By Oleg Kusov

Anna Politkovskaya didn't consider herself to be an expert on the Caucasus. But a great number of her articles were dedicated to the problems of this tumultuous Russian region.

Movladi Soipov, the head of the organizational committee for Daghestan's Aukhov district, says that for Politkovskaya, the "Novaya gazeta" correspondent for the North Caucasus, the central issue was preserving the life and dignity of ordinary people.

"Human rights were a sacred matter for her. People saw their defender in her. I've always been amazed by this woman as a person, as a journalist, and as a courageous, virile person, an intelligent journalist. For this woman, there were such concepts as justice, kindness; she suffered the pain of others as her own," Soipov says.

"Last year, not long before her death, she came to Daghestan, spoke with us, not only with Chechens, but with people of other nationalities," he adds. "She was interested in literally everything.

A Woman Of The Caucasus

Many in the Caucasus, like Chechen civil representative Umar Dzhavtayev, believe that Politkovskaya managed, in a short time, to understand this land and its people.

"She could get into a taxi from Khasavyurt, for instance, to Grozny, to Makhachkala, put on the same clothes that most of the women wear -- a shawl, a dress -- not to stand out in any way and to fit in with them, and carry on a conversation. People loved her for that, for her plainspoken manner, for her ability to become a native Daghestani, Chechen, or Avar," he says. "She could easily become a woman of the Caucasus, and so people trusted her. They trusted her, they saw her as one of their own."

Politkovskaya became one of the first to write forebodingly about military action in Chechnya spilling over into all of the North Caucasus.

In Daghestan's Khasavyurt border region, long inhabited by Akkin Chechens, federal security structures since 2000 have been conducting so-called special operations in which they detain armed individuals. Politkovskaya personally observed and often wrote about those special operations, Soipov recalls.

"There were many raids. She was outspoken in her opinion in Khasavyurt. When innocent people were jailed, she defended the rights of those people, and wasn't afraid of anyone. When, for instance, one bandit hid himself in a house, that house was bombarded with cannon fire, and that happened more than once. Not just the house where he was hiding, but the entire block was pelted with cannonballs and grenades, which pulverized everything, and then it turned out that the bandit had already left the place," Soipov says.

"She interfered in those cases, fought with security organs, with the employees of security organs," he continues. "During the special operations, she put herself in the line of fire. All in all, in the Caucasus we value masculinity, and when that masculinity is expressed by a woman, that's just so valuable. We even reproached some men: we'd say, 'there's the paragon of masculinity.'"

A Special Kind Of Energy

In the city of Khasavyurt, Anna Politkovskaya prepared many case studies. "At a discussion one evening, she gathered material for three articles. Her mastery was remarkable. She immediately immersed herself in the issues, and posed sharp questions," recalls local attorney Ruslan Umayev.

"And when I was leaving, I said: 'Anna, it doesn't surprise me that you manage to prepare an editorial for every issue. Your secret has been revealed to me,'" he says. "A professional with a capital P. Not just diligence, not just some kind of energy, but a number of productive energies combined."

That evening, while Politkovskaya worked on her editorials, Umayev wrote a poem, which he dedicated to Anna:

How I lived today and what I did yesterday,
I offended, lied, sold out for nothing.
There must be light, there must be light -- the lamp won't work.
And the tobacco is running out, and everything is ash.

"During our conversation, I presented her with my poems, dedicated and signed," Umayev says. "A woman, but a unique sensitivity -- no usual feminine mawkishness. She took it, read it with dignity, smiled: 'Is this a keepsake for me?' She put it aside. Everyone has some personal parts that stand out, where you make the biggest effort. And in my poem it was like this: if it's night, conscience torments you. She smiled, in a way: 'Do you smoke much?' That is what she paid attention to."

In neighboring North Ossetia, poet and publicist Zaur Dzarakhokhov dedicated a posthumous poem to Politkovskaya:

No need to follow her with jeering phrases!
She raked through filth ad nauseam,
Sometimes she was covered by it,
But Anna wasn't the one who churned it!
Still, adulation never dies,
For she was never scared to interfere
In problems that promised a deathly hour,
No need to follow her with jeering phrases!

They say that if men in the Caucasus dedicate poetry to a woman, it means that she has played a very big part in their lives.