Angel of Grozny; Inside Chechnya, Asne Seierstad
Asne Seierstad is a Norwegian author and journalist of both note and controversy. She is also a very brave committed individual, who has continually risked her life to live amongst the ordinary people of some of the most fractured and dangerous places on earth. She might, quite possibly, also be raving bonkers.
Her work tends not to be translated from its native Norwegian very quickly, she also works for various foreign language media outlets, so I can’t find what she is currently working on. If she is working on a new project, I’d put money on it being Syria. Currently the rest of the world is turning a blind eye to the fate of tens of thousands of children. She, most probably, will not.
She first came to my attention as I travelled through Serbia in 2007. Serbia, at the time, was still recovering from the wars of the 90s and the crippling effects of the Milosevic regime. Serbia became internationally isolated as Montenegro declared independence and later Kosovo.
Serbia was still struggling with a crumbling economy and infrastructure, extreme nationalism and violence. Her book, With their Backs to the World; Portraits of Serbia, made her name. It was a highly personal portrait of everyday life in a very un-everyday place. It left a massive impression on me and changed the way I looked at the country I was in.
She is, of course, most famous for The Book Seller of Kabul, which landed her in court accused of defamation, negligence and invasion of privacy. She was acquitted on appeal in what appears to be a most complicated case. Having read most of works, I certainly couldn’t say without equivocation, that any of her subjects have not been exploited in the name of a story. Does her particular brand of journalism help people? It is debatable whether being the centre of attention and consorting with western media helps or hinders your average local in trying to survive in a war zone.
I thought about her again this week because her work The Angel of Grozny; Inside Chechnya, suddenly seems more important again. It was written in 2006 and documents Seierstad’s two spells reporting on the Chechen wars of the 90s and their terrifying impact on the local population of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Seierstad knows better than most the effects of the wars of the 90s in the Balkans, Kosovo and Chechnya. The human displacement and loss was huge, and suffered by all sectors of the populations of those failed stated and broken countries, but particularly Muslims. Many families were rendered refugees, suffered mental breakdowns, maiming and disabilities, horrific violence and alcoholism. All of these became significant issues for people who lived through and tried to survive horrors that are unimaginable to us in the west. These were the people who were scattered across the earth to start a whole new struggle to survive. What of their children? Anyone born in the Balkans conflicts of the early 90s is approaching their early 20s. Anyone a child in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia in 1995 is now an adult. Anyone born afterwards in a foreign country, of traumatised and psychologically harmed refugees, is now potentially a teenager. What sort of life have they had?
Damaged people can be dangerous, we know this, and two of them made themselves known in Boston this week. They killed and maimed, most likely, although all the facts aren’t known yet, in the name of Islamic Fundamentalism.
The social and psychological impact of war lasts for decades. America and Britain’s’ attitudes to the processes of Asylum is wrong and does nothing to address these kind of issues. There is a blinkered attitude that the granting of Asylum should come with some sort of defacto life-long gratitude. The process does nothing to address the scars left by the life these asylum seekers escaped from. In Britain they are barely allowed to work, to integrate or to play a full part in the society they have joined. The result in some cases is a disaffected isolation. The media is significantly guilty of colouring the opinions of the Western populations, never has this been so obvious, with headlines in equal measure about Borat and the eastern assassin.
In the case of Boston, the outraged of the USA should start by locating Chechnya on a map, it is clearly not the Czech Republic. Dagestan is not part of Pakistan either. Once that has been established they should read Asne Seierstad’s book, in particular her description of what war does to children. The Guardian helpfully serialised a couple of chapters back in 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/03/politics1
The story of Timur and his sister is nothing short of horrific, his mentality is formed by the violence he has known all his life, to him it is normal. Children of war are all affected by what they see then, for the rest of their lives.
Asylum is hugely necessary, we are all part of one world. We, in the so called free west, have a duty to help anyone who seeks to come from a part of the world destroyed by the forces of war. Helping them though means more that just providing basic accommodation and a subsistence allowance. Integration is supposed to be America’s great success story. It would seem that depends on your story. The wars of the 90s have produced a generation of damaged, traumatised youth just about to approach adulthood. The vast majority find a way to rebuild their lives, such is the resilience of human spirit, unfortunately some cannot. For some of them, it is already too late.
We need to recognise this and not turn our backs on the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of war damaged children, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, before it is too late for them. Globalisation is also about responsibility, or at least it should be.
Her work tends not to be translated from its native Norwegian very quickly, she also works for various foreign language media outlets, so I can’t find what she is currently working on. If she is working on a new project, I’d put money on it being Syria. Currently the rest of the world is turning a blind eye to the fate of tens of thousands of children. She, most probably, will not.
She first came to my attention as I travelled through Serbia in 2007. Serbia, at the time, was still recovering from the wars of the 90s and the crippling effects of the Milosevic regime. Serbia became internationally isolated as Montenegro declared independence and later Kosovo.
Serbia was still struggling with a crumbling economy and infrastructure, extreme nationalism and violence. Her book, With their Backs to the World; Portraits of Serbia, made her name. It was a highly personal portrait of everyday life in a very un-everyday place. It left a massive impression on me and changed the way I looked at the country I was in.
She is, of course, most famous for The Book Seller of Kabul, which landed her in court accused of defamation, negligence and invasion of privacy. She was acquitted on appeal in what appears to be a most complicated case. Having read most of works, I certainly couldn’t say without equivocation, that any of her subjects have not been exploited in the name of a story. Does her particular brand of journalism help people? It is debatable whether being the centre of attention and consorting with western media helps or hinders your average local in trying to survive in a war zone.
I thought about her again this week because her work The Angel of Grozny; Inside Chechnya, suddenly seems more important again. It was written in 2006 and documents Seierstad’s two spells reporting on the Chechen wars of the 90s and their terrifying impact on the local population of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Seierstad knows better than most the effects of the wars of the 90s in the Balkans, Kosovo and Chechnya. The human displacement and loss was huge, and suffered by all sectors of the populations of those failed stated and broken countries, but particularly Muslims. Many families were rendered refugees, suffered mental breakdowns, maiming and disabilities, horrific violence and alcoholism. All of these became significant issues for people who lived through and tried to survive horrors that are unimaginable to us in the west. These were the people who were scattered across the earth to start a whole new struggle to survive. What of their children? Anyone born in the Balkans conflicts of the early 90s is approaching their early 20s. Anyone a child in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia in 1995 is now an adult. Anyone born afterwards in a foreign country, of traumatised and psychologically harmed refugees, is now potentially a teenager. What sort of life have they had?
Damaged people can be dangerous, we know this, and two of them made themselves known in Boston this week. They killed and maimed, most likely, although all the facts aren’t known yet, in the name of Islamic Fundamentalism.
The social and psychological impact of war lasts for decades. America and Britain’s’ attitudes to the processes of Asylum is wrong and does nothing to address these kind of issues. There is a blinkered attitude that the granting of Asylum should come with some sort of defacto life-long gratitude. The process does nothing to address the scars left by the life these asylum seekers escaped from. In Britain they are barely allowed to work, to integrate or to play a full part in the society they have joined. The result in some cases is a disaffected isolation. The media is significantly guilty of colouring the opinions of the Western populations, never has this been so obvious, with headlines in equal measure about Borat and the eastern assassin.
In the case of Boston, the outraged of the USA should start by locating Chechnya on a map, it is clearly not the Czech Republic. Dagestan is not part of Pakistan either. Once that has been established they should read Asne Seierstad’s book, in particular her description of what war does to children. The Guardian helpfully serialised a couple of chapters back in 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/03/politics1
The story of Timur and his sister is nothing short of horrific, his mentality is formed by the violence he has known all his life, to him it is normal. Children of war are all affected by what they see then, for the rest of their lives.
Asylum is hugely necessary, we are all part of one world. We, in the so called free west, have a duty to help anyone who seeks to come from a part of the world destroyed by the forces of war. Helping them though means more that just providing basic accommodation and a subsistence allowance. Integration is supposed to be America’s great success story. It would seem that depends on your story. The wars of the 90s have produced a generation of damaged, traumatised youth just about to approach adulthood. The vast majority find a way to rebuild their lives, such is the resilience of human spirit, unfortunately some cannot. For some of them, it is already too late.
We need to recognise this and not turn our backs on the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of war damaged children, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, before it is too late for them. Globalisation is also about responsibility, or at least it should be.
