Chechen Angels, Chechen Devils

Culture11 ^ | 1/26/2009 | Joseph Lawler

[Ericka81]

"I think Chechnya," Asne Seierstad laments, "is very much forgotten." Eight years ago this month, the Second Chechen War had reached a bitter crescendo. But today, as Ms. Seierstad shows in The Angel of Grozny, the Chechen dystopia festers far out of the headlines.

The Angel of Grozny recounts Seierstad's experiences as a journalist during the wartime Chechnya of 1994 and the peacetime Chechnya of 2006. It's a peace that would seem all too familiar to Abkhazians or Ossetians. Although Chechnya has largely rebuilt itself since the wars, Seierstad reveals a generation of children still growing up in a world of desperate ethnic and nationalist strife, with Moscow always lurking in the background and the West's attention elsewhere. But the problem of this lost generation must not escape the notice of the United States — if it hopes to understand the danger within lands like Chechnya.

[SunkenCiv]

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The Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War by Asne Seierstad

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