Dirty War

A Dirty War is the harrowing account of Russia's invasion and subsequent decimation of Chechnya--a place with a mixed population, many of whom were themselves Russians. Politkovskaya's reports from the war zone were printed in Novayagazeta, one the few Moscow papers that dared to defy government propaganda. Journalists were denied visas if they were suspected to deliver "anti-Russian coverage" and the dangers of being a free-thinking Russian were tragically illustrated by the murder of the paper's editor, Igor Domnikov, by an unknown assailant armed with a hammer. In a confused and horribly entangled situation, one thing is certain: for people and groups on both sides, the war has been extremely profitable. Black market profiteering has reached obscene and nonsensical proportions. Young, barely trained soldiers, fed on rotten food and with no guarantees of any kind of social security should they return home injured, trade guns and ammunition to those who will certainly sell them on to be turned on their comrades. Kidnapping gangs extort huge ransoms from their victims' families while staying above the law by buying favour with the Russian authorities. But from this chaotic mess, Polikovskaya manages to draw episodes and scenes which manage both to elucidate and humanise the complexity of the war and its many casualties. Refusing to simplistically apportion blame to one side or the other, she shows instead how the corrupt, unwieldy and utterly dispassionate Russian system has allows anarchy and violence to ravage its people. --Rebecca Johnson

Synopsis
The first account written by a Russian woman of the Chechen conflict, "A Dirty War" is an edgy and intense study of a country in crisis. Exasperated at the Russian government's attempt to manipulate media coverage of the war in Chechnya, journalist Anna Politkovskaya set off for the front line to report back and keep events in the public eye. In a series of articles from July 1999 to February 2000 she vividly describes the atrocities and abuses of the war, whether it is the corruption at the heart of post-Communist Russia or the equally spurious arguments and abominable behaviour of the Chechens. Very much a woman's view of the conflict, Politkovskaya excorites male stupidity and brutality on both sides.