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No Dog in This Fight Chechnya, 1995 In the video passed from hand to hand, we see what’s coming: thugs in boots shoot off their Uzis, dance the dhikr before Dudayev, who applauds from the palace roof in his uniform of azure blue. Women chant the ninety-nine names of God in ululating circles now coalescing, now dissolving in the earthen square beneath. Who can read these people, fathom their ways? How can a Samaritan give aid? The weak will die, they always do: at Samashki, Russians get high, take turns at raping Chechen women and kids before they shoot them dead; in Grozny, starving Russian grannies prowl the ruins in search of rats. Refugees pack the border towns, shoving among lone women seeking their sons. The conscripts tell this story: rockets screaming, mortars pounding, a woman comes from out of nowhere, marches right up to the lieutenant colonel, she says, You come home, son, and off they go, as if there weren’t a battle going on. As if 18 nothing mattered in the whole wide world except their own two selves. What gives a man courage in places like these? Back home, this stuff won’t make the evening news, an internal Russian affair: ain’t got no dog in this fight. And to the stranger bringing succor in this squalid little war, is it much comfort, thinking he’ll go home to a land of self-evident truths, to hot and cold running water, to all-night diners? He’s a largeboned man; they’ll find remains. Frederick C. Cuny, in memoriam 19 ...

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