From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24  (Original Message)    Sent: 2/22/2007 9:17 AM
Chechnya Weekly - Volume VIII, Issue 8
February 22, 2007

IN THIS ISSUE:
* Kadyrov Takes the Helm
* Zakaev “Welcomes” Kadyrov’s Accession
* Will Kadyrov’s Elevation Come Back to Haunt Moscow?
* Poll Finds That Half of Russians Know Who Kadyrov Is
* Some Human Rights Activists Boycott Grozny Conference
* Briefs
* Remembering the 1944 Deportation: Chechnya’s Holocaust
By Mayrbek Vachagaev
________________________________________
KADYROV TAKES THE HELM
In an official statement posted February 16 on the Chechen Republic’s president and government website (Chechnya.gov.ru), Ramzan Kadyrov said his appointment as the republic’s acting president the previous day was a “huge responsibility before God and the Chechen people.” “As before, huge tasks in restoring the economic sphere and social sphere stand before the team of Akhmat Kadyrov,” he said, referring to his late father, who was the republic’s president until his assassination in May 2004. “Russian Federation President V.V. Putin’s decision obliges the leadership of the Chechen Republic to work with great force and energy. I have repeatedly stated that those who regard themselves as genuine patriots of their people have a golden opportunity to prove themselves not in words, but in deeds, regardless of rank or work status. There exists before each of us the task of providing our citizens with a worthy life, peace and prosperity.” Referring to the man whom he replaced as the republic’s president, Kadyrov said: “In my opinion, Alu Alkhanov, as head of the republic, used all of his potential to accomplish all the tasks put before him. I want to congratulate him on his appointment to a high and important post, and also wish him success in his new position.” Upon accepting Alkhanov’s resignation as Chechnya’s president, Putin appointed him a federal deputy justice minister (Chechnya Weekly, February 15).
Kadyrov, who had been serving as Chechnya’s prime minister, automatically became the republic’s acting president when Alkhanov resigned on February 15. Within 14 days of Alkhanov’s resignation, Putin must propose at least two candidates for the Chechen presidency to the republic’s legislature for its approval. While it is virtually certain that Kadyrov will end up being confirmed as Chechnya’s president, the Russian president’s envoy to the Southern Federal District, Dmitry Kozak, traveled on February 21 to Grozny, where, according to RIA Novosti, he told reporters that he would recommend Putin to consider three candidates for the Chechen presidency – Muslim Khuchiev, leader of the regional branch of A Just Russia, the recently-created pro-Kremlin party; Shakhid Dzhamaldaev, head of the Grozny district; and Kadyrov. Newsru.com reported on February 21 that during meetings with the heads of the Chechen branches of political parties, public organizations and movements, and clergy, Kozak had floated the names of ten candidates, but that most of the meetings’ participants had backed Kadyrov. Indeed, the regional branch of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party announced on February 16, the day after Alkhanov’s resignation, that it had already decided to back Kadyrov’s candidacy.
It should be noted that despite Kadyrov’s words of congratulation to his predecessor, tensions apparently remain between the acting Chechen president, on the one hand, and former president Alkhanov and his supporters among the officials in Moscow who reportedly oppose Kadyrov’s monopolization of power in Chechnya. Interfax, on February 20, quoted Kadyrov as saying that he was unhappy about the way the investigation into the May 2004 assassination of his father had been carried out and that Alkhanov was to blame. “If we consider the investigation in terms of the laws of the Russian Federation, I can see absolutely no progress and absolutely no interest in the investigation from those who were supposed to carry it out,” Kadyrov told journalists in Gudermes that day. “At that time, I told Alu Alkhanov that he, as president, should raise this question before those in charge of the investigation, and, if he sees that others are keeping silent, demand that the investigation be carried out. But he has not done anything. As [Chechen] interior minister [in 2004], he [Alkhanov] was responsible on that day [on which Akhmat Kadyrov was killed], and he should have resigned according to the code of honor. I told him that he should have shown adherence to his principles.”
Perhaps even more significant was the article published in a Spanish newspaper four days after Kadyrov’s appointment. El Pais reported on February 19 that detectives investigating last October’s murder of Novaya gazeta special correspondent Anna Politkovskaya have been focusing on Kadyrov’s inner circle and believe that he, at a minimum, knows the identity of her killers. The Spanish paper quoted Vyacheslav Izmailov, the retired army major and Novaya gazeta military correspondent, as saying that the murder trail leads to Kadyrov’s entourage but that the Russian authorities are “exerting pressure” on the investigation to pin the crime on Boris Berezovsky, the London-based exiled oligarch; Izmailov belongs to a group of journalists that Novaya gazeta set up to investigate Politkovskaya’s murder. “We don’t know if Kadyrov himself ordered the murder, but we know that he is well-informed about who did it,” the Spanish newspaper quoted Izmailov as saying. He added that “at a minimum, three sources with no connection to one another” have alleged Kadyrov’s involvement in the murder. “Politicians are sticking to the version that enemies of Russia – specifically, Boris Berezovsky – are behind the murder,” Izmailov said. According to El Pais, Izmailov also indicated that evidence against Berezovsky, which was collected “under pressure” even before Politkovskaya’s death, has been introduced into the criminal investigation. Izmailov, however, did not want to go into detail about this because the evidence remains confidential.
El Pais also reported that bodyguards were recently assigned to Izmailov after his wife spotted suspicious persons inside the entrance to their apartment building. According to the newspaper, Izmailov noted that following Politkovskaya’s murder, it was discovered that security cameras had photographed her killer inside the entrance to her apartment building on two separate occasions several days before October 7, the day she was shot to death.
In January, members from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), who were in Moscow to push for more aggressive investigations into the murder of Russian journalists, claimed they were told by a Foreign Ministry official that Chechen policemen were being investigated for the murder of Politkovskaya. That official, Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Boris Malakhov, subsequently denied that he had told the CPJ representatives about a possible Chechen police role in Politkovskaya’s killing (Chechnya Weekly, January 25).
The day after the El Pais article was published, Kadyrov directly blamed Berezovsky for the murder of both Anna Politkovskaya and former Federal Security Service (FSB) Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandr Litvinenko. “It’s obvious that this person killed Litvinenko and Politkovskaya,” the Regnum news agency quoted Kadyrov as telling reporters during a press conference in Grozny on February 20. “Today, someone is trying to look for tracks in Chechnya while the person who ordered this murder is sitting in London. It’s like the Russian proverb about the hunter who sees a bear in front of him but is looking for its tracks in the snow.” Kadyrov added that “both Politkovskaya and Litvinenko” had done “everything Berezovsky needed” so they were no longer of any use to him. Kadyrov added, according to IYAR-Tass: “Politkovskaya was not a hindrance to us at all. We were reading her articles like children’s fairy tales. She relied on rumors and not on hard facts.” The acting Chechen president also asserted that the deaths of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya were only of benefit to Berezovsky, who wanted to use their deaths to “undermine the image of the state.” Litvinenko and Berezovsky, Kadyrov claimed, had “started a process” aimed at “undermining the basis of a sovereign state, Russia,” but once Litvinenko “fully had his say,” he was no longer useful to Berezovsky, and the latter “disposed of him.”
Last month, a senior aide to President Putin, Igor Shuvalov, suggested that the murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Aleksandr Litvinenko were both linked to people who were trying to discredit Putin. “There are strong groups which have joined together to constantly attack the president’s line and him personally,” RIA Novosti quoted Shuvalov as saying on January 18. “None of these murders are in our interest.”
Kadyrov also claimed during his February 20 press conference in Grozny that Berezovsky had “openly financed” Chechen separatist guerrillas. “During the first two military campaigns in Chechnya, Berezovsky was the one who financed the militants,” ITAR-Tass quoted Kadyrov as saying. Berezovsky and Litvinenko, he claimed, “gave [the late Chechen rebel field commander Shamil] Basaev money. I was a witness to their talks myself.”
ZAKAEV “WELCOMES” KADYROV’S ACCESSION
The reaction of Akhmed Zakaev, the London-based foreign minister of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), to Ramzan Kadyrov’s accession as acting president of the pro-Moscow Chechen Republic raised some eyebrows. Referring to the fact that Kadyrov had fought on the separatist side during the first military campaign in Chechnya, while Alu Alkhanov was always on the side of Moscow, Zakaev said in a statement posted on the separatist Chechenpress information agency’s website on February 17: “We consider the dismissal of the so-called Chechen president Alu Alkhanov and the appointment of Kadyrov in his place to be a natural step, and, on the whole, appraise it positively. Regardless of whether Putin deliberately made the rearrangement in question or was forced to do so, it is evidence of the indisputable preponderance in the republic of a disposition in favor of the Ichkerians, as we are often called. It is gratifying that Moscow has finally begun to act in accordance with reality, and not rosy dreams.”
Zakaev added in his statement that with Alkhanov’s appointment to “a new role” (he has been appointed a federal deputy justice minister), “the Russian leadership will start to reevaluate the significance of the mythical and absolutely unlawful referendum of March 23, 2003 [in which Chechnya’s new constitution was adopted] and the ensuing ‘popular elections of presidents’ in the person of one or another appointee. The sooner that Russia comes to the realization that Chechens will reckon only with a government that they themselves have elected, the sooner this longstanding and expensive confrontation will end.”
According to some observers, Zakaev’s “praise” of Ramzan Kadyrov as acting Chechen president may have been designed to sow greater distrust of Kadyrov in Moscow. In any case, Kadyrov’s response to Zakaev’s statement clearly indicated that the acting Chechen president was less than enchanted with the ChRI foreign minister’s “praise.” Kadyrov addressed the issue during his February 20 press conference in Grozny, during which he invited Zakaev, who was once an actor, to return to Chechnya and take up his previous profession.
“Zakaev is a good actor,” Newsru.com quoted Kadyrov as saying. “Everybody knows this. In his time, he performed on the stage of the local theater, devoted a lot of energy to culture. I know him well – I know that he is not a warrior; I know that he is an artist. We are completing the repairs to the theater; we will find work for him. We are proposing to him that if he is not guilty of anything, if his conscience is clean before the Chechen people and Russia, then he should come to Grozny and work in his republic. He performed very well and is performing very well in London. Sometimes he speaks the truth and he also tells lies well. We are waiting for him to come home in the near future and will be pleased by his arrival. If he is a Chechen, then he needs to be in the Chechen Republic, in Grozny, and we don’t understand why he is hiding in London if he says that he is not guilty.” As Newsru.com noted, Kadyrov alleged earlier that Boris Berezovsky had handed $1 million over to Zakaev to finance the bombing that killed his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, on May 9, 2004 (Chechnya Weekly, March 6, 2006).
On February 20, Chechenpress posted a more blunt assessment of Kadyrov’s elevation to the Chechen presidency, written by Zaurbek Galaev. It stated, among other things: “If the largest country in the world, fighting against Chechnya, is able to pick only a criminal and a degenerate like Kadyrov out from a million Chechens for the role of chief traitor to the nation, then you have to admit that the Chechen people have something to be proud of.”
WILL KADYROV’S ELEVATION COME BACK TO HAUNT MOSCOW?
A number of Russian observers suggested that Kadyrov’s long-predicted accession to the Chechen presidency would eventually turn into a Pyrrhic victory for the Kremlin’s “Chechenization” policy. Novaya gazeta military correspondent Vyacheslav Izmailov, a retired army major who had arranged for the release of dozens of hostages in Chechnya, noted in the biweekly’s February 19 edition that Kadyrov’s government is dominated by former separatist officials and field commanders.
Izmailov wrote: “With the departure of Alkhanov, one can cry: ‘Farewell, Chechnya! Long Live Ichkeria!’ Now, former Ichkerians are sitting in all of the republic’s key posts. Judge for yourself: Adam Demilkhanov – the vice-premier in charge of the power bloc (formerly Salman Raduev’s driver); [former rebel field commander] Abdul-Kadyr Izrailov, a vice-premier of the government; Leche Khultygov – [former] head of the Department of Security of Ichkeria and currently a member of [Chechnya’s] parliament; Magomed Khambiev – former Defense Minister of Ichkeria, currently a deputy in the [Chechen] parliament; Musa Dadaev – head of the administration of one of Chechnya’s largest districts, Achkoi-Martan, formerly a field commander close to Djokhar Dudaev; Ibragim Dadaev (Musa’s brother, aka Toptygin) – commander of the Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov regiment of the Chechen MVD; and so on. All of these citizens were [rebel] fighters, who now, it turns out, have been divided into ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ ones. Yet behind many of them are dozens of murders, kidnappings, people who were sold and people who were crippled.”
Izmailov added: “During the period that I collaborated with Akhmat-Khadzhi [Kadyrov] on freeing the hostages, he said on more than one occasion, in open conversations: We are such idiots for having fought against Russia – with [Russia], it is possible to take whatever we want and at the same time live as we like. Kadyrov Senior was right, and his son turned out to be faithful to the wishes of his father: Ichkeria has returned. Formally, as part of Russia; in reality, with a leadership that is not dependent on anyone, for whom the word ‘law’ is no more than an unintelligible combination of letters, with daily arbitrary rule and a people deprived of civil rights.”
Meanwhile, Kadyrov is hinting that he will ratchet up his economic demands on the federal center. As the Moscow Times reported on February 21, 51 percent of Chechnya’s Grozneftegaz energy company, which currently extracts the republic’s oil and gas reserves, is owned by the Russian state oil company Rosneft and 49 percent by the Chechen government. Vremya novostei on February 20 quoted Kadyrov as complaining that although Chechnya has such a large stake in Grozneftegaz, his government still has no real say in running the company. In an interview with the newspaper Tvoi den published on February 18, Kadyrov complained that Chechnya does not control its own oil. Asked about recent reports of a conflict between his government and Rosneft, Kadyrov said: “For Chechnya, oil is the main means of revenues. But 51 percent of Chechnya’s oil belongs to Rosneft. They know that they have the controlling interest, the lion’s share, and do not ask us about anything. But if we controlled the share that we actually needed, it would help lift the republic’s economy. In Chechnya, the oil and gas sector must be raised up to what it formerly was. And I will be seeking this in all of the corridors and offices. We currently have 76 percent unemployment and we need jobs.”
The chairman of Rosneft’s board of directors is Igor Sechin, the powerful deputy head of the Russian presidential administration who is said to be the leader of the hard-line faction of Kremlin insiders known as the “siloviki.” The siloviki have reportedly opposed Kadyrov’s monopolization of power in Chechnya and are likely to react negatively to any attempts by the Chechen government to take control of Grozneftegaz.
Still, since his appointment as Chechnya’s acting president, Kadyrov has reiterated his fealty to the Russian president. In his interview published in Tvoi den on February 18, he said: “For me, [Putin’s] word is law.” During his February 20 press conference in Grozny, Kadyrov declared once again that Putin should remain in office after his second and final constitutionally mandated term ends in 2008, and not just for a single additional term. “He ended the war on Chechen land, and therefore the Chechen people will never forget him,” Kadyrov said. Echoing his comments to Tvoi den, Kadyrov added: “I am a person of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. For me, all that he says is law.” Last July, after Chechnya’s parliament voted to propose constitutional changes that would allow for Putin to run for a third term, Kadyrov said that if it were up to him, he would give Putin about ten more years in office (Chechnya Weekly, August 3, 2006).
POLL FINDS THAT HALF OF RUSSIANS KNOW WHO KADYROV IS
Newsru.com reported on February 21 that a poll conducted in February by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) found that 56 percent of the Russian public believes that the situation in Chechnya has improved lately, while 33 percent believe it has worsened. The poll also found that 50 percent of Russians know who Ramzan Kadyrov is, and that of those who do, 6 percent pay close attention to his activities while 46 percent know whom he is but are not interested in his work. Another 34 percent of the respondents said that they had heard of Kadyrov’s name but did not know who he is, while 13 percent said they had never heard of him.
10 percent of the poll’s respondents identified Kadyrov with the reconstruction of Chechnya, 4 percent with the fight against terrorism and another 4 percent with ending the war in Chechnya. 28 percent of those polled by VTsIOM said they trusted Kadyrov, while 22 percent said they did not. Kadyrov aroused hope in 17 percent of the respondents, respect in 11 percent, distrust in 9 percent, sympathy in 8 percent, trust in 7 percent, and admiration in 1 percent. 34 percent of those polled said they felt indifferent toward Kadyrov.
30 percent of those polled by VTsIOM said that Kadyrov had a bright political future while 21 percent said they doubted he would achieve more than he has up until now. 12 percent said they felt he had no political prospects.
SOME HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS BOYCOTT GROZNY CONFERENCE
On February 21, Newsru.com reported that the representatives of leading Russian human rights groups will boycott the human rights conference organized by the Chechen government that is scheduled to take place in Grozny on March 1. “We consider it impossible to participate in the work of the human rights conference in Grozny conducted by Ramzan Kadyrov,” read a statement released in Moscow that was signed by, among others, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, chairperson of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and Lev Ponomarev, leader of the For Human Rights movement. The signatories said they would not go to the Grozny conference because “both we and the international community know a great number of cases of gross violations of human rights by representatives of the current Chechen authorities.” The statement added: “Today the territory of the Chechen Republic continues to be a place of massive and gross violations of human rights, including extra-judicial killings, kidnappings and torture, corruption and extortion of humanitarian aid and compensation.” Kommersant, on February 21, quoted the statement’s signatories as calling the planned Grozny human rights conference “a cynical ploy, the goal of which is to use the well-deserved authority of many human rights activists, human rights movements and the human rights idea in Russia and the international arena, as a way to strengthen the legitimacy of the existing illegitimate regime in Chechnya.”
Lyudmila Alekseyeva told Interfax that she had received an invitation to participate in the Grozny conference but would not do so because she does not believe “that it is possible to talk to Ramzan Kadyrov about human rights.” She added: “I do not want to be shown with Kadyrov on television so that people think that human rights activists acknowledge him.” Lev Ponomarev said that he had not received an invitation to the Grozny conference, Newsru.com reported. “Personally, I did not get an invitation, but Alekseyeva got one, and we decided to make a general statement so that it was understood why the human rights activists do not want to go to Grozny, irrespective of whether they were invited or not,” he said.
Other human rights activists, however, were less categorical. Svetlana Gannushkina, chairperson of the “Grazhdanskoe sodeistvie” (Civil Assistance) Committee, said that she had received an invitation from the Chechen authorities but would not be able to attend the conference in Grozny because she will be in Prague to receive a human rights award. “There is now a critical political situation in the Chechen Republic because of the change in leadership, and I do not regard it as necessary to participate in such a conference,” Newsru.com quoted her as saying. “However, in reality, I consider cooperation with the authorities in the area of human rights on concrete issues to be absolutely necessary, including with Kadyrov. But now, I do not think that such a meeting will play the role that I think it ought to play.” Still, on February 21, Kommersant quoted Gannushkina as saying: “The conference will not resolve any real problems; it will work only for the personal PR of Ramzan Kadyrov. Had it been Alu Alkhanov’s idea, I would have gone.”
Aleksandr Brod, director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, said he had not received an invitation to attend the Grozny conference, but that those human rights activists who had received invitations ought to attend. “One should not tie the situation only to one person, to approach it with only negative aims and paint everything in dark colors,” he said. “It is necessary to have a dialogue with all representatives of the powers-that-be.” Brod added that rights activists have had many problems with the Chechen authorities concerning kidnappings and the effectiveness of the fight against crime and corruption, but that it was necessary to talk to them about these issues. “If our organization had received an invitation to participate in the conference, we would have agreed and could speak to the Chechen authorities [directly].”
Meanwhile, Aslambek Aslakhanov, Putin’s adviser on the North Caucasus, said that the human rights activists’ criticism of Kadyrov was not constructive. “Kadyrov, more than anyone else, is interested in getting things in order in the sphere of protecting human rights and the fight against kidnapping. Judging by the demands that Kadyrov is placing on the Chechen law-enforcement system, he is genuinely engaged in putting things in order, and I want to wish him success in this.” Aslakhanov claimed that thanks to the efforts of the Chechen authorities, the number of kidnappings has dropped. “It is already not possible to say that any kind of mass kidnappings are continuing,” he said. “Sometimes such cases occur. And it is necessary to find…those involved in these crimes. In general, I suggest that a special unit be set up that will neutralize the people involved in kidnappings.”
BRIEFS
- BUDANOV DENIED PAROLE
Andrei Koshkin, the head of the Volga River region Penitentiary Department, said at a news conference on February 20 that a court in the town of Dmitrovgrad had denied a parole request from Yuri Budanov, the Russian colonel who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for murdering an 18-year-old Chechen woman. Budanov was convicted in July 2003 of murdering Elza Kungaeva three years earlier. The Associated Press quoted Koshkin as saying that Budanov was transferred last year from a prison in Dmitrovgrad to a penal settlement in the Volga River city of Ulyanovsk to serve the rest of his term. Interfax quoted Ziyad Sabsabi, the Chechen government’s representative in Moscow, as saying: “The decision is entirely correct. It testifies to the fact that the judicial system in Russia is acquiring independence and is not subject to any political pressure.”
- NORTH OSSETIAN POLICE RAID OFFICES OF BRITISH NGO
North Ossetian police seized two computers and documents on February 21 in the Vladikavkaz office of the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, a British nongovernmental organization, the Moscow Times reported on February 22. The English-language newspaper quoted IWPR’s coordinator in the North Caucasus, Valery Dzutsev, as saying that investigators told him to show up at their office next week, after they have examined the seized documents and computers. The raid came a month after police opened a criminal investigation into Dzutsev on suspected tax evasion. IWPR has trained journalists in the Caucasus since the late 1990s, and Dzutsev has headed its Vladikavkaz office since it opened in 2002. It is now trying to re-register with authorities as required by the NGO law. Last year, IWPR’s senior editor, Thomas de Waal, was denied a Russian visa without explanation.
- EUROPEAN COMMISSION ALLOCATES MORE FUNDS FOR NORTH CAUCASUS
The European Commission announced on February 21 that it has allocated 17.5 million euros ($22.9 million) in aid to help victims of the ongoing crisis in Chechnya, Deutsche Presse Agentur reported. The commission said the funds would go to the displaced people and refugees in the North Caucasus republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan and to Chechen refugees in neighboring Azerbaijan and Georgia. EU funds will be used to provide housing, jobs, health care, water and sanitation, as well as mine-risk education and psychological help for the people, especially children, traumatized by the war, DPA reported. The European Commission said that including the new funds, the EU has provide 220 million euros ($288 million) in aid to Chechnya and its environs since 1999, making the 27-member bloc the largest donor in the war-torn region.


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From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24    Sent: 2/22/2007 9:17 AM
Remembering the 1944 Deportation: Chechnya’s Holocaust
By Mayrbek Vachagaev
Even though many decades have passed, the Second World War is still an unanswered question for the Chechen people, and this historical burden inevitably impacts the continuing development of Chechen society today. Though the current Russian government is eager to emphasize recent peaceful developments, the image of the Chechen as "the enemy," originally created by the Communists, is alive and well within the country today. Historians, politicians and journalists have created thousands of works that are filled with deliberate lies that portray the Chechens as a people and the entirety of Chechen history in a truly terrible light.
February 23 is one of the most tragic dates in the history of the Chechens and the Ingush. Until the Russo-Chechen War of 1994, the Chechens were a small ethnic group relatively unknown to the rest of the world, living in the northern foothills of the Caucasus, one of the most remote corners of Europe. On February 23, 1944, the Chechens were exiled from their ancestral lands and deported to Siberia and the northern regions of Kazakhstan. The entirety of the Chechen nation was accused of collaborating with the Fascists, even though unknown to Russians and Europeans alike, the Chechens only knew about the Fascists from the movie screen and the wartime news reports. The frontlines of the German advance stopped in Mozdok, in Northern Ossetia, never reaching Chechnya. Therefore the Chechens not only were unable to collaborate with the Germans, but also never truly saw any of them [1].
The Chechens were deported en masse, only excluding a few hundred men who managed to escape to the mountains at the last moment and who over the years tried to extract a vengeance for the deaths of their people through constant attacks on local Soviet institutions. The Chechen deportation, the most massive of all Soviet deportations, took place over the course of only a few days. However, in that period, during the middle of winter, almost 400,000 men, women and children were loaded into cattle cars and shipped to various locations, thousands of kilometers away. The victims were only allowed to take three days' worth of rations and spent a horrifying two or three weeks on the road. Thousands died every day and the bodies were simply tossed out of the cars at every railroad station. Death quickly claimed the weakest – the elderly and the children (Radio Svoboda, February 23, 2000). According to the official Soviet figures, roughly a third of the whole Chechen nation perished during the thirteen years of exile, though independent researchers have suggested that essentially every second Chechen died during the Soviet government's terrible crime against part of its own populace.
Many Chechens had in fact fought on the front lines of the Soviet war against the German aggressor. Thousands of Chechens died on the field of battle, with many becoming war heroes. The long list of Chechen war heroes includes the first men to reach the fortifications of Brest, where over two hundred Chechens fought for their country. To name a few Chechen soldiers of note: Khanpasha Nuradilov died in Stalingrad having killed over 900 Germans; Movlad Bisaitov was the first to meet the Americans on the Elbe; Hakim Ismailov was one of the men who raised the Soviet flag over the Reichstag; and Alavdi Ustarkhanov (Andre) fought with the French Resistance. Yet all of these men died in obscurity, deliberately hidden or sometimes killed, so that their very existence could not be used as an accusation against the Soviet regime in later years.
Fifty years later, on February 24, 2004, the European Parliament suggested that the "deportation of the whole of the Chechen nation into Central Asia on February 23, 1944, as ordered by Joseph Stalin, was an act of genocide" [2]. Today's Chechens cannot help but compare themselves to their countrymen that lived during the deportation. Even today, Russia, having unleashed this latest war, has caused every tenth Chechen to be killed, every third to flee the territory of the republic and another ten percent to seek refugee status in Europe, trying to escape the regime that hunts them today, just as they had in the past. In the Chechen republic, over ten thousand are wounded, several thousand are invalid children (many lacking limbs), and nearly 20 percent of the population is suffering from illness and requires medical aid.
In 1944, the Chechens stood accused of cooperating with the Fascists, but in this war, their fault lies in being in league with the forces of international terrorism. Grozny, a city of 400,000, was wiped off the map while the leaders of those countries supposedly championing human rights stood by and applauded. People were killed everywhere and in all possible ways, while all of European society watched in confusion as the might of the Russian rulers was directed against women, children and the aged, all of whom were deemed terrorists. It is alarming that the people from the generation that survived the deportation say that living in Chechnya today is more frightening than the terrible years of 1944 to 1956.
Today, in pseudo-democratic Russia, in accordance with the wishes of the Kremlin, Potemkin villages are being built. What can a couple dozen new houses and several hundred kilometers of newly paved roads do to change anything in war-stricken Chechnya? What can it do to change the oppression led by the Kremlin? The applied lessons from the Soviet school of forcefully creating "loved and respected" leaders, widespread threats and endless pressure cannot solve the problems of Chechnya's society! These problems are ignored and sacrificed to the ambitions of certain leaders, leaving them to burst forth in the form of mass disturbances at the smallest opportunity.
Russia cannot afford to make the choice in favor of Ramzan Kadyrov, even though he has achieved that which President Putin has called the "amazing accomplishments of the Chechen government" (Radio Svoboda, February 2). The game between Alu Alkhanov and Ramzan Kadyrov is just a delaying tactic by the Kremlin. Eventually, one of the men will be removed, and then the survivor will eventually be replaced by someone even more obedient. It is only the problem of finding a good candidate that keeps Moscow involved in this game, since the Kremlin's eventual goal is to find a loyal functionary, not a military commander. Ramzan Kadyrov was born during a military era, guaranteeing that he will not last long as a civilian leader.
It will probably take another fifty years for the international community to call things by their real names and agree that Russia has committed war crimes against the Chechen people–a people that suffered two military campaigns that left 100,000 dead and several hundred thousand crippled and traumatized. With Europe concerned over the fate of Kosovo today, it seems necessary to remind the Europeans that Chechens are also residents of the European continent who have fled their war-torn home to come to Europe, instead of heading East and who made a conscious choice to embrace European values [3]. To push them away today and to reject them as non-Europeans would be a crime that would need to be explained by European leaders.
Mayrbek Vachagaev is a PhD candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Paris. He is the author of the book, "Chechnya in the 19th Century Caucasian Wars."
Notes
1. Grechko, A. A. Bitva za Kavkaz (Battle for the Caucasus), Moscow, Voenizdat, 1967. p. 86.
2. Committee of Foreign Affairs. A resolution of the European Parliament regarding relations between the Russian Federation and the European Union, February 24, 2004.
3. Data shows that close to 100,000 Chechens may live in Europe today, making them a powerful force free from Russia's influence. Most diaspora communities live in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Poland.
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