ABSTRACT
I had arrived a few days earlier so as to assess what was feasible for an academic researcher, having secured a grant in 2003 to conduct fi eldwork into interpretive approaches to war, narrative and the changing character of the armed resistance movement. As we drank our tea, I began to think about the local support for the insurgency, as opposed to the role of external groups like the Arab mujahedeen: was the confl ict simply focussed on Chechnya? Did the armed resistance movement have a measure of support from the local community? In what ways could the violence, which continued unabated, be described: a low-intensity confl ict, a post-Colonial intervention, or a civil war perhaps? Underlying these questions was a broader issue: would fi eldwork in the North Caucasus produce any meaningful fi ndings? So in this fl eeting moment on the Moscow metro I began to consider how to understand the local confl ict dynamics: that is, to begin to trace and interpret how the groups themselves described or portrayed their actions, as a way into studying terrorism.
