Terror Trek

IF you think Russia's targeting of civilian areas in Ukraine is surprising, you shouldn't - it is par for the course.

The country used the same tactics, only more so, in wars against separatist Chechnya at the end of the last century.

Then in 2004 Muslim terrorists, still fighting for Chechen independence, took over a school in predominantly Christian North Ossetia-Alania.

Cold-blooded murders followed, at which point Russian security forces stormed the buildings, resulting in the deaths of more than 300 hostages.

One journalist covering the Beslan school siege was Tom Parfitt, a Moscow-based correspondent who was left traumatised by what he saw.

His reaction, admittedly four years later, was to walk through the Caucasus region where all the killing took place, and was still going on in a low-key way.

The result is High Caucasus - A Mountain Quest In Russia's Haunted Hinterland

No doubt the point of the book - and the walk - was not to entertain, but rather to be informative, and was perhaps mostly written as a form of therapy.

Whether it turned out to be therapeutic for the author, I do not know, but the book taught me a lot about what is going on in the Caucasus, and how much the history of the region, including tsarist conquests, are important to the present inhabitants.

The book is also entertaining.