posted 03 August 2005 09:12 AM                   

The Russian government has never permitted any more factual reporting on the Chechen situation than is absolutely unavoidable and that seems to remain true to this day for the most part, as the conflict continues on a smaller scale. Under these circumstances, it has been much of the time extremely difficult to track the progress of events inside Chechnya over the last few years. Partly, the indifference of the western media to the situation has made reading about it in English rather difficult to begin with, and partly, Russian restrictions imposed on independent journalism permit few verifiable certainties regarding military encounters and political realities inside Chechnya to leak out. I don't think I'm merely being inflammatory when I say that the best one can do is take the selective reporting and careful coverups that the Russian military has to offer and the selective reporting and raving fanaticsm that the rebels have to offer and try to guess what real world events might have produced the two semi-fictional accounts which any real world event inspires. With the moderate leader of the independence movement and former President of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, killed by Russian forces this year, truths get even harder to come by, as the Islamist Basayev becomes the face of Chechen resistance to the world and the voice of Islamic fundamentalism becomes the voice of the independence movement. Depressing as it is, Basayev is, regardless, almost certainly the most crucially influential voice of resistance factions in Chechnya. And accepting that reality, I'll be fascinated to hear what he has to say for himself in this interview.