Nokhchallah, thought Shamil, as he lowered his binoculars and ran a finger down his nose. His mother had called it a Roman nose when he was a boy. His loving mother insisted that her firstborn should not be named Ruslan like many other newborn boys. Instead, he was to be named after the famous twentieth-century Chechen rebel leader. The thoughts darkened Shamil’s mood for a moment, and his jaw clenched. Those damn Russian soldiers, he muttered as he tried to push the memories away. To push the shooting of his parents from his mind. It was now three years ago, but it remained etched on his inner eye.
He raised the binoculars and… no movements. As he lay there on the hillside, he looked overdressed, as though for winter, on this sunny spring day. He wore a pair of worn-out black cotton trousers, a dirty, white woollen sweater with traditional patterns knitted in horizontal bands, a sheepskin vest – worn with the woolly side towards his body, and a long, blue-grey coat bought from one of Grozny’s Russian supermarkets. But he’d grown up in Chechnya’s harsh climate and knew that the weather, without warning, could turn to a chilling cold when the rain and storms from the north closed in, extinguishing the spring sun beating 23down on him as he lay in the shade afforded by the grass. Shamil was proud to be Chechen. Chechens had inhabited these mountainous, often pitilessly barren regions of the Caucasus since the seventeenth century. And throughout that time the Chechens had been proud – if necessary, taking up arms in defending their right to be themselves. To be free.
Even after the Russians defeated Imam Shamil and his resistance fighters in a final, bloody battle in 1858, the Chechens remained defiant and proud peoples. The Russians’ behaviour then resulted in an indomitable opposition up to the Russian Revolution in 1917. And the struggle was so ingrained that it had carried on after the fall of the Tsar when imperial rule had been replaced by an even more brutal Bolshevik regime. Nokhchallah! No Chechen man would ever submit to foreign rule, and centuries of repression had only strengthened their resolve. Every Chechen male was taught to handle weapons from a young age and, as an integral part of their upbringing, taught to use these weapon skills without hesitation. Their society was built on ancient codes of honour and the belief that a man’s duty to protect his family was front and centre. Violence was not alien. Besides, the Russians had taught them that merciless violence was the only answer to brutality. When General Dzhokhar Dudayev declared Chechnya’s independence in Grozny in 1991, Russia replied with unprecedented force. Yeltsin had unleashed his far superior military might on the independent republic. The Russian military was a relic from the heyday of the Soviet Union, but still Grozny had been flattened to the ground and more than 70,000 civilians killed. But Dudayev and the Chechen bandits, as the Russians called them, remained defiant, and in 1996 the Russians were humiliated and forced to withdraw. Nokhchallah!24
Shamil adjusted his position as he checked his watch: it was 11:25. To avoid being spotted, he had walked to the hilltop before the break of dawn. I hope the intelligence is correct, he thought, stroking his beard, which only partly concealed the blue-black scar on his right cheek. Something on the horizon caught his eye, and he trained the binoculars on an approaching dust cloud. Yes, the information was correct! Through the binoculars, he could see the contours of the vehicles, and as they drew closer, he recognised the familiar armoured personnel carriers: the type used by the Russians. Although the vehicles had no markings and the number plates were covered in mud, there was no doubt in his mind.
Russian soldiers heading for one of their much-feared ‘sweep operations’, which entailed brutal house-to-house searches of small villages under the pretext of hunting bandits. Shamil slid his focus towards the east, until he could just make out the nineteen dwellings of the village of Duba-Yurt in the far distance. As was often the case, rumours of the impending sweep had spread like wildfire, and the male inhabitants had used the final hours of darkness to seek hiding in the mountains to the north. Invariably, that, unfortunately, meant that the women and children would be left behind. Vulnerable. Being a seasoned fighter who, over the years, had made a friend of the cruelty of war did not mean that Shamil had no feelings, and he closed his eyes at the thought of what was in store for the women when the soldiers reached them. Shamil would never forget what happened in his village in February. It was etched into his soul. His sister told him what happened on that dreadful day. She had been alone with her son when the Russians arrived at their home. They had surrounded the village so 25that no one could get away. The soldiers had all worn balaclavas to hide their identity as they went from house to house, hammering on the doors with rifle butts until they were opened. The soldiers had been drunk when they forced their way into the house, and they’d immediately started looting the family’s meagre valuables. However, that was not the full extent of their ravaging. Three of the most drunken soldiers had begun making lewd remarks as they sized Shamil’s sister up and started questioning her about where the bandits were hiding. But it was just an excuse for hitting her and tearing the fabric of her dress until it hung in shreds around her shoulders. When they demanded that she remove what was left of her clothes, she had tried desperately to defend herself, but to no avail. They had battered her with rifle butts before two of them held her down, while a third had ripped the underwear from her body. They had taken turns until she lost consciousness.
To this day, Shamil’s dark face still twisted at the thought of the shame. The Russians’ lack of respect for women once again filled him with uncontrollable rage. Nokhchallah! This is an untranslatable Chechen word. Nokhcho meant Chechen, and Nokhchallah was the collective noun for the numerous moral and ethical norms that had helped shape the Chechen code of honour over centuries. It embraced manhood, defiance, respect for women, diplomacy, honesty, reliability and generosity. In short, the age-old characteristics of a people forced by harsh nature to develop a system for survival and co-existence. From the earliest times, it had been customary to invite strangers into one’s home as the winter weather might very well claim the life of a traveller.
Equally, pride and family honour could spark clashes in which 26the use of arms was just a small step away when words ran dry. Diplomacy and good manners were therefore essential in helping to avoid blood feuds. Nokhchallah demanded fundamental respect for all men irrespective of background, status, nationality or religion. And the respect for women was legendary. According to old folklore, a man had once arrived in a village where his wife’s relatives lived. He had knocked on the door of a house on the outskirts of the village, unaware that the woman who lived there was alone. Unable to refuse his request for shelter or declare that she was alone, the woman let him in. When the stranger had retired for the night, she had stayed all night in the living room watching over him. It was not until he rose the following day that the stranger realised, she had given him her bed for the night. After breakfast, he insisted on helping with the dishes and inadvertently touched the woman’s arm with a finger. The stranger cut off the finger to show her respect as he left the house. The old folk tale had been passed down through generations to instil in all Chechens that respect for women was sacrosanct. The frequent incidents of rape by Russian soldiers were not just an offence against women but also against one of the pillars of Nokhchallah.
All these sacred values have been put to the test by those bloody Russians, he thought. And all because of oil. Shamil was no scholar, but he knew the basics. His local imam had seen to that. He knew that Chechnya was producing more than four billion tons of oil a year, and it had been refining eighteen million tons when Dudayev proclaimed independence. This production constituted ten per cent of Russia’s GDP, and oil pipelines ran through Chechnya to the Black Sea. Fear of losing control over these vital resources was the real reason, he knew, behind the invasion in 1991.27
Shamil wiped the sweat from his leathery face with the palm of his hand, checking the battery status on the small device in front of him one last time. He then raised the binoculars again while, with his right hand, adeptly switching the control on. A low bleep was followed by a red light. Shamil concentrated on the armoured personnel carriers on the dirt road below and the two lonely trees that were his trigger point. At the precise moment when the first vehicles passed the trees, he pressed the white button on the control device with his thumb. A lightning flash, followed by dust and plumes of black smoke, erupted from the three bombs he had planted there last night, disseminated via the binoculars to his cerebrum. The Russian soldiers are so delightfully well-trained that they maintain a predictable distance between the vehicles in formation. Which makes it so much easier to place the roadside bombs to cause maximum effect on as many vehicles as possible, he thought, and a smile spread across his lips. He squinted through the smoke from the explosions, seeking survivors, running terrified from the burning personnel carriers. There they are. With satisfaction, he detonated the improvised explosive devices – an assortment of paint tins filled with nails he’d placed on the other side of the road. His expectations had been met: the soldiers had run there for cover.
Shamil lowered his binoculars without checking the outcome and packed up his gear, leaving the hillside without a backward glance and heading for the distant woods where he had hidden his car. He knew all too well the mayhem that the swarms of sharp nails would unleash on the unsuspecting soldiers; it would maim them, or kill them outright. Just another day in the bloody field of martyrs. As he walked across the barren landscape, everything emanated tranquillity. Had anyone been observing him, they 28would have had difficulty reconciling his joyful stride with that of an avenger incarnate who’d just satisfied his hatred. Shamil looked like any other local peasant who had survived a brutal life with his honour intact. However, his upright posture was no longer a sign of pride. Everyone that met Shamil immediately noticed his sunken black eyes, glowing with hatred. Hatred towards the Russians who had inflicted so much pain upon him and ripped away his parents. His sister, too, had been dead to him since her attack. No, his straight posture and steely handshake were signs of the rage that made him boil with a hatred that was waiting to be released. He had stared death in the face many times but always came out on the other side alive. As if he had a pact with the devil. Many of his enemies had not been so lucky. They had seen the violent, smouldering hatred as their lives ebbed away.
Shamil thought of his brothers, who he had not seen since they’d left for Afghanistan. Chechen resistance had acquired many new faces, of late, and many foreign brothers had been enlisted into the ranks of holy warriors in Russia’s Afghan war. As a Sunni Muslim, he welcomed them all, and fully understood why it was necessary to co-operate with the Russian security services over acts of terrorism in Russia. These acts had domestic policy ramifications, yielding intelligence on Russian operations in Chechnya. Heroes were made in Moscow, and intelligence enabled the insurgents to fight the superior enemy in Chechnya, precisely as he had done today. He was not entirely comfortable about the new alliance his brothers had forged. An alliance with a Russian nationalist party. They were to safeguard a shipment of drugs to Russia. He shook his head at the absurdity of the venture and, again, felt his gut clench. He would soon join his brothers and would then be able 29to keep an eye on them. Until such time, he prayed for their safety every day. An extra prayer at sunset. Yes, an extra prayer – that I shall live to exert my revenge on the infidels once more, he thought and picked up speed, thrusting his hand into his pocket. The cold metal of his car key refocused him on escaping the area before the Russians got their checkpoints up.