Chechnya's children traumatized by unending war

Killings, bombings leave lasting scars, counselors say

Grozny, Russia -- On school mornings, 10-year-old Fatima Zakriyeva pulls her shiny black hair into a tight ponytail and walks through the ruins of what once were several blocks of Chechnya's capital to spend the day shivering at a desk in her unheated school.

On weekends, she goes to the hastily paved backyard of the cramped dormitory where she now lives to play on a tiny triangle of concrete wedged between a giant water tank, rows of zigzagging clotheslines and two freshly painted but smelly communal outhouses.

But often Fatima, who bites her nails so short that they expose red slivers of raw skin at the fingertips, just stays in the dorm room she shares with her unemployed parents and three older siblings.

Sitting on the edge of one of the two narrow cots her parents moved together to form a master bed, she thinks longingly of the tent in a sprawling, disease-ridden refugee camp in Ingushetia, a Russian region bordering Chechnya, where she lived for three years until she moved to Grozny two months ago.

Sometimes Fatima's thoughts go further back, to her family house in the village of Martyn-Chu, about 15 miles southwest of Grozny, and how its walls split like the skin on an overripe plum one day in 1999 when a Russian rocket hit a house next door, and how her family had to hide from the bombing in friends' cellars before they fled war-torn Chechnya for Ingushetia.

She wonders what peace might be like. Often she cries.

"I hate being here," Fatima whispered last week, weeping. "It is scary. It is awful."

Her words echoed the sentiment of many Chechen children trapped in Russia's decade-long war against separatist guerrillas, which has killed thousands of Russian soldiers and Chechen fighters and civilians. The conflict has turned towns and villages into apocalyptic moonscapes where deformed carcasses of concrete apartment blocks and wooden houses hover over bomb craters strewn with shrapnel, garbage and unexploded ordnance.

The impact of Russia's campaign to rule the breakaway republic goes beyond the terror of bombings and gunbattles. Amid almost daily clashes between federal forces and rebels, Chechnya's 500,000 children -- many of whom know nothing but war, violence and deprivation -- struggle with the trauma of growing up in a war zone.

"There is not a single child in Chechnya who hasn't been traumatized," said Yakha Shvarts, one of about 30 psychologists working with children in the devastated republic.

"Most children have lost a parent or a sibling," she said. "They saw people die. They have fears. They have nightmares. They are afraid when they see or hear tanks. The process of healing is very slow."

Eight out of 10 children in Chechnya suffer from psychological or nervous disorders, a study by the republic's health ministry last November showed. It attributed the problems to "the endless tensions within the society that cause permanent stress syndromes." Widespread poverty and hunger, as well as the lack of clean drinking water, basic sanitation and public health infrastructure have led to outbreaks in communicable diseases such as measles, hepatitis A and whooping cough. Anemia and gastrointestinal disorders are common.

Hasan Gadayev, a Chechen Ministry of Health official, told Russian news agencies a health survey of 320,000 Chechen children last year showed that about 70 percent had tuberculosis. Once, the republic could treat 1,200 TB patients at a time, but aerial bombardment and heavy artillery strikes by the Russian military have destroyed many hospitals, reducing the capacity to only 150 TB patients.

"Sadly, the consequences of war will have a major impact on the health of our children for many years to come," Gadayev said.

Although Shvarts urges the children to talk about war and their losses as a way of dealing with trauma, she said very few youngsters want to discuss war and death or even write about it in journals.

"Why would I want to write down my war memories?" asked Amina Askhabova, a 16-year-old junior high school student who dreams of becoming a journalist. "I don't need to be reminded about it. It's unforgettable."

Frustrated teachers try to do their best to make life easier for the troubled children.

"We help as much as we can," said Hamzat Kukayev, the headmaster of the school where Shvarts works.

In addition to two staff psychologists, Kukayev's school -- unlike Fatima's -- has metal gas stoves in every classroom to keep the children warm when they study.

Few schools in Chechnya have even such primitive heaters, and fewer still offer counseling.

Jamal Nikiya, 17, said psychological help in his school in Chechnya's second-largest city, Gudermes, amounts to occasional reminders that everything outside might be booby-trapped.

Thousands of children in Chechnya have died or lost their limbs after stepping on land mines or picking up unexploded ordnance or homemade bombs disguised as toys, videotapes or cigarette lighters, relief agencies say. In 2002, the Chechen Ministry of Health reported 5,695 land-mine and unexploded ordnance casualties, among them 938 children.

The United Nations estimates that there are about 500,000 mines in Chechnya, making it one of the most mine-contaminated zones in the world.

Pointing at the wasteland near the dormitory Fatima shares with about 500 others who have recently returned from refugee camps in Ingushetia, Fatima's neighbor, Aslan Sakhurov, 17, wondered if it, too, was mined.

"I wouldn't play soccer there," he said. He looked around at buildings bearing the familiar shrapnel pockmarks, their roofs caved in from Russian aerial bombardment. "There's nowhere to play soccer here. There is absolutely nothing for us to do. This is home, but it was better in the refugee camp."

He lit a cigarette, his last smoke before he goes upstairs. There, he shares a room with his mother and younger brother. "There is no daddy," he explained curtly, with a painful wince, before stumbling off. "Daddy got killed in the war."

Upstairs, Fatima wiped tears from her face and looked up. Her father, Zhunid, an unemployed tractor driver, smoked nervously, exasperated by his inability to console his little daughter. Her mother, Roza, busied herself wiping dishes that were already impeccably clean.

Zhunid broke the silence. "We're sorry," he said. "Come to our house when the war is over."

Suddenly, Fatima's dark eyes lit up with the memories of her old home and the normalcy it once meant.

"Pochtovaya, nine," she chirped, reciting the address of the house she left four years ago. "Pochtovaya, nine. Will you come?"

E-mail Anna Badkhen at abadkhen@sfchronicle.com.

San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/01/MNGEL5B8C91.DTL&type=health