From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 5/16/2006 2:41 AM
May 2006
‘Why did we let this war poison everything?’
Chechnya only seems normal
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said last month that the UNHCR would open an office in Grozny as soon as security permits. The appearance of normalisation implied by his statement is deceptive. The Russians are counting on continued violence, and local resignation.
By Anne Nivat
Nearly seven years after the launch of Russia’s second military campaign in Chechnya, it is still dangerous for journalists to venture into this region, where “anti-terrorist operations” are being carried out (1). To go from Ingushetia to this Chechenised republic, where the consequences of war make repeated horrors seem routine, we had to head east, not via the main road that goes through the infamous Kavkaz military checkpoint, but on back roads that are just as sad and muddy.
On the flight from Moscow I met Aza, a chic 50-year-old Ingush woman who told me she was going to visit her family in Sleptsovsk, on the Chechen border, for the wedding of her 18-year-old niece. Aza left Grozny for Moscow in 1994, on the eve of the first military campaign, and had never been back. “I don’t want to see the town riddled with bullet holes, ruined and depressing. It would spoil my childhood memories, or those of my student days.” She was tearful. “How could we have let this war poison everything, even our relations with our brother nation? When I see Ramzan Kadyrov (2) strutting about the Kremlin in his tracksuit alongside Putin, I’m ashamed. Why did they choose him? He’s useless; you can tell how stupid he is just by looking at him.”
Like many Ingush, Aza has a soft spot for Ruslan Aushev, the president of Ingushetia before he was sacked in 2003. Aushev, a former army officer, had tried to maintain good relations with Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen rebel leader murdered by Russian forces in March 2005. “All those people now belong to the past. What a waste,” Aza said with regret. “More important, none of the problems raised by the separatists has been solved by this war. What’s going to happen now?”
Her question haunts everyone, Chechen or not, who stayed behind because they had nowhere else to go. They struggle to live in a region that has been bled dry, where even now it is hard to get electricity or running water.
In Sleptsovsk, 28-year-old Mouslim, the fourth son in a family of seven children (3), lives with his parents after having escaped for a few months to work on building sites in Kazakhstan. Since his mother begged him to return, he has tried to earn money by various means but he is bored. Through a former Chechen boxing champion now exiled in Moscow, Mouslim got hold of five gaming machines which ended up in Ingushetia after Kadyrov had banned gambling in Chechnya. Mouslim tries to make his gaming room profitable but complains about competition. Although old enough to get married he has yet to find a partner, much to his parents’ dismay, for marriage is a condition for his departure to join his brother in Poland.
One of Mouslim’s friends, Ahmed, is getting married this month and will move to Grozny with his 22-year-old wife. According to Ahmed, Grozny has regained some of its big city status and he hopes to find work there with the help of an uncle who works in the pro-Russian government. He intends to trade in his late-model Jigouli car, bought new for $10,000, for a two-room flat in the city centre. As Mouslim knows well, only people with this kind of contact can find work in Grozny: Mouslim could get a job in the Kadyrovtsy, prime minister Kadyrov’s bodyguard, but he does not want to.
Mouslim’s older brother Anzor scrapes a living by wheeling and dealing; recently he paid a doctor to give him a disability certificate that entitles him to benefits. “It cost me $800 but now I get $30 a month for the rest of my life.”
