Forgotten Chechens Scratch Out a
Life From the Ruins
Nick Allen, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
GROZNY, 11 January 2004 — “You can’t spend your
life in transit, if you have to die early then best do it at home,” says Malika
Magomedova after reoccupying her bombed-out house in the Chechen capital
Grozny. In a derelict room upstairs, her nine-year-old son Ibragim and a visiting
Russian soldier spar with a boxer’s punchbag beside paneless window frames and
ruptured walls that lean in precariously.
The building is a safety menace by any standards
but it’s home for this family of four. And a roof over your head counts for a
lot after four years of heavy fighting between Russian troops and separatists
in this near-forgotten conflict in the North Caucasus. Some 70,000 people who
fled prefer to remain in tent camps and other primitive accommodation in
neighboring Ingushetia until there is real peace in Chechnya, not just the
propagandistic settlement that is portrayed in Moscow.
Frequent disappearances, summary executions, rape,
torture and terrorist bombings make a compelling argument to stay put. But
despite the dangers, others like Malika and her husband chose to return to
Grozny as soon as possible and start life anew.
Driving through this devastated city it’s hard to
imagine how more than 200,000 civilians live here. The most visible signs of
life are heavily-armed troops manning ubiquitous blockposts and checkpoints.
Enter the half-ruined buildings, though, and you
find pockets of life where the locals are working to create a sense of
normalcy. At school No. 41, visitors are led through dank, crumbling corridors
to a classroom that was repaired by parents and teachers. Heated with a gas
fire and decorated with drawings and paintings, it offers a cosy environment
for two dozen children. Many have seen untold horrors of war but they are
astonishingly bright-eyed and brim with enthusiasm to learn.
“My name is Bekkhan, how are you?” an 8-year-old
boy says proudly in English, adding in Russian, “When I leave school I want to
become a teacher.” The pupils receive a daily meal of porridge in a
bullet-marked dining hall under a school feeding project for 68,000 children
run by the United Nations World Food Program.
At a nearby temporary accommodation center for
almost 1400 returned refugees — officially termed internally displaced persons
or IDPs — come more reminders that it’s premature to speak about stability. “I
don’t let my kids go to school, it’s dangerous, some children were shot at and
wounded near here,” says Ruslan, a father of two.
A police officer tells of an explosion in a
neighboring house a few days earlier that killed an entire family of 13.
Violent incidents are still daily fare, says Musa, another native of Grozny:
“Shootouts have become as natural as light and air for people here.”
Unemployment is high but men might earn the
equivalent of around three US dollars a day loading railway cars or working on
building sites, or clear rubble under the UN Food for Work program.
Otherwise the only material assistance is monthly
rations of flour, oil, sugar and salt distributed by foreign and Russian aid
workers who face the constant threat of kidnapping or so-called “wrong place,
wrong time” incidents, where bystanders are caught up in mine attacks and
ambushes.
Grozny’s main pediatric hospital was bombed out
three times in the past decade but its tireless staff has patched it up again
to accommodate 310 child patients.
There’s little funding for the work but head doctor
Sultan Alimkhadzhiyev says they hope some day to replace destroyed or looted
equipment like the X-ray machine and artificial respiration units.
In the spartan intensive care room five infants get
some basic help. Two babies lay in incubators provided by foreign donors, one
boy with severe blood poisoning is bound to a bed by his wrists and ankles to
stop him thrashing. He is expected to survive, many other children won’t as
there is no means to bring them in from outlying regions — the clinic’s three
ambulances were stolen and wrecked.
Lack of elementary medical supplies results in the
deaths of one or two more children in the hospital each week, says
Alimkhadzhiyev, who is also the republic’s deputy health minister. “We get the
impression that Chechnya has been forgotten and we are left to bury our future
in the ground.”
To an extent he is right. International objections
to Moscow’s military campaign abated after Russia joined the anti-terrorist
coalition in 2001. Chechnya slipped from the political agenda and world
attention steadily diminished, especially with the start of other conflicts in
Iraq and Liberia.
We leave the republic via the westbound Caucasus
highway, a rutted road patrolled by hundreds of soldiers, armored cars and
tanks. Next stop is Ingushetia where the displaced civilians spend their fourth
year in mud-swamped tent settlements, disused farms and factories.
Most are simply too scared to return, especially
those with adult sons who may fall foul of the security forces. The official
line of the Russian and republican authorities is that no one is sent back
against their will. But it’s well evidenced that many are dislodged using what
aid workers call the “carrot and stick” approach.
This involves deliberate disruptions to gas and
electricity supplies, verbal intimidation, and promises of extra food rations
and up to 400,000 rubles (almost $13,400) in compensation for loss of property
through war damage.
Displaying thick scars on her torso from a shell
blast that injured her and her 13-year old son, Elza from Grozny tearfully says
she was told by the Alina camp’s supervisor that it will close next month.
They are to be trucked to Chechnya and may not even
take their bedding with them, just a few clothes. “My boy cries every night and
begs that we don’t go. Even though he was small then he remembers the
shelling,” she said. “Why can’t they send us in spring, not winter — you
wouldn’t turn a dog out in this weather?”
The official line is that no one is planning any
further camp closures after the dismantlement in September of the Bella camp
near the Chechen border with around a 1000 people.
UN workers say they are worried by “significant
discrepancies” between official policy of voluntary repatriation and the
situation on the ground.
“We don’t disagree with closure of the camps
providing it means improved conditions for the IDPs and that they have the
right to choose,” said Valentin Gatzinsky, UN Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator
for the North Caucasus. Unofficial Russian objections to the camps are
elementary. “The guerrilla fighters come and rest here, if they are closed down
they will have nowhere to hide,” said a security service officer.
The other side of the coin are tales of dawn
arrests and abductions of young men from the sites by uniformed squads, often
with detainees vanishing completely. “It all depends on Russia now, if they pay
the compensation people will go back and start to build their own homes,” said
one man when asked about the solution. “We survive by clinging to the hope of
getting this money,” adds a widowed young mother of three.
Most expect to be cheated. Some who tried to claim
say officials demanded a $200 bribe to include them in the list for
compensation and said they must hand over half the sum upon receipt. The people
of Chechnya are the most vulnerable in Russia today. But they don’t want much
for their torment, says Satsita Saidullayeva, an administrator at a hostel in
Grozny. “We’d be happy to live with nothing as long as the war stops.”
Many say a genuine settlement is impossible without
bringing the sides to the table, something the Kremlin categorically rules out.
“Until the negotiation process starts it’s too
early to speak of an end to the conflict,” says Bela Tsugayeva of the World
Vision aid and development agency.
