"You're no Muslim," I told Basayev . . . He answered me in Russian: "We're driving out the Russians, Mother, because they don't want Islam." I spat at him and said: "Yours is a dirty war, it's not a Muslim war! There aren't any Russians here."
KALIMAT IBRAGIMOVA
ANSALTA, DAGHESTAN
The regime couldn't resolve the conflict itself so it decided to go to war. Now we must hand over our children to correct other people's mistakes . . . my eldest boy was bullied quite unmercifully in the army and returned home not entirely in his right mind . . . So now they want my next son? Not for anything in this world.
"What do you think?" I ask them. "What are the police up to?"
"They told me themselves," replies Arslan, "the Chechens are being labelled a nation of criminals."
MOSCOW
7 OCTOBER 1999