The North Caucasus Emirate and Beyond

Abstract

Chechnya is located in Europe. Istanbul is a two-hour flight from Grozny; Sophia is three hours away and Frankfurt is four or five. I drove from Paris to Grozny in three days, making many stops on the way. However, Chechnya might as well be in another universe. It is completely isolated, sealed off, and obscure. This has to do with the peculiar status of Russia in Europe and Russia’s ability to cut off access and persistently misrepresent the situation in Chechnya. The conflict has not ended. It regenerates itself from within and mutates, through processes that are difficult to observe from this distance. War has its own rules and algorithms; it is its own cause and effect, what philosophers call “a thing in itself,” and this insularity might be its most frightening characteristic.