Caught in the Maelstrom: Perceptions of the Populace in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq

At a recent Kennan Institute talk, Anne Nivat, an author and journalist based in Moscow, discussed the discrepancies between the media coverage of the wars in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the realities for the people who live in these countries. Nivat has extensive experience in covering the war in Chechnya and has recently spent several months in Afghanistan and Iraq. She explained that her goal in covering war zones is to go beyond the traditional method of interviewing people by developing a dialogue with ordinary people and learning how they perceive the world. To achieve this goal, when Nivat traveled in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, she adopted the dress styles of local women, lived with ordinary families, and traveled without any sort of bodyguards.

Nivat argued that the images of wars that viewers in the West get from television and newspapers do not accurately portray reality in conflict regions. Journalists and editors, she said, are focused on the commercial appeal of their material and the imperatives of the companies that own newspapers and television networks. Therefore, the media tends to cover only the most recently-started, "fashionable" wars, compress war zones into a series of powerful photograph and film images, focus only on a few cities or specific events, and follow the official positions of governments in describing conflicts. According to Nivat, this type of media coverage tends to oversimplify complex realities and to present one side as more successful in winning the war than is actually the case.

Nivat gave several examples of distorted media coverage of the war in Chechnya. She argued that media coverage of the war, which was fairly extensive in the mid-1990s, is almost nonexistent today. Because the war has gone on for so long without significant changes, most editors do not see stories about the continuing conflict as newsworthy. She also contended that after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, more people have been willing to accept the Russian government's position that the Chechen separatist movement is controlled by terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists. The media gives a lot of attention to, and shows vivid images of terrorist attacks in Russia, but ignores the Russian military's attacks on Chechen cities.

According to Nivat, in both Chechnya and Iraq, the media has treated leaders installed by the Russian and U.S. occupying forces as the legitimate leaders of those states. However, her experience in both places led her to believe that these leaders are hated by the majority of the population and not seen as legitimate. Nivat argued that by taking Russian and U.S. government official statements at face value, the media oversimplifies the situation and makes the Russian position in Chechnya and the U.S. position in Iraq seem much stronger than they actually are.

People in the West know very little about the true situation in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Nivat argued, but she emphasized that the information gap exists in both directions. Ordinary people in these three regions have many misconceptions about Europeans and Americans—many of them, Nivat contended, coming from the images they see on Western television. Throughout her travels, she found that the people she met were just as curious about her as she was about them. Nivat believes that correcting the misconceptions that people in Muslim societies have about the West is as important an aspect of her work as showing people in the West the reality of wars.