Disquiet On The Chechen Front Posted Sunday, April 20, 2003; 14.23 BST Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the Moscow biweekly Novaya Gazeta, was in Los Angeles last October, picking out her dress for a media awards ceremony, when some staggering news came from Moscow: Chechen terrorists were holding 850 hostages in a theater. The Russian authorities tried to send in negotiators, but the Chechens refused to see most of them. They asked for Politkovskaya.

And so Politkovskaya rushed back to cover yet another episode of one of the world's nastiest and longest wars, which this time had shifted to Moscow. The terrorists, she says, "wanted someone who would accurately report things as they were. My work in Chechnya makes people there feel that I don't lie. But there wasn't much I could do for the hostages anyway." She mighty pen: Politkovskaya braves the hell of Chechnya to get the truth carried water and fruit juice to them, and reported their dejection and feelings of doom to the world. Two days later, Russian Special Forces stormed and gassed the theater, killing 41 terrorists and 129 hostages.

When those missiles hit a market in Grozny, it was only prompt coverage by journalists like Politkovskaya that forced the Russian commanders to let ambulances in and refugees out. "Our work is a lever to help people as much as we can," she believes. But it also causes trouble. In February 2000, the FSB (the former KGB) arrested Politkovskaya in the Vedeno district of Chechnya. They kept her in a pit for three days without food or water. "It was important not to let them kill me on the first day," she says. A year later, a Russian officer whose war crimes Politkovskaya had exposed threatened to kill her. Novaya Gazeta had to hide her in Austria for a while. The officer is now awaiting trial on charges of war crimes committed in Chechnya that Politkovskaya was the first to report. "But I don't feel victorious," she says. "I only feel that we're all involved in a great tragedy."

Her editors have had to stand up to pressure from the Kremlin, which is often infuriated by her reporting. Novaya Gazeta balances on the brink of forcible closure. "Well, it goes with the job," she shrugs. Politkovskaya has long since learned to keep her anxieties in check. As she arranges yet another trip to Chechnya, she may now be too famous to be targeted by the FSB. But she really doesn't think about such things. "If you don't have the strength to control your emotions, you're of no help to the people who are in such shock and pain. You only add to their burden," she says.

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Politkovskaya, special correspondent for the Russian twiceweekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, published in Moscow. She received her Diploma in Journalism from Moscow State University in 1980, and has since worked on a number of newspapers as a correspondent and editor. She has a particular interest in Chechnya, and has written extensively on the subject, including the book A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya (Harvill, 2001). She acted as a mediator in the NordOst theatre siege in Moscow in 2002, and has mighty pen: Politkovskaya braves the hell of Chechnya to get the truth been the recipient of numerous international honors, including:

· First Prize of the Lettre Ulysses Award (2003) · HermannKesten Medal, PEN Germany (2003) · Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation (2002) · Most Courageous Defence of Free Expression from Index on Censorship (2002) · Special Award of Amnesty International (2001)

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Novaya Gazeta

What happened to Anna Politkovskaya? Details about the health status of our reporter and the events of 1 – 2 September in RostovonDon.In the days of this tragedy, hundreds of our colleagues, civil servants, readers were interested in our reporter’s fate. They assumed that her presence in Beslan could be useful. But Politkovskaya didn’t arrive in Beslan. ...First of September, evening. Politkovskaya is sent to “Vnukovo” in the editorial staff car. Before that she had been in contact with a number of Russian politicians and Maskhadov’s representative in London, Ahmed Zakayev. The essence of his proposals: All who can get into contact with the terrorists are obliged to do this immediately. Without calculating the consequences. To save the children. “Let Maskhadov go and negotiate with them”. Zakayev conveys that Maskhadov is ready to do this without any conditions and guarantees. At “Vnukovo”, flights to Vladikavkaz are cancelled. Flights to the nearest cities are cancelled as well. Politkovskaya is checked in three times, and three times she can’t leave. The editorial staff gives the order: to Rostov, and from there by car. The “Karat” airline takes Anna on board. A necessary detail: Politkovskaya hadn’t had the time to eat for the whole day. On the aircraft (she is an experienced person) she refused the food, she had brought her own porridge. She felt very well. She only asked the flight attendant for tea. And ten minutes after drinking it she lost consciousness, but had the time to call the attendant. Later she remembers everything in fragments. The phantastic efforts of the doctors of the aid station at Rostov Airport. They tried to get her out of the coma and succeeded. The brilliant work of the doctors of the Infection Department at Clinic No. 1 in Rostov. Under miserable conditions they resuscitated her with all their improvised materiel they even coated plastic bottles containing hot water. Dropper, needles, in the morning stable consciousness. Grigory Yavlinksy, our colleagues from “Izvestia” (Special Correspondent Vladimir But), General Solodovnikov made all efforts so that the physicians would manage an “almost hopeless” task, according to the doctors. They succeeded. On the evening of 3 September, with the help of our friends (thank you, Messrs. bankers!), Anna was taken on a private airplane to one of the Moscow clinics. The Rostov doctors gathered to send her on the way. The analysis by the Rostov laboratory isn’t ready yet. And the first analyses, which were made already at the airport, were destroyed for unknown reasons. The Moscow doctors directly stated: the toxin is so far unknown, but it entered the organism from outside, in the aircraft. Until the explanation of all circumstances, we don’t want to voice the “conspiracy version”. However, the situation with the journalist from “Svoboda”, Babitsky, taken from the flight to the North Caucasus on suspicion of transporting explosives (!) (of course they didn’t find any), and the case of Politkovskaya force us to assume that the attempt was made to prevent a number of journalists who have a name in Chechnya from shedding light on the tragedy in Beslan. Politkovskaya is now at home under the care of doctors. In their opinion, an unknown toxin has seriously affected her kidney, liver and endocrine system. What will be needed for rehabilitation is impossible to know, unfortunately. Well, why aren’t the service members who are so concerned about Politkovskaya’s activity, interested in her profession, after all? To prevent terrorist acts, for example?

Sergey SOKOLOV, Dmitriy MURATOV, our special corr., RostovonDon – Moscow www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

Anna Politkovskaya in conversation with Jonathan Steele

"This is life, this is the reality in Russia today"

Anna Politkovskaya was in conversation with Jonathan Steele, Senior Foreign Editor of the Guardian recently, to discuss her new

book Putin’s Russia, the first title to be supported by English PEN’s Writers in Translation programme. The event took place at the

Frontline Club (in collaboration with whom the event was arranged), and saw a sellout crowd eager to listen to the views of one of

Russia’s leading journalists.

Steele began by asking Politkovskaya what the reception of the book had been in Russia. Politkovskaya explained that the book

was not published in Russian, and that the book’s subject matter [a critical appraisal of the Russia that has emerged under Putin's

The author leadership] meant that it was unlikely to ever find a publisher in Russia. In fact, the English edition (published by Harvill), is currently

signing books the only edition available in the world, although rights have now been sold into eight other languages.

Anyone who has read the book will agree that its defining characteristic is the level of pessimism which pervades it. Steele was keen to gage whether

Politkovskaya could see any cause at all for hope in Russia. Politkovskaya explained that the tone of her writing was something that she thought about and discussed with other Russian journalists endlessly: to what extent should they try to show some light at the end of the tunnel?

The problem was, she explained, that the stories people told her were pessimistic; ordinary people would queue up outside the

offices of Novaya Gazeta [the Moscowbased newspaper for which Politkovskaya writes] to talk to her and tell her their stories, and

she therefore felt a responsibility to write about them. Her task was not, she said, to write entertaining (and therefore more upbeat)

stories about famous people, but rather to write about the very gloomy situations that she claimed were representative of 95% of the

population.

Steele wondered what Politkovskaya felt about the oftcited view that at least Putin has managed to introduce a period of stability to

With interpreter the country: a sharp contrast to the more chaotic Yeltsin years. Politkovskaya was adament that this was not the case, questioning

Elena Cook how one could possibly have stability under a President who planned to scrap the direct elections of provincial governors, replacing

them instead with governors that he nominated himself. Things were worse now than under communism she said, with fewer children in school, people starving, and elderly people left to die by themselves.

Not surprisingly, a lively question and answer session followed, during which members of PEN and the Frontline Club quizzed Anna further. A full transcript of the evening, including these questions, will be available shortly: please check back soon.

We are grateful to the Frontline Club for their partnership in this event, and for the assistance of Elena Cook who interpreted for

Anna during the evening.

This event was organised through Writers in Translation, which chose Putin's Russia as the inaugural title for the programme to support.

Anna Politkovskaya · Learn more About Writers in Translation

· Who is Anna Politkovskaya?

· Why is English PEN working to promote translation? Read about Writers in Translation's roots in the PEN Charter

· Find out more about Anna Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia (published by The Harvill Press)

· Buy the book from Amazon

Report by Catherine Speller

We are grateful to Edward Zaslavsky for the photographs. All images are subject to copyright, and may not be reproduced.

Putin's Russia on sale

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Anna Politkovskaya: Putin, poison and my struggle for freedom

She has been poisoned by men she suspects worked for Russia's secret service and held in a pit in Chechnya for three days by men she knows for certain worked for the successor of the KGB.

But Anna Politkovskaya, Russia's most famous investigative journalist and the most outspoken member of the country's increasingly enfeebled media establishment, has not buckled under the pressure.

Yesterday her most searing critique of the Russian government to date, a book entitled Putin's Russia, was published in the UK. Its contents are likely to send the Kremlin's spin doctors into paroxysms of anger for she paints her main subject, President Vladimir Putin, in a devastating light.

Deploying her legendary blunt prose to great effect, she savages the man she calls "a KGB snoop," and warns that he is moving the country back to a Sovietstyle dictatorship. She also does what Moscow has so far miserably failed to achieve: present a roadmap for peace in Chechnya.

At a time when the Russian media is falling over itself to fawn over Mr Putin and sustain a Sovietstyle cult of personality around him, her work provides a lone dissenting voice and a voice that cannot be heard in Russia at least outside the pages of her liberal newspaperNovaya Gazeta.

Politkovskaya does what few other Russian commentators dare and steps over an invisible line, mocking Mr Putin in an intensely personal way; comparing him to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, to a pathetic literary creation of Nikolay Gogol's and to a bland, overpromoted spy who should never have been elevated to the dizzy Kremlin heights. She paints a relentlessly bleak view of the state of Russia today chastising those in the West whom she says the status quo "suits" and, depressingly, holds out little or no hope for improvement.

In a frank interview with The Independent yesterday she said she was fearful for the future of a country she loved, and hoped against the odds that a viable form of democracy might take hold one day.

"Under President Putin we won't be able to forge democracy in Russia and will only turn back to the past. I am not an optimist in this regard and so my book is pessimistic. I have no hope left in my soul. Only a change of leadership would allow me to have hope but it's a political winter. The Kremlin is turning the country back to its Soviet past."

Admitting that her book is staunchly antiPutin, she claims that the Russian leader rues the day in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and is in the process of rebuilding his own version of the USSR which has already started to seriously impinge upon people's basic freedoms.

"My heroes are those people who want to be individuals but are being forced to be cogs again," she said. "In an Empire there are only cogs."

Describing how Mr Putin has been careful to sideline any viable opponents, she argues, however, that Russia's liberals, thrashed at the ballot box and discredited in the eyes of many Russians, are still a force to be reckoned with. "There are many people in Russia who would be strong leaders," she said. "You might think they have their faults but nothing could be worse than Putin." Aligning herself strongly with the country's liberal forces, she argues that Russia cannot leave Mr Putin at the helm until 2008 and says that fresh elections need to be held before then.

"Because Putin, a product of the country's murkiest intelligence service, has failed to transcend his origins and stop behaving like a lieutenantcolonel in the KGB. He is still busy sorting out his freedomloving fellow countrymen; he persists in crushing liberty just as he did earlier in his career."

"We no longer want to be slaves, even if that is what best suits the West. We demand our right to be free." Poking fun at Mr Putin, she compares him to the humble Tsarist clerk, Akaky Akakievich, a famous literary creation of Russian author Nikolay Gogol. The wretched Akakievich believed the key to being successful and popular lay with his expensive overcoat. He was concerned only with his own image but when the overcoat was stolen he discovered that his own soul was empty. Politkovskaya told The Independent: "Putin is like Gogol's Akaky Akakievich. He is a small grey person who really wants not to be grey. Putin had a historic chance to be great and not to be grey but he is still grey."

Elaborating on a personally harrowing experience earlier this year she describes how men she suspects were Russian secret service agents prevented her from getting to Beslan on 1 September where proChechen extremists were holding some 1,200 hostages in a school. Politkovskaya had played a role in negotiations with Chechen rebels in 2002 during an ultimately tragic hostage situation in a Moscow theatre and felt her neutral status could come in handy once again.

On 1 September she phoned her rebel contacts and pleaded with them to allow Aslan Maskhadov, former Chechen president and rebel leader, to journey to Beslan and persuade the hostagetakers to release their captives. Having agreed to fly to Beslan and negotiate a safe passage for Maskhadov she set off for the airport. "My last contact with Maskhadov's people was ten minutes before I got on the plane. I suppose I did more than a journalist normally does. I then got on the plane and drank some tea and then ... nothing."

Politkovskaya had been poisoned, she said: "I don't remember anything else. I don't know but can surmise what happened. 'They' had decided that I needed to 'be dealt with' though not killed. A decision was taken and a middle ranking (FSB) officer fulfilled it."

The veteran reporter's voice tightened when asked how she felt the authorities handled the Beslan siege in which 344 people, over half of them children, died. "I didn't see what happened because I was unconscious but I believe the presidential administration, which was pulling all the strings, was cowardly.

"One and a half days passed and nobody went to negotiate with the bandits because the presidential administration opposed such a move. It was a tragedy."

Politkovskaya has had some unpleasant tangles with the authorities in the past. In 2000 her life was threatened by a Russian police officer because she had spoken out about an individual being kidnapped; she was forced into hiding.

In February 2001 there was worse to come. Accused of being a spy for Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, the man who claims he masterminded Beslan, she was held in a pit for three days by the FSB without food or water. Chechnya and its complex vortex of hatred and violence have fascinated Politkovskaya since 1999 when she first started reporting from the breakaway region. She has been back countless times since documenting in minute detail the terrible suffering of ordinary Chechens and the state of the demoralised, brutalised Russian forces. She said yesterday she took no sides in the conflict and had no truck with the likes of Basayev whatever the Kremlin may or may not think.

"He (Basayev) asked me to come and interview him once but I refused. After Budennovsk (in 1995 when Chechen rebels took 1,600 people hostage in a hospital in southern Russia) I thought there was nothing to talk about. There are no heroes and no angels in Chechnya. The war there has been going on for so long that there are only people who are interested in continuing it ... And then there are the people, stuck in the middle."

After Beslan, Politkovskaya says she wrote a letter to Mr Putin with her ideas for a peaceful settlement of the Chechen problem, urging the Kremlin to turn its back on Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's Moscowbacked deputy prime minister.

Politkovskaya's peace plan involved demilitarisation, international peacekeepers, a crackdown on corruption and the creation of a federal commission to govern the region. "It would be made up of non governmental organisations and civil society groups who have worked in Chechnya through the two wars and who are trusted. Of course I didn't get a response to my letter." Politkovskaya concedes she is afraid, but has no intention of shutting up. "Of course I'm afraid (of speaking out). Everyone is afraid in the current situation. I would be delighted if the Kremlin reacted to my book. It would mean that someone had got through to them but I think there will only be a deafening silence."

The book is not published in Russia.

'WHY I DISLIKE PUTIN'

The return of the Soviet system with the consolidation of Putin's power is obvious.

It has to be said that this has not only been made possible by our own negligence, apathy and weariness after too much revolutionary change. It has happened to choruses of encouragement from the West, primarily from Silvio Berlusconi, who appears to have fallen in love with Putin. He is Putin's main European champion, but Putin also enjoys the support of Blair, Schröder and Chirac, and receives no discouragement from the transatlantic junior Bush.

So nothing stood in the way of our KGB man's return to the Kremlin, neither the West nor any serious opposition within Russia. Throughout the socalled election campaign, from 7 December 2003 until 14 March 2004, Putin openly derided the electorate.

The main token of his contempt was his refusal to debate anything with anyone. He declined to expand on a single point of his own policies in the last four years. His contempt extended not only to representatives of the opposition parties but to the very concept of an opposition. He made no promises about future policy and disdained campaigning of any kind. Instead, as under the Soviet regime, he was shown on television every day, receiving topranking officials in his Kremlin office and dispensing his highly competent advice on how to conduct whichever ministry or department they came from.

There was, of course, a certain amount of tittering among members of the public: he was behaving just like Stalin. Putin too was simultaneously "the friend of all children" and "the nation's first pigfarmer", "the best miner", the "comrade of all athletes" and the "leading filmmaker"...

Why do I so dislike Putin? Because the years are passing. This summer it will be five since the second Chechen war was instigated. It shows no sign of ending. At that time the babies who were to be declared shaheeds [martyrs] were yet unborn, but all the murders of children since 1999 in bombardments and purges remain unsolved, uninvestigated by the institutions of law and order. The infanticides have never had to stand where they belong, in the dock; Putin, that great "friend of all children", has never demanded that they should. The army continues to rampage in Chechnya as it was allowed to at the beginning of the war, as if its operations were being conducted on a training ground empty of people.

Why do I so dislike Putin? This is precisely why. I dislike him for a matteroffactness worse than felony, for his cynicism, for his racism, for his lies, for the gas he used in the NordOst siege, for the massacre of the innocents which went on throughout his first term as President.

"Putin's Russia" by Anna Politkovskaya (The Harvill Press, Random House), £8.99, supported by English Pen

Anna Politkovskaya The Russian Parliament is to launch an inquiry into the Beslan ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA school siege, but it is not clear JOURNALIST, NOVAYA GAZETA whether it will investigate the role I have a lot of links with Maskhadov's of the security services. people. My point of view was Maskhadov needed to go to these There are many stories about the bandits and say to them openly, please siege yet to unfold, including don't do it. Please free all the kids. separate claims by two Russian After midday until evening, of course, journalists, who have been critical I discussed all these details about of President Putin over Chechnya, that they were poisoned as they maybe Maskhadov's future departure to made their way to the school. Beslan. In absolutely the open air of mobile phones. One of them Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter on the million selling Moscow paper Novaya Gazeta has been ill ever since, but she came to the BBC's Moscow studio to give Newsnight her first broadcast interview.

Kirsty Wark asked why she thought she'd been targeted.

ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA JOURNALIST, NOVAYA GAZETA : I have a lot of links with Maskhadov's people. My point of view was Maskhadov needed to go to these bandits and say to them openly, please don't do it. Please free all the kids. After midday until evening, of course, I discussed all these details about maybe Maskhadov's future departure to Beslan. In absolutely the open air of mobile phones.

WARK: What happened to you when you got on the plane to Rostov? Watch the interview

POLITKOVSKAYA: One boy, I didn't know him, gave me this cup of tea. I drank it and after ten minutes, I began to feel very, very bad. After that I heard only two, three words. The crew beat me on the face and asked me, cried to me, "Please don't die. Don't die." After that I discovered myself in the hospital.

WARK: Did anyone say to you that you had been poisoned?

POLITKOVSKAYA : Doctors said God bless you, and you are with us. You were poisoned.

WARK: You talk about an information vacuum at Beslan, what exactly do you mean?

POLITKOVSKAYA: Our TV channel gave society only official information. And people, relatives of hostages were out of this information. They were in a vacuum. They didn't know what happened. What would happen in the next minutes, in the next hours.

WARK: Is this the Kremlin pressuring the media, or do you think the media are guilty of selfcensorship?

POLITKOVSKAYA: My colleagues tried to be only in the way of the official information. It was real selfcensorship, but it's only from one hand. In the other hand, the staff administration of the President pushed a lot, during these two days, the hands of mass media.

WARK: Do you think the West simply accepts President Putin's policies without criticism?

POLITKOVSKAYA: Putin is very influenced by the Western opinion. He doesn't like to think about society and civil society in Russia, about points of view of civil society here. So, it means that only the West now could change him, could change him from tyranny to democracy.

Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Politkovskaya, the daughter of SovietUkranian diplomats, was born in New York in 1958.

Politkovskaya is a special correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, published in Moscow. She has written extensively on Chechnya, including the book A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya. She has received numerous international honors, including: First Prize of the Lettre Ulysses Award, HermannKesten Medal from PEN Germany, Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation, Most Courageous Defense of Free Expression from Index on Censorship, and the Special Award of Amnesty International.

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NovayaGazeta.Ru, September 4, 2004 What Happened to Anna Politkovskaya The first details about the events of September, 12 in Rostov and the state of health of our observer.

By Sergey Sokolov and Dmitry Muratov

At time of these tragic days hundreds of our colleagues, state officials and readers expressed their concern about the fate of our observer Anna Politkovskaya. They believed that her presence at Beslan could have proved useful. However, Politkovskaya did not reach Beslan.

In the evening on September 1 Politkovskaya went to Vnukovo Airport in the Novaya Gazeta editor’s car. She had contacted a number of Russian politicians and the representative of Maskhadov in London Ahmed Zakaev. Her proposals boiled down to the following: anyone who can contact terrorists should immediately go without calculating the [political] consequences in order to rescue the children. "Let Maskhadov go and negotiate with them ". Zakaev noted that Maskhadov was ready to negotiate without any conditions or guarantees.

Flights to Vladikavkaz as well as to the nearest cities were cancelled from Vnukovo Airport. Three times Politkovskaya was registered and three times could not depart. Editors issued the following order: fly to Rostov and from there get to Beslan by car. Airline "Carat" takes Anna on board.

Important detail: all day long Politkovskaya had not time to have a meal. She refused (as she is person of experience) a meal on the plane, taking porridge with her. She felt fine and only requested tea from the stewardess. Anna lost consciousness 10 minutes after drinking and had enough time to call the stewardess.

Further she remembers only fragments. Doctors took fantastic efforts at the first aid office at Rostov airport. They tried and managed to bring her out of a coma. This was attributable to the precise work of the doctors in the isolation ward of the first Rostov hospital. In miserable conditions they reanimated Anna improvising in all possible manner – even using plastic bottles with hot water. A dropper, injections, she regained her consciousness by the morning.

Grigory Yavlinsky, our colleagues from "Izvestiya" (staff reporter Vladimir But) and general Solodovnikov did everything in their power to resolve a problem that doctors termed "almost hopeless". The doctors coped with the task.

In the evening on September 3, with the help of our friends (thanks to our bankers!) we forwarded Anna by private plane to one of the Moscow clinics. Rostov doctors gathered to see her off. The Rostov laboratory analysis is not ready yet. The first analyses taken in the airport were destroyed for some reason. The Moscow doctors directly declared: the actual toxin remains unclear, but entered her organism from the outside, in the plane.

We do not want to make any statements before we learn all the circumstances. However, the situation with the journalist of "Liberty" Babitsky who was removed from a flight to Northern Caucasus on the suspicion of transporting an explosive (naturally, it was not found), and the case with Politkovskaya leads us to assume that an attempt was made to debar a number of journalists who are authoritative in Chechnya from covering the tragedy in Beslan.

Now Politkovskaya is at home under supervision of doctors. In their opinion, she has seriously affected kidneys, livers and endocrine system owing to the unknown toxin. Unfortunately it remains unclear how much time will be required for her rehabilitation...

Why were officials so anxious about Politkovskaya's activity and not focus instead on their own work? And prevent, for example, terrorist acts?

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By Anna Politkovskaya Saturday, April 1, 2006; A17

MOSCOW We are using Stalin's methods again, this time to fight terrorism. I am writing for this American newspaper on a subject that one can no longer write about in Russia islamskiy terrorizm, or Islamic terrorism cases. There are hundreds of such cases going through the courts in our country. Most of them have been fabricated by the government so that the special services can demonstrate how "effective" Russia is in fighting terrorism and so that President Vladimir Putin has something with which to impress the West.

Close examination of these cases shows that many interrogation records have been tampered with and that the documents containing socalled honest confessions were obtained through the torture of innocent suspects who are being punished for the crimes of Chechen separatist Shamil Basayev.

Here is one example of how it's done. Recently two young college students from the Chechen capital of Grozny Musa Lomayev and Mikhail Vladovskikh were accused by the police and the prosecutor's office of all small, previously unsolved acts of terrorism that had occurred about six months before in one of Grozny's residential areas. As a result, Vladovskikh is now severely disabled: Both his legs were broken under torture; his kneecaps were shattered; his kidneys badly damaged by beating; his genitalia mutilated; his eyesight lost; his eardrums torn; and all of his front teeth sawed off. That is how he appeared before the court.

To get Lomayev to sign and he did sign confessions for five acts of terrorism they inserted electrical wires in his anus and applied current. He would lose consciousness, and they would pour water on him, show him the wires again, turn him around backward and he would sign confessions that he belonged to a gang with Vladovskikh. This despite the fact that the two defendants were first introduced to one another by their prison torturers.

Yet another young man who was pulled into this case is Muslim Chudalov, a neighbor of the Vladovskikh family before the war. Within 48 hours of being jailed, he produced confessions to 15 crimes, after which the torturers dragged him as a witness to testify at the LomayevVladovskikh trial. The left side of his face was burned, his arms and legs were swollen, and he had bruises and bloodstains all over his body. He could neither walk nor stand security personnel had to carry him in. Responding to the prosecutor's demand, his tongue faltering, Chudalov confirmed all of his testimony against Lomayev and Vladovskikh. And certainly against himself.

Approximately a month later Chudalov was able to send a message from jail: "I could not endure all those tortures. I am scared even now when someone simply opens my door. . . . I did not participate personally in any one of those crimes. The investigators would themselves state the date of a particular crime, then they would tell me: 'This is what you participated in,' and beat me up. Then they made me learn the text of my statement by heart."

This is how we create our "Islamic terrorists" but we are no longer allowed to write openly about it in Russia. It is forbidden for the press to express sympathy with those sentenced for "terrorism," even if a judicial mistake is suspected. During the perestroika years we fought so persistently for the right to appeal and the right for clemency, knowing how many judicial mistakes are made in the country, and a special state committee on pardons was established.

Now, under Putin, the committee has been disbanded, executions have been tacitly restored, and judicial mistakes are again viewed as permissible and tolerable. The flow of "Islamic terrorism" cases has engulfed hundreds of innocent people, while Basayev continues to walk free. And there is no end in sight.

Russia continues to be infected by Stalinism. But it seems to me that the rest of the world has been infected along with it, a world shrunken and frightened before the threat of terrorism. I recall the words of one torture victim at his trial: "What will become of me? How will I be able to live in this country if you sentence me to such a long prison term for a crime that I did not commit, and without any proof of my guilt?"

He never received an answer to his question. Indeed, what will become of all the rest of us, who tolerate this? What has become of us already?

The writer is a special correspondent for the Moscowbased paper Novaya Gazeta and the recipient of the 2005 Civil Courage Prize.

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Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya to Help in Hostage Negotiations in Moscow

Read her firsthand account. Los Angeles, California, October 24, 2002 Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist with the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta who was scheduled to receive a Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation during ceremonies in Los Angeles tonight, has flown home to help in negotiations with Chechen rebels who are holding up to 700 people hostage in a Moscow theater. Politkovskaya received word late on October 23 that the rebels had asked her to participate in negotiations. She left Los Angeles on the early morning of October 24. The following message was read by John Puerner, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, during the awards ceremonies. Message from Anna Politkovskaya, IWMF Courage in Journalism Awards, Los Angeles, California, October 24, 2002: October 24, 2002; Los Angeles, 4:10 a.m “Dear friends! I want to thank you once again. It is a great honor for me to receive the Courage in Journalism Award. However and I think you will agree with me it is an even greater honor for me to respond when Destiny offers the opportunity to help people when a crisis strikes. There's a big tragedy unfolding in Russia today, and those circumstances require that it is today, and not a day later, that I need to prove that I indeed have courage. I have always believed that Russian journalism, first and foremost, is the journalism of action. The journalism of taking the step that you simply must take. Please pray for us, those who are directly affected by this crisis. And of course, say a prayer for me. I am ever more convinced that the war in Chechnya must be brought to an end. And today, the time has come for me to appeal to President Bush and plead with him to use his influence on President Putin to stop the bloodshed in Chechnya, and to prevent it in Moscow."

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Anna Politkovskaya

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Anna Politkovskaya (Russian: Анна Политковская) is a Russian journalist well known for her opposition to the Putin administration.

She studied journalism at the Moscow State University, graduating in 1980, and began her career with the Izvestia newspaper, now a staunchly progovernment publication owned by the Nickel oligarch Vladimir Potanin. Since June 1999, she has written columns for the online news publication Novaya Gazeta.

She has, on several occasions, been involved in negotiating the release of hostages, including the October 2002 Nord Ost crisis in which Chechen rebels stormed a Moscow theatre. Politkovskaya has also been involved in supporting the legal rights of victims' families.

During the Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004, Politkovaskaya was felled by a mysterious case of poisoning after drinking tea on an airline flight while on her way to Beslan to help negotiations with the hostagetakers. She fell violently ill, lost consciousness and never made it to the school. The cause of her illness has not been determined, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Anna Politkovskaya: Russia heading back to Soviet abyss

Very strong paper from the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in The Guardian. Just her conclusion after the Beslan slaughter: "We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit."

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Politkovskaya's Duty Is to Cover Chechnya's War

Run Date: 12/29/05

By Alexandra Poolos WeNews correspondent

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya has earned recognition and reprisal for her coverage of the war in Chechnya. She is unswerving in her dedication to her work, which she says offers a chance to help people face both atrocities and everyday life.

(WOMENSENEWS)Anna Politkovskaya was exhausted on a late Sunday night in December.

A mother of two and one of Russia's most daring journalists, she has made a career of covering the wars in Chechnya. That evening she had been out in the cold protesting the disappearance of democratic freedoms in Russia in central Moscow. The march, which was scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the Battle of Moscow during the Second World War, drew thousands.

Politkovskaya, however, was disheartened that many in Russia would never even know the demonstration had taken place.

"It's absolutely forbidden to cover democratic activities," she said in a phone interview from her home in Moscow. "We don't have one independent TV channel, just state channels. We have one independent radio station and two newspapers. It's absolutely little for such a huge country."

But protesting in the cold and fighting for democracy is nothing new for Politkovskaya, who has made a career out of daring journalism and tenacious activism.

In her work for the independent biweekly Novaya Gazeta, she has endured intimidation and even poisoning. Considered one of Russia's bravest journalists, she has covered the Chechen wars from the ground, traveling deep into the remote and dangerous southern Caucasus to report on how the war has affected ordinary citizens. She has faced Russian soldiers, Chechen rebels and constant warfare in her tenacious work.

Recently she was awarded the Civil Courage Prize, given by the Northcote Parkinson Fund, based in New York, which honors those who fight injustice at great personal risk.

"The courage of Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia's leading journalists, stands out in sharp relief," presenter Nicholas Platt said at the October ceremony in New York. "She has exposed the atrocities of the war in Chechnya, in books and articles in Novaya Gazeta, persisting despite the wrath of the Kremlin and in the face of death threats, intimidation and poisoning." She was also a recipient of the International Women's Media Foundation Courage Award in 2002.

Duty, Not Courage

But Politkovskaya doesn't believe that "courage" is a good word for her work. "I don't like this word. It's duty. I'm absolutely sure that I want to do something for the people using journalism."

Politkovskaya doesn't focus on women's issues in particular. Rather, she says, just being a female journalist in Russia today means that she will see everything about her work differently, especially when it comes to war.

She says that while female journalists can be repelled by covering war, male journalists can often become fascinated. "They like weapons; they like to see it. But female journalists and me too, all the time, I thought it's so awful to see all these weapons, to hear all these noises of the war. The only thing I prefer is to return home, not to see it and smell the war."

Politkovskaya says that her tenacity in covering the second Chechen war, which began in 1999 and continues today, ended her marriage in 1999. Her husband walked out after he could no longer stand the worry and loneliness that accompanied her constant travels. She believes her role as a female journalist and mother has shown her that reporting on the atrocities is never enough. She was a negotiator in the Moscow theater siege and has worked to find food, housing and justice for her subjects countless times.

"You need to be a writer first of all," she says. "But, secondly, you need to do something more for them. If the people don't have food and water, you need to find them food and water."

Born in New York, Educated in Moscow

Politkovskaya was born in 1958five years after Stalin's deathin New York, where her Soviet Ukrainian parents were United Nations diplomats. She was sent back home to be educated and graduated from one of Soviet Union's most prestigious departments, the journalism program of Moscow State University.

She became well read, in part, because her parents' diplomatic status allowed them to smuggle forbidden books into the country. After graduation she worked for state newspapers and eventually made her way to the independent press, where she began to distinguish herself by offering dogged reporting of Chechnya and becoming one of the few reporters to stick it out over the years.

She says the challenges of working as a female journalist in Russia are many. She speaks of constant discrimination and harassment, and says that it's almost impossible for a woman to rise to the rank of editorial board member. Ironically, these same challenges melt away in the mountains of the southern Caucasus, her second home in many ways.

"It's absolutely dangerous work for men because everybody sees them," she says, "but as a woman I can wear some clothes, like the Chechen women, and move around more easily." Slipped Poison in Her Tea

Recently, Politkovskaya's work almost cost her life, when on her way to act as a negotiator in last year's school hostage crisis in Beslan, she was slipped poison in a cup of tea. Although she isn't sure who tried to poison her, she suspects the Russian security service.

The situation, she says, is likely to become more dangerous as democratic institutions suffer under Russian President Vladimir Putin's measures. Just this month, Putin backed a bill to close all foreign nongovernmental organizations in the country.

Despite the risks, she believes she can only go forward and continue with what she calls the Russian theory of "little business."

"It's a special Russian theory that if you can't change the whole world, you need to do some little things to help specific people," she said. "Russian journalism was and now is the possibility to help people first of all in their everyday life and in their catastrophic life. I decided that it was a very nice theory for me."

Alexandra Poolos, the former managing editor of Women's eNews, is completing a journalism fellowship at Columbia University. She has worked for Radio Free Europe, The Wall Street Journal, NPR and Newsday.

ANNA POLTIKOVSKAYA SPEAKS OUT ON CHECHNYA Maral Madi

The Silk Road Studies Program at Uppsala University recently hosted a lecture by the renowned Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose reporting and books on Chechnya have made her famous. Ms. Politkovskaya noted that she visits Chechnya as a journalist about once a year. Only a fraction of journalists are allowed to visit the war zone. After providing a historical background to the Chechen conflict, she argued that the brutality of the second Chechen war could be compared only to medieval times.

Russian forces use extensive brutality in Chechnya, hiding behind the smokescreen of the international war against terrorism. The second Chechen war, she argued, is very cynical. It has been going on for four and a half years, longer than the Second World War in Russia. More than a million soldiers have been through the war on a rotational basis. Importantly, there is no idea or specific goal in the second war.

The war is concentrated around the civilian population, and its main facet is the zachistka or mopping up operations. A Zachistka is a large scale military operation, where forces of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Chief Military Intelligence Agency (GRU) encircle an area accompanied by the usage of heavy artillery and armored vehicles. A Zachistka is conducted in the following manner: the village, usually with more than 20,000 inhabitants, is blocked, and nobody has a right to move from house to a house. Sometimes a zachistka can last for three weeks. Then the whole male population is taken to open areas, e.g. fields, where they are beaten while checking their documents. Later some are let go, but some stay, never to be seen again. Russian forces consider as male population any male from 1011 years old up to 88 years. Russian forces usually explain the disappearances of the people with them being from the resistance. It is impossible to grasp the logic in this extermination, as rows of extrajudicial executions have been reported.

One of the biggest problems in the second Chechen war is kidnappings. Three thousand people are proved to be missing. These are only those, whose relatives were able to present undeniable evidence.

Ms. Politkovskaya provided the example of an event on 29 February 2004, when four bodies were found in the forest and brought to the local mosque in a village in Chechnya. They were found in a pit, in an areas where previously the military division Don2 of the Ministry of Interior had been stationed. It is believed that they were questioned by servicemen from that division, and were not seen later. The only chance to find or to get any news about missing relatives is by checking the photographs of the dead bodies that are usually hung in the central market in Grozny. This activity is arranged by the people who lost any hope to get exhumation results from the experts. Relatives search their relatives by the clothing, since when soldiers kill a person, they often just take off their clothes and hang next to the body.

In 2003 alone, Ms. Politkovskaya told the audience, Russia evidenced ten terrorist attacks on its territory. The majority of these acts were carried out by Chechens who lost their family members in the war, people who just disappeared after zachistka. In March 2004, the Murids of Gazavat claimed responsibility for the latest terrorist act in the Moscow metro of 6 February 2004. They said they are taking revenge for the events in the village Aldy. This goes back to 46 February 2001, when federal forces entered the village of Novye Aldy and carried out what can only be described as a bloodbath, during which 55 people were killed. The Murids of Gazavat said “it is our answer for the nonavenged, we were waiting for a long time, and we cannot wait any more”.

“The second Chechen war”, Ms. Politkovskaya stated, “has started acquiring all the features of the Palestinian conflict. We [Russians], by our own hands molded this ‘palestinized’ war. Until now, the Russian government does not want to acknowledge its mistakes in the Chechen war. Thus we created a situation where one side pictures Chechens who carried out blasts as heroes, and others, mainly the Russian government, pictures them as terrorists. Unfortunately, the Nord Ost tragedy did not teach Russian government a lesson. THe example of this is the appointment of Ahmad Kadyrov as leader of Chechnya. Kadyrov is a very ruthless man, and a puppet of the Kremlin. As civilian Chechens say, “only federals can be worse than the kadyrovtsy (Kadyrov’s people).”

War is a selfevolving business, Ms. Politkovskaya concluded. Military men are interested in the oil business and the weapons trade. The present war in Chechnya is now called a war against terrorism, since in the aftermath of the September 11 events, this turned out to serve Russian interests best. The following conclusions, according to Ms. Politkovskaya, could be drawn from the war:

Russian society came into agreement with the state initiated terrorism; Extrajudicial executions carried out by the state led to a system of terrorism; Putin is pictured as a hero, who is fighting international terrorism; There is no discussion and questioning of Putin’s actions at the societal level.

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Anna Politkovskaya the wellknown war reporter of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, arrived by helicopter to the village of Khankala on Thursday afternoon. There she had to undergo thorough questioning on details of her detention in Chechnya that took place shortly beforehand. Politkovskaya plans to return to Moscow on Friday. NTV correspondents met with the journalist in Khankala. Anna told them she had been brought to Khankala near 2:00 pm Moscow time on Thursday. Prior to that she had been held at the army unit in Khatuni, a village near Vedeno for two days. In official news reports the military spokesmen claimed she had received a warmed welcome in the unit**, but on Thursday Politkovskaya refuted those reports and made quite the opposite statements.

Judging from the news reports and explanation provided to Gazeta.Ru by the Novaya Gazeta's military observer Major Vyacheslav Izmailov, here is how it all happened: On Monday Anna Politkovskaya took a taxi in Mozdok and arrived in Chechnya. The destination of her trip was the mountainous village of Makhety in Vedeno District. Russian troops had destroyed that settlement through air bombings back in 1996. The key target of the federals' attacks was the headquarters of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who later turned president of Ichkeria. Not long ago the residents of Makhety declared they no longer considered it possible to live in ruins, and turned to the federal authorities with the request to help them move to Russia.

Anna Politkovskaya intended to go to Makhety in the company of the recently appointed Chechen government prime minister Stanislav Ilyasov to dissuade desperate locals from moving. But by some obscure reason, the journalist went alone to the settlement, where at local inhabitants welcomed her with numerous complaints about the actions of the military. From Makhety Anna Politkovskaya, accompanied by a group of the Chechens, headed to the Khatuni village, some four kilometers from Makhety, whereat the 119th paratroopers' unit was stationed. "She went there on her own, in order to hear the opinion of another side (the military), and they detained her," Novaya Gazeta's Vyacheslav Izmailov told Gazeta.Ru correspondent.

According to Anna's colleague, unwanted guests did not receive a hearty welcome from the paratroopers. They detained the journalist and the driver who brought her to Khatuni, and released them only three hours later. The driver preferred to return home (it is still not known, whether he got his vehicle back or not). As for the journalist she was detained again, shortly afterwards, at the nearest checkpoint. It is quite likely, that she had decided to continue the conversation to get more explanation from the military, and, naturally, her perseverance annoyed them.

All those events took place on Tuesday. News on Politkovskaya's arrest arrived in Moscow a day later, at midday on Wednesday. Upon hearing the reports, Vyacheslav Izmailov immediately started calling Kremlin's spokesman for Chechnya Sergei Yastrzhembsky andthe Federal Security Service for more information on the incident. However, neither of the offices would provide any details. Yastrzhembsky's office began making inquiries, however, neither of the law enforcement agencies in Chechnya could answer their questions. Gazeta.Ru correspondent called the FSB pressservice on Wednesday for comment on the journalist's detention and that was how that agency learned about the incident. Several hours later the commandant of Chechnya Ivan Babichev asserted he had nothing to do with the journalist's detention and ordered to release her immediately. But when the journalist was found eventually, paratroopers would not release her. It had grown dark by the time, when the Unified military group spokesman Konstantin Kukharenko emerged in front of cameras and said that due to poor weather conditions Politkovskaya could not fly away from Khatuni.

Then the official told the journalists that as soon as the fog lifts, Politkovskaya would be transported to the military base in Khankala, and afterwards, she will be deported to Russia. "Politkovskaya has gone on a hunger strike," the spokesman said, adding that what had happened to her was her own fault, for she had been traveling around Chechnya "without a duly arranged permission and without accreditation". However, Yastrzhembsky's office said Politkovskaya had a valid accreditation in Chechnya. "But (having) accreditation does not imply that one may go wherever he wants to. Anna Stepanovna (Politkovskaya) never informed us of her plans," a person at Yastrzhembsky's office told Gazeta.Ru.

And, indeed, it turned out that Politkovskaya failed to register with any of both presscenters of the military, in Mozdok and in Khankala. The military assume that journalists should not travel around the region withour registering, "wherein the counterterrorist operation is still on". Besides, the military insist that reporters who work inthe region should negotiate their itineraries with the military.And the Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya has always preferred to choose her routes on her own, her colleagues say. Earlier she managed to get away with it, despite the fact that most of her articles on Chechnya were extremely critical, exposing atrocities of the military and numerous cases of human rights abuse.

Politkovskaya wrote in one of her reports that it is not a problem to take an interview from any Chechen rebels in a downtown cafe in Grozny. All that's needed is to know informal rules of interpersonal communication. In Anna Politkovskaya's opinion, people she had encountered are mentally sick resulting from the conditions they are in. She said she had written a letter to the military prosecutor, for, she holds that if soldiers treat a journalists in such fashion, that means that all complaints filed by civilians about the atrocities and harassment arewellfounded.

It is also known that the prosecutor had questioned Anna on each detail of her adventure, and the whole process lasted nearly 3 hours. In televised comments for NTV the FSB spokesman Alexander Zdanovich said Anna Politkovskaya had only herself to blame for her misfortunes. She merely failed to behave herself correctly. Notwithstanding the fact she had infringed all the rules of stay in the volatile area, she was treated very well, and at her request, she was brought to Khankala by helicopter. Zdanovich described her charges against the military as sheer nonsense. On Thursday evening Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said he would take the investigation of the incident under his personal control. www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com Novaya Gazeta Reporter Anna Politkovskaya flees to Vienna

12 October 2001

The Moscow Times By Yevgenia Borisova, Staff Writer Reuters

Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, known for her reporting of human rights abuses in Chechnya, has fled to Vienna after receiving threats on her life.

Politkovskaya said Thursday that she believed the threats were connected to a story she wrote that suggested a military helicopter shot down last month in Grozny had been fired on by Russian troops, not a lone rebel as reported by the army. Ten highlevel officers including two generals died in the crash.

Politkovskaya said one of the officers, Lieutenant General Andrei Pozdnyakov, was on orders from President Vladimir Putin collecting information about the behavior of federal troops in Chechnya. She spoke with Pozdnyakov while he waited for the helicopter.

"He was supposed to make this report to Putin the next day and was carrying the documents," Politkovskaya said by telephone from Vienna.

The Defense Ministry on Thursday denied that federal troops had shot down the helicopter. "It is natural that federal troops could not have done so, and in any case they don't have the weapons to shoot a helicopter," a Defense Minister official said.

The ministry has blamed a shavenheaded Chechen rebel in white pants for the attack, saying he ran into Grozny's central Minutka Square as the helicopter lifted off and fired a Stingertype weapon. The suspect was not captured.

Politkovskaya said the square and surrounding districts were too well fortified for a rebel to enter and then slip away. "The city was blocked that day completely," she said Thursday. "It was impossible to get even from one district to another. And they say a rebel shot a helicopter from Minutka?" The Defense Ministry official said there was no mystery about how the suspect escaped. "He shot unexpectedly and apparently knew all the entrances and exits to the square," the official said. "The investigation is still going on."

Politkovskaya said she began to receive threats shortly after her story was published Sept. 20. The newspaper initially provided her with bodyguards and told her to stay at home. Then last week the paper sent her to Vienna.

Vyacheslav Izmailov, a fellow reporter at Novaya Gazeta, said the threats continue to come, the most recent one arriving by email Wednesday. The message was signed "Kadet," he said. Izmailov said threats were being passed to him by "special services," without elaborating further.

Politkovskaya said she is not sure what she will do next. "I can't work from here, but I think the threats might be coming precisely to keep me away from my work," she said.

Anna Politkovskaya www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com OSCE Prize for Journalism and Democracy 2003 Anna Politkovskaya Russia OSCE Parliamentary Assembly International Secretariat Rådhusstræde 1 1466 Copenhagen K Denmark Email: [email protected] Internet: www.osce.org/pa For further information, please contact Jan Jooren, Press Counsellor of the OSCE PA Email: [email protected] • tel: +45 33 37 80 40 • fax: +45 3337 80 30 • Printed April 2003 www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

L e a d i n g R u s s i a n J o u r n a l i s t a n d B u r m e s e P r o D e m o c r a c y C a m p a i g n e r t o R e c e i v e I n t e r n a t i o n a l A w a r d

Anna Politkovskaya, Russia, and Min Ko Naing, Burma

New York, NY – Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist whose dispatches from the war in Chechnya have led to death threats and poisoning, and Min Ko Naing, a Burmese prodemocracy advocate who endured fifteen years of imprisonment and torture, will receive the 2005 Civil Courage Prize on October 11.

The Civil Courage Prize of $50,000 honors steadfast resistance to injustice at great personal risk. It has been awarded annually since 2000 by the Trustees of the Northcote Parkinson Fund.

Anna Politkovskaya, special correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and author of three books, reports on the plight of Chechnya’s civilian population, which has been under military assault since 1994. She has put herself in danger by openly challenging the authorities. In February of 2000, the FSB (the former KGB) arrested Politkovskaya in Chechnya and imprisoned her in a pit without food or water for three days. In 2001 a Russian officer, whose war crimes Politkovskaya had earlier exposed, threatened to kill her, and she was forced into hiding. As she flew to Beslan in 2004 to report on the school hostage crisis, she lost consciousness and believes that she was poisoned.

Min Ko Naing, a leader of the 1988 peaceful popular uprising against Burma's dictatorship, is a central figure in the Burmese democracy movement. While a student at the University of Rangoon in the 1980s, Min Ko Naing secretly organized a nationwide student union, the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), to oppose army rule. In 1988 ABFSU coordinated a nationwide nonviolent uprising. Millions marched throughout Burma demanding an end to decadeslong military oppression. The regime responded with force, gunning down thousands. Min Ko Naing evaded the Burmese Military Intelligence for several months before his arrest in 1989. He was released from prison in November 2004 after a fifteenyear imprisonment, during which he underwent torture and solitary confinement.

Min Ko Naing has asked that his portion of the Prize money be donated to a worthy notforprofit organization. He is under constant government surveillance and is unable to leave Burma. Anna Politkovskaya is expected to receive her award in person.

A posthumous award for civil courage will be bestowed on Munir Said Thalib, an Indonesian human rights activist, who exposed "disappearances," corruption, and other abuses until his murder by arsenic poisoning in September 2004.

The 2005 Award Ceremony will be held at the Harold Pratt House, 58 E 68th St in New York City on October 11 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. To attend the event as a member of the media, please contact Barbara Becker at 2123750661.

Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Politkovskaya (Russian: Анна Политковская) is a Russian journalist well known for her opposition to the Putin administration.

She has on several occasions been involved in the aftermaths of bombings and terrorist acts, negotiating the release of hostages, and supporting the legal rights of victims' families. She alledges that during the Beslan school masacre, when she attempted to travel to the site to conduct negotiations with Aslan Maskhadov, she was poisoned on an aircraft by Russian security services (the FSB).

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See No Evil: An Interview with Anna Politkovskaya Emma Gray, Europe Program Consultant, CPJ November 13, 2001

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today released an exclusive interview with exiled Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent [until October 2001] with the Moscowbased newspaper Novaya Gazeta, who is known for her investigative reports on human rights abuses committed by the Russian military in Chechnya.

Politkovskaya fled Russia to Vienna in early October after she received death threats related to her reporting in Chechnya. "What torments me more than anything," Politkovskaya says in the interview, "is the thought that those people who wanted me to stop my work have succeeded."

Europe program consultant Emma Gray met with Politkovskaya in Vienna on October 26 [2001], to discuss the recent threats she has faced, her coverage of the conflict in Chechnya, and the current state of journalism in Russia.

Committee to Protect Journalists: Describe the events that led you to flee Moscow. Anna Politkovskaya: The first unpleasant signals came from a colleague at the newspaper, a former army man with good military sources. "You'll be killed if you go back to Chechnya," he told me in September, just before my most recent trip to Chechnya.

But I felt obligated to the people in Chechnya. A boy who had suffered very serious burns was waiting for me to deliver money for an operation. I had also promised to write an article about the fact that there has been no electricity in [the Chechen capital] Grozny for two years.

CPJ: In spite of these threats, you did return to Grozny.

AP: When I arrived in Grozny, there was a very tough blockade. No one could move; you had to stay home all day. I sensed something must be something going on. By chance, I was introduced to the head of a commission that had been created to investigate the Russian military in Chechnya. I was astonished and glad that someone had been given such a task.

The head of the commission said he was returning to Moscow to present his findings to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin. An hour after we spoke, the whole commission was killed when its helicopter exploded. The official version was that a Chechen fighter shot it down with a Stinger missile. I knew there was simply no way a Chechen fighter could be out on the streets—nothing could have moved that day without being spotted. Naturally, I wrote an article saying that it was impossible for anyone to fire a missile without the express permission of the Russian military itself. Then I had to get out of Grozny, and I flew to Moscow.

CPJ: What happened when you returned to Moscow?

AP: [My paper's editorinchief, Dmitry] Muratov told me to stay home and came over to see me. He had been summoned to the Ministry of Defense, which knew all about the contents of my article even before it came out. The next day, Muratov came back and told me that he had been summoned again to the ministry. They told him that my conclusions were correct, but that the ministry simply could not let this information get out. Muratov told me there had been more threats against me, this time from a person in the military whose crimes I had written about. "A man called Lapin, with the nickname ‘Kadet' has sworn to get rid of you," he said. We talked about it and concluded that Lapin could not be acting by himself. So I stayed at home one day, two days, 10 days. The Ministry of Interior did nothing to find Lapin.

Eventually, my editor said that I must return to work. I left home twice with a guard from the newspaper to give two television interviews. One of the broadcasts showed that I had a guard. After that, the next series of threats began, telling me that the guard wouldn't save me. My editor said I should leave the country, and he told me to choose a destination.

My choice was Vienna because nearly a year ago I had applied for and received a grant from the Vienna Institute for Human Sciences, which gives fellowships to journalists who want to write books.

CPJ: Are you able to work here?

AP: For the first week I couldn't write anything. I sat woodenly in front of the computer. But I gradually calmed down and started to write each day and to work. The book is about the changes in Russian society as a result of Putin's war. My position is that the war has wrought colossal changes in our country. It has made our country worse in a moral sense. The economy is torn as well, but what interests me is the moral context; things like the brutalizing of young Russians who have to serve in Chechnya and return to Russia violent or psychologically disturbed, the capitulation of the mass media, or the increasing intolerance of ethnic minorities living in Russia.

CPJ: What is your opinion of the way the Russian press is covering the war?

AP: Most of the mass media chose to cover this war without leaving Moscow. If they did go to Chechnya it would be only to travel to the Russian military base. All visits to Chechnya were controlled by the military, and no one could step out of line. Many of my colleagues accepted this situation straight away, and most of them thought that it was right, that this was patriotic journalism. When the war started, many of my close journalist friends said they could not write about this war in the same way they had about the first one [the 199496 conflict]. After the explosions [300 people were killed in attacks on apartment blocks in Moscow in August 1999, acts that the Russian government blamed on Chechen terrorists and that sparked the second conflict], they said they did not want to understand the [Chechens' separatist claims] and agreed they should be "flushed down the toilet" [as Putin has said].

There was strong propaganda, especially on the TV, saying the Chechens were guilty, even though there was no evidence at all. The idea began to spread throughout the mass media that an entire people must accept collective responsibility for the actions of one person or one group. That is an idea that I simply cannot accept.

CPJ: Why do you think so many of your colleagues took the government line?

AP: Most Russian journalists who are working today were educated and started to work during the Soviet era—a time when journalists were propagandists. Propaganda was the basis of journalism, and everyone knew how the system worked. So the years of free journalism were very hard for many. When the opportunity came to return to propaganda, some people were more than happy to do so. It's far less work. You just sit in Moscow, don't go out looking for information. You just write about how evil the Chechens are without moving from your seat. You live the sweet Moscow life and even get thanks for it—awards from President Putin for fine coverage of the war.

CPJ: You've spoken about your desire to return to Moscow. Do you feel it's safe to return? http://www.cpj.org/news/2001/Russia13nov01na.html to our block of apartments; someone like me—the same age and height, and grayhaired. I told them, "These things happen in our city." They said, "No, it was meant to be you." There are constant phone calls to my home from anonymous callers. They call my daughter's cell phone as well asking, "Where is your mother?" My children are terrorized.

CPJ: Why do you carry on?

AP: I am exhausted by my monthly trips to Chechnya. It is a very hard life. If I knew that others were going there, I would be able to relax. But they are not going, so I feel it is my duty to continue to visit Chechnya. Things will be worse for everyone if there is a lack of information. I see myself as a conduit of information from one place to another, a means of showing Russians what is really happening in Chechnya so they do not mistakenly believe that the military action is creating order.

The military is doing nothing of the kind, and if they continue to use such methods, they will create more warriors— which will be more dangerous for all of us. It is this ideology that I want to combat. What torments me more than anything is the thought that those people who wanted me to stop my work have succeeded. I worked so hard to shine a light on the events in this war, and now they have stopped me.

From Committee to Protect Journalists, November 18, 2001. www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

Tony Wood on Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War. Putin’s campaign of colonial repression in Chechnya, and the contradictions of a courageous journalist’s response.

TONY WOOD

PUTIN'S COLONIAL WAR

On 6 August 1996, three days before Yeltsin was to stumble through the especially shortened ceremony inaugurating his second term as Russian President, Chechen forces suddenly attacked and recaptured a string of major towns, including the battleblasted capital, Grozny. It was the success of this assault—coupled with the unending and increasingly unpopular stream of Russian casualties—that persuaded Yeltsin to sue for peace, and within a month General Aleksandr Lebed and the Chechens’ military commander Aslan Maskhadov had signed the Khasavyurt accords, seemingly bringing to an end the brutal conflict that has been dubbed ‘Yeltsin’s Vietnam’. Five years later, Russia is once again involved in a murderous war in Chechnya, waged as before largely on a civilian population living beneath ruins or in ‘filtration centres’ that echo unapologetically Nazi concentration camps or the Soviet Gulag. But where the first Chechen war was widely unpopular, seen as a needless waste of lives and an unwarranted use of force, Putin’s war has until now commanded widespread support, as an ‘antiterrorist operation’—the action of a strong state that means to rein in lawlessness on its periphery, no matter how daunting the task, and in so doing regain some measure of its former greatness. Yeltsin’s Vietnam has become Putin’s Falklands. Still more sombre analogies can be found: as Anna Politkovskaya writes in A Dirty War, ‘the tragic terrorist bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinaksk [in September 1999] are far too rapidly coming to resemble another distant event: the burning of the Reichstag.’

Anna Politkovskaya has written on Chechnya for the Moscowbased newspaper Novaia gazeta since July 1999, and the present volume gathers her dispatches from the North Caucasus up to January of this year. The book has been widely praised as a principled and unflinching exposé of Russia’s conduct, garnering the author prestigious awards from the Russian Union of Journalists and Amnesty International. Earlier this year she was arrested, abused and threatened with rape and execution by FSB personnel in Chechnya, after she probed too much into allegations of Russian torture of Chechen civilians; here she braves the streets of Grozny despite the snipers and the high incidence of kidnapping, using the pages of her newspaper to publicize the names of Russian officials responsible for withholding supplies from refugees, and to wage a campaign to evacuate the inhabitants of Grozny’s old people’s home. A Dirty War is frequently devastating about Russia’s barbaric conduct of the war; but despite the author’s brave and honourable intentions, the book is shot through with the prejudices and incomprehension subtending both the current war and its historical antecedents.

Russia has claimed dominion over Chechnya since the days of its Imperial expansion southwards beyond the Terek River—Grozny (meaning ‘terrible’ or ‘aweinspiring’) was founded by General Aleksei Ermolov in 1818 as a garrison town from which to conduct a steady pacification of the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus. This policy did not prove entirely successful, however; the history of the region has been littered with instances of rebellions which proved hard for Russia to quell—the most notorious being the uprising led by Imam Shamil, which lasted from 1829 to 1859. Further uprisings occurred in Chechnya in 1905, and again in the Soviet period, in 1917–21, 1929, 1937 and 1942—this last doubtless contributing to Stalin’s decision to deport the entire Chechen nation, together with the neighbouring Ingush, to Kazakhstan, whence they returned in 1957.

Having earned a reputation for fractiousness, the Chechens were mistrusted by both Russian and Soviet authorities, marginalized from positions of power; the Chechens have, however, proved extraordinarily adept at living in the cracks between state authority, often flourishing in illicit trade networks and criminal gangs in European Russia. In the years of exile, this impassioned resistance to alien authority combined with a forceful sense of national humiliation, and when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate Chechen nationalism expressed itself in urgent demands for full independence—backed by a prosperous Chechen diaspora. This double legacy of resistance to and successful subversion of state authority proved invaluable to the Chechens in the war of 1994–6, but—as elegantly chronicled by Anatol Lieven in Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (1998)—it has also hamstrung any attempts to establish a viable state since then, and has given a sad degree of credence to claims that Chechnya’s only law is lawlessness.

In 1991, the Yeltsin government was convinced that, were Chechnya to gain independence, the rest of the North Caucasus would follow and the region’s many nationalities—the Arabs called the area ‘Language Mountain’—would be plunged into ethnic anarchy; the ‘domino effect’ might then spread to others of the Russian Federation’s national autonomous areas and republics. That this failed to occur can be explained by their economic dependence on Moscow, as well as the continued dominance of local Soviet party and managerial elites. Apart from Chechnya, the only place where substantial autonomy of any kind (let alone independence) was actively sought, and achieved, was Tatarstan, which in 1994 negotiated with Moscow a separate federal treaty. No such compromise was ever contemplated by the then Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev, and Moscow initially preferred to support and arm Dudayev’s opponents, in the hope of installing a more pliable regime. The manifest weakness of this opposition, together with a string of hijackings on Chechnya’s borders, blamed on the separatists, provided the rationale for Moscow’s intervention in the autumn of 1994.

Putin’s policy in Chechnya has replicated many of the features of Yeltsin’s: an initial pretext of dealing with lawlessness; an attempt to install a proMoscow puppet regime (this time headed by AhmadHadji Kadyrov, the former Chief Mufti of Chechnya); and, of course, the presumption that the result would be, in the famously illstarred words of Nicholas II’s Interior Minister Viacheslav Pleve in 1904, ‘a small victorious war’. But where Yeltsin’s blundering and brutal intervention was at least in part motivated by a concern to preserve Russia’s territorial integrity, Putin’s was driven by a need to manipulate the fears and prejudices of the electorate, by cold calculation and bottomless cynicism—and by the Russian military’s burning desire to reverse the humiliations of the previous war.

Politkovskaya is frequently illuminating on the pervasiveness of this cynicism, and what it might portend—as in the reference to the Reichstag fire, and elsewhere a description of Putin as an incipient Pinochet. She is also unafraid of comparing Russian police harassment and unlawful detention of ‘people of Caucasian nationality’—Chechen or otherwise—to the Nazi targeting of Jews and Gypsies. Her account of the Russian military lays bare an unrelenting decline of morale and, most terrifyingly, of basic humanity—from the commercial exploitation of war casualties by the private firm Military Commemoration Ltd. to the abduction of recruits to the front in the middle of the night; from the rancid food with which soldiers are expected to fill fighting stomachs to random acts of terror and largescale atrocities, such as the massacre at Novye Aldy. There are chilling moments here, such as an interview with MajorGeneral Anatoly Shamanov, who announces that ‘kindness must have its limits . . . If the bandits do not understand our code of ethics, they must be destroyed. If someone falls ill, they hurt the patient by removing the affected organ.’ One of the most disturbing pronouncements in this idiom comes from Putin himself, announcing on Russian television in early November 1999 that he would ‘corner the bandits in the shithouse and wipe them out.’

There is much, then, in Politkovskaya’s book that is praiseworthy and even necessary: as Thomas de Waal writes in his preface to the volume, it is ‘the nearest thing yet written to a correct diagnosis.’ However, much of the good work is unravelled by a few stray, but damning sentences. The process begins with such crudely prejudicial statements as ‘Ruslan is a devout Muslim. But you’d never know it. Not a single word, look or movement betrays his inner faith, let alone demonstrative green bandannas or cries of “Allahu Akbar!”’ The simplistic division between well behaved, silent Muslims on the one hand and raging Wahhabite extremists on the other is paralleled by a division of Chechens into a peace loving, proMoscow camp and rabid, extremist (and, naturally, far too vocally Islamic) nationalists: at one point, Politkovskaya refers to ‘the “liberated” northern areas of Chechnya, a region opposed to Maskhadov, Dudayev, Basayev and all of their kind.’ The mere attempt to lump these men into a single category indicates a shameless ignorance of the politics of Chechnya between 1991 and the present—Dudayev representing the maximalist separatist tendency and Maskhadov the pragmatic approach quite visibly preferred by Moscow; hence the failure of negotiation in 1994, when Dudayev was in charge, and its success in 1996, when the Russians, having assassinated Dudayev, were much relieved that Maskhadov had taken over.

Politkovskaya reserves a special tone of condemnation for Shamil Basayev, who has been Russia’s demon of choice since June 1995, when he and a busload of heavily armed fighters bribed their way several hundred miles into Russia, before reportedly simply running out of money in Budennovsk. They seized a hospital, took 1000 hostages, and demanded the start of peace negotiations—which began only after a bungled attempt by Russian special forces to storm the building, in which over a hundred hostages were killed. Basayev then finished second in Chechnya’s presidential elections of 1997, and was appointed Maskhadov’s Prime Minister before leaving the government, disappointed by the lack of official backing for his plans to unify Chechnya and Daghestan—and thus, he thought, remedy the former’s isolation. It was Basayev, together with the Wahhabite leader Khattab, who led a band of men into Daghestan in August 1999. A month later, Politkovskaya went to Daghestan and encountered the incomprehension and anger of refugees from the fighting, to whom she refers as ‘mountain women’. Two passages are worth quoting, both for their patronizing ethnographic tone and for their more troubling implications:

They are, as you see, very simple people. Some might even call them primitive. However, they can see to the very heart of the matter, while we remain blinkered and confused by our complexes and sophistication. These women speak with a decisiveness and clarity that we have long forgotten: ‘Basayev is a bloodthirsty bandit and traitor and he has no place among normal people.’ Their questions and answers expose Russia’s illdefined policies in the North Caucasus. Our own answers hint at some involved game we are playing, and it is never clear to whose advantage: ‘Things aren’t that simple,’ we say. ‘It makes sense to negotiate with Basayev . . .

They simply cannot understand that Russian men are going to say nothing to Siberian mothers to explain how they are dealing with Shamil Basayev. They’ll keep quiet as usual. Yet again they’ll do nothing about Basayev and swallow this disgrace. Then they’ll shield themselves behind clever words: discussion of the status of Chechnya has been ‘postponed’, we must not increase tension by arresting Basayev. Madness. The women are right. As long as our men behave in this way, their war will never end. Within a few short weeks Putin began a war that supplied answers to all of Politkovskaya’s prayers: a ‘decisiveness’, shorn of ‘complexes and sophistication’, an end to ‘illdefined policies in the North Caucasus’, to ‘doing nothing about Basayev’, an end to ‘swallowing disgrace’. It is also, incidentally, quite extraordinary that a book which begins with an exhortation to Russia’s men to do their masculine, militaristic duty should then be lauded (on its back cover) for ‘excoriating male stupidity’, when the war Politkovskaya seems so urgently to be requesting eventually arrived.

Indeed, there are many more passages which point to this contradictory stance: for example, condemnation of Putin’s use of force, paired with blanket categorization of Chechnya’s democratically elected leaders as ‘bandits’. (If they’re simply bandits, why not use force?) At one point Politkovskaya suggests Russia’s leaders should try ‘either focusing the war within clear lines or a local arena, or else halting it altogether’—when Chechnya’s borders have, with terrifying logic, been sealed precisely so as to do this. She notes that ‘the present “struggle with the terrorists” is spreading across the entire country and is becoming a deadly danger to many who have not the slightest connection with the terrorists.’ But the logic of the entire operation has been precisely to forge this link, to turn all Chechens into terrorists so as to give a mask of legality to a war designed to crush their aspirations to independence. Putin’s subterfuge seems to have escaped a great many people in Russia today, Politkovskaya included.

This blindness to the national aspect underlies most of the weaknesses of her account. For example, Politkovskaya seems to see Kadyrov’s puppet regime as simply another instance of corrupt and ineffective rule—which of course it is—but it is also more than that: a regime imposed by Moscow, under force of arms, against the democratically expressed wishes of Chechnya’s populace. The smallest sign of Politkovskaya’s disorientation is that, in the tenth year of Chechnya’s struggle for independence, she announces in shock—as if it were merely a symptom of how bad the situation has become—that ‘Chechnya is not a part of the same country.’

Politkovskaya’s book is, in more senses than one, a diagnosis of Russia’s ills: the horrifying parade of scars and suffering, the incompetence and brutality to which she testifies are not rapidly forgotten, and deserve far more attention than they are given. A Dirty War lays no claims to authoritative analysis—it is, after all, a book of reportage, of testimony rather than critical insight—but even so it is deeply flawed, and symptomatic of a broader malaise. If one of Putin’s harshest and most principled critics turns all Chechen politicians into bandits or raving Wahhabites, ignores the fundamental historical fact of colonization, objects to the ‘antiterrorist operation’ only because of its geographical imprecision—in short, replicating much of the logic driving the current war—then there can be little hope of a cogent and wellinformed resistance to it. Worse still is the Western reaction to the Chechen war: as in NATO’s assault on Serbia, thousands of human lives are held to be of secondary importance to the maintenance of liberal values. In the revealing words of the translator, John Crowfoot, ‘the suspension of the constitution in that small republic puts democracy and free speech throughout Russia at risk. And that is a danger that no one can ignore.’ The reduction of a city of 400,000 to postapocalyptic rubble, the immiseration and reduction to abject servitude of an entire nation, and the massacre of countless innocents at Novye Aldy, Samashki, AlkhanYurt: all this can safely be ignored, so as not to interrupt the charade of lies, theft and corruption the world’s leaders have been pleased to call democracy in Russia. Politkovskaya’s freedom to speak a tainted truth is meagre compensation for lives lost and ruined.

Anna Politkovskaya Special correspondent for the Russian twiceweekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, published in Moscow. She received her Diploma in Journalism from Moscow State University in 1980, and has since worked on a number of newspapers as a correspondent and editor. She has a particular interest in Chechnya, and has written extensively on the subject, including the book A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya (Harvill, 2001). She acted as a mediator in the NordOst theatre siege in Moscow in 2002, and has been the recipient of numerous international honours, including: * First Prize of the Lettre Ulysses Award (2003) * HermannKesten Medal, PEN Germany (2003) * Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation (2002) * Most Courageous Defence of Free Expression from Index on Censorship (2002) * Special Award of Amnesty International (2001) New York, November 13, 2001— The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today released an exclusive interview with exiled Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent with the Moscowbased newspaper Novaya Gazeta who is known for her investigative reports on human rights abuses committed by the Russian military in Chechnya.

Europe program consultant Emma Gray met with Politkovskaya in Vienna on October 26 to discuss the recent threats she has faced, her coverage of the conflict in Chechnya, and the current state of journalism in Russia.

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

Anna Politkovskaya: "Nobody is interested in the matter of what is going on in the country"

On April 28th, 2003 in issue #30 of "The Novaya Gazeta" the article "Who Remains Alive" by Anna Politkovskaya was published. It says that the Theater Center hijacking committed by terrorists must have been at least controlled by the secret service of Russia. Anna Politkovskaya managed to meet Khanpash Terkibaev who claimed to have been a member of the terrorist group. He also claimed to have followed orders of some special service. In April 2003 Terkibaev was a member of the Russian delegation at the European Council as a "representative of the Chechen public". At present Terkibaev is a special correspondent of "The Russian newspaper". Terkibaev's name was in the list of the members of Baraev's group that had been published by "The Izvestia" not long before the Theater Center assault held by the special police forces. According to Anna Politkovskaya, "The Novaya Gazeta" has got some other evidence that Terkibaev was among terrorists. Terkibaev also claims to be working in the Information Office of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation.

In our opinion, the facts tackled in this publication are of the enormous public significance. Has there been any reaction to the investigation carried by "The Novaya Gazeta" from the authorities, society and their colleagues? The author of this sensational article Anna Politkovskaya, an observer of "The Novaya Gazeta" answers the questions of the editorinchief of the Informational Center of the Society for the RussianChechen Friendship Stanislav Dmitrievsky.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: Quite a lot of time has come since your first publication about Terkibaev. Do you know anything about any reaction of the authorities to your article? Is there any reaction from the Procurator Office, the administration of the President or the State Duma?

Anna Politkovskaya: Nothing at all. I have not even been asked any questions. Stanislav Dmitrievsky: You mean to say that you have not been asked to come anywhere, that there have not been any official interrogations or at least contacts with lawenforcement structures.

Anna Politkovskaya: Absolutely no official respond. It made us publish our second article in which we reminded that there is the General Procurator Office in the country and we not only asked the same questions but also put some more.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: I regard your article sensational. I personally think that in any country with the stable democracy such an article and its impact are sure to cause the governmental crisis, at least. Nevertheless, there is no reaction not only from official structures but also from other sources of mass media. There are too few responds and the majority of them are absolutely passive and spiritless. You are either contradicted at a very low level of "you are a fool yourself", "it was made up by Berezovsky" or just mentioned as if your article had tackled upon a trifle matter. There is neither any serious discussion, nor, moreover, any social resonance. What do you think about the reasons for such an attitude both by the mass media and by the society?

Anna Politkovskaya: You know, to be frank, we expected a different reaction. And we supposed we didn't want it but we supposed that the reaction would be serious. So it is very difficult for me to comment on the fact that there is no reaction at all. It means that it's of no interest to anybody. I mean to say that nobody is interested in the matter of what is going on in the country. What is interesting is the PR: some people are for the president, some others are against him…But the facts and the matter of what is going on in the country are of no concern to anybody. I personally can't comprehend all that.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: Apparently, it's a problem not only of the mass media but of the whole Russian society.

Anna Politkovskaya: Certainly. Mass media just reflect social interests, opinions and needs. You know, what shocked me most of all was the human rights activists' position. I am honest here. None of the human rights activists have made any attempt to put any questions in front of the official power. There was the only example the appeal of the social movement "For Human Rights" headed by Lev Ponomaryov.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: Yes, as far as I know, it was also signed by the manager of the museum and The Social Center named after A.D.Sakhsrov Yury Samodurov and the writer Alexander Tkachenko.

Anna Politkovskaya: I haven't seen the final wording of this document but the variant they showed to me the next day after the publication made me feel indignation. As I expressed these feelings to the authors of the appeal openly I am telling you about it now. The matter was that social appeal was called "The authorities should refute…" From my point of view, it is awful of them. The authorities must investigate such cases. To investigate means to interrogate Terkibaev and me, at least, by members of that big investigating group that is working now to investigate "The NordOst" events under the control of the General Prosecutor Office. I understand the "The authorities should refute…"position of human rights leaders as a desire to be acceptable by the official power. I can only wish them much success on their way. I was promised, though, that my comments would be certainly taken into account. [Indeed, Anna Politkovskaya's comments must have been taken into account. In the final wording of the Public Appeal that was published the people who signed it demand investigating into the facts reported in the article and in case they are true starting a criminal suite. There is no demand to refute in this document. the editor.]

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: Yesterday there appeared an article on Viktor Popkov site by Andrew Smirnov who doesn't agree to you and your supposition about "the controlled terrorist act".

Anna Politkovskaya: Sorry to say, I haven't read this article yet.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: Then it wouldn't be right to discuss this topic. It might be possible to comment on the main idea of this publication the author accuses you of being subject to explain everything by making up schemes of conspiracy. As an example of one of suchlike schemes common of the modern Russian mythology Andrew Smirnov tells about the theory of global plot between the two fighting sides. He also considers the supposition of the involvement of the Russian intelligence service into the terrorist act at Dubrovka to be one of these myths. How can you comment on it?

Anna Politkovskaya: Nothing of the kind, I am not for any plottheories. I can tell honestly after "The NordOst" a lot of western journalists and employees of foreign embassies used to come to our editorial office with the same question, "What do you think about the involvement of the Russian intelligence service into this terrorist act? Haven't you noticed anything suspicious?" Whenever I was asked this question, I answered that I refused to admit such possability. I couldn't believe it just because it would have become very difficult to go on living if I had let myself assume it. But later, somewhen from January, we began to get some bits of information. It evidenced that there had been some involvement all the same. I started checking it mainly to prove myself that the information wasn't true. This article came from attempts to persuade myself that it wasn't true. I personally think that the reality we are living in now is horrible. It is horrible that the intelligence service controls both the president and the whole system of power, that the intelligence service makes all the people jump as they wish. I started my article from the opposite thought: I wanted to make myself sure that the society was much stronger, that we were living in the democracy. And then… It took a long time to get all the information to write the article. And at last I told the editor that I could write the article. And at the same time my Chechen friends who are living in Moscow told me that they had seen that person Terkibaev in Moscow and if I wanted they would be able to get in touch with him. I told that I would certainly meet him. I thought such meeting would be very important. Besides, it was just interesting for me what kind of person was he and what was his life like. At first he refused but then accepted my offer to meet. It was his right.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: So if I've caught you right, you mean to say that you had the information concerning the fact that Terkibaev had really been among the terrorists in the Theater Center long before the interview with him, don't you?

Anna Politkovskaya: Exactly. I could have written the article without meeting him. The next bit of the information will be revealed later as the authorities take some measures.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: I have some more questions connected with, so to say, technical points. First, don't you know where Khanpash terkibaev is now?

Anna Politkovskaya: No information at all. He has disappeared somewhere but I was sure that it would be so.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: Have any other representatives of mass media tried to find him?

Anna Politkovskaya: Yes, they have. Many of them have tried but it was possible to get through to him only once.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: In your interview to the TVS channel that took place on April 28 you told that the members of special military unit who were assaulting the building couldn't have been aware of the "controlled terrorist act". But there appears one more question: the fact that Terkibaev could leave the building of the Theater Center means that he had accomplices among those representatives of the enforcement structures who were in the cordon. The plan of the Theater Center building that Terkibaev had couldn't guarantee that he would manage to leave the blocked building.

Anna Politkovskaya: It was not so. The building wasn't blocked that hard. There was a possibility to escape. If we want to go deeper into that point, I can tell you that too many absolutely inexplicable stories happened there. I can give you some examples. Yes, there was a cordon. And it was rather difficult for me to get into the Theater Center as one special structure said "yes" whereas the other said "no", the Home Affairs Ministry allowed but representatives of the FSB didn't as they didn't have Patrushev's allowance. On having at last received the permission to go, I approach the last circle of the cordon and …see a woman. I ask her, "Who are you? What are you doing here?" And she tells me, "I am this and that". An absolutely incidental person. Then a strange man turned up from somewhere and joined me. I ask him, "And what are you?" The matter is that I was afraid to enter the area that wasn't observable together with him where it was easy to shoot me dead. He answers, "I am from the Red Cross". I inquire him, "Well, but do you have any documents to prove it?" The white armband with the red cross that he was wearing couldn't be regarded as a proof. And one more strange occasion happened inside the cordon where the terrorists were nearby, where it was supposed to be dangerous as the Alfamen were lying there under the cars and when in spite of all that a woman threw herself at me. She tells me, "I am the wife of …tell Baraev this and that." I was completely astonished. I don't know whether she really was the person she gave herself out to be but the fact remains. She managed to get there. There were a lot of similar situations there: some people went inside the cordon, some other went out of it none of them was known to the public. And if I witnessed what was going on at that time it means that somebody else could leave the building through some other exit, from the back one, for example.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: You mean to say that it was possible to pass the cordon, don't you? Anna Politkovskaya: Yes! I can say when it became impossible to go through it. It happened an hour and a half or two hours before the assault. But it hadn't been so before that time. That is why I am not suspicious of this very detail that Terkibaev had managed to leave the building before the assault.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: How can you explain that Terkibaev was let to survive? He could have been put away, at least, couldn't he?

Anna Politkovskaya: I don't have the unequivocal answer to this question. I just think that he is a very convenient person for our authorities. He can contact both this and that sides, he can represent the Chechen public in the Russian delegation in Strasbourg, he can wriggle out of any situation. The world has known such people in all times. They just needed him.

Actually he made a big mistake when he made an appointment with me.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: Sure.

Anna Politkovskaya: And I think that he has already been explained that.

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: And the motif of the meeting? Vanity?

Anna Politkovskaya: He is absolutely vain. But there is one more explanation that, I think, has some grounds. He might have had some problems. He might have dared to accept my offer to meet not to be killed. And now who would dare to commit it!

Stanislav Dmitrievsky: Exactly, as there would be a scandal then for sure.

Anna Politkovskaya: That's it. It would be absolutely clear why it was done.

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com Silenced Voice: Anna Politkovskaya by Siobhan Dowd, with the cooperation of the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN, London

(December 3, 2001) The Daily Telegraph reports that "she looks more like a spinster aunt than a hardened war correspondent" and The Guardian suggests she is Russia's "lost moral conscience." To human rights professionals she is a heroine in her time; and to her teenage children, her recent exile renders her an alltooabsent mother. But all agree that Anna Politkovskaya is a devastatingly honest journalist, with the highest principles of fairness. She sees many sides of a problem, but never flinches Silenced Voices, a monthly from reporting what she witnesses. column about imprisoned authors, is written by Siobhan Dowd of the Writers in Prison But she is also a virtual lone voice crying in the wilderness. While the world reels from Committee of International PEN. This column originally appeared World Trade Bombers and the "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan, the goingson in the Literary Review (London). in the small enclave of Chechnya are on the global backburner. Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited U.S. President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas and has had tea with the queen, but no world leader has yet dared to suggest that his military's treatment of Chechen civilians smacks of a Milosovicstyle ethnic cleansing. A spate of bombings in Moscow by Chechen separatists has on the contrary given him carte blanche to deal with his local "terrorist threat" in whatever style he chooses. Anna Politkovskaya is one of the few Muscovite intellectuals to raise a protest.

A special correspondent for the respected biweekly Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya received the 2000 Golden Pen Award from the Russian Union of Journalists. Greyhaired, bespectacled, and robust, she led a busy life as mother and war reporter, at the pinnacle of her career, until last October, when a series of sinister death threats caused her to flee to Vienna. The threats arose in response to her series of startling and deeply troubling stories about Chechyna, which she has frequently visited. A compilation of these dispatches — dating from 1999 and 2000 — has appeared in English under the title A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya, published by Harvill Press. Although it has won wide acclaim, she nevertheless reports feeling horribly silenced. As she put it in a recent interview, "what torments me more than anything is the thought that those people who wanted to stop my work have succeeded."

Chechnya, a corner in the northern Caucasus, has been conflictmired since 1994. An ethnic and religious mix (Russian/Chechen and Christian/Muslim) its calls for autonomy led to a preliminary war in the mid1990s, from which the Russians withdrew after suffering heavy casualties. However, warlords took over and the region devolved into a banditstyle state. One of the parties conducted a series of Moscow apartment bombings, in which some 200 died. This led to Putin's government declaring war again, this time with greater vehemence. The military has now been fighting for over two years.

Grozny, the main city, is, Politkovskaya writes "a living hell. It is another world, some dreadful Hades you reach through the Looking Glass. There are no Anna Politkovskaya fled Russia after signs of civilization among the ruins — apart from the people themselves." receiving death threats from the Russian military for her book, A Dirty War. Photo Amidst the exploding shells and gunfire, she reports, children live as if courtesy St. Petersburg Times. unconcerned. Mass graves have been unearthed. Russian soldiers shoot innocent civilians for no discernible reason. If you don't give soldiers at the military checkpoints a "Form 10" (a code for a tenrouble bribe) you risk a bullet in the back. "Any discussion of human rights is silly," says Politkovskaya. "Such rights simply do not exist." Two thousand civilians have disappeared, with no redress from the courts. There is no accountability for the federal troops' excesses. Reports of torture in custody are routine.

She concludes: "The overall picture of the Chechen ghetto is not just grim, it is incomprehensibleÖWhat does Putin want in Chechnya?Ö What, in view of the fact that not one of the goals of antiterrorist operation has been realised? The terrorist leaders are still at large. And the resistance easily replenishes its ranks with new recruits seeking revenge of the suffering and deaths of family members."

In February 2001, Politkovskaya was briefly arrested while in Chechnya's mountainous south. Russian soldiers allegedly threatened her with rape and execution while she was investigating allegations of torture inflicted on Chechens in custody. She was formally accused of infringing the strict laws that control media coverage of the conflict and ordered out of the enclave. In the autumn, a colleague of hers with good military connections warned of increasing danger should she pay another visit. She considered his words; but a promise to a boy there with severe burns that she would bring money for his muchneeded operation, impelled her to return. On her arrival she found the atmosphere in Grozny tenser than ever. However, the head of a new investigative federal commission spoke with her, acknowledging some of the problems that had been occurring with the military. An hour after this encouraging conversation, the helicopter in which he and his commission were travelling exploded. She reported the incident, casting doubt on the official claim that a Chechen fighter on the street had shot it down, since as she observed the heavy military presence that day was such that no fighter could have moved without being spotted.

On her return to Moscow, her editor telephoned her and warned her to stay home. The Ministry of Defense apparently knew the contents of her article before it had even been published, and had told him that while her conclusions about the incident were germane, the story should not come out. He also told her that a military man called Lapin was reported to have issued threats against her, and suggested he provide her with a bodyguard. She agreed, but further, more insistent threats came, saying that her guard would not save her. At last her editor urged her to leave; she reluctantly but hurriedly did so and has remained outside the country ever since.

She is planning a second book which will analyze the overall effect of the Chechen conflict on Russian society. She notes a resurfacing of such phrases as "enemy of the people," a rise in racism and intolerance, and a "tougher, less polite" atmosphere. Where, she wonders, will Russia's growth of a "greatpower mentality" and "warrior" ideology lead? But more than anything else, she worries about her children who continue to receive anonymous threatening calls at their Moscow home, and hopes to be reunited with them soon.

Letters requesting that the threats against Anna Politkovskaya be thoroughly investigated, and that journalists be allowed to report on Chechen issues freely, can be sent to:

His Excellency Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin President The Federation of Russia The Kremlin Moscow Russia Fax: +(7095) 2065173

October 18, 2001 Threatened Journalist Flees from Russia By Artyom Vernidoub

One of Russia's best known broadsheet journalists Anna Politkovskaya, of the popular Novaya Gazeta (NG) newspaper who has won a reputation for exposing violations of human rights and other illegal activities committed the federal forces in Chechnya, has fled from Russia after receiving threats from an officer with the KhantyMansiysk Region's Interior Ministry department Sergei Lapin, known to his colleagues as Kadet.

In September this year Novaya Gazeta published an article by Anna Politkovskaya entitled "People Disappearing" about alleged summary executions and torture committed by a unit of Interior Ministry troops from KhantyMansiysk, serving in the Oktyabrskiy district of the Chechen capital Grozny. In particular, on January 2 this year the KhantyMansiysk unit arrested 26yearold Chechen national Zelimkhan Mourdalov.

"In the district department (manned by the KhantyMansiysk Interior troops) Zelimkhan was put at the disposal of Major Alexander Prilepin, head of the criminal police, more commonly known by the nickname Alex, investigator Zhuravlyov and officer Sergei Lapin, nicknamed Kadet that word was shaven on the back of his head," wrote Politkovskaya in the article.

"Later an investigation determined that namely those officers ordered that Zelimkhan be tortured and also tortured him themselvesâ€¦ His fractured bone stuck out from his right forearm. His right ear was cut off. His thorax bones were brokenâ," Politkovskaya asserts in the article.

On the same day the crippled Chechen was taken from his cell reportedly to be sent to hospital. He has not been seen since that moment.

On January 7th, under pressure from Mourdalov's relatives, the prosecutor's office of Grozny ordered the arrest and remand of investigator Zhuravlyov, however the seniors of the KhantyMansiysk unit had already sent him back to his hometown of Nizhnevartovsk.On January 18 the prosecutors went after Lapin (aka Kadet), but his colleagues in the Oktyabrsky police station refused to hand him over. Soon afterwards, he too was sent home from Chechnya.On March 12 two investigators from the Grozny prosecutor's office arrived in Nizhnevartovsk to detain LapinKadet. But Lapin was not detained. Instead, he gave a written promise not to leave Nizhnevartovsk pending trial. A month later the travel ban imposed on him was lifted by the Nizhnevartovsk municipal court.On September 10, Anna Politkovskaya wrote the article about the case. In her usual, sometimes overdramatic style, she described the atrocities committed by the federal policemen in Grozny.For instance, in her article she wrote: "KhantyMansiyskers terrorized not only the population of Grozny, but also the prosecutor's office of Groznyâ€¦ when anyone of the officers implicated in Mourdalov"s case was summoned for questioning (at the prosecutor"s office), a police brigade armed to the teeth went there, smashed furniture in corridors, and aimed their grenade launchers at the building."

Several days after the article was published, NG editor's office received the first threat by email.An anonymous well wisher wrote: "There exists trustworthy information that an operational worker of the criminal investigation department, who served in the Republic of Chechnya, who has a personal callsign "Kadet" (not a nickname), received training in special FSB (Federal Security Service) camps in spheres of subversive activities, sniper's trainingâ€¦ At present, his whereabouts are unknown but there is evidence that he is in possession of a rifle and intends to visit the city of Moscow. Are you by any chance in the know about the aim of the disgraced Interior Ministry operative's visit to Moscow?"

"We immediately became suspicious because of the fact that the person knew that 'Kadet' was not a nickname but a callsign. We receive dozens of such letters and otherwise we would yave ignored the threat," NG's chief editor Dmitry Muratov told Gazeta.Ru.

"Therefore it was decided to provide Anna Politkovskaya with guards. Provided she was accompanied by guards, I allowed her to go to a live program at one television company, and then an anchorman revealed that Politkovskaya had come with guards, I do not know why they did that, such idiocy. And five days ago one more letter arrived that reads that if in the course of ten days a refutation of Politkovskaya's article was not published, thenâ€¦ Kadet had already arrived in Moscow". "But," Muratov told us, "There will be no refutation".

After that Muratov decided to send Anna abroad. He did not specify whereto though but later Ekho Moskvy radio station learned from the Committee to Protect Journalists based in New York that her destination was Vienna, Austria.

Deputy chief editor of NG Yuri Shchekochikhin, who is also a State Duma deputy, wrote a letter to the Minister of the Interior Boris Gryzlov and met with his deputy Vassilyev.

Muratov assured Gazeta.Ru that the Interior Ministry had promised to thoroughly investigate the situation.

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www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com DFN Hosts Online Meeting with Journalist Anna Politkovskaya Exiled Author to Discuss Chechnya and Russia's Role in the Fight against Terrorism

NEWARK, N.J., November 9, 2001 — The Digital Freedom DFN CHAT Network (DFN) will host an online meeting with Russian DFN's chat with Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya journalist Anna Politkovskaya on Thursday, November 15 will take place on Thursday, November 15 from 4:00 to from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM New York Time (Thursday, 9:00 5:00 PM NY time (Fri. 9:0010:00 PM GMT) at 10:00 PM GMT). http://dfn.org/meet.

The online meeting, which is free and open to the public, will take place on DFN's Web site at . No registration is required. Anyone may attend the meeting and post questions to Ms. Politkovskaya in the moderated forum. The chat will be in English, translated by author Andrey Kurkov.

Anna Politkovskaya is an awardwinning Russian journalist who covered the war in Chechnya. Her exposes of the atrocities there sparked international protests and forced her to flee her native land last month after she received death threats from the Russian military. Ms. Politkovskaya's articles were collected into a book, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya, published recently by Harvill Press.

Ms. Politkovskaya will discuss her experiences in Chechnya as well as Russia's new role since the terrorist attacks of September 11. She will also answer questions from the audience.

A free copy of A Dirty War will be awarded to one chat participant, selected at random.

The online meeting will be accessible to anyone running a Javaenabled Web browser or an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client application. The Digital Freedom Network (DFN) is an international organization that develops and promotes the use of Internet technology for human rights activism. DFN designs online campaigns, makes technical information more readily available to activists, and provides an online voice to those attacked for expressing themselves. DFN's web site is http://dfn.org.

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PUTIN'S RUSSIA

Life in a Failing Democracy

By Anna Politkovskaya

Metropolitan. 274 pp. $25

Since coming to power in 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin has had one clear central objective: strengthening the Russian state, at home and abroad. For Putin, Russia's second postSoviet leader and a former KGB official, the disappearance of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a tragedy that produced anarchy, corruption, instability and uncertainty. He pledged to end the chaos by restoring the state power that had been lost under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Everything else, such as freemarket economic reforms or careful, balancing diplomacy, was a means to this end.

Above all, Putin believed that the way to make Russia stronger was to shift more authority to the Kremlin. Motivated by this conception of statebuilding, Putin has shrunk or eliminated every serious check on presidential power. Russia's two houses of parliament, its independent media, regional governors, the prime minister's office, independent political parties and civil society all are weaker today than they were in 2000, leaving the presidency as the country's sole meaningful center of decisionmaking.

Putin's more autocratic state is supposed to be a more effective state. But has it delivered? In "Putin's Russia," Anna Politkovskaya answers with an emphatic no. A courageous investigative journalist who has produced jarring and tragic accounts of Putin's brutal war in Chechnya, Politkovskaya makes her case against Putin not by systematically cataloguing the democratic rollbacks that he has successfully pursued in the past six years; on the contrary, despite the book's subtitle, it contains almost no direct discussion of Russia's increasingly autocratic politics. Instead, she focuses on dark dramas of individuals in the Putin era. If a theme unites the snippets of everyday life stitched together in this volume, it is that the state is not effective but corrupt unable and unwilling to provide basic public goods to the suffering people of Russia. "Putin's Russia" suggests that fear is the only public good that today's Kremlin provides effectively.

Politkovskaya devotes considerable space to showing how Putin's government does little to provide the most basic of state services: a professional army capable of defending the country. Instead, Russia's army "is mostly a prison camp behind barbed wire where the country's young are locked up without trial." Rather than protecting civilians from terrorism or violent crime, the Russian armed services, Politkovskaya argues hotly, have themselves become a perpetrator of terrorism first through their activities in Chechnya, where civilians are tortured, raped and murdered, and second through a brutal and unaccountable system of initiating draftees (known as dedovshina ) that reportedly kills and wounds hundreds every year.

Effective states have independent courts capable of enforcing the rule of law, but Politkovskaya makes the case that Russia has no such institutions. She tells the (overly) detailed story of a violent fight for property among thugs in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains, to demonstrate how Russia's courts serve the interests of criminals and oligarchs, not the rule of law.

Effective states draw borders between the activities of the government and the private sector. Politkovskaya argues that in Putin's Russia, one can become rich only by maintaining close relations with the authorities. Corruption, a problem Putin pledged to fight by building a stronger state, has instead exploded during his tenure.

Effective states provide their citizens a basic level of subsistence. Not Putin's Russia. To make the point, Politkovskaya tells of a World War II veteran who froze to death in his apartment in Irkutsk because local government authorities would not repair a broken heating pipe.

Putin and his comrades simply do not care about people, in Politskovskaya's account: "Their line is wholly neoSoviet: humans have no independent existence; they are cogs in a machine whose function is to implement unquestionably whatever political escapade those in power have dreamed up. Cogs have no rights, not even to dignity in death." This is strong stuff, from a woman who obviously feels passionately for her people and her country. In the tradition of the great Soviet dissidents, Politkovskaya is unwavering in telling the gruesome truth about the injustices that she has witnessed.

She also unapologetically criticizes Putin and the political and economic system that he has consolidated. Her stories are certainly true, but they are not the only dramas unfolding in today's Russia. Every day that an army private is hazed to death, a middleclass family in Moscow drives to Ikea to purchase furniture for their newly renovated dacha. Every day a veteran dies tragically from the state's neglect, millions of other retirees receive their state pensions on time, something that rarely occurred under Yeltsin. In the aggregate, Russians are wealthier today than they were when Putin took office. Driven by high oil prices (not Putin's statebuilding), Russia's GDP has grown steadily for the past six years, investment is booming, and the Russian stock market was among the hottest in the world last year. The number of people below the poverty line has dropped significantly, and consumer spending is skyrocketing.

Of course, the trends of state corruption and decay outlined in Politkovskaya's book do threaten the more positive economic story. As this clash between bad political trends and good economic trends deepens, the evidence in "Putin's Russia" suggests that the dark side the forces for a nontransparent government and a noncompetitive economy dominated by the state will win out. And yet hidden within Politkovskaya's bleak stories are flashes of individual inspiration. The dominant tone in "Putin's Russia" is one of despair that echoes the Soviet era. But a few of the victimsturnedheroes in Politkovskaya's stories are taking actions that no Soviet citizen would ever have contemplated. For instance, Nina Levurda, a Russian mother whose son died in Chechnya, is trying to sue the state not in response to the tragic loss of her son but because of the inhumane manner in which the state reported (or did not report) his death to her. Judge Vladimir Bukreev another courageous, very unSoviet citizen described in these pages dared to convict a decorated soldier of the rape and murder of a Chechen woman, despite pressure from the Ministry of Defense. That Politkovskaya herself has withstood poisoning and harassment to tell the truth about Putin's Russia should give even the most pessimistic observer of current Russian affairs some hope.

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A WAR WITHOUT HEROES By Vladimir Voronov Chechnya. How can one survive where there’s no life?

“A nation where the number of heroes is regarded restricted information meant only for those officials who give out awards while real heroes get no awards at all is powerless indeed. It will lose all its wars, because it is always in the wrong place and on the wrong side”.

It’s difficult to argue with these bitter words of Anna Politkovskaya, especially since the author of these lines was as unsuccessful in his attempts to reach the Department (or the entire Directorate now, which is unbelievable!) for State Awards attached to the president’s administration. My attempts to talk to their long–time and elusive boss, Nina Sivova, at least by phone, failed too (she was on a sick leave… on a business trip… meeting with her superiors… caught a cold…). And why did I need her? Just to find out how many people had received awards for the previous Chechen war, the First one…

Politkovskaya finally managed to reach her only to hear: “… This information is classified… for the sake of security. We do not want those persons to have any trouble…”

The response of the government official is just fantastic: the heroes of the bloody war are now afraid. Or maybe somebody is concerned about their safety. The statement of Sivova can also be interpreted one more way: it is safer being in a war zone than in civilian life in your own apartment, and the huge state machinery is incapable of guarding its heroes! But why should they be guarded and from whom? And what did they do if their names are classified and they have to hide from revenge? We find the answer on the same pages of Politkovskaya’s book: a war is being waged which is not a sacred, popular undertaking, but rather a dirty, bloody and criminal business. Can there be any heroes among dragoons?

Sometimes you may come across some heroes though, for people are different, and not all are murderers. Anna Politkovskaya tells about Magomed Yandiev, a colonel in the Ingush police force who risked his own life to bring 89 elderly people out of a retirement home in besieged Grozny. He was recommended for the “Hero of Russia” decoration. He did not get this award, and never will! For “Yandiev is an Ingush, and Ingushes cannot be trusted”. It isn’t even his nationality that matters, for Hero bars are conferred on murderers rather than rescuers. This is why Putin will never approve the highest award for rescuers… And now Magomed Yandiev is sitting in front of me – an ordinary hero of the sick nation. He never robbed or raped anyone, nor did he slip the trophy women’s underwear into the bosom of his camouflage. He rescued people.

For this very reason he is not a general, and his ‘Hero’ papers are rotting in Moscow safes.

Though an old truth says that a feat is the other side of someone’s baseness and sloppiness, you should agree that a war without heroes is not only an appalling, but a devastating diagnosis.

It is this side of the war without heroes that Politkovskaya describes in her Novaya Gazeta every week. Her main character is simple and unpretentious: a man in a Chechen street, not necessarily a Chechen by nationality, more often a common man in the street who does not care about the political or economic background of the bloodshed, even less so about the stratagem behind it. His main burden is how to survive always and anywhere: under bombardment, mop–ups and aviation raids, when crossing a minefield, passing a post or going to a marketplace, when you may run into a landmine, a stray bullet or the same mopup. Our tired average man with a heap of his own problems does not know anything about this side of “living” in the territory which is humbly designated as “the zone of the counterterrorist operation”. And in all sincerity we should admit that he is not willing to feel any empathy. If asked he would condemn militants and call for carpet bombing them. When he is bored with the news, he simply switches his TVset to a different channel where it shows in a serial how these bearded men are wiped out in public places by cool guys wearing masks and camouflage.

However, the average man refuses to accept the truth of the matter: they do not wipe out militants, but rather the same kind of average men engaged in making a living, and they don’t do it in a battle, but rather in everyday life. Nor would the average man know anything about the mop–ups which degenerated into marauding massacres long ago. The average man plugs his ears, refusing to hear anything about the cruel tortures inflicted not on captives, but on commoners like himself seized in their own homes, streets or at military posts. Our snug average man wouldn’t even want to admit to himself that men in masks and camouflage are common district police officers from the Motor Licensing and Inspection Department, or colonels (like Budanov) who work there in a “trade” which is not mentioned in referencebooks –“sadism”. They charge people for everything: for passing through a post, for the bodies of their loved ones, for the redemption of the living and for many other “services”.

The characters of Politkovskaya are real, not fictional, and that horrifies (if anyone is still capable of feeling any horror): they are refugees, officials, brigands in uniform and without it. And there’s actually not a single person worthy of emulation, as they used to say several dozen years ago. Certainly it is neither the rapist and sadist Budanov, the former mufti Kadyrov, nor 16yearold Magomed Idigov who was tortured with electric current, had German shepards set on him, led to the place of execution, and whose kidneys and lungs were badly damaged…

This book will hardly be a big success. Pain is a poor commodity, even when it is in print. And Politkovskaya’s book is so packed with appalling pain and horror, that the reader feels sick at once, imagining himself in this concentration camp! Only personal military experience helps get through this book, though the reading is like torture. I haven’t felt such hopelessness since the days of horror that I experienced in the cellar of a Grozny fivestoried panel house which was being bombed during the winter assault of the First war. The absolute gloom and hopelessness of the war has become a way of life, a livelihood for countless officials, a way of functioning for the entire nation.

They may reproach (and they actually do) the military reporter Politkovskaya: yours is a onesided picture; it shows nothing bright, only hangmen and their victims. But that’s how it is. And who could give a comprehensive and allround “picture” of this gloom? Someone must make at least some of us take a look into our national military machine. Someone must show us our possible future so that none might be able to say later, when jackboots rumble nearby and a “filter” operation with all its “delights” touches the indifferent with its tender bony hand: “We didn’t know anything and hadn’t been forewarned…” www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

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Anna Politkovskaya: Putin, poison and my struggle for freedom

Russian London 15 октября 2004, 12:28

She has been poisoned by men she suspects worked for Russia's secret service and held in a pit in Chechnya for three days by men she knows for certain worked for the successor of the KGB.

But Anna Politkovskaya, Russia's most famous investigative journalist and the most outspoken member of the country's increasingly enfeebled media establishment, has not buckled under the pressure.

Politkovskaya does what few other Russian commentators dare and steps over an invisible line, mocking Mr Putin in an intensely personal way; comparing him to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, to a pathetic literary creation of Nikolay Gogol's and to a bland, overpromoted spy who should never have been elevated to the dizzy Kremlin heights. She paints a relentlessly bleak view of the state of Russia today chastising those in the West whom she says the status quo "suits" and, depressingly, holds out little or no hope for improvement.

In a frank interview with The Independent yesterday she said she was fearful for the future of a country she loved, and hoped against the odds that a viable form of democracy might take hold one day.

"My heroes are those people who want to be individuals but are being forced to be cogs again," she said. "In an Empire there are only cogs."

Aligning herself strongly with the country's liberal forces, she argues that Russia cannot leave Mr Putin at the helm until 2008 and says that fresh elections need to be held before then.

"Because Putin, a product of the country's murkiest intelligence service, has failed to transcend his origins and stop behaving like a lieutenantcolonel in the KGB. He is still busy sorting out his freedomloving fellow countrymen; he persists in crushing liberty just as he did earlier in his career."

More dangerously she is convinced that Mr Putin has only contempt for ordinary Russians and democracy. "During the presidential preelection campaign (this year) he behaved exactly like Stalin. He destroyed the democratic opposition, pulled the wool over people's eyes, refused to even debate and constantly lied about Chechnya and about social reforms. They say we have a happy country but we do not. It is a poor country. Putin doesn't respect people and repression will follow just as it did with Stalin." Elaborating on a personally harrowing experience earlier this year she describes how men she suspects were Russian secret service agents prevented her from getting to Beslan on 1 September where proChechen extremists were holding some 1,200 hostages in a school. Politkovskaya had played a role in negotiations with Chechen rebels in 2002 during an ultimately tragic hostage situation in a Moscow theatre and felt her neutral status could come in handy once again.

"One and a half days passed and nobody went to negotiate with the bandits because the presidential administration opposed such a move. It was a tragedy."

Chechnya and its complex vortex of hatred and violence have fascinated Politkovskaya since 1999 when she first started reporting from the breakaway region. She has been back countless times since documenting in minute detail the terrible suffering of ordinary Chechens and the state of the demoralised, brutalised Russian forces. She said yesterday she took no sides in the conflict and had no truck with the likes of Basayev whatever the Kremlin may or may not think.

The book is not published in Russia.

'WHY I DISLIKE PUTIN'

The return of the Soviet system with the consolidation of Putin's power is obvious.

Why do I so dislike Putin? Because the years are passing. This summer it will be five since the second Chechen war was instigated. It shows no sign of ending. At that time the babies who were to be declared shaheeds [martyrs] were yet unborn, but all the murders of children since 1999 in bombardments and purges remain unsolved, uninvestigated by the institutions of law and order. The infanticides have never had to stand where they belong, in the dock; Putin, that great "friend of all children", has never demanded that they should. The army continues to rampage in Chechnya as it was allowed to at the beginning of the war, as if its operations were being conducted on a training ground empty of people.

This massacre of the innocents did not raise a storm in Russia. Not one television station broadcast images of the five little Chechens who had been slaughtered. The Minister of Defence did not resign. He is a personal friend of Putin and is even seen as a possible successor in 2008. The head of the air force was not sacked. The commanderinchief himself made no speech of condolence. Around us, it was business as usual in the rest of the world... Why do I so dislike Putin? This is precisely why. I dislike him for a matteroffactness worse than felony, for his cynicism, for his racism, for his lies, for the gas he used in the NordOst siege, for the massacre of the innocents which went on throughout his first term as President.

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www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com ProDemocracy international award announced

Monday, October 03, 2005 Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist whose dispatches from the war in Chechnya have led to death threats and poisoning, and Min Ko Naing, a Burmese prodemocracy advocate who endured fifteen years of imprisonment and torture, will receive the Civil Co Monday, October 03, 2005 Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist whose dispatches from the war in Chechnya have led to death threats and poisoning, and Min Ko Naing, a Burmese prodemocracy advocate who endured fifteen years of imprisonment and torture, will receive the Civil Courage Prize on Oct. 11.

The Civil Courage Prize of $50,000 honors steadfast resistance to injustice at great personal risk. It has been awarded annually since 2000 by the Northcote Parkinson Fund. In 2004, the Civil Courage Prize was awarded to Dr. Lovemore Madhuku for his work in pursuing constitutional reforms in the Zimbabwe.

Anna Politkovskaya, special correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and author of three books, reports on the plight of Chechnya's civilian population, which has been under military assault since 1994. She has put herself in danger by openly challenging the authorities. In February of 2000, the FSB (the former KGB) arrested Politkovskaya in Chechnya and imprisoned her in a pit without food or water for three days. In 2001 a Russian officer, whose war crimes Politkovskaya had exposed, threatened to kill her, and she was forced into hiding. As she flew to Beslan in 2004 to report on the school hostage crisis, she lost consciousness and believes that she was poisoned.

Min Ko Naing, a leader of the 1988 peaceful popular uprising against Burma's dictatorship, is a central figure in the Burmese democracy movement. While a student at Rangoon University, Min Ko Naing secretly organized a nationwide student union, the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), to oppose army rule. In 1988 ABFSU coordinated a nationwide nonviolent uprising. Millions marched throughout Burma demanding an end to decadeslong military oppression. The regime responded with force, gunning down thousands. Min Ko Naing evaded the Burmese Military Intelligence for several months before his arrest in 1989. He was released from prison in 2004 after a fifteenyear imprisonment, during which he underwent torture and solitary confinement.

Min Ko Naing has asked that his portion of the Prize money be donated to a worthy notforprofit organization. He is under government surveillance and unable to leave Burma. Politkovskaya will receive her award in person.

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www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com Disquiet On The Chechen Front

Anna Politkovskaya, Russia

BY YURI ZARAKHOVICH | MOSCOW

Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the Moscow biweekly Novaya Gazeta, was in Los Angeles last October, picking out her dress for a media awards ceremony, when some staggering news came from Moscow: Chechen terrorists were holding 850 hostages in a theater. The Russian authorities tried to send in negotiators, but the Chechens refused to see most of them. They asked for Politkovskaya.

And so Politkovskaya rushed back to cover yet another episode of one of the world's nastiest and longest wars, which this time had shifted to Moscow. The terrorists, she says, "wanted someone who would accurately report things as they were. My work in Chechnya makes people there feel that I don't lie. But there wasn't much I could do for the hostages anyway." She carried water and fruit juice to them, and reported their dejection and feelings of doom to the world. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed and gassed the theater, killing 41 terrorists and 129 hostages.

Politkovskaya, 44, made her name by writing detailed, accurate and vivid reports on the plight of the civilian population in Chechnya, caught in the horrors of war since 1994. She tells stories of people who are taken from their homes at night and never come back; about extrajudicial executions; about the hungry refugees in cold and damp camps. "It was the refugee problem that started it," she now recalls. When the second Chechen war began in 1999, tens of thousands of refugees began flooding the makeshift relief camps. "It was horrible to stand among the refugees in the field in October 1999, and see cruise missiles flying over your head," she recalls. When those missiles hit a market in Grozny, it was only prompt coverage by journalists like Politkovskaya that forced the Russian commanders to let ambulances in and refugees out. "Our work is a lever to help people as much as we can," she believes. But it also causes trouble. In February 2000, the FSB (the former KGB) arrested Politkovskaya in the Vedeno district of Chechnya. They kept her in a pit for three days without food or water. "It was important not to let them kill me on the first day," she says. A year later, a Russian officer whose war crimes Politkovskaya had exposed threatened to kill her. Novaya Gazeta had to hide her in Austria for a while. The officer is now awaiting trial on charges of war crimes committed in Chechnya that Politkovskaya was the first to report. "But I don't feel victorious," she says. "I only feel that we're all involved in a great tragedy."

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

PRESSRELEASE #423 FROM MAY 16, 2003

DOCUMENTS

The Tomblike Silence of the Russian Authorities Confirms the Involvement of the Special Services of Russia into the terrorist act at Dubrovka

The Appeal of the interregional public organization "The Society for the RussianChechen Friendship"

On April 28, 2003 in issue #30 of "The Novaya Gazeta" there appeared the article "Who Remains Alive" written by an observer of the newspaper Anna Politkovskaya. It states that the hijacking of the Theater Center at Dubrovka was, at least, controlled by the Russian special services. Anna Politkovskaya managed to meet Khanpash Terkibaev who claimed to have been a member of the terrorist group. He also claimed to have followed orders of some special service. In April 2003 Terkibaev was a member of the Russian delegation at the European Council as a "representative of the Chechen public". At present Terkibaev is a special correspondent of "The Russian newspaper". Terkibaev's name was in the list of the members of Baraev's group that had been published by "The Izvestia" not long before the the Theater Center assault held by the special forces. According to Anna Politkovskaya, "The Novaya Gazeta" has got some other evidence that Terkibaev was among terrorists.

Taking into account that all the terrorists who could have given the evidence of the exclusive importance to investigate the terrorist act and to find out the people behind the group, were shot dead by the police special forces during the Theater Center assault, that was committed in spite of the fact that the majority of the terrorists were under the influence of some poisoning gas and thus were absolutely defenseless at the time of the assault, we consider Anna Politkovskaya's version of the terrorist act more than probable. It goes without doubt, that the information reported by Politkovskaya is both of the great public importance and of the exclusive importance for the national safety of the Russian Federation. "The Novaya Gazeta" has appealed to the General Procurator Office of the Russian Federation to investigate the information tackled in the article. The chairman of the AllRussia social movement "For the Human Rights" Lev Ponomaryov, the manager of the museum and The Social Center named after A.D.Sakhsrov Yury Samodurov and the writer Alexander Tkachenko have demanded the same.

There has been no respond from the Russian authorities yet to the social appeals of the leaders of the Russian human rights movement. The General Procurator Office has done nothing they should have done to check the information tackled in the article. They have interrogated neither Anna Politkovskaya nor Khanpash Terkibaev; they have not demanded "The Novaya Gazeta" to put at their disposal all the additional information concerning the case that was received in the course of the journalist investigation whereas as it goes from a number of publications the editors of the newspaper have it at their disposal. The silence is kept by all the branches of power from the president and his administration that seem to pay no attention to the severe accusations against them and to the socalled "groups of opposition" in the State Duma that have not even tried to start the process of the parliamentary investigation. The silence is kept by the majority of mass media. And what is worse the silence is kept be the Russian society.

The passiveness of the lawenforcement structures and the silence of the official power in connection with both the present situation and the "Ryazan training" accident of 1999 when some members of the FSB were first detained on a charge of a terrorist act and then released, confirms the gravest suspicion that the Russian special forces must have been involved into planning and carrying out the terrorist act at Dubrovka and the explosion of dwelling houses in some cities of Russia in autumn of 1999.

We think that the President of the Russian Federation has no longer any moral right to head the Russian state as we have to establish a fact that he was either involved into preparing that "controlled terrorist act" or isn't able to control neither Russian special forces nor his own nearest circle of advises and consequently the situation in the country.

We also think that the Russian political spectrum lacks the really democratic opposition and that all the parliamentary groups claiming themselves the opposition are free to move as little as the Kremlin allows them.

To sum it up, all what is going on confirms the old idea that there is no public society in Russia able to influence the situation in the country. And it makes it possible for the Russian authorities to use terrorism as their political method to reach their own political aims contradictory to the interests of the Russian society, to the safety of the citizens and the state.

We appeal to all the people who are not indifferent to the fate of the country, to the future it is going to have, to everybody who has not lost the feeling of selfprotection and worries about their children's and their own safety. The time has come not only to express the attitude to the socalled ruling elite and their policy that is getting more and more alike an endless special operation. It is necessary to do our best to deprive those who come from the secret service with the present president as their head of the possibility to make their political capital on their cocitizens' blood. It is necessary to do our outmost to make them leave for ever. Being realists and understanding that our voice is hardly to be heard and that the country is going to face the dictatorship, we consider it our moral obligation to make our position known.

Cochairmen of the Society for the RussianChechen Friendship Stanislav Dmitrievsky, Imran Ezhiev.

THE INVISIBLE WAR

By: David Hearst Source: The Guardian (UK), 14 July 2001; through Johnson’s Russia List.

"A Dirty War" Anna Politkovskaya 336 pp, Harvill, £12 David Hearst reads brave dispatches from Chechnya, a land where there is officially no conflict, in A Dirty War by Anna Politkovskaya, and hopes that the truth will out.

There is a corner of what is still geographically known as Europe where anything goes. Here you can raze cities to the ground and call it an "antiterrorist operation". You can round up the inhabitants of a village, shoot them in broad daylight, and come back for more the next day. You can chuck grenades into shelters packed with the sick and elderly. You can loose off a volley of missiles into a busy marketplace. As a country’s leader you can do all this, and still retain voting rights on the Council of Europe. President Bush may even invite you to stay on his ranch.

This distant land is called Chechnya, and the most sobering part of this tragedy is that it continues to this day, right under our noses. As Slobodan Milosevic stands to face his accusers in the UN war crimes tribunal in what is seen as a remarkable triumph for international justice, Chechnya remains a distant blur, beyond the reach of international courts. Here, too, crimes against humanity have been committed. But there are no real commissions of inquiry, no indictments, no extradition warrants. Officially there is no war.

Russia’s return match for the humiliation it received in the first Chechen war of 199496 is of a ferocity that makes Macedonia, Kosovo, even Sarajevo at the height of the siege, pale in comparison. All but a handful of international human rights organisations ignore it. So too do most journalists. Chechnya has disappeared off the radar screen of the international news agenda, as it has off Russian TV screens. This is in part because the current campaign is still overwhelmingly popular. The disintegration of peacetime Chechnya into a bandit state, the incursion of two of its warlords into a neighbouring multiethnic north Caucasian state and a terrorist campaign in which more than 200 Muscovites died in a series of apartmentblock bombings have given the Russian army, police and Federal Security Service forces carte blanche to "restore constitutional order" in the statelet.

The radio silence from Chechnya is also down to the fact that few journalists are willing to risk life and limb to report it. Reporters, whether from rich western news organisations or poor Russian ones, risk kidnap if they go into the war zone from the Georgian border, while on the Russian side the war front is almost entirely closed down. Gone are the days when reporters and satellite dishes were free to roam between the Grad missile batteries on the hills overlooking Grozny and the squads of Chechen fighters in green bandannas defending the city. At least in one respect, Russia has learned the lesson of the first war.

A handful of reporters, mainly women, think it worth the huge risks. Anna Politkovskaya was held and threatened by the very soldiers whose mistreatment of suspects she was there to report. Her dispatches make compelling reading. In a series of articles published by her newspaper Novaya Gazeta from July 1999 to January this year, Politkovskaya chronicles the deathly thud of the Russian war machine and the anguished cries of those crushed in its tread.

Politkovskaya prefers to ignore the warmongers (although she interviews one Russian general who revels in the title "the cruel Shamanov"). Instead, she concentrates on the little people the man who runs Laboratory 124, still trying to identify the bodies of the last war; the women from the Daghestani village wiped out by the marauding Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev; the OMON footsoldier eating tins of rotten meat and the butcher in Semikarakorsk who provides them.

Politkovskaya discovers that Russia is like an echo chamber. If she has to act as its lost moral conscience, she rapidly finds she has few supporters. There are few institutions to which she can refer. There is no redress. There is a rule of rules, but no rule of law. When Politkovskaya howls with indignation, her rage echoes around an empty parking lot. She loses her temper as she talks to that butcher flogging rotten meat to the army: "You’re a real bastard, aren’t you? Are you really too thick to understand that your rotten meat may be the last thing one of those young soldiers ever eats?" There is an unpleasant, disparaging laugh: "Fax us your questions, and if we see the necessity, we’ll provide answers." Without a word of farewell, he slams down the receiver. "You want to know his name of course..." She gives it, plus his telephone numbers.

After a gruelling account of her paper’s vain efforts to evacuate the starved residents of an old people’s home in Grozny, Politkovskaya comes to a weighty conclusion not that the Russian state is allpowerful, but that it does not really exist. "The situation has become quite intolerable," she says. "What earthly use to me is the Putin we see, prancing about on the TV and telling us that he’s going to ‘wipe out’ the bandits after they have been cornered in the ‘shithouse’? I want a Putin who will defend the weak according to the constitution our state exists, first and foremost, for the good of the people... Not the man who, in front of the TV cameras, climbed into the cockpit of a bomber wearing a pilot’s helmet that was evidently the wrong size, but someone who will go to the Staropromyslovsky district and visit the Grozny old people’s home." She may have a long time to wait.

The more the Russians bomb the Chechens into submission, the wilder and more battered the land becomes. The people, too, get larger than life, inviting comparisons with fictional characters. There is the main ideologue of the campaign, ColonelGeneral Valery Manilov, who is nothing like Gogol’s character, but just as grotesque: "Manilov, his face red after telling the latest lie about ‘only 400 dead’, half listened to my story: of Misha Moshtyrev’s unclaimed body, of the wounded soldiers who were, for some reason, brought to a district hospital in Ingushetia, and of the chronic shortage there of medicines and equipment. Disgruntled with what he was hearing, Manilov turned to his aide: ‘Write that down. We’ll investigate.’ His aide began slowly and unwillingly to draw his pen across the page, but quickly abandoned this unrewarding task. ‘It’s a pack of lies,’ he retorted, and disappeared into the crowd behind his hefty boss’s uniform."

This week the commander of Russian forces in Chechnya was forced to admit for the first time that his soldiers had committed "widespread crimes", inflicting beatings and electric shocks on 1,500 civilians in two villages. Meanwhile, Politkovskaya was awarded Amnesty’s prestigious Global award for humanrights journalism. Maybe there is yet hope that the truth will out. It can only help Russia’s cause.

Fears grow over Putin's control of Russian media

Reporter: Emma Griffiths

TONY JONES: To Russia, where political control of the media has been a growing concern ever since President Vladimir Putin came to power five years ago.

But after the tragic school siege in Beslan last month, there are fears that government control is reaching a new extreme.

Some journalists were detained. Some suspect they were even drugged to prevent them from reaching the North Ossetian town to report on the crisis.

Analysts say it's a disturbing sign that Putin's Russia is moving closer to an authoritarian state and even the EU has said it fears Russia is "backsliding on democracy".

From Moscow, Emma Griffiths reports.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: Anna Politkovskaya is a journalist at the respected Moscow daily Novaya Gazeta.

A frequent Kremlin critic, especially in relation to its policies in Chechnya, she's been targeted by authorities before, but never like during the Beslan school siege.

On her flight to the north Ossetian town, doctors believe she was drugged when airline attendants were serving drinks.

ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA, JOURNALIST: TRANSLATION: The very first cup of tea completely incapacitated me.

I lost consciousness practically straight away and woke up later in hospital.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: And Anna Politkovskaya wasn't the only media victim.

The editor of competing newspaper Isvestia was sacked after he devoted the paper's entire front page to the massacre.

The owners apparently judged it too emotional. Others had to contend with what appears to be deliberate misinformation something one Russian journalist tried to uncover, asking the local security chief if he could correct any of the media's reporting.

But the question was merely brushed aside.

VALERY ANDREIV, FEDERAL SECURITY SERVICE: TRANSLATION: As soon as we get additional information, more clear and precise, we will inform you.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: Analysts fear the Russian media is headed back to its Soviet past, delivering more propaganda than facts.

ALEKSEI MALASHENKO, POLITICAL ANALYST: I think that in several months and several years, we'll deal with a real very strong, very powerful authoritarian regime.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: Vladimir Putin is now more than ever living to up his reputation as an autocratic leader. In response to the Beslan siege, he's announced changes to the political system.

Leaders of Russia's 89 regions will now be appointed by the President rather than elected.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT: TRANSLATION: It is clear that a unity of actions of the entire executive protocol must be ensured here unconditionally.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: Vladimir Putin's popularity is at its lowest since the Kursk submarine sank four years ago.

It's still a hefty 66 per cent, but the Beslan siege has forced him to act and the measures he's put in motion has so far been largely welcomed by the Russian public.

Such is his popularity and power that some have already begun to speculate that Vladimir Putin will be President for longer than the permitted eight years, suggesting he'll change the constitution to stay in charge.

Emma Griffiths, Lateline.

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com new left review 11 sep oct 2001 155 reviews Tony Wood

PUTIN’S COLONIAL WAR

Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya Harvill Press: London 2001, £12, paperback xxxiii, 336 pp, 1 86046 897 7 On 6 August 1996, three days before Yeltsin was to stumble through the especially shortened ceremony inaugurating his second term as Russian President, Chechen forces suddenly attacked and recaptured a string of major towns, including the battleblasted capital, Grozny. It was the success of this assault —coupled with the unending and increasingly unpopular stream of Russian casualties— that persuaded Yeltsin to sue for peace, and within a month General Aleksandr Lebed and the Chechens’ military commander Aslan Maskhadov had signed the Khasavyurt accords, seemingly bringing to an end the brutal conflict that has been dubbed ‘Yeltsin’s Vietnam’. Five years later, Russia is once again involved in a murderous war in Chechnya, waged as before largely on a civilian population living beneath ruins or in ‘filtration centres’ that echo unapologetically Nazi concentration camps or the Soviet Gulag. But where the first Chechen war was widely unpopular, seen as a needless waste of lives and an unwarranted use of force, Putin’s war has until now commanded widespread support, as an ‘antiterrorist operation’—the action of a strong state that means to rein in lawlessness on its periphery, no matter how daunting the task, and in so doing regain some measure of its former greatness. Yeltsin’s Vietnam has become Putin’s Falklands. Still more sombre analogies can be found: as Anna Politkovskaya writes in A Dirty War, ‘the tragic terrorist bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinaksk [in September 1999] are far too rapidly coming to resemble another distant event: the burning of the Reichstag.’ Anna Politkovskaya has written on Chechnya for the Moscowbased newspaper Novaia gazeta since July 1999, and the present volume gathers her dispatches from the North Caucasus up to January of this year. The book has

156 nlr 11 reviews been widely praised as a principled and unflinching exposé of Russia’s conduct, garnering the author prestigious awards from the Russian Union of Journalists and Amnesty International. Earlier this year she was arrested, abused and threatened with rape and execution by FSB personnel in Chechnya, after she probed too much into allegations of Russian torture of Chechen civilians; here she braves the streets of Grozny despite the snipers and the high incidence of kidnapping, using the pages of her newspaper to publicize the names of Russian officials responsible for withholding supplies from refugees, and to wage a campaign to evacuate the inhabitants of Grozny’s old people’s home. A Dirty War is frequently devastating about Russia’s barbaric conduct of the war; but despite the author’s brave and honourable intentions, the book is shot through with the prejudices and incomprehension subtending both the current war and its historical antecedents. Russia has claimed dominion over Chechnya since the days of its Imperial expansion southwards beyond the Terek River— Grozny (meaning ‘terrible’ or ‘aweinspiring’) was founded by General Aleksei Ermolov in 1818 as a garrison town from which to conduct a steady pacification of the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus. This policy did not prove entirely successful, however; the history of the region has been littered with instances of rebellions which proved hard for Russia to quell —the most notorious being the uprising led by Imam Shamil, which lasted from 1829 to 1859. Further uprisings occurred in Chechnya in 1905, and again in the Soviet period, in 1917 –21, 1929, 1937 and 1942 —this last doubtless contributing to Stalin’s decision to deport the entire Chechen nation, together with the neighbouring Ingush, to Kazakhstan, whence they returned in 1957. Having earned a reputation for fractiousness, the Chechens were mistrusted by both Russian and Soviet authorities, marginalized from positions of power; the Chechens have, however, proved extraordinarily adept at living in the cracks between state authority, often flourishing in illicit trade networks and criminal gangs in European Russia. In the years of exile, this impassioned resistance to alien authority combined with a forceful sense of national humiliation, and when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate Chechen nationalism expressed itself in urgent demands for full independence —backed by a prosperous Chechen diaspora. This double legacy of resistance to and successful subversion of state authority proved invaluable to the Chechens in the war of 1994 –6, but —as elegantly chronicled by Anatol Lieven in Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (1998) —it has also hamstrung any attempts to establish a viable state since then, and has given a sad degree of credence to claims that Chechnya’s only law is lawlessness. In 1991, the Yeltsin government was convinced that, were Chechnya to gain independence, the rest of the North Caucasus would follow and the region’s many nationalities— the Arabs called the area ‘Language Mountain’—would be wood: Politkovskaya 157 reviews plunged into ethnic anarchy; the ‘domino effect’ might then spread to others of the Russian Federation’s national autonomous areas and republics. That this failed to occur can be explained by their economic dependence on Moscow, as well as the continued dominance of local Soviet party and managerial elites. Apart from Chechnya, the only place where substantial autonomy of any kind (let alone independence) was actively sought, and achieved, was Tatarstan, which in 1994 negotiated with Moscow a separate federal treaty. No such compromise was ever contemplated by the then Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev, and Moscow initially preferred to support and arm Dudayev’s opponents, in the hope of installing a more pliable regime. The manifest weakness of this opposition, together with a string of hijackings on Chechnya’s borders, blamed on the separatists, provided the rationale for Moscow’s intervention in the autumn of 1994. Putin’s policy in Chechnya has replicated many of the features of Yeltsin’s: an initial pretext of dealing with lawlessness; an attempt to install a proMoscow puppet regime (this time headed by AhmadHadji Kadyrov, the former Chief Mufti of Chechnya); and, of course, the presumption that the result would be, in the famously illstarred words of Nicholas II’s Interior Minister Viacheslav Pleve in 1904, ‘a small victorious war’. But where Yeltsin’s blundering and brutal intervention was at least in part motivated by a concern to preserve Russia’s territorial integrity, Putin’s was driven by a need to manipulate the fears and prejudices of the electorate, by cold calculation and bottomless cynicism —and by the Russian military’s burning desire to reverse the humiliations of the previous war. Politkovskaya is frequently illuminating on the pervasiveness of this cynicism, and what it might portend— as in the reference to the Reichstag fire, and elsewhere a description of Putin as an incipient Pinochet. She is also unafraid of comparing Russian police harassment and unlawful detention of ‘people of Caucasian nationality’— Chechen or otherwise —to the Nazi targeting of Jews and Gypsies. Her account of the Russian military lays bare an unrelenting decline of morale and, most terrifyingly, of basic humanity— from the commercial exploitation of war casualties by the private firm Military Commemoration Ltd. to the abduction of recruits to the front in the middle of the night; from the rancid food with which soldiers are expected to fill fighting stomachs to random acts of terror and large scale atrocities, such as the massacre at Novye Aldy. There are chilling moments here, such as an interview with MajorGeneral Anatoly Shamanov, who announces that ‘kindness must have its limits . . . If the bandits do not understand our code of ethics, they must be destroyed. If someone falls ill, they hurt the patient by removing the affected organ.’ One of the most disturbing pronouncements in this idiom comes from Putin himself, announcing on Russian television in early November 1999 that he would ‘corner the bandits in the shithouse and wipe them out.’ There is much, then, in Politkovskaya’s book that is praiseworthy and even necessary: as Thomas de Waal writes in his preface to the volume, it is ‘the

158 nlr 11 reviews nearest thing yet written to a correct diagnosis.’ However, much of the good work is unravelled by a few stray, but damning sentences. The process begins with such crudely prejudicial statements as ‘Ruslan is a devout Muslim. But you’d never know it. Not a single word, look or movement betrays his inner faith, let alone demonstrative green bandannas or cries of “Allahu Akbar!”’ The simplistic division between wellbehaved, silent Muslims on the one hand and raging Wahhabite extremists on the other is paralleled by a division of Chechens into a peaceloving, proMoscow camp and rabid, extremist (and, naturally, far too vocally Islamic) nationalists: at one point, Politkovskaya refers to ‘the “liberated” northern areas of Chechnya, a region opposed to Maskhadov, Dudayev, Basayev and all of their kind.’ The mere attempt to lump these men into a single category indicates a shameless ignorance of the politics of Chechnya between 1991 and the present —Dudayev representing the maximalist separatist tendency and Maskhadov the pragmatic approach quite visibly preferred by Moscow; hence the failure of negotiation in 1994, when Dudayev was in charge, and its success in 1996, when the Russians, having assassinated Dudayev, were much relieved that Maskhadov had taken over. Politkovskaya reserves a special tone of condemnation for Shamil Basayev, who has been Russia’s demon of choice since June 1995, when he and a busload of heavily armed fighters bribed their way several hundred miles into Russia, before reportedly simply running out of money in Budennovsk. They seized a hospital, took 1000 hostages, and demanded the start of peace negotiations— which began only after a bungled attempt by Russian special forces to storm the building, in which over a hundred hostages were killed. Basayev then finished second in Chechnya’s presidential elections of 1997, and was appointed Maskhadov’s Prime Minister before leaving the government, disappointed by the lack of official backing for his plans to unify Chechnya and Daghestan— and thus, he thought, remedy the former’s isolation. It was Basayev, together with the Wahhabite leader Khattab, who led a band of men into Daghestan in August 1999. A month later, Politkovskaya went to Daghestan and encountered the incompre hension and anger of refugees from the fighting, to whom she refers as ‘mountain women’. Two passages are worth quoting, both for their patronizing ethnographic tone and for their more troubling implications: They are, as you see, very simple people. Some might even call them primitive. However, they can see to the very heart of the matter, while we remain blinkered and confused by our complexes and sophistication. These women speak with a decisiveness and clarity that we have long forgotten: ‘Basayev is a bloodthirsty bandit and traitor and he has no place among normal people.’ Their questions and answers expose Russia’s illdefined policies in the North Caucasus. Our own answers hint at some involved game we are playing, and it is never clear to whose advantage: ‘Things aren’t that simple,’ we say. ‘It makes sense to negotiate with Basayev . . . wood: Politkovskaya 159 reviews They simply cannot understand that Russian men are going to say nothing to Siberian mothers to explain how they are dealing with Shamil Basayev. They’ll keep quiet as usual. Yet again they’ll do nothing about Basayev and swallow this disgrace. Then they’ll shield themselves behind clever words: discussion of the status of Chechnya has been ‘postponed’, we must not increase tension by arresting Basayev. Madness. The women are right. As long as our men behave in this way, their war will never end. Within a few short weeks Putin began a war that supplied answers to all of Politkovskaya’s prayers: a ‘decisiveness’, shorn of ‘complexes and sophistication’, an end to ‘illdefined policies in the North Caucasus’, to ‘doing nothing about Basayev’, an end to ‘swallowing disgrace’. It is also, incidentally, quite extraordinary that a book which begins with an exhortation to Russia’s men to do their masculine, militaristic duty should then be lauded (on its back cover) for ‘excoriating male stupidity’, when the war Politkovskaya seems so urgently to be requesting eventually arrived. Indeed, there are many more passages which point to this contradictory stance: for example, condemnation of Putin’s use of force, paired with blanket categorization of Chechnya’s democratically elected leaders as ‘bandits’. (If they’re simply bandits, why not use force?) At one point Politkovskaya suggests Russia’s leaders should try ‘either focusing the war within clear lines or a local arena, or else halting it altogether’—when Chechnya’s borders have, with terrifying logic, been sealed precisely so as to do this. She notes that ‘the present “struggle with the terrorists” is spreading across the entire country and is becoming a deadly danger to many who have not the slightest connection with the terrorists.’ But the logic of the entire operation has been precisely to forge this link, to turn all Chechens into terrorists so as to give a mask of legality to a war designed to crush their aspirations to independence. Putin’s subterfuge seems to have escaped a great many people in Russia today, Politkovskaya included. This blindness to the national aspect underlies most of the weaknesses of her account. For example, Politkovskaya seems to see Kadyrov’s puppet regime as simply another instance of corrupt and ineffective rule —which of course it is— but it is also more than that: a regime imposed by Moscow, under force of arms, against the democratically expressed wishes of Chechnya’s populace. The smallest sign of Politkovskaya’s disorientation is that, in the tenth year of Chechnya’s struggle for independence, she announces in shock —as if it were merely a symptom of how bad the situation has become —that ‘Chechnya is not a part of the same country.’ Politkovskaya’s book is, in more senses than one, a diagnosis of Russia’s ills: the horrifying parade of scars and suffering, the incompetence and brutality to which she testifies are not rapidly forgotten, and deserve far more attention than they are given. A Dirty War lays no claims to authoritative analysis— it is, after all, a book of reportage, of testimony rather than critical insight —but

160 nlr 11 reviews even so it is deeply flawed, and symptomatic of a broader malaise. If one of Putin’s harshest and most principled critics turns all Chechen politicians into bandits or raving Wahhabites, ignores the fundamental historical fact of colonization, objects to the ‘antiterrorist operation’ only because of its geographical imprecision— in short, replicating much of the logic driving the current war— then there can be little hope of a cogent and wellinformed resistance to it. Worse still is the Western reaction to the Chechen war: as in NATO’s assault on Serbia, thousands of human lives are held to be of secondary importance to the maintenance of liberal values. In the revealing words of the translator, John Crowfoot, ‘the suspension of the constitution in that small republic puts democracy and free speech throughout Russia at risk. And that is a danger that no one can ignore.’ The reduction of a city of 400,000 to postapocalyptic rubble, the immiseration and reduction to abject servitude of an entire nation, and the massacre of countless innocents at Novye Aldy, Samashki, AlkhanYurt: all this can safely be ignored, so as not to interrupt the charade of lies, theft and corruption the world’s leaders have been pleased to call democracy in Russia. Politkovskaya’s freedom to speak a tainted truth is meagre compensation for lives lost and ruined.

What has become of us?

By Anna Politkovskaya Wednesday, April 5, 2006

MOSCOW

We are using Stalin's methods again, this time to fight terrorism. I write here on a subject that one can no longer write about in Russia islamskiy terrorizm, or Islamic terrorism cases.

There are hundreds of such cases going through the courts in our country. Most have been fabricated by the government so that the special services can demonstrate how "effective" Russia is in fighting terrorism and so President Vladimir Putin has something with which to impress the West.

Close examination of these cases shows that many interrogation records have been tampered with and that the documents containing "honest confessions" were obtained through the torture of innocent suspects who are being punished for the crimes of Chechen separatist Shamil Basayev.

Here's one example: Recently two young college students from the Chechen capital of Grozny Musa Lomayev and Mikhail Vladovskikh were accused by the police and the prosecutor's office of all small, previously unsolved acts of terrorism that had occurred about six months before in one of Grozny's residential areas. As a result, Vladovskikh is now severely disabled: Both his legs were broken under torture; his kneecaps were shattered; his kidneys badly damaged by beating; his genitalia mutilated; his eyesight lost; his eardrums torn; and all of his front teeth sawed off. That is how he appeared before the court.

To get Lomayev to sign and he did sign confessions for five acts of terrorism they inserted electrical wires in his anus and applied current. He would lose consciousness and they would pour water on him, show him the wires again, turn him around backward and he would sign confessions that he belonged to a gang with Vladovskikh.

This despite the fact that the two defendants were first introduced to one another by their prison torturers.

During the perestroika years we fought so persistently for the right to appeal and the right for clemency, knowing how many judicial mistakes are made in the country, and a special state committee on pardons was established. Now, under Putin, the committee has been disbanded, executions have been tacitly restored and judicial mistakes are again viewed as permissible and tolerable.

The flow of "Islamic terrorism" cases has engulfed hundreds of innocent people, while Basayev continues to walk free. And there is no end in sight.

The plight of those sentenced for "Islamic terrorism" today is the same as that of the political prisoners of the Gulag Archipelago. They receive long terms 18 to 25 years in strict security camps in Siberian swamps and woods with virtually all communication with the outside forbidden. Russia continues to be infected by Stalinism. But it seems that the rest of the world has been infected along with it a world shrunken and frightened before the threat of terrorism.

I recall the words of one torture victim at his trial: "What will become of me? How will I be able to live in this country if you sentence me to such a long prison term for a crime that I did not commit and without any proof of my guilt?"

He never received an answer to his question. Indeed, what will become of all the rest of us, who tolerate this?

What has become of us already?

Anna Politkovskaya is a special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta newspaper and the recipient of the 2005 Civil Courage Prize.

Reporter: My Chechen Sources Were Killed

By Yevgenia Borisova Staff Writer Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya has said that many of the residents of Chechen villages who complained to her in February that paratroopers from a nearby base were kidnapping villagers for ransom were later killed by the military in retaliation.

"Those who spoke openly to me, ignoring any [possible] consequences, are not alive any more," Politkovskaya wrote in this week's issue of the newspaper.

"They disappeared. They were murdered. Their corpses were bought back [by their relatives]. ... How I am supposed to live with all this?"

In February, Politkovskaya and Zeinap Gashayeva, cofounder of the Echo of War human rights group based in Ingushetia, visited several villages in the mountainous Vedeno district, including Khatuni and Makhkety. Politkovskaya For The St. Petersburg Times spoke to villagers and saw the deep pits at the 45th airborne unit, located near Anna Politkovskaya says her sources were killed Khatuni, where they said people were held until ransom was paid. She then by the army for talking to her. reported what she saw and heard.

In Monday's article, Politkovskaya listed the names of 15 civilians from four villages in the Vedeno district who were killed in April, May and June in what she believes was revenge for giving her information about atrocities committed by the military. Gashayeva, in an interview, added nine more names to the list.

"About 2 a.m. [on May 7] unknown people in masks came to the Khuguyevs' home and killed Yaragi Khuguyev, 52, his wife Markha Khuguyeva, 47, a local activist, and their son Akhyad Khuguyev, 17," Politkovskaya wrote. In an interview, she confirmed that Khuguyeva was among the people she had talked to.

Her article also gives the names of 21 people who were kidnapped after her visit, although it was not clear whether they were among those she had interviewed. To free someone who was kidnapped, or even to retrieve the body of someone who died in military custody, relatives had to pay in cash or weapons, according to Politkovskaya.

There is nothing new in the idea of Chechens being held in pits. Saipudin Mumayev, a surgeon in Grozny's main hospital, said in an interview in April that many people with swollen legs, some with gangrene, come for treatment after spending days in deep pits filled with icy water.

But Politkovskaya is the only journalist who has succeeded in seeing them and writing about them. She said she walked into the 45th unit and persuaded the commander to show them to her. But as soon as she left, she was arrested at a checkpoint and held at a military unit for a few days. She had gone to the Vedeno region to follow up on a letter signed by 90 local families, who asked to be relocated in part because they feared the paratroopers.

At a news conference after coming back to Moscow, Politkovskaya called for international protection for the 90 families.

"I was told by a deputy to Stanislav Ilyasov [head of the Chechen government] that I didn't need to worry about the people I wrote about, that they would be helped and assisted in their problems," Politkovskaya said in an interview Monday.

It was not clear how many of the villagers who Politkovskaya and Gashayeva say were killed were among those who signed the letter, which also was sent to authorities in Chechnya. The signatures are difficult to read and often have initials instead of first names.

After Novaya Gazeta printed Politkovskaya's article about the pits, and following investigations by the Chechen military prosecutor's office and presidential human rights envoy Vladimir Kalamanov, Politkovskaya said people she had interviewed were called into the military commandant's office and warned not to talk about atrocities committed by federal troops. After a few months of quiet, she said, the army got even with the people who complained. "What is going on in this country?" Politkovskaya wrote. "Death comes after talking with a journalist?"

Many of those who killed were among the most respected in their villages, she said. "Look, they killed activist Khuguyeva. ... Also Sultan Arsakhanov, 56, a retired Soviet army colonel. He was very much an authority in the Tevzani village whom people listened to. And a deputy school director from Tevzani, Ramzan Ilyasov, 56."

"What they want is for the rest of the people to be like cattle, just silently sitting in their barns," she said.

Although journalists try to protect their sources, and Politkovskaya used no last names in her report, the villages were too small and the Moscow reporter too conspicuous to prevent anyone from figuring out who had talked to her.

Alexei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Fund, said protection of sources is the most sensitive question for journalists, especially in Chechnya where "sources are so distinctive that even if they are not named, they are effectively revealed."

"Our journalists who write about human rights from this war are basically in a vicious circle," he said. "And this is Anna's personal tragedy."

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www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"

Many analysts including Chechen ones, express opinion, that the next RussianChechen war was favorable to Putin in the beginning of his career to come to the authority and to become stronger in the Kremlin, but now Putin would like "a pacification of the Caucasus", as he has already built his "vertical of authority" and does not need propaganda use of "the Chechen card" any more. To the question, why Putin in this case does not begin a real political settlement of the RussianChechen conflict, in most cases they refer to a certain "mafia", which consists of Moscow financiers, commands of occupational forces in the Chechen Republic and the puppet officials terribly interested in the continuation of the war, bringing them fabulous benefits with larceny of the "regenerative" and "compensatory" money. And this mafia also blocks "at the level of intentions" any Putin's peace plans.

Some western and Russian analysts (among the latter the solo party is sung by known journalist Anna Politkovskaya) expand structure of the notorious "mafia", adding also heads of the Chechen Resistance in its structure, who, according to their belief, also are interested in the continuation of the war, as certain "international centers" plentifully finance "field commanders" during the war, but they will immediately stop this financing if the war somehow comes to the end. As the result it turns out, that literally all the participants and sponsors are interested in the continuation of the war, and the pessimistic conclusion, that the RussianChechen confrontation does not have any chance of a compromise political settlement, is made.

Some inadequacy of judgments of Anna Politkovskaya concerning "the high policy" was evidently showed in March, 2003, when she demanded from President Aslan Mashadov "to come down from mountains" and to accept legal participation in the arranged by the Kremlin performance named "presidential elections of the Chechen Republic ". In the context of the fierce war this requirement was so ridiculous, that it received comments neither from the Chechen, nor from the Russian party. The conviction of Politkovskaya that continuation of the war is favorable to Chechen commanders "in the financial plan" looks rather strange. Any journalist applying for the role of an analyst, and who does not want to be at the same level as Shabalkin, should know even bases of human psychology, that is to understand, that a pursuit of material benefits should assume in a person desire to live and to use these blessings in conditions of personal safety.

If during many years a person daily risks his life, it is silly to name selfishness and selfinterest the motivation of his acts. In other words, it is silly to assume, that Chechen commanders pursue "financial interests" in this fatal struggle. Especially silly it looks at the background of simultaneous charge of them in "religionism". "Religionism", that is sincere fidelity to some idea, and "gangsterism" prosecution of terrestrial material benefits, are antagonistic conditions of human soul and they do not get on in one person (unless only in propaganda tricks of Shabalkin, a comparison with who will certainly offend intelligent Anna Politkovskaya). For this reason, if there is "a mafia of war" it is necessary to mention it only in the structure of the Russian party (including the Russian puppets in the Chechen Republic ).

But whether only "mafia", it does not matter, what structure it has, is guilty in continuation of the war? Whether this war is really so unfavorable to Putin (what automatically makes some analysts suspect in him a supporter of at least, objective – stop of it)? In our opinion, Putin and his KGB surrounding is interested not in absence of the war, but in such a condition that the war possessed, so to say, a propaganda reality, at the same time not threatening with serious troubles to Russia , successfully privatized by them with all verticals, horizontals and diagonals. The matter is that when a war proceeds in a propaganda plane, being "an operated conflict", it is favorable to the Kremlin regime, but it is resolutely unprofitable, when it finds uncontrollable scales and intensity, showing military and political inconsistency of Putin and his "strategists".

There is no need to explain for a long time, why "the operated conflict" is favorable to Putin and his security officers' junta. In 2000 Putin began to manage a rather liberal country, where the main condition of democracy was observed: a free exchange of information and opinions. However now even Putin does not name Russia democratic, he sends the construction of the "free country" to some foggy future, stipulating thus, that democracy in Russia will be not the same, as everywhere, but "Slavic", "traditional", etc. And it means that there is not democracy in Russia and there will not be, if political processes in this country would be managed with the KGB junta. And it would be silly to expect democracy from the KGB junta. It is the same as to expect hyenas to become vegetarians at their own hunting. It is quite natural, that the repressive organization created and structured for protection of the totalitarian regime, having got the governmental authority, can come only to the idea of a totalitarian regime. This organization, which has destroyed tens millions of people, simply cannot generate other ideas.

The security officers' junta, sitting in the Kremlin needed "an operated conflict" with all its propaganda horror stories for this restoration of totalitarianism. Putin and his camarilla thought, that they would manage to transform the Chechen Republic into a camp of death, completely isolated from the external world, and to begin and to finish successfully the main operation under a smoke screen of "counterterrorist operation" an establishment of security officers' dictatorship in Russia, with bereaving of all profitable branches of business and manufactures from oligarchs by classical racket methods. It is not a secret fro anybody, that nowadays Russian oligarchs are only nominal owners of their billions: actually this money and the whole business by means of which it is earned, for a long time are under the control of Putin and his security officers' grouping. Obstinate oligarchs are either killed, or imprisoned, or are made leave the country. So, Putin and accomplices needed "an operated conflict" in the Chechen Republic for an establishment of such gangster totalitarianism.

It is quite natural, that Putin will dislike the war in the Chechen Republic only when it becomes a real threat for him and his accomplices instead of "politics tricks" and "a propaganda horror story". The real estimation of the situation shows, that the war can become such a threat for the Kremlin criminal grouping, only when it leaves "the Chechen ghetto" and get allCaucasian scales. President Aslan Mashadov fairly warned the Kremlin, that the war would be extended to the whole Caucasus , and invited Putin and his "strategists" to begin peace negotiations. But he did it not because he had any illusions concerning moral responsibility of this mean gang. He simply appealed to their gangster pragmatism, thinking, that the real prospect to get the Great Caucasian War will make Putin's gang to estimate the developing situation more soberly. It is wellknown, how Putin's murderers responded to these offers of the Chechen President.

Now, when all mirages of "the political decision" have completely vanished, militarypolitical management of the CRI clearly knows how to achieve victory in this bloody longterm conflict. It is necessary to emphasize, that Putin's regime makes all conceivable efforts, so that the Chechen Resistance had powerful allies not only in the Caucasus transformed by the Russian chastisers into a zone of lawlessness and bloody reprisals, but also in Russia as well. The matter is that numerous opponents of the gangster totalitarianism of Putin begin to realize, that the most organized and powerful force resisting to the KGBism, is the Chechen Resistance. They begin to realize, that it is absolutely ridiculous to oppose Putin, simultaneously positioning themselves as opponents of the Chechen Resistance. A simple principle inevitably begins to operate: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I think that Chechen politicians and propagandists should not only be ready for such new alliances, but also they should actively work for acceleration of this process.

M. Visaitov , Chechenpress, 29.04.05.

Journalist Anna Politkovskaya detained in Chechnya (LAST UPDATE: Feb 28)

Related materials: Journalist Calls for Families to Be Protected (The Moscow Times)

How the heroes of Russia turned into the tormentors of Chechnya (The Guardian) Profession Reporter (Ichkeria.org

Military Releases Reporter in Chechnya (Moscow Times)

Military Deny Any Filitration Camps Exist in Chechnya (Gazeta.ru/Interfax

A statement of the Russian Union of Journalists

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

Russian newspaper claims Russia could have abducted Chechen representative Ahmed Zakayev in Helsinki Journalist Anna Politkovskaya's recent article in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, about the replaced Chechen president Aslan Mashadov's special representative Ahmed Zakayev's cancelled seminar trip to Finland, has provoked a minor sensation in Russia.

According to the article, Finland's Minister of Justice Johannes Koskinen had said to the organisers of the seminar, the Green League MPs Heidi Hautala and Matti Wuori, that "he was unable to guarantee Zakayev's safety in Finland against the Russian secret service". "According to Politkovskaya, the minister could not guarantee that Russian secret service Anna officials wouldn't have seated Zakayev on a Russian plane in Helsinki and flown him to be Politkovskaya interrogated in the Lefortovo prison", Finland's Ministry for Foreign Affairs quoted Novaya Gazeta in a recent press roundup. Politkovskaya called this a "serious scandal for Finland", and asked: "Who runs the country, the Finnish government or the Russian secret service?" The Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs also commented on Politkovskaya's article on their website, claiming that Finnish officials' statements and the whole state of affairs had been grossly misconstrued by the writer. Ahmed Zakayev Politkovskaya has continued probing into the matter in her latest article in the same newspaper. She claims it is possible that Zakayev's handing over may really have been planned, as the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs was so quick to deny everything. Politkovskaya also hinted that minister Koskinen may have to step down because of the "Zakayev scandal".

On Monday, Koskinen denied having said anything about the Russian secret service during a Johannes telephone conversation with Matti Wuori. Koskinen Koskinen explained that he had been unable to promise in advance that Finland would not consider handing Zakayev over to Russian officials, should Russia come up with an official print this request of extradition, as arguments for such a request could not be known in advance. Koskinen also pointed out that had Zakayev shown up, the Finnish police should have arrested him in any case, as he is wanted by Interpol. "But even in that case, Zakayev would have been handed over by the Finnish police, not by Russian security agents", Koskinen explained.

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Abu Bakar lifts the black mask covering his face. We are staring, examining each other at close quarters, both trying to understand what's going to happen when this, yet another Russian tragedy, is over. Abu Bakar, a 29yearold Chechen, looks 40. He is deputy commander of the terrorist group that has taken several hundred people hostage. I am a journalist who has come to the captured theater to negotiate. I am trying to understand who these people are. Who is behind them? And, more important, what comes after them?

We don't want anything, says Abu Bakar sharply; we do not intend to survive. We have come to die. And we are going to die in battle. His military fatigues cover the figure of a physically fit fighter with long service. He strokes the automatic weapon on his lap as if it were a baby.

Abu Bakar is one of those Chechens who have been fighting since youth. He has spent the past three years in the woods and mountains, without water, gas or heat. He has been surviving.

Why did you live like that?

I am a fighter for the freedom of my land.

What did you come to Moscow for?

To show you what we feel like during mopup operations, when federals take us hostage, beat us up, humiliate, kill. We want you to go through it and understand how you have hurt us.

But let the children go.

Children? You take our 12yearold children away. We are going to keep yours. To make you understand what it feels like.

This refrain "We will show you how we suffer" is an undercurrent of our "talks." Their attitude is not going to change. It is this: We have come to die to make the war stop. We are making no concessions.

Abu Bakar and his group, the majority of them between the ages of 25 and 30, are the generation of the "sons" of the Chechen war, who have grown old together with their "fathers." They have known nothing but an automatic weapon and the woods ever since they finished school.

In midsummer this year, as the militarypolitical leadership of the Chechen resistance grew more radical, Abu Bakar and people like him began to raise their voices against the "fathers" including leaders and wellknown field commanders saying they were lacking in drive, leaving fighters alone in the woods while the outrageous Russian "mopping up" operations rose to unprecedented levels.

A Chechen woman of about 40 comes in, an explosive device attached to her body. She carries a pail, which she fills with water for the hostages. We talk a little about her family in Grozny. She doesn't feel sorry for anybody or anything. Her husband and brothers were killed; her uncle and nephew are missing.

Are you answerable to Aslan Maskhadov?

Yes, Maskhadov is our president, but we are fighting on our own. Abu Bakar says this coldly. It confirms one's worst fears: This group is a force that operates on its own, waging a war of its own. Members of the Chechen leadership conduct peace talks slowly, he says, because they sleep on sheets, whereas we are dying in the woods. We are tired of them.

That was it, the sum total of their "ideology." It's easy to deride it as primitive, but I don't feel like doing that just now. This group, which is gaining the upper hand in Chechnya, promises innocent blood in the future one terrorist act after another. Meanwhile, the Kremlin does not want to hear about a peace process.

The fate of Maskhadov is becoming ever more predictable: Choose the frenzied radicalism of the "sons" or be swept away, and very soon.

The chance for a peaceful settlement now, after the October tragedy, has been lost. The Kremlin turns a deaf ear. Now it will take a much stronger effort for it to sit down at a negotiating table.

Anna Politkovskaya is the author of "A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya." She contributed this comment to The Washington Post.

See also: the original at www.themoscowtimes.com

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Chechnya abuses under investigation February 27, 2001 Web posted at: 3:27 PM EST (2027 GMT)

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) The Council of Europe's human rights supremo has begun a factfinding trip to Chechnya as new allegations of military abuses surface in the region.

Alvaro GilRobles flew to Chechnya after pressing Russian officials to investigate who killed 16 people found in a trench in the regional capital Grozny.

The human rights commissioner for the Strasbourgbased watchdog said he has received assurances that officials will investigate the Grozny grave and try to prosecute the killers.

Locals unearthed the mass grave just days after journalist Anna Politkovskaya returned from Chechnya saying she had seen pits at a paratroopers' base that were used to hold Chechens.

Politkovskaya, who was briefly detained by the military for allegedly having incorrect documents, said that Chechens were held in the pits until relatives could buy their release.

She told CNN's Steve Harrigan that she gathered testimony from Chechens who claimed to have been detained in what are called filtration camps where suspected rebels are sorted from civilians.

Politkovskaya says she was able to confirm the stories of people thrown into pits by observing and photographing such prison pits inside a Russian military base in Chechnya, before being detained herself.

"The (two) pits were empty when I saw them or maybe I couldn't see fully because they were so deep," she said.

"But the stories about where they were held were so close to what I saw that I never doubted they were the same."

GilRobles has said he will visit the base if time allows on this week's trip.

The Council of Europe gave cautious support to Russia last month when it restored Moscow's voting rights after suspending them over alleged rights abuses. Anna Politkovskaya says she was detained in Chechnya The U.S. State Department's annual rights assessment, published on Monday, lambasted Russian tactics used in Chechnya.

"Numerous credible reports of human rights abuses by Russian forces in Chechnya, which included extrajudicial killings, torture and rape, provoked widespread condemnation and calls for accountability," the report said.

Russia has admitted to isolated rights infringements in the course of military operations, but denies they were regular or excessive.

Moscow is now trying to scale back its forces and establish civilian control in Chechnya, which has been shattered by two Kremlin crackdowns since 1994.

But Moscow's Human Rights Commissioner Oleg Mironov said there was still much work to do. Reuters contributed to this report.

Anna Politkovskaya tells

Conversed Marcin Wojciechowski 26052004, last update 26052004 19:13 Link: http://serwisy.gazeta.pl/swiat/1,34174,2094754.html

Marcin Wojciechowski: Where this videomovie, which shows the guards unloading Chechens from trucks and loading them to those prison railroad cars has been taken?

Anna Politkovskaya: That was on a railroad sidetrack near the Chervlyonnya station in the northern Chechnya. People who could be seen in this video are the fighters captured after the battle for Komsomolskoye on the turn of FebruaryMarch 2000. That was the biggest battle of this war in Chechnya besides the siege of Grozny . Then some 1,500 people were defending themselves in that native village of commander Ruslan Gelayev. The army used airplanes and heavy artillery. A part of fighters broke through the encirclement, a part was taken prisoner. The were promised amnesty, to encourage the other guerillas to surrender.

Have people seen on this vido clips been already amnestied?

That's what a man from whom I've got this videocassette asserts. But, from a group of more than

70 people we were able to find out that only three have survived the captivity. Two of them hanged themselves later and one has disappeared. It's totally unknown what has happened with the rest. Possibly they were moved in the railroad cars to the next filtration camps. A majority could got into the camp in Chernokozovo. I've reached some statements of other prisoners who assert that under cover of the night they were told to move the bodies of prisoners from Komsomolskoye. Some corpses supposedly were still warm, that means that the prisoners were getting killed on the spot. On their bodies there were marks of sapper shovels and other blunt objects.

Who is the man who had taken this video?

That's a young soldier, who was on the contract in Chechnya. He was serving in a special unit of the Ministry of Justice. He has taken this video for a keepsake. Maybe he wanted to boast to his collegues about fighting in Chechnya. I also have some info that this is not the only one this type of case although I haven't seen other videos. After his return from the war he suffers from this "Chechen syndrom" which affects many of our soldiers. He had a bad nervous breakdown, he drank alcohol, took drugs and at the end he'd decided to reveal this video to partially hush the voice of his conscience.

In every truck there's close to 40 persons sitting, squeezed like in the can of sardines. At some moment we can see some corpses being thrown out. Why corpses?

The man who was shooting this video says that all people who were loaded on the trucks were alive, which means they died while en route. The reason for that could had been a squeeze, lack of air, tortures which the prisoners were subjected to, lack of medical aid.

Does the army still apply tortures in Chechnya?

According to persons who get in touch with me yes, it does. Generally in every unit there are places for holding and interrogating prisoners. Sometimes that's a whole in the ground covered by a tent fabric so nothing can be seen. Sometimes it's a cave in the mountains, a clearing in the forest. A big prison is also in the Khankala Russian base, in Grozny, but there's absolutely no access to it. It's own jails has also a proMoscow Chechen police commanded by Ramzan Kadyrov who tortures detained as well.

Allegedly, his house in Tsentaroi it's big torture room? Interrogations take place in basements and courtyards. I heard stories of cutting off pieces of skin from people's backs. Young Kadyrov likes to stage a trial in his courtyard. He sits on a platform and pretends to be a judge. People are being beaten up till they acknowleged their guilt or to agree to collaborate. Malik Saydullayev who was one of the candidates for president of

Chechnya had a personal body guard and he was let go only when he agreed to plant a bomb underneath of his chief's car.

Weren't they afraid that after leaving that jail, outside, he will tell about this?

His own and his family's life was warranty of silence. This man was able to leave Chechnay with his wife and children. After that, he told me everything about it.

Acquaintance of mine, from a humanitarian organization at the Caucasus, was telling me that the army more often kills than bothers with holding prisoners.

That depends what's needed at the moment. If there's a bombing attack, and a guilty one must be found very fast, then some prisoner gets tortured till he acknowledges his guilt. There was a case where two brothers were arrested and one of them was mentally ill. The healthy one was ransomed out by his familly and the sick one admitted himself that he wanted to plant a bomb.

Was there even one case that the prosecutorship investigated described by you some cases of torture?

In Chechnya there's a civil and military prosecutorship. The first one tries to do something, but all the cases regarding soldiers are handed over to the military prosecutors. Civil prosecutors even showed to me some documents that they sent this particular case to the military, but after two months everything returns to them untouched. Also, after our publication of this videomovie from Chervlyonnaya there was no response from the authorities. The Russian journalists also haven't got interested in this.

But in your texts some militarymen appear, those who don't like violence, tortures, lawlessness.

Sometimes they even deliver some information for you.

Some of them give me informations for money. But there are idealists too, even among generals.

Those who understand that this war destroys Russia and people who participate in it.

(tr. by M.L.)

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www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com Anna Politkovskaya, Russia's whistle blower 16 March 2002

David Hearst, The Guardian

She is Russia's least wanted journalist. She's been held overnight in the torture cells she was investigating, threatened with rape, and received numerous death threats. Her reporting has stirred the wrath of Russia's most powerful and unfettered institutions the Kremlin, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the GRU, the military intelligence. She has been forced to flee the country, work under the surveillance of roundtheclock police bodyguards. She has been accused of being a western agent. And yet she keeps on coming back for more. To be precise, she has returned to the land that has caused her so much trouble, Chechnya, 39 times.

It's not even as if Anna Politkovskaya is fighting a popular cause. Her theme crime and punishment in Chechnya is as unpopular at home as it is ignored abroad. Few Russians want to read about how 75,000 of their crack troops are mired in a conflict against 3,000 active rebel fighters (President Putin would like the world to believe that this is Russia's contribution to the postSeptember 11 global war on terror). Still less do they want to hear of atrocities carried out in their name by their own army, as their arch rival America spreads its military tentacles just across the mountains in Georgia.

Politkovskaya could have taken that fat research grant, settled in America and, like so many other generations of Russian dissidents, bemoaned her country's stillborn democracy from a safe distance. "I could not do that. There are practically no journalists working now in Chechnya," she says. Andrei Babitsky, the Russian reporter working for the USrun station Radio Liberty who stayed in Grozny under the Russian bombardment, was forced to flee to eastern Europe. Natalya Kononova, the Novye Izvestia correspondent, has gone into hiding in Russia. Two, formerly independent stations, NTV and TV6, have now fallen under the Kremlin's long shadow. That leaves Politkovskaya.

"So each time I go there, people tell me things. They do so in the sincere hope that, if I record what is actually happening, it will lead to change, to peace. Obviously, I am not to blame for what is going on, but the more I think about it, the more I would be betraying these people if I walked away. The only thing to do is to take this to the bitter end, so that no one can say that when things became difficult, I ran away."

She sits bolt upright in the subsiding foam chair, her eyes shining with intensity. She is on a mission.

The mountain Chechen clans have been battling their Russian neighbour since at least 1818, when a Russian general established a fortress called Groznaya, meaning "terrible" or "formidable", in a vain effort to subdue this wild NorthWest Frontiertype region. The Chechens survived Stalin's mass deportations. And since the breakup of the USSR in 1992, they have survived botched government by two Chechen leaders first Dhokar Dudayev and then Aslan Maskhadov both ex Soviet army officers who yet managed to bring the wrath of the whole Russian army down on their heads. The one constant is that they know what they're fighting for, or at least whom they're fighting against. There is misery in the land of howling dogs, distant booms and deep silences, but no surprise. None of that collective ethnic memory applies to a Moscovite such as Politkovskaya. She is a child of good times, the Brezhnev era, when the Soviet Union was a world power and those fairy lights on the world map in the operations room of the KGB meant that their net was cast globally. Her parents were senior diplomats; she was part of the elite. For her family, Vladimir Putin is not a distant object of fear and veneration, but a former KGB staffer rather too lowly for them to have come across socially. So why does a 43yearold mother of two grownup children, separated from her husband, living in a flat in a privileged block on the Garden Ring in Moscow, put her life on the line for a faraway people who hate the Russians?

"I am not a war correspondent. All my working life I wrote about the state of our orphanages, our old people's homes. I was interested in reviving Russia's prerevolutionary tradition of writing about our social problems. That led me to writing about the seven million refugees in our country. When the war started, it was that that led me down to Chechnya."

In 1998, Politkovskaya knew, like most of her compatriots, that something had to be done about Chechnya, whose persistent calls for autonomy and its complex ethnic and religious mix (Chechen/Russian and Muslim/Christian) had brought it once again into conflict with Moscow. In the two years since the withdrawal of Russian troops after the first round of fighting, it had become a haven for bandits and rival warlords beyond the control of its elected president, Maskhadov. When two of those warlords, Shamil Basayev and Khattab, invaded Dagestan, another member of the Russian Federation, to further their ambition of setting up a Muslim state across the North Caucasus, Russia had to react. "But it was the way they did it," says Politkovskaya. "It was clear to me it was going to be total war, whose victims were first and foremost going to be civilian."

And that is what she has been chronicling. Total war. Maskhadov generally believed to be a moderate, is up in the mountains leading the rebels; and Moscow has set up a puppet government in what remains of the capital, Grozny. Meanwhile, Russia enjoys voting rights as a member of the Council of Europe and, as a signatory to the European Convention For The Protection Of Human Rights, is answerable to the European Court of Human Rights.

As Politkovskaya foresaw, it is a dirty war. Take, for example, the minibus that in January this year was travelling between the villages of Shatoi and Nochkiloi during an operation known euphemistically as a "zachistka": a security sweep launched a week after a Russian military truck had been blown up by a landmine. There were six villagers on the bus, and the local Russian commander, who enjoyed reasonable relations with Chechens in his area, knew every one of them. There was Said Alaskhanov, the head teacher of the village school; Shaban Bachayev, a forester; Zahab Yavadhanova, a mother of seven children; Hamsad Toburov, the ownerdriver; and two others. Nine members of Russian military intelligence (GRU) special forces, who had flown down from Khankala (the Russian military headquarters outside Grozny) had other ideas about the occupants of the bus.

The opening burst of fire killed three passengers, at which point the special force team realised that they had fired on unarmed civilians. Then they shot the rest. Afterwards, they set fire to the bus to make it look as if it had been hit by rebels. The villagers said that the six who perished left behind them 28 orphans. The GRU officers are under arrest partially because of the testimony of another Russian officer, a major, whose life is now also under threat. It was this element of the story that Politkovskaya brought to light. She returned to Grozny in the wake of the massacre: when the bodyguards assigned to "protect" her, but who in fact monitored her every move, disappeared.

In another case, Politkovskaya revealed how a Russian major, indicted on criminal charges, turned up to answer the prosecutor's preliminary questions not with a lawyer but with his entire brigade."They set up their heavy mortar outside the military prosecutor's office in Grozny and told the prosecutor that if he did not let the major go, they would bring his building down. They let the major go."

"No one in the Russian military machine down there trusts each other," says Politkovskaya. "Moscow does not trust Khankala. Khankala does not trust the lads in Argun. That's what it's like down there. There is so much corruption, so much information leaks out, such as that when the pension money arrived in Gudermes [Chechnya's second city], it got hit by a rebel attack. An accident?" What she's getting at is that Russian military may be operating against each other tipping off the rebels and sharing in the plunder.

The Chechen war was launched by Russia in order to establish "constitutional order". In fact, matters have got worse. Politkovskaya writes not least about the plight of Russian soldiers, themselves victims of the war. "To whom does a dead body belong?" she wrote in one of her early pieces. "Ask any normal person, and they will answer, without a moment's thought, 'To the relatives, of course, and no one else.' "

Try as he might, Colonel Slipchenko, the general director of Military Commemoration Limited, could not clearly formulate an answer to this question. Today, the remains of more than 400 soldiers and officers are still lying in unmarked graves somewhere in Chechnya, and several hundred other corpses are awaiting identification at Forensic Laboratory No 124 in RostovonDon, but Slipchenko, a military man, finds nothing particularly shocking about this: "So they're lying there! We must work effectively, and not rush things. It'll take many years yet to finish the job."

These were the dead from the first war (199496), and the reason for Slipchenko's lack of haste was obvious. The longer the exhumations and identification took, the more money his company, a privatised arm of a state business, received from the federal budget.

"During the period that you have been receiving budget funds, has your company buried one of the soldiers whose remains were exhumed in Chechnya?"

No."

"So what have you been doing with the money?"

"We are in possession of the entire database for soldiers missing in action."

"Could we take a look at your database?"

"No, it's a commercial secret."

In the absence of a functioning state, journalists such as Politkovskaya have become used to taking on the villains themselves. People such as the butcher in Semikarakorsk who flogs rotten meat to the army: "'You are a real bastard, aren't you? Are you really too thick to understand that your rotten meat may be the last thing one of those young soldiers ever eats?'" Politkovskaya reports herself as saying. And she proceeds to give the man's full name and telephone number so that readers could reach him.

In September, six days after the attack on the World Trade Centre, Grozny was in a feverish state. The checkpoints were preventing anyone getting in or out of the city centre, not even bureaucrats with official passes. Politkovskaya was in the office of Stanislav Ilyasov, the Chechen prime minister, a Moscow placeman. He was striding up and down, grabbing telephone receivers, cursing the whole incomprehensible business. Only onefifth of his civil servants had made it through for his regular Monday morning briefing.

A young Russian general sitting in his office, Anatoly Pozdnyakov, gave sympathetic nods, and it was obvious the two understood each other very well: it was time to put a stop to the lawless behaviour in the province. Pozdnyakov confided in Politkovskaya that he was that day returning to Moscow with a report he had written on corruption in Chechnya. He was the head of a new military investigative commission, acting, he said, on the personal orders of Putin. An hour after the interview, the general was dead. His helicopter, and his top secret report, were shot out of the sky by a Stinger missile directly over the city centre which was unusually empty, thanks to the military at the checkpoints. "The official version," says Politkovskaya, "is that a Chechen fighter ran out on to the street, launched the missile and ran away. It could not have happened like that. He would have been shot the moment he popped his head out." Ten days after writing that it was, in fact, colonels in Chechnya who had shot down their own chief of staff, Politkovskaya, under threat of her life, was forced to flee the country.

Politkovskaya works for a small biweekly liberal newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Its editor, Dmitri Muratev, breathes fire at the latest tactic invented by the state to silence Politkovskaya a smear that she has been secretly working for, and paid by, western benefactors, including the Soros Foundation. "Well, we are suing the FSB [the Federal Security Service] for saying that. You must understand what our Chekisti, our KGB, have become." he said. "They think that Politkovskaya is Bin Laden. They don't have anything better to do than to pursue a newspaper and the grants it gets. Now they are threatening to withdraw her accreditation. If you read our constitution, there is nothing written there about the FSB. Nothing is said about their right to withdraw accreditation or to close newspapers. It's none of their bloody business. It is up to the courts to do that, and let them bloody well try."

This is what motivates them both."I am not fighting the FSB," says Politkovskaya. "I'm only doing my job. I explain to my readers what I see. The FSB, or whoever wants to fight with me, are fighting not with me but the constitutional principle that we should have freedom of press. It is obviously not terribly pleasant..." Her voice tails off. She remembers those gooks outside her window, hanging around in the courtyard. She remembers the comments of her neighbours, some of them regarding her as a traitor to Russia, or her son, Ilya, "looking under his car every single time he gets into it", believing his mother should pursue a less dangerous career. "But in time of war, I already learned to fight, never to surrender and to try to survive. I can say that now I really want to survive and stay strong. Up to the very end." I tell her that her editor says he'd back her up to the very end, as well. She laughs: "That depends on what he means by the very end..."

Anna Politkovskaya has been nominated for the Most Courageous Defence of Freedom of Expression award, to be presented by Index On Censorship, on March 21.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

Chechnya: Articles by Anna Politkovskaya

Children of Chechen "Spetzoperations", by Anna Politkovskaya, Novaya Gazeta, May 19 2002 Nation Non Grata, Interviw w Anna Politkovskaya, by Karol Wrubel, Rzeczpospolita, Apr 27 2002

[http://2002.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2002/15n/n15ns12.shtml]

Children of Chechen "Spetzoperations" by Anna Politkovskaya Novaya Gazeta May 19 2002

Do you still think you should be supporting the war in Chechnya because of some aim that's being pursued, so things wouldn't get worse? We have reached a stage in Russia now, where every schoolchild knows that Chechnya is being "cleaned", and adults no longer bother with the inverted commas.

"Zachistka" in this sense entails thoroughly sorting out someone or something and, on the whole, we prefer not to enquire too closely into who or what. For this meaning of this old word we have the war in Chechnya to thank, and more particularly the highranking military brass who routinely update us on television with the latest news from Russia's Chechen ghetto, popularly known as the "Zone of Anti Terrorist Operations".

It is March 2002 and the thirtieth month of the second Chechen war. "Zachistka", if we are to believe the military, is precisely the aim of the current "special measures". From last November until now, lunatic waves of special measures have been sweeping over Chechnya: Shali, Kurchaloy, TsotsanYurt, BachiYurt, Urus Martan, Grozny; again Shali, again Kurchaloy; Argun again and again; ChiriYurt.

Towns and villages are besieged for days; women wail; families try desperately to evacuate their adolescent sons where to doesn't matter providing it's a long way from Chechnya; village elders stage protest demonstrations. Finally, we are regaled with general Moltenskoy himself, our supposed commanderinchief of the 'Front Against Terrorism', festooned with medals and ribbons, there on the television screen, pumping adrenalin, larger than life; and invariably against a background of corpses and "cleaned" villages.

The general reports some recently achieved "significant success". But there's still no Khattab with Basayev.... And you know full well that something isn't right, because you went to school when you were little and can do enough mental arithmetic to add up the numbers of enemy fighters he claims to have caught over the past winter. It amounts to a whole regiment of them. Just the same as in last year's warfare season.

So, how many fighters are still there? What exactly does "zachistka" involve? What is the truth, and who is telling it? What have these special measures actually turned into? What is their aim? Last, and most important, what are their results?

His eyes looked so calm

I was relieved when they took us out to be shot.

Relieved? What about your parents? Didn't you think about them then, and how sad they would be?

Mahomed Idigov, recently taken out to be shot, is 16.

He is a pupil in the tenth grade of School No 2 in the town of Starye Atagi, Grozny region. He has a favourite pair of jeans, a much loved tape recorder, and a stack of pop music cassettes which he enjoys listening to. He's a typical 16yearold. The only disturbing thing about him is his eyes, which have the level steadiness of an adult's. They don't go with his teenager's skin problems and adolescent gawkiness.

There something wrong, too, in the measured way Mahomed relates the story of what was done to him. In the course of "zachistka" he was subjected to the same electric torture as the grown men. Having themselves been tortured, these men pleaded with Russian officers not to torture the boy but to torture them again in his place.

No way, was the reply. We get good counterterrorist information out of schoolboys.

When I ask about his parents, Mahomed pauses for a time. His eyebrows finally arch childishly as he tries not to cry. He manages, and replies clearly and directly, as you can when something's over,

Other people get killed too. Indeed. Why should Mohamed have it easier than other people. Everybody is in the same situation. The "zachistka" of Starye Atagi from 28 January to 5 February was the second time the town had been "cleaned" in 2002, and the twentieth time since the beginning of the second Chechen war.

It is subjected to "special measures" nearly every month. The official explanation is plausible: with a population of around 15,000, Starye Atagi is one of the largest towns in Chechnya. It is 20 kilometres from Grozny and ten from the socalled "Wolf's Gate", as Russian soldiers call the entrance to the Argun Gorge. It is considered a trouble spot full of terrorist wahhabites and their sympathisers.

But what has this to do with Mahomed? On the morning of 1st of February, when the twentieth "zachistka" was at its most ferocious, masked men seized the boy from his home in Nagornaya Street, threw him like a log into a military truck and took him to a "filtration point", where he was tortured.

It was very cold that day. First we were "put against the wall" for several hours, which means you stand with your hands up and your legs apart, facing the wall. If you try to lower your arms you get beaten immediately. Any soldier who walks past is likely to hit you. They unbuttoned my jacket, pulled up my sweater and cut it into strips with a knife, like a clown's jacket.

Why?

Just to make me feel the cold more. They saw I was shivering.

I can't bear it. Mahomed is too dispassionate. I can't bear the calm, thoughtful look on his face as he relates his appalling story. I wish this child would at least cry and give me something to do. I could comfort him then.

Did they hit you a lot?

All the time. On the kidneys. Then they put me on the ground and dragged me through the mud by the neck.

What for? Did you know why they were doing it?

Just because. For fun.

But were they trying to get something out of you?

For a whole day there was nothing. They just hurt me. They took me to interrogation in the evening. They interrogated three of us. They showed me a list and said, "Which of these people are fighters? Where are they treated for injuries? Who is the doctor? Whose house do they sleep at? Which of your neighbours is feeding them?" I answered, "I don't know".

And what did they say?

They said, "Do you need some help?" And they tortured me with electric current. That's what they meant by helping. They connected the wires and turned a handle, like on a telephone. The more they turned it, the stronger the current that passed through me. They asked me where my older brother, "the wahhabite", was as well.

And is he a wahhabite?

No, of course not.

What did you say?

I didn't say anything.

And what did they do?

They passed the current through me again.

The war has been lost

Did it hurt?

Mahomed's head on his thin neck slumps down below his shoulders, into his angular knees. He does not want to answer, but it is an answer I need.

It hurt a lot then?

Yes, a lot.

Is that why you were relieved when they took you out to be shot?

Mahomed is shaking as if he has a high fever. Behind him is an array of bottles with solutions for medicine droppers, syringes, cotton wool, tubes.

Whose is this stuff? It's for me. They damaged my kidneys and lungs.

There are a lot of people in the room, but it's as silent as if we were in an uninhabited, soundproof bunker. The men are completely motionless. Somewhere outside the Idigovs' house the nightly artillery barrage is starting, but nobody so much as stirs at its uneven booming which sounds like the drums at a funeral.

I realise that this war, which from force of habit we still call an 'antiterrorist operation' has been lost. It can't be continued solely for the momentary gratification of a group of people who long ago has gone mad. The silence is broken by Mahomed's father, Isa, a haggard man whose face is deeply etched with suffering.

I was wounded serving in the Soviet army. I served on Sakhalin. I know the way things are. During the last "zachistka" they took my oldest son. They beat him up and let him go, and I decided to send him as far away as I could, to people I know, where he'd be safe. Was I wrong to do that? During this "zachistka" they've crippled my middle son, Mahomed. What am I to do? My youngest is already eleven. How long will it be before they start on him? Not one of my sons is a gunman. They don't smoke or drink. How are we supposed to live? I do not know how. I only know that this is unacceptable.

I know too how it has come about: our entire country has joined hands to follow the lead of our great statesmen (and not only Russia, but Europe and America too), and at the beginning of the twentyfirst century we are acquiescing without a murmur in the torture of children in a presentday European ghetto mendaciously called a 'zone of antiterrorist operations'. The children of this ghetto will never forget what we have done.

You give birth to a dead baby?

"Zachistka" began on 28th of January. In the evening several soldiers and armored vehicles surrounded the village. By dawn all streets were swarmed with APC's with their ID numbers painted over with mud. Very low, as if approaching for landing, above the village, helicopters hovered, and roof tiles as maple leaves in the fall wind, flew from the roofs away, leaving them uncovered. In the morning, on 29th of January, Liza Yushayeva, being in the last month of her pregnancy, went into labour. This frequently occurs unexpectedly and doesn't depend on the periods and parameters of "spetzoperations" set up by General Vladimir Moltenskoy, who commands the United Grouping in Chechnya. Liza's relatives went to ask military men, who were standing in the nearest encompassment, to let the pregnant women pass into the hospital, but they didin't allowed it for a long time. The women loudly shamed them, they said, you have also mothers, wives, sisters. But they answered that they arrived here to kill those who are alive, not to help those who are giving birth.

As a matter of fact, it turn out, when servicemen ended their rage, this "process" went ahead, but Liza couldn't go those 300 meters, which was the distance to the doctor, which also was closed by troops by their "zachistka's cell". So, they began to negotiate again, about a vehicle, and again time passed away. Finally, Liza was brought to the hospital. But since there, entirely other soldiers stood, they pinned down the arranged driver and Liza to the wall like to a fighter, who's been captured: hands up, legs spread wide apart. Yushayeva endured "the wall" for sometime and then she began to faint. Soon, a baby was born, but it was dead.

Do you still think you should be supporting this war because of some aim that's being pursued and so things wouldn't get worse? Things cannot get worse. We have lost all sense of the morality and restraint we were taught in less tumultuous times, and something more vile and loathesome than we could ever imagine has erupted from the murkiest depths of our souls.

Do you deliver a dead baby, because you weren't allowed to give birth to a live one? point blank, like a shot, asked a woman looking into Magomed's room.

If you know the answer, you are still a happy person.

Anna Politkovskaya from Stariye Atagi

From the Polish daily newspaper "Rzeczpospolita" April 27, 2002 Nation Non Grata interview with Anna Politkovskaya Karol Wrubel: President Putin has been ruling Russia for two years. During that time the economy has been revived and foreign policy has been reoriented. Only the war in Chechnya is still going on. Society is observing it with growing apathy.

Anna Politkovskaya: I get a lot of letters, 40% of them are against the war, in the rest of them people condemn my antiwar views. In the Russian media there's a lack of information regarding this subject, not like during the first war from 199496. In this information emptiness, actions of authorities are supported by a huge propaganda machine. This machine has been able to create a picture of the enemy. This enemy living down south, they called them "blacks". Thanks to that, for many people it's easier to put up with reality of life or break down with nostalgy for the past: to live with the enemy is much more comfortable it's possible to devolve the responsibility for defeats, failures on it. There's no absence of verbal abuse and swearwords in letters addressed to me. But, people read my articles because there's no information in the media. If we're going to have more of this kind of articles, maybe the Russian public opinion will change its views, on what's going on in Chechnya.

Q: During the first war you hadn't written about Chechnya?

A: I was working at "Obshchaya Gazeta" then, this subject was taken by my collegues, they had appropriate conctacts, experience, I was writing that time about military hospitals, refugees. For the first time I flew to Grozny in 1998, to conduct an interview with president Maskhadov. People were kidnapped at that time, there was trafficking in prisoners, and Maskhadov himself didn't really know how to cope with this. This biggest impression on me made those crowds of bearded men for them, all of journalists from Russia were officers of the FSB; waves of fleeing people, I've had worked already for "Novaya Gazeta" and editorinchief asked me to take the subject of Chechnya seriously. In the Caucasus, the big role play contacts with people, they give you some warranty of security, after each trip there's more of them.

Q: Since then, you've been to Chechnya more than 40 times. You were arrested last year, you were threaten with death, Gazeta had had sent you to the West. Your son, before he gets into a car, checks it out very carefully to find if a bomb is not planted on it. Are you afraid?

A: I'm afraid a lot. During every trip. But, if I wanted to live without fear and risk, I would became a teacher or a housewife. There's a risk written in the profession of journalist, so this talk about my fear doesn't have any sense. The editorinchief asked me to take this subject and that's enough.

Q: It doesn't make you think why people don't flee Chechnya? There's still shooting there, soldiers perish, civillians. A Russian woman acquaintance of mine told me, if she were a Chechen mother, she would taken her children and fled. They would be more secure if she were to beg for bread near church in Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk.

A: Many Chechens dream about leaving, but to where they can escape? Does it matter that they're citizens of Russia?. Nobody is waiting for them in Russia, not even for Russians who used to live in Grozny before. Those people are not able to create a new life somewhere else the country rejects them. A Chechen had been killed, not so long ago in Ivanov, only because he was Chechen. This nation is exposed to agression and humiliation. Why they don't flee abroad? Till now, the Interior Ministry instruction stating that Chechens musn't get passports for travel abroad has been in full force. They can buy a passport for 250300 USD, but that's a skyhigh amount for them. The poorest have remained in Chechnya, those better off have left it a long time ago.

Q: In Poland, every now and again, we hear about problems that Chechens are facing, trying to get political asylum. From the side of authorities we hear arguments that they don't deserve this status, because after their return to Russia they're not threaten with any repressions.

A: The Chechens are in Russia the nation non grata. Even for me it's strange, that it has to be explained to people in Poland, that they meet with repressions in their own country and they have a right to get asylum in democratic countries. I had been describing many such cases: a Chechen comes to Moscow to do some business; police plants on him narcotics and grenades; the Chechen lands behind bars. At the start of war, soldiers called them "chekhs", now they say about Chechens not otherwise than "apes".

Q: In the eyes of authorithy's representatives there are also "good" Chechens?

A: Even those who are proRussian, those who collaborate with the authorities, are barely tolerated. In one of my last articles, I've described a family with the totally proMoscow views. Father was a Colonel in the Russian police, his son had joined the Chechen one, he wanted to participate in bringing order there. He had been shot during one of many "zachistkas". His body has been taken away somewhere, and till this day it can't be found. Chechens who are employed in the administration complain that their Russian supervisers treat them as people of worse kind. Some Colonel of Chechen police complained to me that they don't get promotions, rewards. Apes don't deserve that.

Q: What's a "zachistka". Were you a witness to it?

A: Many times. Military surrounds a villlage or a town. The whole Grozny was subjected to this type of operations. Blockade can last for many days, there's a ban on travelling to other localities, sometime it's not even allowed to walk from house to house. Military controls documents. I used to know well some old man from Stariye Atagi, he came out in the front of his house convinced that his papers are OK. In next moment he was dead. That happened in the spring of 2000, just after the assault on Grozny. Today "zachistka" that's an act of ordinary marauding. Russian soldiershave to be payed 1000 roubles, and then a man won't be taken a filtration point. Price depends on the material situation of a house that's being searched. It goes up if there's furniture, kitchen dishes in it. Lately in Stariye Atagi, for 300500 roubles Russian soldiers were ready to give up rape of local women.

Q: How do you explain this kind of behaviour?

A: It's hard to comprehend this. From one side, those young men, who are a few months in Chechnya, without contacts with women, I understand in this wild, war conditions their hankering for rape. They want a woman, but if they get payed 300500 roubles, they don't want her anymore. Maybe for them, the more important than their sexual urge, is the need to humiliate? All kind of pleasure in humiliation. I promise her that I won't rape her, but she must pay me 300 roubles...

Q: What are sources of this demoralization? A: The young soldiers live in terrible conditions for months. It's needed for a few weeks not to wash himself, to eat very poorly. Fear, alcohol, feet that have been rotting from dirt, a human being has been slowly changing into beast. Already, a long time ago they quit to obey all regulations. Anarchy and chaos rule in the military. Russia is sending its men in the military uniforms to Chechnya, in the same time they are told: are you sick and tired of everything? do you want to live to the fullest? lower your stress level?. Have a pleasure, Chechen apes are living there. You can do whatever you want, you don't have be afraid of punishment, in any case as the military men say, "vali, vsiekh prikroyem" (in Russian have a go, we'll cover you all. M.L.).

Q: Doesn't anybody in the military understand that these acts deepen a process of autodestruction of the army?

A: When I come to Chechnya, almost always some officer tries to arrange a discreet talk with me. I hear praises then: "I read your articles, you're right, this what's going on here is terrible, it needs to be stopped. If some help is needed, please ask myself." But, the same officers in the presence of their collegues join the choir of condemnations and insults. Then, I hear that I humiliate and offend the Russian soldiers. In the last year, Colonel Anatoli Khriechkov, a military commisar, dared to give me an official interview. In his opinion, in Chechnya, it would be needed to introduce ban on alcohol, it's imperative to stricly obey regulations, officers should be responsible personally for behaviour and actions of their subordinates, they should be accounted for it. Not long ago, I'd met colonel Khriechkov again, and he says: " You know, after this interview I was really in trouble". His friends in the high places in the General Staff were barely able to defend him.

In January of this year, in the Shatoy region, a group of GRU officers had killed and burnt six persons. This case was investigated and officers had been arrested, only because a Major from the Defence Ministry, who was a witness in these events radioed the Prosecutor Office. Thanks to him those murders had been cought practically red handed. But now, the Major is in serious trouble. And what about if he wasn't there? In many cases of crimes that have been comitted by the military men, prosecutors arrive too late or not at all, or have problems to get a vehicle.

In September of 2001, a helicopter with two Russian generals on board was shot down over Grozny. One of them was Pozdniakov. He was sent to Grozny by the president, he gave him full powers to collect materials about crimes that have been comitted by the military. I didn't know him well, but I was under impression that he understood the need to clean up the army. The official communique lied the blame for the death of general on "Chechen bandits". I was in Chechnya then. The city was under total blockade. The helicopter could had been only shot down by people who were interested to hide truth. If death, for not minding their own business, threatens generals supposedly supported by the Kremlin, then we'll have less heroes who are ready to follow their footsteps.

Q: In Chechnya, thousands of Russian soldiers have perished, many more have been wounded. But, the country doesn't really care about it... A: Mothers of soldiers who were killed in garrisons because of "dedovshchina" ( violent hazing of conscripts M.L) are often come to see me. "It would be better, if they were killed in Chechnya, at least they would recognized them as heroes." when I hear this kind of talk, I'm speechless. That means that they have also became victims of the state propaganda. After all, there's nothing more important for a mother than her own child. In big cities there are working Soldiers' Mothers Committees, some protests are taking place, the youth demands the right to substitute for the military service. So, in Chechnya mostly boys from the countryside are in the military service. I'm getting conviced about that when I'm visiting military hospitals.They were born in 198183. Those were times where our health and educational system was going down the tubes. Those boys are undernourished, uneducated, forgotten by their parents.

Q: From where people in Chechnya get money for their survival?

A: The best luck have those with grandpaspensioners, for many families their pensions that's the main source of cash. Women trade on bazaars in whatever is possible. Families with small children can count on some support, so there are some scams when they register "dead souls of children".

Q: Moscow bureaucrats are assuring that Chechnya will be rebuild soon. Is that possible?

A: I've been hearing thist for the last five years. Buildings could be rebuild, however if you take under consideration our Russian corruption and sluggishness even this is doubtful. But what hurts me the most is that, there's absolutely no chance that Chechens could trust and like Russia in the near future.

Q: The Chechen war will still play a role in Russian politics. Do you believe that Putin will be willing to sit down to talks and finish this war?

A: Putin that's an intelligent politician, and for sure, he will be keen one day to come out as a creator of peace. Maybe before the elections to the parliament in the end of 2003, certainly before the presidential elections in 2004. But during his presidency, in the front of our eyes, there are things happening which can only arouse our dismay. During Yeltisin's time, at the beginning of his rule, we were going in the opposite direction, from the official side we had been being assured that the most important is a human being and its rights. We can't exist without our state, but its significance is much smaller then an individual person. Now, we're hearing something different, well known from the Soviet times. Above all, only the state counts and its interest, a person counts when it is servicing its state. There has came an odour of our old, well known ideology. For many that's a source of happines now it's going to be as it had been before.

Q: Do you want us, those living beyond Russia's borders, to do something more on the issue of Chechnya?

A: Putin doesn't care what the Russian media say and write about him. Although, he watches the Western ones, trying hard that they would shown him there in his best light. So, there is some chance. The world media should pay more attention to what is going on in Chechnya and the Caucasus. Happily, when I was in London not long ago, accepting the "Index" award, (Most Courageous Defence of Freedom of Expression from the English magazine "Index on Censorship" M.L.) I was surprised that the English press and TV were interested in what I was saying.

Q: Are you going to Chechnya again?

A: Yes I am, the next week.

Karol Wrubel talked with Anna in Moscow Translation from Polish: Marius

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Remember Chechnya

Source: Washington Post By Anna Politkovskaya Date: November 14, 2001

Three years ago Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power by launching a war in Chechnya that is still referred to in Russia as an anti terrorist operation. The war continues, with almost 4,000 Russian soldiers having been killed and more than 13,000 wounded. Why?

In Russia, the disjunction between official statistics and real life is as great as that between Putin and democratic freedoms, an issue President Bush should raise in his discussions with Putin this week. This disjunction is evident to all who seek to answer the question: What is the reality in Chechnya today?

The answer is that Chechnya is an isolated enclave within Russia, a 21st century ghetto. No one may freely enter or freely leave neither men nor women; neither children, nor the old. Military checkpoints are everywhere. In order to pass these checkpoints, civilians must place a "Form #10" (a 10ruble bribe) in their passports. Without such bribes, soldiers might shoot you in the back or simply detain you, the consequences of which are also usually fatal.

The most characteristic feature of life in Chechnya today is the uncontrolled blizzard of bullets and shells all around you. No one is safe. Any discussion of human rights is silly: Such rights simply do not exist. As Sultan Khadzhiev, one of the few surgeons remaining in Chechnya, stated, Chechnya is a place where some people can do anything they like, while the rest have to put up with it.

In this drama, the leading roles are played by the military and the supporting roles by the civilian population. As for the fighters and other militants, they are nothing more than extras, providing the necessary background and scenery for a dirty little war.

A brief look at events on a typical day this month illustrate the point. Nov. 4: Federal troops at a checkpoint open fire on a passing tractor. Fifty twoyear old tractor driver Sultan Suleimanov and his assistant, 42yearold Akhmed Sadullayev, are lucky. They are in intensive care, but they are alive. While proceeding along a road bordering the town of AkhchoiMartan, a military column opens fire on a roadside cafe. A 19yearold waitress, Larisa Bugaeva, a refugee from Grozny, is killed immediately; another waitress, 30yearold Larisa Khatimova, is seriously wounded and is taken to the intensive care unit. The column, meanwhile, continues toward the mountains without even slowing down.

There has been no criminal investigation of these incidents, either on the day they occurred or since. This is reality in a militarybandit zone: The procurator's office is helpless to prevent the federal troops' excesses and, more often than not, prefers not to become involved. Even when it takes action, as it did in early July after the troops conducted a viciously thorough sweep in the villages of Sernovodsk and Assinovskaya, nothing comes of its efforts. Federal troops in that instance gave the procurators no information, and the civilians simply disappeared. Almost 2,000 civilians have disappeared in Chechnya in this way: Picked up during a sweep, they are never seen again, dead or alive.

The courts which exist in name only do nothing. The police act as badly as the military. In fact, the worst torture chambers in Grozny are in the offices of the Interior Ministry i.e., in the police stations. Add to all this the barely functioning proMoscow governmental organs established during the war, wrecked schools and hospitals, an economy in a collapse and a nonexistent banking system, and the overall picture of the Chechen ghetto is not just grim, it is incomprehensible.

What does Putin want in Chechnya? In place of Chechnya? From the Chechens? What, in view of the fact that not one of the goals of the anti terrorist operation has been realized? Civilians do not feel even relatively safe. The terrorist leaders are still at large. And the resistance easily replenishes its ranks with new recruits seeking revenge for the suffering and deaths of family members.

Putin constantly sounds the theme of Russia's greatpower status in his public speeches, and the Russian public eats it up. In what, specifically, does Russia's status as a great power manifest itself? What aspects of Russian life demonstrate that we have or should be proud of something today? Putin's Russia has no positive aspects. The economy is still in the hands of oligarchs. Corruption is still rampant. Our social safety net is nonexistent. In fact, there is nothing on which to build a domestic policy. Nevertheless, the Russian people want to feel that they live in a big and important state.

Chechnya provides the yeast for the growth of the greatpower mentality, the basis of Putin's state morality. For that reason, Putin forgives the army for committing daily crimes and atrocities. In fact, by providing the ideological basis for its active struggle with Islamic extremists, Putin encourages the military's addiction to criminal irresponsibility in Chechnya. Putinism is equally appealing to those in Europe and America who have warmed to the Russian president because of his genuine ability to keep Russia under control. Among Western premiers and presidents, no one is willing to disturb the Russian beehive by raising the question of the catastrophic situation in Chechnya.

So here we are, America, Europe and Putin, all happy with one another, mired in compromises that look like betrayal. This betrayal will deepen as Putin and Bush solidify their support for their respective campaigns against international terrorism. Bush should be aware that in his meetings with Putin, continued compromises will only reinforce Putinism and further entrap those Chechens living in this 21st century ghetto.

Anna Politkovskaya is a special correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaia Gazeta and the author of: "A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya."

The corrosive evil of the Chechen conflict

Date: February 5, 2002 Source: Index on Censorship By Anna Politkovskaya

A look at the ferocious misery of Chechnya and the "other" war on terrorism

"People who were my witnesses and informants in Chechnya have died for that reason, and that reason alone, as soon as I left their homes. How am I go on living abroad while others are dying in my place?"

Just before my last trip to Chechnya in midSeptember my colleagues at Novaya Gazeta began to receive threats and were told to pass on the message that I shouldn't go to Chechnya any more. If I did, my life would be in danger.

As always, our paper has its own people on the general staff and the ministry of defence people who broadly share our views. We spoke to people at the ministry but, despite their advice, I did go back to Chechnya, only to find myself blockaded in the capital, Grozny.

The city was sealed off after a series of strange events. Controls were so tight you couldnt even move between different districts within the city, let alone make your way out of Grozny on foot.

On that day, 17 September, a helicopter carrying a commission headed by MajorGeneral Anatoly Pozdnyakov from the general staff in Moscow was shot down directly over the city. He was engaged in work quite unprecedented for a soldier in Chechnya.

Only an hour before the helicopter was shot down, he told me the task of his commission was to gather data on crimes committed by the military, analyse their findings, put them in some order and submit the information for the president's consideration. Nothing of the kind had been done before.

Their helicopter was shot down almost exactly over the city centre. All the members of the commission perished and, since they were already on their way to Khankala airbase to take a plane back to Moscow, so did all the material they had collected. That part of the story was published by Novaya Gazeta.

Before the 19 September issue was sent to the printers, our chief editor Dmitry Muratov was summoned to the ministry of defence (or so I understand) and asked to explain how on earth such allegations could be made. He gave them an answer, after which the pressure really began. There should be no publication, he was told.

Nevertheless, he decided to go ahead, publishing a very truncated version of what I had written. At that point, the same people at the ministry who had claimed our report was false now conceded it was true. But they began to warn of new threats: they had learned that certain people had run out of patience with my articles. It was, in other words, the same kind of conversation as before my last trip to Chechnya.

Then we heard that a particular officer, a Lieutenant Larin, whom I had described in print as a war criminal, was sending letters to the newspaper and similar notes to the ministry. The deaths and torture of several people lie on his conscience and the evidence against him is incontrovertible.

Soon there were warnings that Id better stay at home. Meanwhile, the internal affairs ministry would track down and arrest this selfappointed military hitman, and deputy minister Vasilyev would himself take charge of the operation. I was supposed to remain at our apartment and go nowhere.

But they made no progress in finding Larin, and I began to realise that this was simply another way of forcing me to stop work. The newspaper decided I should leave the country until the editors were sure I could again live a normal life and resume my work.

The paper was forced to omit from my story the sort of detail that is vital to the credibility of an article like this, which suggested the military themselves had downed the helicopter.

All my subsequent difficulties began with those details. If these details surface, the ministry of defence warned our chief editor, that's the end for you . . . In fact, since I was moving around the city at the time, I can personally testify to what happened, as can others who were there with me.

And these were no ordinary citizens: among them were Chechen policemen and Grozny Energy Company employees who, like me, were trapped inside the city. FSB [former KGB] General Platonov was also there. Currently, he is a deputy to Anatoly Chubais, chief executive of United Energy Systems, a key Kremlin player throughout the 1990s and a hawk on Chechnya.

All these saw and knew exactly what I know. Platonov is not only Chubais's deputy but remains a deputy to FSB director Patrushev (in early 2001, the "antiterrorist operation" in Chechnya was transferred from the military command of the Combined Forces Group to the FSB and its director Patrushev in Moscow placed in overall charge).

No one else saw and knew as much about what happened as Platonov he couldnt help but see it. Not one person was allowed into the city centre after 9am that morning. And yet a helicopter was downed there. Different branches of the military are split over future policy in Chechnya.

There are good reasons why the recent public statements of defence ministry spokesmen all repeat the same phrases: "We deny the possibility of negotiations"; "Its out of the question";

"We are just doing our job." Indeed they are: their sweep and cleanse operations have become even more brutal. Let us suppose that those representing certain other branches of the military on the ground in Chechnya are pursuing a rather different policy.

That is where you should seek the reason for the deaths of all the commission members. I'm just a small cog in that machine someone who happened to be in the thick of events when no other journalists were around.

Those who want to continue fighting seem to have the upper hand; they represent the more powerful section within the socalled CFG, the Combined Forces Group.

To avoid repetition of the disastrous lack of coordination between ministries of defence and internal affairs and the FSB during the first Chechen conflict in 199496, overall command of army, police and other paramilitary and special units (CFG) in the present war was given to the military.

Although the FSB supposedly now exercise overall control of the antiterrorist operation, the military are too strong for them. On the fateful day the helicopter was downed and the commission perished, not even servicemen and officers were permitted to enter the central, cordonedoff area of Grozny.

Only defence ministry officials were allowed through. Even FSB and ministry of justice people were kept out; that was extraordinary. No one was permitted to enter the area where the helicopter was about to fall: representatives of other military bodies and organisations, even ranking officers, had no right to go there. I dont think we should expect too much from the defence ministry, nor from President Putin (in the light of the USled campaign in Afghanistan. Editor). He has received carte blanche to take the measures and employ the forces he considers necessary in Chechnya.

Im thinking of Prime Minister Blair's recent activities and words spoken by Chancellor Schroeder when Putin was visiting Germany. As you know, it was then said that Europe should reexamine its stance on Chechnya. Their position was already pretty feeble and bore no relation to the real state of affairs in Chechnya and the abuse of human rights there. If, however, they are going to alter their position, then its clear what will happen. In practical terms they'll support Putin.

Whatever he does will be fine by them. I think he's been working steadily and persistently towards that end for some time. And Im sure he'll make good use of it now. Not for the first time in the present war, there's been a battle to see whose nerve is stronger.

Putin held back [over the Wests antiterrorist operation] for some while: we shant support the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, he said, but we'll offer them backup. Then he agreed to supply them with arms and, evidently, advisers. In exchange he received a free hand in Chechnya.

Thats the way things are likely to go, I'm afraid. I cant say when it will happen, but whatever happens there will be a more intensive "liquidation of Chechen partisans". As always in Russia, however, it all depends on the methods to be used. What will the liquidation of Chechen bandits amount to this time?

Will they herd everyone else into concentration camps or hold repeated sweep operations in all the population centres in Chechnya? I cant answer for Chechen President Maskhadov, but will offer a brief analysis of his actions.

In my view, he is doing nothing whatsoever. He has retreated into his shell and is thinking, to the exclusion of all else, about his own immediate future hes forgotten the Chechen nation. Just as the federal authorities in Moscow have abandoned the Chechens, so now have the other side.

The nation has to fend for itself, with no leadership or protection. It survives as best it can. If people need to take revenge for their tortured and murdered relatives, they will. If they need to say nothing, theyll keep their mouths shut.

In such circumstances, which are the equivalent of a civil war, and under continuing pressure from the federal forces, no one today can say whom the Chechen nation would vote for if elections were held. No one now has any idea whom theyd elect and in that respect everyone has committed the same enormous mistake.

Maskhadov has obviously been driven into a corner. But the struggle for independence has become an obsession with him: he will hear of nothing else. I dont really understand what use independence will be to him, when he, Shamil Basayev and his immediate bodyguard are all that's left.

The first duty of a president is to fight for the wellbeing of his nation. I have my own president and it makes no difference that I personally did not vote for Putin. He remains the most important figure in the Russian state.

And Id like him to enable me, and everyone else, to live a normal life. Im referring to the laws that should govern our existence. I find myself in a situation, however, where no one gives a damn how I survive.

Im cut off from my family. I dont know what will happen in the future to my two children. It is not law that rules Russia today. Theres no person and no organisation to which you can turn and be certain that the laws have any force.I have no thoughts about my future. And thats the worst of all. I just want everything to change so I can go back and live in Moscow again.

I cant imagine spending any length of time here. Or in any other place, for that matter. I must do all in my power to return to Moscow. But I have no idea when that will be. If people in my country have no protection from this lawless regime, that means I survive here while others are dying. Over the last year Ive been in that position too often. People who were my witnesses and informants in Chechnya have died for that reason, and that reason alone, as soon as I left their homes.

If it again proves the case, then how can I go on living abroad while others are dying in my place?

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Chechnya: New Russian Atrocities Exposed

Date: March 28, 2002 Source: IWPR (CRS No. 122, 28Mar02) By Anna Politkovskaya

Russian troops engaged in new levels of extortion, looting and rape in their recent eightday operation in the Chechen village of Stariye Atagi.

The inhabitants of this southern Chechen village are so used to surviving from one Russian military "cleanup" operation to the next that they talk about their lives in a surreal fashion. "Do you remember, that was during cleanup number 19?" they say. Or "My neighbour was killed in cleanup number 23."

Stariye Atagi, 20 km south of Grozny, is one of the largest villages in Chechnya, with 15,000 inhabitants. The eightday "passport checking operation" that occurred there two months ago was the twentieth such action since the start of the second Chechen war, and definitely the worst. The village is a troubled place, home to many Islamic militants, usually referred to as "Wahhabis", which makes it the object of sustained attention from Russian soldiers. But locals, telling the story of what happened, wonder if it is really the Islamists that they are after.

Cleanup number 20 lasted from January 28 to February 5. As in earlier operations, federal forces besieged the village, using heavy armour, aviation, artillery and a contingent of 5,000 troops. Inhabitants were forbidden not just to leave the village, but also to move from one street to another or from house to house.

The soldiers came to the house of two sisters, Markha and Taus Musayeva, on Nagornaya Street at about 9 am on the morning of January 29. They are a poor family, who live off food they grow themselves and the pension of their old and almost bedridden father.

Markha said the soldiers immediately began demanding cash, but there was none. "Then we will screw you in front of your mum and dad," said the soldiers. They surrounded Markha, pushing her from one to the other like a punching bag, pulling her by the arms and hair. Tearing herself away, she rushed to the man who seemed to be the most senior, perhaps even an officer, wearing a black mask. Two fine calm green eyes looked at her and the man said, "Give us 300 roubles [about 10 dollars] and we won't screw you."

Taus, Markha's sister, who was being held in another room, cried out, "I'll run to the neighbours and bring it!" But the same drama was being played out there. Soldiers had forced Milana Kutsayeva, a beautiful 18yearold from Grozny, with a oneyearold son in her arms, into her house, while her husband and fatherinlaw were made to stand against the wall in the courtyard. Milana was given a simple choice: be raped by the soldiers or pay 500 roubles.

Over the past two years, the mass documentchecking process in Chechnya has turned into mass looting, as the soldiers "clean up" whatever they like, especially cash and jewellery. This time, however, for the first time in this second Chechen war, the soldiers ravaged the village by extorting money or indulging their own sexual pleasure.

The federal forces took 300 roubles from the poorerlooking houses and 500 from the richer ones. Women were spared rape if they handed over earrings and necklaces. The poorest in Stariye Atagi suffered worst of all, because they had nothing to give the Russians. Milana Kutsayeva was able to pay off the soldiers, but Markha and Taus weren't and suffered the brutal consequences.

Money was also demanded from men. Entering houses, the soldiers told them that if they paid up, they would be free from checks or suspicion of links with members of armed resistance groups. If they didn't, they could be taken away to "filtration points", where they would be interrogated and tortured.

Payments from men ranged from 500 to 4,000 roubles, depending on their age (younger men paid more) and how wealthy they seemed. From Saidash Akhmadov, of 26 Kooperativnaya Street, they extorted 3,500 roubles, as well as a commercial consignment of chewing gum he was planning to trade worth 2,700 roubles. KhozhAhmed Akhmadov, an old man aged almost 70, paid 4,000 roubles money he had collected for his own funeral arrangements. The same process applied to property throughout the village. For not destroying or not expropriating items, the soldiers demanded payment in return, with the price for a car, for example, beginning at 1,000 roubles.

According to the Russian General Staff, a contingent of 70,000 soldiers is facing around 1,500 members of "illegal bandit formations" in Chechnya. The "passportchecking regime" or "cleanup" operation is deemed an essential part of the "counterterrorist" actions. But there appears to be no connection between the operation in Stariye Atagi and warriors, terrorists or Islamic extremists the official targets of the vast military contingent sent into Chechnya two and a half years ago. On this occasion in Stariye Atagi, the soldiers did not even check the villagers' documents.

"As always, the real bandits bought themselves out and sat it out at home," said SaidEmin Apayev, who lives on Nagornaya Street. "They have a deal with the federal forces." Apayev did not want to buy his freedom. As a result, on February 1 he was taken to a filtration point, where, together with eight Stariye Atagi police officials employed by the Russian authorities, he was tortured for three days and nights.

One of the policemen was Ramzan Sagipov. A junior sergeant in the patrol service, he was injured on duty in Grozny at the end of December. And so, on February 1, his arm was in plaster, the stumps of his tornoff fingers were bleeding and shrapnel was still digging into his legs. The soldiers seized him, took away his gun and began to beat him, aiming straight at his bandages.

But didn't he cry out that he was a policeman? "Of course," said Sagipov, "They said, 'You're all one band! We will shoot you all! You are sheltering fighters!' Then they tied me up and threw me into the back of a military truck on top of live bodies. They were other policemen who had tried to defend their fellowvillagers from looting and rape. When I tried to lift my head or move it, they immediately kicked me in the head or beat me with a riflebutt."

The detained men were taken to a semiabandoned poultry farm on the edge of the village.

"First they drove us 'down the line'," said Sagipov. "The soldiers formed two files facing each other and threw us out of the truck at their feet, so that each one could kick us, just as he wanted to. Then they put us against the wall. I was all bandaged up and one man came up, turned me to him and said, 'He is sick', and immediately hit me with a truncheon over the head. Then they took off my bandages and began to squeeze, trample and crush me."

After they had finished with Sagipov, they let him go. He said they detained him and his colleagues "in order to humiliate us, to break our spirit.

"They put us against the wall with our arms raised, legs spread out and heads lowered," said Apayev of his ordeal at the filtration point. "It was forbidden to move or speak. For every act of disobedience blows landed on us from behind. They beat us with their feet, hands, riflebutts, whatever they wanted. We stood there for six or eight hours."

"On the morning of February 2 they led us back to the wall and kept us in the same position until evening," he went on. "At dusk they took us to interrogation with an investigator, who demanded the time and itinerary of the fighters' movements, their hiding places and addresses. On February 3, they again stood us against the wall, then in the evening they forced us to sign in a book that 'we had no complaints' and let us go."

In fact, all of Russia saw Apayev on its television screens during this period in reports from Stariye Atagi. He was standing behind General Vladimir Moltenskoi, commander of federal forces in Chechnya, as the general declared that they had arrested bandits with guns, whom the local police had been defending. "We were all at home," said Apayev. "We had no weapons. We simply didn't buy ourselves out."

The operation ended on February 5, when armoured cars, loaded with loot, left the village. A few days later, a different set of looters arrived in the village, also wearing camouflage and black masks. These were members of one of the Wahhabi units, who were demanding "money for jihad". Like the Russian soldiers, they wanted money from young men, or would take them away by force.

Two days later, local people say, a group of young men from Stariye Atagi staged an armed revolt against the Wahhabis, which was crushed by Russian units. Relatives of the young men said that the Russians had been summoned by the Islamists to assist them. As a result, the local mutineers were all killed, while the Wahhabis escaped into the hills.

Two and a half years after the beginning of the second Chechen conflict, the Russian war machine is being operated with methods which only serve to create new recruits for terrorism and inflame hatred and the desire for revenge amongst ordinary Chechens. Meanwhile, bandits on both side profit. Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist with Novaya Gazeta, was given Index on Censorship's Most Courageous Defence of Freedom of Expression award on March 21 for her reporting on Chechnya. She visited Stariye Atagi earlier this month.

Akhmad Kadyrov: Had I been the dictator of Chechnya

Date: March 22, 2002 Source: Novaya Gazeta (No. 20) By Anna Politkovskaya

An interview with Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the administration of Chechnya

Author: Akhmad Kadyrov discusses the current situation in Chechnya, and gives his views on what the federal government, the military, and the people of Chechnya ought to do. He believes the war in Chechnya will be over soon, most likely by autumn this year.

Question: What do you think of the socalled peace talks between Kazantsev and Zakayev the Kremlin refers to every now and then?

Akhmad Kadyrov: I have always objected to the idea. I told the president that it would avail us nothing and that only Maskhadov's side would benefit. That's exactly what happened.

Question: And what are these benefits you are talking about?

Akhmad Kadyrov: Maskhadov was given another chance at deceiving the people. When the talks began, he immediately released several addresses to the Chechen people that Putin had allegedly understood pointlessness of the war, that "were it not for Kadyrov, the troops would have been withdrawn in January, but this bastard Kadyrov rushed to Putin to plead to leave the troops..." An influential field commander I know was ready to lay down the arms and disband his detachment shortly before the negotiations were announced. Guess what happened when he discovered that the talks were about to begin. He said, "No". Other field commanders also opted to wait and see what would happen. Had the troops been withdrawn after the negotiations, the people would have branded them traitors for the decision to lay down the arms.

Question: What is the current state of affairs in these peace talks? Are they underway? Are they over?

Akhmad Kadyrov: No talks are underway, and no are planned. Some meetings do take place because I know for a fact that all these mujahedin are kept on the short leash by secret services. I discuss surrender with several armed groups. Nineteen men laid down the arms and ceased the resistance in Gudermes not so long ago, the fact utterly dismissed by the media.

Question: Do you remain in touch (perhaps, discuss the same thing) with field commanders like Basayev, Gelayev, or Khattab?

Akhmad Kadyrov: Only with Gelayev. I sent my envoys to him on several occasions. They even travelled to Georgia. He is stalling for time. Gelayev always says he needs time to think it over. He is waiting too.

Question: Your attitude to the socalled Pankisi gorge problem?

Akhmad Kadyrov: I'm sorry for the noncombatants residing there. We will do everything to have refugees return from Georgia, Ingushetia, and even from Turkey. A spokesman for refugees in Turkey approached us not so long ago. As I see it, our refugees are completely abandoned there, no one helping them anymore, and they are prepared to return home on any conditions.

As for the Pankisi gorge, this is what I can say. There are armed men there of course. I would not call them guerrillas, however, because guerrillas are those who are here, who are fighting. Over there, in Georgia, they are armed refugees. I would not call Gelayev a guerrilla, for example. He has not been a guerrilla for a long time now. Neither is Vaja Arsanov, Maskhadov's vice president, even though he is called a direction commander. General Aslanbek Arsayev is abroad, not a guerrilla either.

Question: All right. How would you say the secret services should treat Arsanov, Gelayev, Arsayev? Akhmad Kadyrov: As criminals. They are criminals all right, otherwise they would not have been murdering the imams and village mayors. If a mayor is assassinated, how will the people get their pensions and other benefits? I might have understood this practice of assassinations had Maskhadov provided the people with everything necessary. In this case the people would not have been working for the existing regime. But Maskhadov has not been doing it.

Question: Why do you think men like Khattab and Basayev, the most notorious field commanders, are still at large?

Akhmad Kadyrov: Well, I have my suspicions which I would not disclose. As soon as these commanders are taken out, the war will be over. Some generals do not want that they are too busy lining their pockets (businesses, oil, etc). I do not doubt that had the security structures wanted it, not a single oil truck would have been moving nowadays... I pin a lot of hopes on the latest Security Council meeting where all these problems were discussed. The president was fairly tough.

Question: What do you mean?

Akhmad Kadyrov: The president said that more trust in the Chechens themselves was needed because only the Chechens could restore order in Chechnya.

One other factor was discussed by the Security Council. When a person disappears, no one tells the relatives what happened to him, and only the body is found later. Every such episode creates at least a dozen new guerrillas. That is why the number of guerrillas has not been going down.

Question: The major problems of modern Chechnya are evaluated as the sweeping operations, inadequate and unjustified use of force against the population, looting, and tortures. How do you intend to fight the practice of sweeping operations which results in appearance of new guerrillas?

Akhmad Kadyrov: Once again, I rely on the latest Security Council meeting and on the president. Why is that not a single general is ever responsible for whatever happens during the sweeping operations? I demanded from him. The president ordered no more sweeping operations. Unfortunately of course, this is not the first presidential order on Chechnya which is ignored...

Question: Still, what can you do to put an end to the military's abuse of power in Chechnya?

Akhmad Kadyrov: I'm helpless against the military. I asked the president for this sort of power but Kazantsev objected and acidly inquired what sort of powers Kadyrov wanted now. Was he going to become a dictator? That's what Kazantsev asked.

Question: How did the president react?

Akhmad Kadyrov: He said that Kadyrov was correct and that he needed broader powers. We will see now.

Question: Do you think there should be one single leader in Chechnya?

Akhmad Kadyrov: Yes, a single person should bear responsibility for everything. Including, before you ask, the security structures. Future Chechnya should be a presidential republic where everything is controlled by one man only. There will never be order in Chechnya otherwise. The republic needs a bona fide dictator.

Question: All right, let's fancy you are a dictator already. The army mounts a sweeping operation in Argun? It's your move now.

Akhmad Kadyrov: Had I been the dictator, there would have been no sweeping operations in Chechnya. I would not have bothered with armored vehicles etc. I'd have compiled information on who is a criminal and who is not quietly, without much noise, and visited the criminals in nighttime. This criminal would have never been seen afterwards. Three to five such incidents and everyone would have got the message. This is how the NKVD operated in its time. Everyone knew it, and everyone was afraid.

Question: What do you think of Maskhadov's future? Akhmad Kadyrov: He will never be a pauper, that much is clear. He will be found a pension and a place of residence somewhere. What's more, he himself knows it.

Question: Who will find all that for him? The Russian Federation?

Akhmad Kadyrov: Yes. In return for some concessions of course.

Question: Like what?

Akhmad Kadyrov: Like disowning what he doesn't have and has not had for some time already. The powers. In a formal manner. Like apologizing to the people. If he does all this, he will leave Chechnya and live a normal life somewhere. That's what I've been offering him.

Question: What do you think it is going to happen?

Akhmad Kadyrov: When Shamil is gone, Maskhadov will undergo a dramatic change. Like a werewolf. You will all be surprised yet. As for now, he fears Shamil.

Question: How would you estimate losses in the second Chechen war?

Akhmad Kadyrov: No one knows exact figures. All I know is that the second Chechen war took much more lives of the armed men than the first one. (According to field commanders, 2,740 armed men were killed in the first Chechen war. In this war, 1,200 lives were lost in Komsomolskoye alone.) As for losses sustained by noncombatants, no one has counted them. It will probably be done only when the war is over.

Question: When do you think that will be?

Akhmad Kadyrov: This year, I think. Before autumn.

Question: How will we know it's happened?

Akhmad Kadyrov: By the formal announcement that those cut throats, Basayev and Khattab, are gone.

The 'Sons' Rise In Chechnya

Date: November 3, 2002 Source: The Washington Post By Anna Politkovskaya

MOSCOW, RUSSIA Abubakar lifts the black mask covering his face. We are staring, examining each other at close quarters. We are both trying to understand what's going to happen when this, yet another Russian tragedy, is over. Abubakar, a 29yearold Chechen, looks 40. He is deputy commander of the terrorist group that has taken several hundred people hostage. I am a journalist who has come to the captured theater building to negotiate. And now I am trying to understand who these people are. Will it be possible to persuade them to compromise if their lives are spared? Will they let all those unhappy people go? Who is behind them? And, more important, what comes after them?

We don't want anything, says Abubakar sharply; we do not intend to survive. We don't need it. We have come to die. And we are going to die in battle. He is wearing military fatigues that cover the figure of a physically fit special forces fighter with long service. An automatic weapon is on his lap; he constantly strokes it as if it is a baby.

Abubakar is one of those Chechens who have been fighting since youth. He has spent the past three years in the woods and mountains, without water, gas or heat. He has been surviving.

Why did you live like that? I am a fighter for the freedom of my land.

What did you come to Moscow for?

To show you what we feel like during mopup operations, when federals take us hostage, beat us up, humiliate, kill. We want you to go through it and understand how you have hurt us.

But let the children go.

Children? You take our 12yearold children away. We are going to keep yours. To make you understand what it feels like.

This refrain "We will show you how we suffer" is to be an undercurrent of our "talks." Other fighters from the "subversive kamikaze group" added their details to the picture Abubakar was painting. Their attitude is not going to change. It is this: We have come to die to make the war stop. We are making no concessions.

Abubakar and his group, the majority of them between the ages of 25 and 30, are the generation of the "sons" of the Chechen war, who have grown old together with their "fathers." They have known nothing but an automatic weapon and the woods ever since they finished school.

In midsummer this year, as the militarypolitical leadership of the Chechen resistance grew more and more radical, Abubakar and people like him began to raise their voices against the "fathers" including leaders and wellknown field commanders saying that they were faltering in the struggle, lacking in drive, leaving fighters to spend a whole winter in the woods doing nothing while the outrageous Russian "mopping up" operations rose to unprecedented levels.

A Chechen woman of about 40 comes in, a grenade hanging on her thumb, an explosive device attached to her body. She carries a pail, which she fills with water for the hostages. We talk a little about her family in Grozny. She doesn't feel sorry for anybody or anything either. Abubakar is telling us that they had chosen people for this operation very carefully: They took only the best. The woman has been waiting a year and a half for a chance to become a kamikaze. Her husband and brothers were killed; her uncle and nephew are missing.

Are you answerable to Aslan Maskhadov (the Chechen separatist leader and former president)?

Yes, Maskhadov is our president, but we are fighting on our own.

Abubakar says this coldly. It confirms one's worst fears: This group is a force that operates on its own, waging a war of its own.

He names certain members of the leadership. They are conducting peace talks very slowly, he says, because they sleep on sheets, whereas we are dying in the woods. We are tired of them.

The fate of the Chechen leader Maskhadov is becoming ever more predictable: Choose the frenzied radicalism of the "sons" or be swept away, and very soon.

The chance for a peaceful settlement now, after the October tragedy, has been lost. The Kremlin turns a deaf ear. Now it will take a much stronger effort for it to sit down at a negotiating table.

Female hostages are led toward me, then men. They all say the same thing: "We are the second Kursk" invoking the lost Russian submarine. No one in the Kremlin cares about their lives, they are saying: The only thing Putin wants is to demonstrate his strength and to show that he will never bow to the terrorists. And so we will have to die for it, right?

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Russia's whistle blower

Date: March 16, 2002 Source: The Guardian By David Hearst

In Chechnya, there is now just one lone Russian voice remaining to chronicle the lives of those embroiled in the killing and corruption that have become the hallmark of President Putin's efforts to bring the province under the control of Moscow. Her name is Anna Politkovskaya, and she is not about to give up the fight

She is Russia's least wanted journalist. She's been held overnight in the torture cells she was investigating, threatened with rape, and received numerous death threats. Her reporting has stirred the wrath of Russia's most powerful and unfettered institutions the Kremlin, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the GRU, the military intelligence. She has been forced to flee the country, work under the surveillance of roundthe clock police bodyguards. She has been accused of being a western agent. And yet she keeps on coming back for more. To be precise, she has returned to the land that has caused her so much trouble, Chechnya, 39 times.

She sits bolt upright in the subsiding foam chair, her eyes shining with intensity. She is on a mission.

None of that collective ethnic memory applies to a Moscovite such as Politkovskaya. She is a child of good times, the Brezhnev era, when the Soviet Union was a world power and those fairy lights on the world map in the operations room of the KGB meant that their net was cast globally. Her parents were senior diplomats; she was part of the elite. For her family, Vladimir Putin is not a distant object of fear and veneration, but a former KGB staffer rather too lowly for them to have come across socially. So why does a 43yearold mother of two grownup children, separated from her husband, living in a flat in a privileged block on the Garden Ring in Moscow, put her life on the line for a faraway people who hate the Russians? "I am not a war correspondent. All my working life I wrote about the state of our orphanages, our old people's homes. I was interested in reviving Russia's prerevolutionary tradition of writing about our social problems. That led me to writing about the seven million refugees in our country. When the war started, it was that that led me down to Chechnya."

The opening burst of fire killed three passengers, at which point the special force team realised that they had fired on unarmed civilians. Then they shot the rest. Afterwards, they set fire to the bus to make it look as if it had been hit by rebels. The villagers said that the six who perished left behind them 28 orphans. The GRU officers are under arrest partially because of the testimony of another Russian officer, a major, whose life is now also under threat. It was this element of the story that Politkovskaya brought to light. She returned to Grozny in the wake of the mas sacre: when the bodyguards assigned to "protect" her, but who in fact monitored her every move, disappeared.

"During the period that you have been receiving budget funds, has your company buried one of the soldiers whose remains were exhumed in Chechnya?"

"No." "So what have you been doing with the money?"

"We are in possession of the entire database for soldiers missing in action."

"Could we take a look at your database?"

"No, it's a commercial secret."

Occasionally she bites off more than she can chew. In February last year, she visited a detention centre where Chechens were being tortured. She was detained overnight by the Russians and threatened with rape by senior officers. In September, six days after the attack on the World Trade Centre, Grozny was in a feverish state. The checkpoints were preventing anyone getting in or out of the city centre, not even bureaucrats with official passes. Politkovskaya was in the office of Stanislav Ilyasov, the Chechen prime minister, a Moscow placeman. He was striding up and down, grabbing telephone receivers, cursing the whole incomprehensible business. Only onefifth of his civil servants had made it through for his regular Monday morning briefing.

I tell her that her editor says he'd back her up to the very end, as well. She laughs: "That depends on what he means by the very end..."

Anna Politkovskaya has been nominated for the Most Courageous Defence of Freedom of Expression award, to be presented by Index On Censorship, on March 21.

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Anna Politkovskaja about war in the Chechen Republic Anna Politkovskaja about war in the Chechen Republic Anna Politkovskoj's Publicism. War and human rights

The World is necessary to huts, and war to palaces The Information vacuum conducts to accident Kadyrov’s Murder revenge or law? Time to correct Murder of five children in the Chechen Republic try to give out for “imprudence” Murder of family Tsintsaevyh: who has let out a rocket? Russia, Ukraine and “nationderelict” The Receipt for murders Death of the soldier and the responsibility of the general GRU200 “Justice” Anna Politkovskaja about business of “Cadet” For crimes in the Chechen Republic the militiaman for the first time judge in Terrible To Anna Politkovskoj it became better, it have sent in the Moscow clinic The Award “ for courageous illumination of events in the Chechen Republic “ Destiny of invalids in the Chechen Republic “ Children had only our love... “ Nobody interests an essence of the phenomena occuring in the country “ GRU and “Northeast”? “Northeast”: dancings come to an end? 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They are old men Chastisers Sergey Valkova’s Business Witnesses “ by way of supervision “ The Chechen Republic after the order ? 80 “ How to erase the Chechen Republic from a card of Russia “ The Reporter on the Chechen war “ Zachistka N 20 “ Children of Chechen “special actions” Business GRU ? 76002 which to hush up was not possible “ People disappearing “ “ The Historical route “ With whom to negotiate in the Chechen Republic Musa Muradov can sleep easy? Antiterrorist operation: blockade of heart People disappearing Sentenced to war TerribleMoscow Why Maskhadov is silent? The Dump for children, or 500 roubles for Pushkin Zoe Svetovoj’s Interview to Anna Politkovskoj The Letter to the president Mahketinskaja school Full public prosecutor’s powerlessness Ambassadorial silence In Mahketah clean witnesses New details sernovodskoj tragedies Who in the Europe will be responsible for war in the Europe? To Whom served Baraev “Generalsoligarches” “ Vahhabitsky a masquerade “ “ How many there is a soldier? “ “ The Application on the pardon “ So to whom war is necessary? Not ugoden to front The Mysterious special division arranges massacre? “ Only then I have learned, what for to the captain a breakage and the weight “ Falling beating The Right at parting “ I was rescueed from the Chechen Republic, but here is even worse “ Personal news from the main military Office of Public Prosecutor Affect of rescue The Price of a mass burial place in the Chechen Republic 50 000 roubles In the Chechen Republic again death from the The Ordinary sadism The Story of the unknown soldier The Demon of a limit The Concentration camp with a commercial bias By Militarians in the Chechen Republic it has been grasped and some days were kept journalist Anna Politkovskaja Stanislav Iljasov: “ I understood: yes, Terrible it is destroyed... “ “ You everyone should me “ “ Then to me in a pocket have thrust to a pomegranate “ The Chechen Republic in recoil “ Murder or execution? “ “Care” our such? 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The Supermarket “War” I am Shamen Nasty travel in preispodnjuju wars Waste ground About execution knew all “ Has been killed, but has for some reason survived “ The city Released from houses Did not regret on death has not sufficed for a life “ Actually war is more awful, than you think... “ Validity never goes after a bullet Victims are waited by court. It strashnyi You bad to us The Cell for the refugee How many victims to us on a pocket To open fire or the MOUTH War sees nobody Hodoki up to putina Field Kulikovo under Komsomol It is necessary to be at war, the sonny Cash department by name war 2 Who such Adam Deniev The Jackal Very sad history. History like with a happyend. This your body The Irradiation not noticed pain “ The Gold feather “ Annas Politkovskoj Whether Will divide explosions Moscow on black and white Anna Politkovskaja on August, 17 th , 1999

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Anna Politkovskaja on August, 17 th , 1999 Whether will divide explosions Moscow on black and white ” A gold feather “ Annas Politkovskoj Irradiation not noticed pain This your body Very sad history. History like with a happyend. The jackal Who such Adam Deniev Cash department by name war 2 It is necessary to be at war, the sonny Field Kulikovo under Komsomol Hodoki up to putina War sees nobody To open fire or the MOUTH How many victims to us on a pocket Cell for the refugee You bad to us Victims are waited by court. It strashnyi Validity never goes after a bullet ” Actually war is more awful, than you think... “ Did not regret on death has not sufficed for a life The city released from houses ” Has been killed, but has for some reason survived “ About execution knew all Waste ground Nasty travel in preispodnjuju wars I am Shamen Supermarket “War” I synochek was at war. And houses it was shot... Why ausheva have not invited to a meeting with the president People at fires The tenth War does not stop: to generals nejmetsja In Terrible the life has begun! AhmadOaa?e KADYROV: Freedom to the simple person is not necessary Preispodnjaja We rescue from the country? Pipe, or revelry of “ a black cash “ under supervision of war Manual ministers without hands Night explosion Anna Politkovskaja answers your questions ” Traces of war conduct to Moscow “ Epoch of military gangsterism. The Constitution day in Terrible Groznensky a demon Planet in structure of Russia Who has stolen Kenneth Glaka it is not known ”Care” our such? ” Murder or execution? “ The Chechen Republic in recoil ” Then to me in a pocket have thrust to a pomegranate “ ” You everyone should me “ Stanislav Iljasov: “ I understood: yes, Terrible it is destroyed... “ By militarians in the Chechen Republic it has been grasped and some days were kept journalist Anna Politkovskaja Concentration camp with a commercial bias Demon of a limit The story of the unknown soldier Ordinary sadism In the Chechen Republic again death from the The price of a mass burial place in the Chechen Republic 50 000 roubles Affect of rescue Personal news from the main military Office of Public Prosecutor ” I was rescueed from the Chechen Republic, but here is even worse “ The right at parting Falling beating ” Only then I have learned, what for to the captain a breakage and the weight “ The mysterious special division arranges massacre? Not ugoden to front So to whom war is necessary? ” The application on the pardon “ ” How many there is a soldier? “ ” Vahhabitsky a masquerade “ ”Generalsoligarches” To whom served Baraev Who in the Europe will be responsible for war in the Europe? New details sernovodskoj tragedies In Mahketah clean witnesses Ambassadorial silence Full public prosecutor’s powerlessness Mahketinskaja school The letter to the president Zoe’s interview Light with Anna Politkovskoj Dump for children, or 500 roubles for Pushkin Why Maskhadov is silent? TerribleMoscow Sentenced to war People disappearing Antiterrorist operation: blockade of heart Musa Muradov can sleep easy? With whom to negotiate in the Chechen Republic ” A historical route “ ” People disappearing “ Business GRU ? 76002 which to hush up was not possible Children of Chechen “special actions” ” Zachistka N 20 “ The reporter on the Chechen war ” How to erase the Chechen Republic from a card of Russia “ The Chechen Republic after the order ? 80 Witnesses “ by way of supervision “ Sergey Valkova’s business Chastisers

Anna Politkovskaya 13 October 2004 Listen to this item Listen to this item The Russian journalist talks about her critique of 'Putin's Russia'

Anna has been so critical of the President and so outspoken about the situation in Chechnya that she received death threats and had to flee the country.

Back in Russia now, she claims to have been drugged on her way to cover the recent siege in the school in Beslan.

Jenni discusses why the authorities are so frightened of what Anna has to say and whether she is herself scared of where her outspokenness will lead her.

Putin's Russia By: Anna Politkovskaya and Arch Tait Published by: Harvill Press ISBN: 1843430509

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com Poisoned by Putin

The horror of Beslan was made still worse by the intimidation of Russia's servile media

Anna Politkovskaya Thursday September 9, 2004 The Guardian

It is the morning of September 1. Reports from North Ossetia are hard to believe: a school in Beslan has been seized. Half an hour to pack my things as my mind works furiously on how to get to the Caucasus. And another thought: to look for the Chechen separatist leader, Aslan Maskhadov, let him come out of hiding, let him go to the hostagetakers, and then ask them to free the children. Then followed a long evening at Vnukovo airport. Crowds of journalists were trying to get on a plane south, just as flights were being postponed. Obviously, there are some people who would like to delay our departure. I use my mobile and speak openly about the purpose of my flight: "Look for Maskhadov", "persuade Maskhadov".

We have long stopped talking over our phones openly, assuming they are tapped. But this is an emergency. Eventually a man introduces himself as an airport executive: "I'll put you on a flight to Rostov." In the minibus, the driver tells me that the Russian security services, the FSB, told him to put me on the Rostov flight. As I board, my eyes meet those of three passengers sitting in a group: malicious eyes, looking at an enemy. But I don't pay attention. This is the way most FSB people look at me.

The plane takes off. I ask for a tea. It is many hours by road from Rostov to Beslan and war has taught me that it's better not to eat. At 21:50 I drink it. At 22:00 I realise that I have to call the air stewardess as I am rapidly losing consciousness. My other memories are scrappy: the stewardess weeps and shouts: "We're landing, hold on!"

"Welcome back," said a woman bending over me in Rostov regional hospital. The nurse tells me that when they brought me in I was "almost hopeless". Then she whispers: "My dear, they tried to poison you." All the tests taken at the airport have been destroyed on orders "from on high", say the doctors.

Meanwhile, the horror in Beslan continues. Something strange is going on there on September 2: no officials speak to the relatives of hostages, no one tells them anything. The relatives besiege journalists. They beg them to ask the authorities to give some sort of explanation. The families of the hostages are in an information vacuum. But why?

In the morning, also at Vnukovo airport, Andrei Babitsky is detained on a specious pretext. As a result, another journalist known for seeing his investigations through to the end and being outspoken in the foreign press is prevented from going to Beslan.

Word comes that Ruslan Aushev, the former president of Ingushetia, rejected by the authorities for advocating a settlement of the Chechen crisis, suddenly walked into negotiations with the terrorists in Beslan. He walked in alone because the people at the special services headquarters responsible for the negotiations were unable for 36 hours to agree among themselves who would go first. The militants give three babies to Aushev and then release 26 more kids and their mothers. But the media try to hush up Aushev's courageous behaviour: no negotiations, nobody has gone inside.

By September 3, the families of hostages are in a total news blackout. They are desperate; they all remember the experience of the Dubrovka theatre siege in which 129 people died when the special services released gas into the building, ending the standoff. They remember how the government lied.

The school is surrounded by people with hunting rifles. They are ordinary people, the fathers and brothers of the hostages who have despaired of getting help from the state; they have decided to rescue their relatives themselves. This has been a constant issue during the past five years of the second war in Chechnya: people have lost all hope of getting any protection from the state and they expect nothing but extrajudicial executions from the special services. So they try to defend themselves and their loved ones. Selfdefence, naturally, leads to lynching. It couldn't be otherwise. After the theatre siege in 2002, the hostages made this harrowing discovery: save yourself, because the state can only help to destroy you.

And it's the same in Beslan now. Official lies continue. The media promote official views. They call it "taking a statefriendly position", meaning a position of approval of Vladimir Putin's actions. The media don't have a critical word to say about him. The same applies to the president's personal friends, who happen to be the heads of FSB, the defence ministry and the interior ministry. In the three days of horror in Beslan, the "state friendly media" never dared to say aloud that the special services were probably doing something wrong. They never dared to hint to the state duma and the federation council the parliament that they might do well to convene an emergency session to discuss Beslan.

The top news story is Putin flying into Beslan at night. We are shown Putin thanking the special services; we see President Dzasokhov, but not a word is said about Aushev. He is a disgraced former president, disgraced because he urged the authorities not to prolong the Chechen crisis, not to bring things to the point of a tragedy that the state could not handle. Putin does not mention Aushev's heroism, so the media are silent.

Saturday, September 4, the day after the terrible resolution of the Beslan hostagetaking crisis. A staggering number of casualties, the country is in shock. And there are still lots of people unaccounted for, whose existence is denied by officials. All this was the subject of a brilliant and, by present standards, very bold Saturday issue of the newspaper Izvestia, which led with the headline "The silence at the top". Official reaction was swift. Raf Shakirov, the chief editor, was fired. Izvestia belongs to the nickel baron Vladimir Potanin, and throughout the summer he was trembling in his boots because he was afraid to share the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, who has been arrested on fraud charges. He was doubtless trying to curry favour with Putin. The result is that Shakirov, a talented newspaper manager and a generally proestablishment man, is out of the game, a latterday dissident and this for deviating ever so slightly from the official line.

You might think that journalists staged an action of protest in support of Shakirov. Of course not. The Russian Union of Journalists and the Media Union kept mum. Only a journalist who is loyal to the establishment is treated as "one of us". If this is journalists' approach to the cause that we serve, then it spells an end to the basic tenet that we are working so that people know what is happening and take the right decisions. The events in Beslan have shown that the consequences of an information vacuum are disastrous. People dismiss the state that has left them in the lurch and try to act on their own, try to rescue their loved ones themselves, and to exact their own justice on the culprits. Later, Putin declared that the Beslan tragedy had nothing to do with the Chechen crisis, so the media stopped covering the topic. So Beslan is like September 11: all about alQaida. There is no more mention of the Chechen war, whose fifth anniversary falls this month. This is nonsense, but wasn't it the same in Soviet times when everyone knew the authorities were talking rubbish but pretended the emperor had his clothes on?

We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.

· Anna Politkovskaya is a journalist on the Novaya Gazeta newspaper; she has won numerous awards for her reporting of the Chechnya conflict and was involved in negotiations with the gunmen who stormed the Dubrovka theatre in October 2002 novayagazeta.ru Dispatches from a savage war

Poison and death threats won't stop Anna Politkovskaya from reporting the truth about Chechnya. She talks to James Meek

Friday October 15, 2004 The Guardian

Anna Politkovskaya was born into Soviet high society; the kind of privileged, metropolitan elite that knew abroad better than it knew the factories of the Urals, and whose children were guaranteed comfortable jobs in the rambling bureaucracies of Moscow.

Half a life later, in her 40s and a mother of two children, Politkovskaya found herself alone at night in the Chechen hills, fleeing through the darkness. She was running from the Russian security service, the FSB, which wanted to arrest her, but out there in the highlands of a lawless region steeped in bloodshed, she could have fallen victim to anyone or anything; Chechen bandits, Russian or Chechen government death squads, a broken neck. It was Europe, in 2002.

"I walked the whole night," she says. "I wanted to stay alive! It was terrifying. I reached the [Chechen] village of Stary Atagi at dawn. I stayed there for a day and a night, keeping my head down ..." She talks about it for a while, then seems to check herself, feeling perhaps that telling a stranger about one of the numerous occasions in her career as a journalist that she faced a threat of imprisonment or serious harm is irrelevant to the serious business of reporting. "These are just details," she says, finally.

In the bland setting of a publisher's London flat, you can see in Politkovskaya, one of the bravest of Russia's many brave journalists, the different ages of her life, and her looking serious in each of them: the bookish student of the 1970s, the earnest, curious young Soviet reporter, the journalist who embraced the freedoms of perestroika in the late 1980s, the veteran of Russia's recent conflicts who returns time and again to Chechnya to enrage the Kremlin leadership as it seeks to make of Vladimir Putin an infallible khan.

Her seriousness is not just her frown, her severe glasses and full head of grey hair. It's the tension, anger and impatience in her whole body, making clear that her sense of the continual injustice being perpetrated in her homeland never leaves her, that she can't shut it out in a way almost all British journalists, even the campaigning, radical kind, can. It's a surprise, then, to see her start to laugh and make fun of the Guardian's photographer when he gets her to pose for him. "Photographers always do that," she says, in her hesitant English. "They get people to do things they don't normally do." The photographer gets quite annoyed and you realise that Politkovskaya is still young (she's 46). And still hopeful. The author picture on the back of her new book, Putin's Russia, is so selfconsciously tragic, and its subject matter so bleak, that I ask her whether she thinks it might take generations for her country to become truly free.

"I wouldn't ever want to say it would take generations," she says. "I want to be able to live the life of a human being, where every individual is respected, in my lifetime."

Politkovskaya was born in New York, where her Soviet Ukrainian parents were UN diplomats, in 1958, five years after the death of Stalin. She was sent back home to be educated and after school entered one of the most prestigious university departments in the USSR, the journalism faculty of Moscow State University. Among its other advantages, her parents' diplomatic status enabled them to smuggle banned books into the country for her, and she was able to write her dissertation about a normally forbidden poet, the emigre Marina Tsvetayeva.

After graduation, Politkovskaya worked for the daily Izvestiya, then moved to the inhouse paper of the state airline monopoly Aeroflot. "Every journalist got a free ticket all year round; you could go on any plane and fly wherever you wanted. Thanks to this I saw the whole of our huge country. I was a girl from a diplomatic family, a reader, a bit of a swot; I didn't know life at all."

With the coming of perestroika, Politkovskaya switched to the independent press which began to emerge and flourish: first Obshchaya Gazeta, then Novaya Gazeta (New Newspaper). None of the terrible things that have happened in Russia since the coming to power of the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 have persuaded Politkovskaya that it would have been better to preserve the USSR.

"From an economic point of view, life became very difficult," she says, "but politically it wasn't shocking at all. It was simple happiness, that you could read and think and write whatever you wanted. It was a joy. You need to endure a great deal in the way of economic hardship for the sake of freedom."

Hardly had the new countries of the former Soviet Union begun to stand on their feet, however, than a series of internal wars broke out. The most savage of them, continuing to this day, involves various attempts by Russian government troops to regain control over the small region of Chechnya. Politkovskaya became one of the most dogged reporters of that conflict.

Russians speak of two Chechen wars: the first, under Yeltsin, from 1994 to 1996, ended with a peace deal and troop withdrawal under pressure from the media and public. When Putin invaded for a second time, in 1999, he took steps to ensure that the media would not embarrass him with reports about the reality of Russia's brutality in Chechnya. If, as Politkovskaya believes, stopping the first Chechen war was the Russian media's greatest achievement in the relatively free Yeltsin years, the second Chechen war has been its greatest disaster. Once an independent voice among many, Novaya Gazeta is now among the few Russian media outlets which have not yet been intimidated into toeing the Kremlin line.

The second Chechen war began by costing Politkovskaya her marriage. She returned home to Moscow one day in 1999, fresh from reporting on a longrange Russian rocket attack in Grozny which had hit a market and a maternity hospital, killing scores of people, including women and children, to hear her husband tell her: "I can't take this any more." Recently, it almost cost her her life, when, on her way to Beslan in the early hours of the school hostage crisis, she was slipped poison in a cup of tea. In between, she has experienced countless death threats from Russian troops, Chechen fighters and the other, more shadowy armed groups operating in the margins of the war. The kidnappings, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, rapes and tortures she has reported on in Chechnya have left her convinced that Putin's policies are engendering the terrorists they are supposed to eliminate.

"To this day there's torture in any FSB branch in Chechnya, like the socalled 'telephone', where they pass an electric current through a person's body. I've seen hundreds of people who've been through this torture. Some have been tortured in such an intricate way that it's hard for me to believe that it was done by people who went to the same sort of schools that I did, who read the same textbooks."

Politkovskaya has no regrets about the times she has stepped outside the role of reporter in recent Chechen terrorist attacks as a negotiator in the Moscow theatre siege, and as a wouldbe negotiator at Beslan, before she was poisoned. "Yes, I went beyond my journalistic role," she says. "But it would be quite wrong to say that doing so was a bad move from a journalistic point of view. By setting aside my role as journalist I learned so much that I would never have found out being just a plain journalist, who stands in the crowd along with everyone else."

She has harsh words for what she sees as the west's kidglove treatment of Putin and Russia. "Most of the time they forget the word Chechnya. They only remember it when there's a terrorist act. And then it's, 'Oh!' And they start their full coverage up again. But virtually nobody reports on what is really going on in that zone, in Chechnya, and the growth of terrorism. The truth is that the methods employed in Putin's antiterrorist operation are generating a wave of terrorism the like of which we have never experienced."

The BushBlair "war on terror" has been of enormous help to Putin, Politkovskaya says. Many people in Russia gained perverse comfort from the pictures of US abuses in Abu Ghraib prison. "I've heard it many times. In Russia you hear people talking about it with pride: that, 'We treated the blacks like this before the Americans did, and we were right, because they are international terrorists.'

"Putin's begun to try to prove on the world stage that he's also fighting international terrorists, that he's just a part of this fashionable war. And he's been successful. He was Blair's best friend for a while. When, after Beslan, he began to state that we were seeing virtually the hand of Bin Laden, it was appalling. What's Bin Laden got to do with it? The Russian government created these beasts, brought them up, and they came to Beslan and behaved like beasts."

The only way for the west to regain moral authority, Politkovskaya argues, would be for it to treat Putin as it treats Alexander Lukashenko, the autocratic, bullying president of Russia's neighbour Belarus not sanctions, but a more personal, tailored form of ostracism. "It's impossible to talk on the one hand about the monstrous scale of victims in Chechnya and the spawning of terrorism and then lay out the red carpet, embrace Putin and tell him: 'We're with you, you're the best.' That shouldn't be happening. I understand, our country's a big market, it's very attractive. I understand it very well. But we're not secondclass people, we're people like you, and we want to live."

· Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya is published by Harvill. To order a copy for £8.99 with free UK p&p, call the Guardian Book Service on 0870 836 0875, or go to www.guardian.co.uk/bookshop. Poison in the air

When a sinister illness hit schoolchildren and their teachers in wartorn Chechnya in December, doctors were convinced it was a case of poisoning. Then the government came up with its own diagnosis mass hysteria. Is there an official coverup going on? Anna Politkovskaya reports

Wednesday March 1, 2006 The Guardian

Awar has been raging in the north Caucasian Republic of Chechnya in the Russian Federation since November 1994. Over the years, officials in Moscow have given the war various names. Sometimes it is called "putting the region in order"; since the beginning of the international "antiterrorist" era, it has become a "counterterrorist operation". But it is never called a war, despite the fact that an estimated 70,000200,000 Russian military personnel are conducting operations as if on enemy territory. The civilian population has taken the brunt of the military impact. For the past 12 years, those living and working in Chechnya have been aware that federal forces were testing new types of weapons. The story of what happened in the Shelkovsk district is simply the biggest such case. In December last year, there were reports of mass poisonings at schools in the Shelkovsk region. Just before new year, a government commission published its official verdict: there was no need to worry there were no poisonings, it was mass psychosis due to stress. But did anyone in Chechnya believe these explanations?

On a bed by a wall in room one of Shelkovsk regional hospital a young woman called Sina is having a seizure. Her face is white, then yellow, then bright red; her brother unclenches her teeth with a spoon in order to pull out her tongue while her mother lies on top of her to control the spasms. The girl is now bent in an impossible arch, her heels touching the back of her head.

It is January 6, a third week has gone by, and there is no improvement in her condition. Aset (Sina) Magamshapieva is not a pupil at the school where most of the victims came from. A 20yearold student teacher, she had gone there for some teaching practice. An elderly nurse arrives with a syringe. The fit has lasted 15 minutes already. The nurse is alone, taking care of 40 patients, and has just been dealing with Marina Tereshchenko in a neighbouring room. Marina has been suffering from similar seizures.

What is in the syringe? "Analgin [an analgesic] and dimedrol [a sedative]," she sighs. But that can't really help, can it? "We don't have anything else," she says. "What can we treat them with? Analgin will at least take the pain away from the spasms, and dimedrol will quieten them down, let them sleep after the fits ..."

Rabadan Ahmethanovich Rabadanov, deputy chief of therapeutics, arrives. He looks at Aset sadly. A sedative is introduced into a vein, and soon tears start to flow down her cheeks. It is the 47th minute of the seizure. Though the girl sees and hears no one, she noticeably starts breathing again. "Tears mean that the seizure is passing," says her mother.

How often do such fits occur? "Three to four times a day. We almost broke her teeth to keep her from swallowing her tongue," her mother says. "I'm in such torment, and she's exhausted by all the fits ... If they could just find out what they were poisoned with, even if they don't tell anyone, just tell us how to treat it ... How long are they going to keep this up?"

Vaha Dardayevich Ehselayev, chief physician at the hospital, is sitting in his office. "We are the doctors who were with these victims from the start," he says, "and we will not change our diagnosis an intoxication of unknown aetiology. How could it be hysterics or mass psychosis?" A tired Rabadanov enters. Together with Dr Jamilya Halilovna Aliyeva, he was the first to be called to the school in the village of Starogladovsk on December 16 after reports of children collapsing unconscious. "Every child had psychomotor excitation, hallucinations and some kind of strange laughter," Rabadanov recalls. "Severe spasms. Nothing seemed to help. We gave sedatives and anticonvulsives. But the spasms just kept repeating. I am certain that such a number of children could never enter a state of psychomotor excitation simply from hysterics. It was some kind of agent. If these were merely hysterical fits, as the commission says, then they would be easy to isolate."

Ehselayev interrupts: "I think that if this was a mass psychosis spread by rumours and the media, then the first to react would have been the 80plus schizophrenics and as many epileptics we have in the region. But they had no such reaction. We checked. I believe that there is a poisonous agent in the victims' schools. But the political situation is such that it has to be denied. We don't know what the agent was. We don't have the resources to find out." At the hospital there is not a single computer and no internet access; none of the doctors who encountered this unprecedented phenomenon could put out an SOS on the web. So what next? "We don't know. A dead end." What are they treating? "Only the symptoms. If there are spasms we give an anticonvulsive. If there is pain we give an analgesic. But the fits continue. We have requested, and continue to request, some kind of a treatment plan. But no one is rushing to bring us one. The commissions from Moscow and Grozny were here and told the patients, 'Don't fake.' But how could they? We were alone with them. The agent acting on them is some kind of toxic substance which makes the nervous system hypersensitive. The fits can be summoned by the creak of a door or the rustle of a packet. This doesn't fit any known disease picture."

The relatives of the victims, just like the majority of the local inhabitants, are sure that the source of the infection was the women's toilet in the Starogladovsk school. All the victims at one time or another were there. It was clear that whoever went to the toilet had the most serious symptoms, while those who were nearby had fewer. The doctors insist it is a toxic substance, most likely a solid, but capable of propagation in a gas wave, one that loses its potency in direct proportion to the distance from the source. The same picture is repeated in the Shelkovsk and Shelkozavodsk schools.

The strict localisation of the sick people by school, time and place is the determining detail in this picture of a massive disease outbreak. At Shelkozavodsk, for example, only those who were on the school building's first floor became ill. Those who did not come to school that day are still healthy.

It all began on December 7, when 13yearold Taisa Minkailova, a pupil at the Starogladovsk school, started suffering attacks of asphyxia, spasms, a severe headache and numbness in her extremities. Her parents took her to the hospital in Kizlyar, in Dagestan, but the treatments there had no effect and her condition deteriorated. On December 9, two highschool seniors from the same school were taken to hospital in Grozny suffering from the same symptoms.

The peak of hospitalisations occurred on December 16, when 19 children and three adults from Starogladovsk were taken to the Shelkovsk hospital. The doctors observed multiple cases of unconsciousness, comatose states, seizures, weakness, amnesia and asphyxia of increasing severity, as well as numbness of the extremities and chills. The children complained of sharp pains in their eyes and dry mucous membranes. It was clear this was a poisoning, and the source was the school. On December 16, a government commission was set up, with V Boriskina, the Chechen president's deputy chief of staff, as its chairman. Military specialists and chemical defence officers were called in. Medicines were offered by the International Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières.

And then came the turning point. A memorandum from a military specialist with the results from the trips to Starogladovsk and Shelkovsk landed on the commission chairman's table. Within two days investigators would remove it from circulation, although we obtained a copy. It reports, "The source of the poisoning was located in the main school building, presumably on the second floor [where the ill teachers were working]. The primary route of intoxication could be the respiratory tract, though direct contact is not ruled out. The aggregate state of the toxic substance was probably a liquid or solid, which, under the effects of the environment, could separate into poisonous vapours. It is not possible to determine accurately the form of the toxic substance from only one clinical picture [the victims' symptomology]. Recommended: in order to clarify what the toxic substance was, conduct toxicological testing of the victims and have this examined by toxicology specialists with the necessary equipment and reagents." After December 17, the commission took an abrupt change of direction, to a psychologicalpsychiatric diagnosis, disregarding the fact that cases of poisoning continued to appear. On December 19, pupils were brought in from the middle schools of the villages of Kobi, Shelkozavodsk and Shelkovsk. Up to 17 cases of asphyxia were observed. Several were extreme, and comatose. On December 20, all the schools in the Shelkovsk region were closed and the republic's attorney general initiated a criminal investigation.

Then, on December 21, official reports suddenly appeared that "the mass media are totally to blame": the seizures had allegedly increased and new cases showed up in proportion to the number of subjects shown on television. On December 22, the chief narcologist of the Chechen Republic, psychiatrist Musa Dalsayev, gave his diagnosis: there was no poisoning, it was a "pseudoasthmatic syndrome of a psychogenic nature". Or a "psychological selfinfection". Dalsayev assembled the parents and accused the sick children of faking, and their mothers of indulging them. He claimed that the fits were just for show and that if there were no spectators, then the seizures ceased. He called the victims' mothers "renters" mercenaries who try to prolong their children's diseases to get compensation. (There has been no request from the victims' families for any material assistance.)

On December 23, a further 81 cases were recorded, provoking panic in the Shelkovsk district. No one believed Dalsayev or the commission, which had delivered its conclusions: "i) No evidence of chemical poisoning; ii) No potentially dangerous objects were revealed on the school premises; iii) Final diagnosis: dissociative (conversional) disorders dissociative disorders of movement and sensation, dissociative disorders of motor activity, dissociative spasms; iv) The commission has come to the conclusion that there was an outbreak of mass hysteria in the Shelkovsk region related to the prolonged emergency situation in the Chechen Republic."

On December 25, the hospitals started to discharge the first victims. On December 26, the country's chief public health officer, Gennady Onishchenko, visited Chechnya and declared that there were no alarming or healththreatening phenomena. Two days later, President Alu Alhanov confirmed this success by travelling to Moscow to report to President Putin that it was all a mass psychosis. He then handed him reports on how much money would be needed in the short term for a grandiose building to overcome any new mass psychoses. On December 31, a group of 17 children and three adults the most seriously ill were sent out of sight to the Salyut children's sanatorium in Zheleznovodsk.

Others have not been so lucky. There is not enough room for the rest. Those such as Aset Magamshapieva and Marina Tereshchenko are victims of official lies, sidelined, since they are unable to be discharged "correctly". They are ordered to be forgotten as malingerers.

This is not an isolated incident. At Shelkovsk district central hospital, Aliyeva recalls a similar, though less severe, outbreak in the autumn. "On September 23, 19 children and one teacher were brought from Staroshchedrinskaya village with similar symptoms. We saw the same strange laughter, hallucinations it was a frightening sight."

Ehselayev says: "The results went for analysis at the legal medical expert's office. There, they acknowledged that the children were poisoned by carbon monoxide. How on earth did that happen during a heatwave, when the stoves had not been fired up? We raised a stink, but everything came to a halt." Ehselayev thinks the results of analysis are "political", just like the conclusion by the commission on the December poisonings. So what happened in Staroshchedrinskaya? "The same as now: poisoning by an unknown chemical substance. It is being tested on our children."

Halid Dudayev, the head of Staroshchedrinskaya middle school, is also convinced of this: "Until September 23 I had been demanding that criminal proceedings and an investigation be undertaken. On October 23, I received a rejection for instituting proceedings, due to the 'absence of a crime being committed'. That day, there was a second mass poisoning. Eight of our children were affected. Since then they have not been seriously examined and they have difficulty studying."

Abzo Shamilov, the father of one of the victims, says, "My daughter, Seda, constantly has high blood pressure. She's always ill. We can't do anything. Before the autumn, she was never ill. She now has nosebleeds, constant headaches, her hands and feet are cold. What are we to do?"

Similar symptoms of poisoning occurred in 2000, when on July 26, in the outskirts of the Stariye Atagi settlement of the Grozny farming region, two faint explosions were heard and a silveryviolet, tulipshaped column of smoke appeared, rising to 150m. The column formed a cloud which hung over the outskirts of the village.

An epidemiological report concluded: "A day after the explosions, the first cases occurred showing signs of poisoning: powerful tonic spasms, loss of consciousness, aggressive agitation, inhibited movement, uncontrollable vomiting, severe headaches, sensation of fear and, in some, haemoptysis [coughing up blood]."

There are differences, however. The tragedy in Stariye Atagi led to three deaths out of 23 cases, with death occurring within about two days. The investigation concluded that "the poisoning of inhabitants of Stariye Atagi was caused by a chemical compound of obscure aetiology, excluding any infectious cause for the outbreak".

It is now 2006. Behind us are 11 years of war with short breaks for clearing mines and unexploded shells. So many war crimes have been committed that the tribunals are scared of setting about analysing these atrocities. But the ideology remains: as before, people who have the misfortune to live in Chechnya are seen as biomaterial for experiments.

The authorities have tried to distance themselves by taking a group of the most seriously ill for a month to a medical academy clinic in Stavropol, the largest city in southern Russia. What happened there has been kept secret. During treatment, none of the patients was told which medicines were being injected into them or what the results of the analysis were. On discharge, the case notes contained not a single record of the nature of the treatments administered.

In the Shelkovsk district, the schools where people were poisoned are closed; the parents refuse to allow healthy children to go back there and insist that the premises are detoxified and that the victims' diagnoses be made public. The authorities maintain that nothing unusual has happening.

www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

A Russian Reporter In Chechnya

Anna Politkovskaya is a special correspondent for the biweekly Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Her reports from the southern Russian republic, Chechnya, have angered authorities.

Once detained by Russian troops herself in Chechnya, she has experienced the conflict both as a reporter and a victim. She talks to Outlook about her new book A Dirty War.

To listen to the interview, please click here

Anna Politkovskaya has made social issues her business. As a journalist she has reported on many subjects – from the fate of orphans to Russia’s defective judicial system.

Tired of the media image driven by the Russian government, Politkovskaya aims to keep the fate of Chechnya in the public eye. She presents the brutality from both sides when describing the abuses of the Chechen War whether due to the corruption of Post Communist Russia or the Russian authorities.

Her dispatches, from July 1999 to January 2001, tell a very different story to that told by the Moscow authorities.

Describing scenes of devastation, the words of desperate civilians who have lost everything scream from the pages. These reports are a moving testimony to the true costs of war.

A Dirty War

In 1996, at the end of the first Chechen war, there were hopes of a possible peace between the breakaway republic and the Russian government. Hopes shattered by growing lawlessness and regional violence.

Then came bomb attacks on civilian targets in Russia; having blamed these on Chechen separatists, the Russian authorities launched a second Chechen war in October 1999.

Today Russian soldiers are continuing what they call an “antiterrorist campaign” in Chechnya. The capital, Grozny, lies in ruins; the vast majority of the republic’s civilians are forced to live in appalling conditions.

Most of those injured or killed are innocent people caught up in what Politkovskaya has aptly called A Dirty War.

Truth Be Told

In order to write her despatches, Politkovskaya risked the dangers of a partisan war, of army checkpoints and Chechen kidnap gangs.

Finally, and most frighteningly, she was arrested, abused and threatened with death by some of the same soldiers she was investigating for atrocities. Her captors simply told her it was ‘time to pay’ for her reports on Chechnya. But still Politkovskaya speaks out. Of her bravery and unquestionable drive she comments:

‘I simply reported what I saw. I feel that it’s my professional duty if you hide information, you have failed in your duty.’

Repeatedly returning to Chechnya, her articles have finally led to arrests. Meanwhile her own experiences have shaped her personal life – her husband left her unable to cope with her hunger to reveal the truth.

Unperturbed, Politkovskaya remains firm in her commitment, she comments:

‘I think it is good that I have had these experiences otherwise I would have lived with illusions. Because of Chechnya I accept the world as it is.’

The Reality Of War

Politkovskaya has recorded many harrowing accounts of torture, murder and loss. Writing in a British newspaper earlier this year she recalled how ‘some stories were so horrific that one’s hand refused to jot them down.’

Her reports of maltreatment carried out by Russian troops include details of people being beaten over the kidneys with full water bottles, of having their nails ripped out and of being detained in shallow dug outs or pits, only big enough to stand in, for days on end.

Such brutality Politkovskaya believes has now bred a culture of revenge, she explains:

‘During this latest part of the “Second Chechen War” as we call it, there are those who feel that it is their duty to take revenge for their murdered and tortured relatives, that’s what their culture demands.’

‘This feeling I believe also drives the new generation of Chechen fighters – 13 to 14 year old boys, they’re the ones who lay the mines and they often come from families who want revenge.’

Conditioned by what they have seen, Politkovskaya is fearful of the hate now rife in Chechen society. She comments:

‘The Russian army is not reliving its glorious past in Chechnya, it is simply running wild, because of that the whole country is getting wild.’

‘The fighters return home bringing with them their military culture which has absolutely nothing to do with the law.’

‘In Chechyna there are a growing number of people who have stones in their hearts, stones that they want to hurl at Russians.’

The Fight Continues

With few indicators that the conflict will be resolved, Politkovskaya now calls for International support:

‘People are now starting to disappear in their tens and hundreds. There are more and more reports of unimaginable cruel torture and abuse.’

‘Those who care about the future are almost united in thinking that only urgent intervention by the international community can help. We won’t be able to cope on our own.’

It is impossible to understand the atrocities that Politkovskaya describes and as detailed in the book’s introduction, A Dirty War ‘offers no solutions to this continuing suffering’, but Politkovskaya reinforces the collective message from her writing by stating:

‘Please help us to stop what is happening in Chechyna. Russia is growing wild with this war and the world needs to understand that. This country is going to be dangerous. Please understand what I am saying.’