Disquiet On The Chechen Front

Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the Moscow biweekly Novaya Gazeta , was in Los Angeles last October, picking out her dress for a media awards ceremony, when some staggering news came from Moscow: Chechen terrorists were holding 850 hostages in a theater. The Russian authorities tried to send in negotiators, but the Chechens refused to see most of them. They asked for Politkovskaya.

And so Politkovskaya rushed back to cover yet another episode of one of the world's nastiest and longest wars, which...