Chechnya: To the Heart of a Conflict

By Andrew Meier

Book Overview

The barbaric, terrorist siege in the summer of 2004 that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent children in Beslan did not begin either there or in the take-over of a Moscow theatre in 2002. As Andrew Meier explains in this utterly compelling account, the most recent Chechen war actually broke out on New Year's Eve in 1994 when Boris Yeltsin sent hundreds of tanks to the center of the city of Grozny in an effort to quell popular demands for independence from Russia. Six years later, Meier, braving great personal danger, traveled to the scene of one of the largest civilian massacres carried out by Russian troops, reporting on the carnage in which over 60 Chechen civiliansincluding a pregnant woman and many elderlywere brutally slaughtered in one of the war's most horrific "mop-up" operations. Days after a Chechen woman became the conflict's first female suicide bomber, Meier visited this war-torn province, encountering, among others, kidnappers, Wahhabi Islamists aligned with the Taliban, and a stream of Russian mothers arriving at the morgue to identify their fallen soldier sons. Chechnya is Meier's stunning report from a region where the death toll has already exceeded 100,000 people, and a book that attempts to comprehend what compels men to shoot children in the back.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393327329
• ISBN13: 9780393327328
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 131 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The new Russia is much like the old Soviet Union.

The main focus of this book is the massacre at Aldy, a town or suburb of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The Chechens want their independence but the Russians want to retain them in the Federation. What has happened is that a purely colonial stuggle is taken on a conflict in the cultural fault zone. The Chechens have become fanatical Islamists using terror to kill and hurt innocent Russians. In turn, the Russians have used terror tactics (ala the Soviet Union) to kill innocent Chechens such as what happened in Aldy. This has become a personal grudge match between the two nations. In Aldy, 60 elderly men, women, and children were killed by OMRON Russian forces. The new Russian judicial authorities have managed to bury this in the courts. However, the terror continues in Russia and Chechnya. This a a good read showing that Russia has not evolved much since the Soviet Union. Maybe the reporting is more open, but the conflicts are as bloody as in the old Soviet times. This is a good perspective on the new Russia.

A heartbreaking, critical piece of journalism

If the cover doesn't break your heart the content of this courageous and brutally bleak piece of journalism will. Meier was able to go where no other western journalist had the ability or courage to go. And his report of the decimation in Chechnya, particularly in the village of Aldy, is an important and critical piece of journalism, which is crucial for understanding Russia's actions in the region and the response of Chechens in their quest for independence. If the Aldy massacre had the media attention Beslan did the portrayal of this centuries old conflict would be much more fairly represented in the press.