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EXCLUSIVE
One day in the life of
Chechnya's Grozny
By Alix de la
Grange
Editor's
note
For more than a
year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has had a free
hand and the blessings of the international community to
intensify his "anti-terrorist operation" in Chechnya.
This is a war that he has declared to be under control
and "under normalization" in the past few months. But
then came August 19, when Chechen fighters attacked a
huge MI-26 Russian transport helicopter over the federal
headquarters in Khankala, in the suburbs of Grozny, with
a Russian-made Strella missile. There were 117 dead, the
heaviest loss by the Russian military since the
submarine Kursk sank a little more than two years ago,
with 118 dead.
Now comes the daring attack on a
Moscow theater by a group of 50 Chechen guerrillas that
ended with all of the hostage-takers killed, as well as
more than 100 hostages, after Putin ordered his Special
Forces to release a narcotic gas into the theater. The
Kremlin's response was wholly Soviet: a mix of obsession
with military secrecy, state lies, manipulation of
public opinion and absolute disregard for human life.
Similarly, information about what really happens
on the ground in the war in Chechnya has been totally
controlled by Russia. No foreign journalists are
officially allowed inside Chechnya by the Russians under
any circumstances. Russia says that Chechens are
terrorists. Chechens say that they are involved in a
freedom struggle for independence. Chechen civilians are
the main victims of the war.
This exclusive Asia
Times Online report comes from a European female
journalist who has recently travelled underground to
Chechnya, at enormous risk.
GROZNY - It's another hot day in the capital of
Chechnya. It's barely 6am and a number of women are
already cleaning up the streets. This is a strenuous job
because the city is entirely destroyed. It doesn't
matter, though, because today the women seem to have
decided to eliminate all traces of the war that has
ravaged the region for three years now. Grozny, "The
Terrible" in Russian, aka "Putingrad", according to its
own citizens, maybe is ready for a facelift.
At
Mayakovsky Street, in the north of the town, a
surprisingly elegant woman waits for her bus under a
pink umbrella. Beside her, a Russian soldier is lying
down under the shade of a tank, hands holding his
Kalashnikov. The woman knows that her umbrella will
protect her from the heat, but not from the bullets. It
also won't prevent her from stepping on one of the
countless mines scattered around, and it won't shield
her from shrapnel flying from the grenades and rockets
raining daily over the almost deserted city. Under
apparent normalcy, terror reigns more than ever over the
ruined capital.
The main road leading to the
city seems to be clear. Cement blocks litter the
roadside. Maybe it will be easy to go through the
checkpoints today. Further on down the road, dozens of
tanks are parked. They seem to be abandoned, like the
countless tanks on the roads of Afghanistan. But this is
an illusion. It's imperative to be suspicious of
silence. Here, silence never lasts long. A small
movement betrays a human presence. Five centimeters to
the right, two down. The calibration of cannons is
subtle but precise. Hundreds of Russian soldiers are
hidden around the tanks - ready to shoot anything
untoward that moves. They are everywhere. Isolated or in
small groups. Big checkpoints are preferable to this one
because they are more visible and in theory less
dangerous. Officially, 80,000 troops are stationed in
the small Chechen Republic. There are in fact closer to
120,000. In spite of repeated promises of normalization
by Putin, Chechnya constitutes the largest barracks in
the country and the favorite playing field of the FSB,
the former KGB.
After 300 yards, there's a
deviation. Locals demonstrate in front of one of the
numerous checkpoints around the city. They block any
passing vehicles to protest against a massacre the night
before. "At two in morning, the Feds [Federal troops]
barged into our neighbor's house. They killed a father
of five point blank, wounded one of his children with a
grenade, and took the grandfather away," says a
villager. Since then, the eight-year-old boy has been
prostrated at the corner of his house, immersed in his
nightmare. No adult can come near him, not even a
doctor. "These people didn't do anything, they were not
boievikis [Chechen fighters]," says an old woman
waving a sweeper under the nose of the soldiers. The
locals are extremely angry: "We demand the release of
the grandfather. Or at least they could hand us his
body!" Surprised by their determination, the soldiers
don't do anything. They behave like traffic wardens.
Traffic is heavy. Trucks, buses and cars are forced to
one very narrow and bumpy side road.
We finally
reach the central market. Regularly plundered by the
soldiers, the stalls today are miraculously tidy -
offering fruit, vegetables, clothes, paper, CDs,
state-of-the-art stereo systems. But a glance through
the rearview mirror paints a gloomier picture. Federal
troops are positioning themselves around the market with
armored vehicles. License plates are covered in black.
This is zatchiska time. These sinister "clean-up
operations" are part of the current practices of the
Russian army. The official objective is to check
identities. But by encircling whole neighborhoods,
people are caught in a trap. Any tentative move to
escape means death. Protected from any outside
examination, the Feds - frequently masked - can get away
with anything: torture, pillage, arbitrary arrests,
summary executions. Once they're done with, the
perimeter is reopened. And they leave behind them a few
traces of barbarity. These types of operation could be
qualified as war crimes. In Russia, they are called
routine controls.
In Meska-Yurt, a village of
5,000 near Grozny, the latest "clean-up operation "
lasted no less than 22 days. Nobody is talking. Threats
of retaliation have definitely silenced the villagers.
Only a few people who managed to get to the place after
it was reopened risked talking about the horror: "I came
at dawn, the Russians were just quitting the village.
The women suddenly came out of their houses, they went
running around the fields crying out loud the names of
their sons and husbands, hoping to find them alive. Some
of them returned with horrendously mutilated bodies,
others with bits of human flesh." The young woman stops
talking. She looks around, very worried: "If the
Russians know that I said this, I am dead." Her hands
are trembling, but she goes on, lowering her voice,
"Lately, the Feds have been exploding the bodies with
grenades." This is a way to eliminate the traces of
torture and to further humiliate the Chechens, who,
according to Muslim custom, must retrieve a body or at
least an identifiable part of it for funeral ceremonies.
"The retrieved bodies had traces of torture by
electricity, some men had their teeth pulled out,
fingers, hands and ears cut off, and many were sodomized
with bottles or clubs, their intestines were showing."
As usual there are no direct confrontations with
the boievikis, the Chechen civilian population
has systematically become a target for the Russians.
This arbitrary war may have decimated 10 percent of the
population since October 1999 - more than 100,000
people. On this particular day, the clean-up operation
in Grozny's central market will last only three hours.
And what is most exceptional, it won't finish in a
bloodbath. Only a few scattered arrests - something that
in the context is quite normal. The Russians prefer to
wait to get their hands on a Chechen combatant - eager
to collect their "commission". A few minutes after the
neighborhood is reopened, the market comes back to life,
like nothing ever happened. "Hell? We never get used to
it, but one has to keep on living," says a fruit seller,
rearranging his merchandise.
Now we're on the
way to Hospital Number 9, the most important in Grozny.
From the outside, there's no reason to believe this
partially destroyed building with its walls filled with
bullets is a working hospital. Bombed many times, it
keeps being rebuilt by whatever means available. Between
the decrepit walls the feeling is one of impotence and
despair. On the second floor, the surgical and trauma
rooms are full. But people don't stay long in the
hospital. They are afraid of being arrested. Here,
nobody feels safe, even if the Feds' visits are less
frequent than two years ago. "Yesterday a family brought
us a 24-year-old man, he had seven bullets in his body
and both arms broken. We operated on him on the spot,
and his family came back to fetch him this morning, 12
hours after his admission. Now, nobody knows where he
is, or if he is still alive," explains a doctor lighting
one cigarette after another. Behind him, the noise of
combat helicopters renders the conversation increasingly
inaudible. "When they come, the soldiers and militia
search all the rooms, all the offices, they destroy
everything, they destroy the registry and they never
leave empty-handed. They always take away young people
suspected of being combatants, people who are wounded,
or just plain visitors," says a nurse, visibly tense.
A few days ago, Salman, a boy of 12, was playing
football with his friends. "I was walking back to my
house. I saw an old tin of condensed milk, I kicked it
just for fun, and then everything exploded." It was a
landmine. In the last few hours, Salman lost a leg. He
tells his story in amazing detail. But he has to stop.
His face becomes pale. There are no painkillers. When
the pills are strong enough to calm the pain, they fall
under a list of forbidden items by Russian legislation -
like psychotropics and other anesthetics. People have to
buy their own medicine underground and with their own
money in certain back rooms in the central market.
Beside Salman, a 17-year-old is lying
motionless. His eyes are blank and he is speechless. His
spinal column was touched yesterday by shrapnel. He is
paralyzed. "We have the specialists, but not the
necessary material to operate. His only chance of
survival is to be sent as soon as possible to
neighboring Dagestan, to Makhachala hospital." The chief
doctor is not exactly enthusiastic over the success of
this transfer - with checkpoints every 10 yards and
roads that open and close according to the whims of
Russian officers. Situations like Salman's are found in
every bed and every floor of this sinister hospital. The
wounded remember very well what happened to them, but no
one knows who shot them, and why. In Chechnya, silence
is part of the survival kit.
In a slightly less
devastated neighborhood there are cafes, and as
surprising as it may seem, they are not deserted. For a
foreigner though, this is definitely not an option. The
thing to do is to go to the back room of a dirty local
bar. Without a word, and with a thorough check of the
people hanging out. In Chechnya, when one does not speak
Tolstoy's language, the key to remaining alive is to
remain silent.
The ceasefire for lunch is brief.
As one steps out of the bar, the firing of automatic
weapons brings one back to reality. The shots intensify
and become closer. Combat is nearby, in front of the
administrative buildings of the pro-Russian President
Ahmed Kadhirov. The official version is of an attack by
Chechen independence supporters against a military
convoy. The version cannot be confirmed. It's not
uncommon that the Feds open fire on the population,
claiming enemy presence.
In a few seconds, a
neighborhood is turned into a battlefield. Everybody
runs for cover. After half an hour of hostilities and
heaps of ammunition spent, everything again becomes
relatively calm. One has to profit from this calm to run
away. And it has to be fast. It is already 4pm. In a
while, as after any attack, all of the city's exit
points will be closed. They can remain closed for hours
or for days. The number of vodka bottles being emptied
correlates to the intensity of the shots being fired.
Without vodka, Putin's soldiers are dangerous. With
vodka, they become terribly dangerous. Fear in their
bellies, a travelling bag ready to go, people go to
sleep with their clothes on, just in case. Tomorrow, the
sun will shine, and it will be an ordinary day in Grozny
- just like today.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
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