In July, Asya met Raisa, a 23 year-old combat photographer/camera woman / fighter. Raisa had filmed the fighting for Tchetchen television as well as carried a rifle. Raisa told Asya that when she first saw her, she thought she was looking at herself. Tall, slim and agile, with wide clear brown eyes. She was wearing a soldier´s striped T-shirt, and combat trousers, not a long dress and traditional scarf. Like most women in Tchetchenya, she sported a green velvet beret - the uniform of the Tchetchen fighters. She spoke like them too. "We will never stop. We will fight to the last," she would say, her eyes hardening. Raisa asked Asya to join her and fight, to come to the mountains because the rebels needed a fighting nurse. Asya followed Raisa to the mountains where she was taught to fight, and demanded to do others things other than nursing. In Itum Kale Mountains, the rebels captured a Russian patrol. In a brief battle, some were wounded, others were killed. The rebels brought four wounded Russian soldiers to Asya to be cared for. One Russian soldier started to talk to his sleep, describing the horrible things that his patrol had done. She took a gun and shot him dead, unable to listen to his confessions. Two other Russian soldiers were taken to a cliff and she pushed them off and the fourth she slit his throat in a public circle of Tchetchen fighters. "He begged, he cried, he swore at us, called us bad names," she told us, "but it was not terrifying because they had done far worse things than we did. I only felt hatred for them."

After Asya had told us her brief story, we were all completely silent. We just sat and stared at this girl, this rebel. In the rebel stronghold of Itum Kale there is a meeting of the rebel commanders to plan new rounds of confrontations and defense of their villages. That is why Commander Daoud was so suspicious of us. Behind the Tchetchen rebels' gay and casual front they are the angriest army that ever went to war. You can feel the anger when Asya talks about the Russians. She speaks about the destruction and waste of human life.