4 November 1999
A tragedy is today unfolding in Ingushetia. It has grown to such catastrophic proportions that, believe me, it is now hardly less terrible than the war in Chechnya. What difference does it make, in the end, if you die from hunger or from bombing? During the month that they have spent in the refugee camps – in these poultry and old stock-raising farms, in cellars, tents and out in the open beside campfires – thousands of people have become deeply embittered, with no regular food or place to wash, and without any occupation or work.
Hopes of returning home have finally melted away. Now people in the camps are desperately struggling just to survive. They await the first snows in November almost as though they were death itself. Each night their fear of bombardment is magnified a hundredfold by the roar of weapons being fired nearby. All the food they brought with them has now been eaten and there is a chronic shortage of humanitarian aid: the little there is, is totally inadequate for the number of refugees. Cold, hunger, sickness and everywhere pale children with blue lips. Adults squabble over each crust of bread. People ask only two questions: "Why?" and "How many more victims do you need?"
Death from the Skies
We are standing in the middle of the camp and even laughing, although it's no laughing matter. We're looking up at the sky where rockets fly over our heads. Insolently they rip through the air above us as though we are not standing below and, instead, this were some weapons-testing site. Why the laughter? It helps us save face in front of each other and conceals the nervous trembling that has seized hold of us all.
27 October 1999. It's sunny and there is no wind. Soon it will be midday. We are on the outskirts of Karabulak, a town in Ingushetia. The camp – more than 3,000 refugees squeezed into 98 army tents – is in a shallow gully beside the River Sunzha. Most people are now gathered in the centre of the camp. Behind the hills to the right stands the town of Mozdok. To the left are more hills, and beyond them the capital of Ossetia, Vladikavkaz.
At last it's midday. We feel a shock wave of uncertain origin pass through our bodies, and pick up an inner rumbling of the earth through the soles of our feet. A 25-year-old from Grozny with a degree in Russian Language and Literature and the wonderful name of Mir23 explains: "They've just launched a rocket. Now we shall be able to follow its tail. We saw them yesterday as well."
He's quite right. In a second two white trails stretch across the sky from the direction of Mozdok. At 12.10 there is a repeat performance. Only this time the missile has been fired from near Vladikavkaz and again there are two trails.
Mir Khadjimuratov thinks aloud: "Doesn't all this remind you of the famous password: "The Spanish sky is cloudless'?24 Are they deliberately provoking us? What feelings can you have, other than a desire for revenge, when you sit watching death fly towards your home town?"
Half an hour later it is as if those vile traces of the rockets had never been there. People are no longer laughing, nor are they trembling. Now their eyes are hard and dull, clenched teeth show through their jaws and their hands in their pockets are bunched into fists. No one even smokes. The men leave the square with the comment: "27 October, between 12.00 and 12.10 another 100 people died. None of them fighters."
Mir Khadjimuratov asks: "Why do they continue firing missiles into Grozny after the tragedy in the Central Market?25 Each missile immediately hits a great number of people. That many fighters never gather in a single place, even our children know that. So it's genocide. And those who didn't want to fight are now ready to."
Vakha Nurmagomedov is 40 years old and comes from Moscow. He had permanent domicile registration in the capital's Mitino district, but police harassment forced him to move. He returned first to his native Urus-Martan in Chechnya and then, with his family, left the republic. Vakha is very keen for his point of view to be heard – not by Putin (that would be a waste of breath, he thinks), but by the millions who today are ready to vote for a continuation of this cruel war in the North Caucasus. "You don't win people over to your side by firing rockets. Missiles spell the end of a friendly attitude towards Russia, even among those who used to feel that way. You must understand, we can never allow ourselves to forget all this. Otherwise we are not the fathers of our children or the children of our fathers."
"We could not forget and forgive deportation,"26 I constantly hear this refrain from the crowd of refugees. "We simply had no right to do so. The first Chechen war joined those memories and so will the present war."
The main focus of their life in Ingushetia in the refugee camps is the accumulation of hatred as they daily study the missiles flying overhead and observe the fighting which can easily be followed from here. By heading for Ingushetia in late September and early October the refugees were leaving the war behind them. Now it has caught up with them again, in their temporary refuge.
Children Fated Not to Survive
Above the Sputnik camp, not far from the village of Ordjonikidzevskaya, it is the Grad [Hail] missiles that swagger across the skies.
Here at Sputnik anyone who wants to can easily guess what the military are planning. The camp is roughly seven kilometres from the small town of Sernovodsk in Chechnya. In late September tents were erected here for the convenience of the refugees. Taken in by the Kremlin spokesmen, local officials believed that the "anti-terrorist operation" would not last long nor affect Ingushetia. It would therefore be easier and quicker, the republic's Ministry for Emergency Situations decided, for the refugees to return home from here.
These good intentions have backfired on everyone. Today the tents sit directly in the zone of bombardment. If the officer aiming the weapon has had a little too much to drink (and the military do take to drink here – it's also bad for them to go on fighting this long) then a tragedy is inevitable. The refugees are in a shallow gully between mountains. On one hillside are the Russian forces, on the other, the town of Sernovodsk. From one hilltop they are firing at Sernovodsk and a stream of murderous metal flies over the heads of almost 5,000 people living in the camp, half of them children. The volleys produce an unpleasant hissing sound, like snakes, and they make the already hard life of the refugees unbearable.
Take, for instance, one half-hour around midday on 28 October: 12.45, volley; 12.47, another; 12.51 yet another. . . Then, there is a brief respite until 13.11, when the firing again resumes every two minutes.
"They're trying to catch Basayev," decide the women in the weeping, worn-out crowd. "Those officers up on the hill probably don't know that Grad missiles can't pinpoint a target, they're a weapon of mass destruction. But we know that all too well."
Meanwhile some boys between five and seven years old are digging a trench beyond the furthest tents. Gradually they disappear below the ground, and pay no attention to what the adults are saying.
"What are you doing?" I finally ask them.
But the children look at me as though I'm from another planet. They don't speak Russian because they were born after the first war in 1994–6. It is their mother Toita Elimkhanova, from the Pervomayskaya village where 157 of their clan are living, who explains:
"The boys themselves took the decision. No one asked them. They say it's just in case: we left home under a terrible bombardment."
It's interesting that the children a little older than two or three do not react at all to the Grad missiles. They are a very strange sight. "Hunger makes them apathetic and lethargic," says Hasan Tempieva from Gudermes. She is without her husband and has eight children. "There is starvation here. Bread is handed out free, but there isn't enough for everyone. In my family, for instance, it is three days since any of us ate. We just drink hot water."
Small children, still entirely dependent on their mothers, react quite differently. Their short lives are threatened by each volley. On the night of 25–26 October, when there was a particularly severe and unrelenting stream of Grad missiles and sparks from the sky burned holes in the tents, many refugees lost control of themselves. The screams of women rose over the Sputnik camp and drowned out the howl of the rockets. Seven months pregnant, Malizha Derbieva from the Ishchorskaya village in Naurskaya district (now she is in Tent 8, Block 6) was so frightened that by morning she gave birth prematurely. Her little baby girl died immediately. Malizha is still being treated in the Sunzhensk district hospital. The doctors cannot guarantee she will ever have children now, the shock was too great.
Aina Terekmurzaeva, from the small village of Betimokhk in the Nozhai-Yurt district, is 17 years old. Only a short while ago she married someone from Gudermes where she herself was born. When Aina arrived at the camp she already had Ibrahim her newborn son with her. He's now four months old. The skin on his face is transparent and his bluish but still smiling lips try to find something to eat. Aina herself has wasted away and is barely alive.
Aina's milk failed as soon as the Grad missile volleys began. A four-month-old cannot eat bread, so for a week now they have been giving him nothing but weak tea. If you've ever had children then you'll know that an infant cannot survive long like that. Aina went to the camp administration and asked if they could get hold of some baby food. So far they have found nothing. The warehouses of the republic's Ministry for Emergency Situations are empty.
You probably think I'm writing all this to stir your pity. My fellow citizens have indeed proved a hard-hearted lot. You sit enjoying your breakfast, listening to stirring reports about the war in the North Caucasus, in which the most terrible and disturbing facts are sanitised so that the voters don't choke on their food.
But my notes have a quite different purpose, they are written for the future. They are the testimony of the innocent victims of the new Chechen war, which is why I record all the detail I can.
The Warehouse
The measure of our present kindness is the warehouse for humanitarian aid on the outskirts of Ordjonikidzevskaya village. Officially it's a local depot of the reserve supplies of the Ministry for Emergency Situations. We arrive unexpectedly and accompanied by Major Tugan Chapanov. He heads one of the Ministry's departments, and on 23 October a decree issued by President Aushev made him commandant of the Sputnik camp (replacing the refugee leaders who had held the post).
Being a refugee is demeaning, not only because you are without a home and of no concern to anyone else. But for days on end there is nothing to do in the camps, apart from go out in the morning to collect sticks and twigs for the fire and chat with your fellows in misfortune. In these endless conversations a great many myths are born. For example, people said that the relatives of Shamil Basayev and Alla Dudayev27 are living peacefully in the Ingush capital Nazran. The government pays all of their bills, no one is in pursuit of them and they have the best cottages the rich could buy. The conclusion? The war is not against the "bandits", but against "us" and they aim to exterminate "us" completely.
Another persistent myth concerns the aid warehouse. The refugees are certain that it is overflowing with supplies and that those distributing the aid are to blame when it does not reach the right people. They are selling most of it at the market, goes the myth, and pocketing the money.
Alas, on inspection the "supply depot" is almost empty. The local deputy director, Hasan Bogatyrev, shows us several metal beds that could not be issued because there were no mattresses, let alone pillows and sheets (they're waiting for a delivery). There were also some black olives that were well past their sell-by date, so they did not risk sending them to the camps. (They would certainly be eaten there, no one has any doubt about that, but who can tell with what consequences?)
Also standing idle in the warehouse were the military kitchens and mobile bath units. People are starving in the camps and they are lousy because they cannot wash. Why then are such valuable items left here? The answer is very simple. Ingushetia already has serious problems with its water supply and now is quite incapable of providing for the refugee camps as well. The camp commandants are afraid to take the bath units since they have no fuel to run them and their many urgent requests to the Moscow authorities to increase the water allowance in the republic's supply network have gone unanswered.
"But what about the kitchen?" demands Major Chapanov.
"What will they cook?" His question is met with a question. "And who will take responsibility?" continues Bogatyrev. "To begin with the federal Ministry of Labour was, apparently, ready to pay the services of cooks from among the refugee women as persons engaged in socially useful work. Now they're keeping quiet. It has all remained at the level of good intentions and the Ministry officials, after tossing out these promises, have gone back to Moscow. We have to sort things out for them."
This is the honest truth. The refugees are extremely bitter. It must be said that they do not accept everything that happens with calm and understanding. There are constant quarrels and fights. Harsh measures are directed against every "newcomer" to the camp. The Chechens are now almost certain that their brother Ingush28 are brazenly cheating them. A dangerous feud between the two nations threatens, though when the refugee exodus began nothing of the kind was in the air. It must also be admitted that we came across people in the camps who were stirring up anti-Ingush feelings.
What will be the outcome? Only one conclusion is possible, that some dishonourable person of dubious sanity passionately desires to extend the war to Ingushetia.
What Can We Do?
All these passions will abate to reasonable levels if the refugees are clothed and fed. Warm clothes are urgently and desperately needed, for children and adults. The majority of women are still wearing only socks and need warm tights. Medicine is also in urgent demand. So are shoes, toothbrushes and toothpaste (families of ten or twelve members have been issued with two or three brushes). Most urgent of all is the need for baby food and milk.
The best thing would be not only to collect the above-mentioned items, but also to hire and equip a convoy of trucks to drive to Ingushetia and hand out these goods ourselves. Where is our fellow feeling? If you want to know what is needed today in which camp, and its exact location, ring the author on her pager (232-0000, #49883). We must get the better of this appalling misfortune. And we must do so together. The last consideration is the most important of all, because we will only remain united in future if we act together now. Otherwise we shall become so many wild and hunted wolves each retreating to hide in its lair.
The refugees in Ingushetia are suffering inhuman deprivation. Despite everything, though, they dream of remaining human beings. They need not only our practical help but also our moral support. Where are all the actors of our great country? Where are its singers, musicians, performers and satirists? Don't tell me they're all too busy with the Ukrainian elections. Where are our own de Niros (remember how he flew to the refugees in the Balkans?) who are trying to reach out to these unfortunate people?
No one is visiting the camps in Ingushetia today, apart from the republic's equally exhausted officials from the Ministry for Emergency Situations who are responsible for their administration. No one is talking to the people or explaining what's going on. The information war has been won, but for the time being the battle for human souls has been completely lost.
INGUSHETIA