3 August 2000
Locked Up
Fortification work is furiously under way at an army post in one of the most dangerous parts of Grozny, not far from Minutka Square. Military trucks energetically deliver one load of brand-new concrete blocks after another. The crane rumbles and the excavator squeals. The inhabitants of the neighbouring ruins quietly gather round, but no one approaches the army post. They prefer to keep their distance, sitting in silence on mounds of broken brick and distorted building panels.
Everyone feels uncomfortable: the soldiers working under the mute gaze of the onlookers; the people among the ruins as the barrels of automatic weapons point their way.
"I've only got one task here," says Yury Sidorov, the post commander from the Petersburg OMON, "to protect the lives of my lads." As he directs the work to strengthen their position he casts a weary glance at the gaping windows of the half-ruined buildings opposite.
"There's nothing else you're trying to do?" I ask.
"Nothing else. I've no wish to die."
Who does?
Evening descends. I must find somewhere to spend the night – there isn't a single hotel in Grozny now. We ask to stay at the post at the end of Staropromyslovsky highway, on the city outskirts. It turns out the Archangel Rapid Response Unit is based there. To begin with the commander is welcoming, but soon he has second thoughts and categorically refuses to shelter or feed us. He doesn't need any extra responsibilities.
"Fine," I say, "in that case give us somewhere in one of the protected houses nearby." The post is located on raised ground and below it stands a group of private houses that have not all been destroyed.
"We have no control at all over those buildings!" he answers. "How could I put you up there?"
Why did they fight this war then? It is now a year since the "anti-terrorist operation" began. Thousands of combatants have been killed or crippled. Tens of thousands of civilians have died or fled and vanished.
You can spend a long time discussing the logic of all that has occurred in the North Caucasus, but this is what it has come down to: each post in Grozny only controls its own immediate "territory".
Every army and police post must keep going independently and rely on itself alone, like a tiny State surrounded by enemies. All the posts taken together are like the water-tight bulkheads of a submarine. Camaraderie is all very well, but if one compartment catches fire the others must seal it off and have no right to come to the aid of their neighbours if the rest are to survive.64 After seven or eight in the evening, every post in Grozny is locked up as tight as a bank vault.
Then the city stops pretending. Unidentified armed men come out on to the streets. There are a great many of them and they are everywhere, in their tracksuits and running shoes, without uniforms but carrying automatic weapons. Who are they? Whose city is it?
Well, some are the newly created "Chechen police", for the most part self-appointed. There are also the looters who now dominate Grozny's summer nights. Yet this is not the most important thing in a situation that is already difficult enough for an outsider to fathom.
"Why don't you catch them?" I ask the policemen from Vyatka who now man the post on 8th Street in the Staropromyslovsky district.
"I've no wish to die," says one.
There it is again, the catchphrase of the present war.
You will hear those words everywhere, like a password, a dozen times a day in Chechnya. From military men of any rank, with every award and medal, at any post and in any branch of the armed forces. That is the true Constitution for people in uniform who find themselves in Chechnya. That is the unwritten Statute that guides their actions from A to Z.
Do people think that way when they feel safely at home? No. Chechnya is not a part of the same country. And it won't be for some time.
So, you ask, what are we to make of those impassioned streams of patriotic rhetoric that assert the contrary? Don't pay them any attention. Let he who is not afraid to lie say such things. However, when you fly from Chechnya to Mozdok, back to headquarters and to peace and quiet, the officers meeting your helicopter joyfully greet you: "Welcome back to the Motherland."
That is the truth. And we must get used to it.
The Argun "Ministry of Foreign Affairs"
"We're foreigners here, aren't we?" many federal soldiers serving in Chechnya frankly admit.
Naturally, they are speaking "off the record" and don't give their names. The overwhelming majority hate the Chechens and are ready to repel their attacks any time of the day or night. Even when they see their colleagues, the newly re-established Chechen OMON, they mutter insults through gritted teeth. The life of the military in Chechnya is riddled with such ambiguities. But what happens next?
"International relations officer. The name's Zobov, Anatoly Borisovich. Deputy commander of the Chelyabinsk police combined unit," says the young man, by way of introduction.
"An international relations officer?" At first the phrase comes as a shock. You think to yourself, that's going a bit far. "What 'international relations' exactly are you monitoring here? With whom? The Chelyabinsk policemen with the Arab mercenaries on the other side?"
"No, with the Chechens, the civilian population. Our relations now are, in essence, international."65
Calmly disregarding my irony, Major Zobov tells me what his job is. He is not overly insistent, but he is completely convinced of the necessity of his work. Day after day is spent talking to the inhabitants of Argun where his unit is based. He goes to the market place, the local administration, and simply walks about the streets, although this is hardly a safe thing for him to do.
The major is not trying to change the minds of the local people: he realises that is impossible. He's just trying to restore bridges that were dismantled long ago, make some contact no matter how shaky, get acquainted with people, to establish ties, perhaps even make friends, if possible.
In other words, this really is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its purest form.
In such local conditions Zobov's ultimate goal is highly original: a softening of attitudes and behaviour, even if it is only within a single small Chechen town. Let them see that we're also human beings and then we'll all find things easier, since we've been thrown together in this way.
To anyone not living next to a war zone such efforts may seem something of a joke. Stupid, even. Naive and a little crazy.
Don't rush to conclusions. The introduction of an international relations officer is above all an honest response. It is a recognition of life as it actually is, not as the General Staff want it to be, and without any of Manilov's window-dressing. It is something our army desperately needs today. People have pushed aside their ideological blinkers and have realised that this is not Moscow, where you can chatter without fear of retribution. In order to survive down here you must not only dig deeper trenches, but also reach agreement with the people on the other side of the barbed wire.
Major Zobov's new job is one example of how the military, driven to the brink by fear, have themselves begun to seek ways out of the Chechen impasse. Paradoxically, and in spite of all the martial rhetoric, the path they have been tracing is unmistakeably political.
Never say never, indeed.
The place where we meet the major deserves to be described. Recently the temporary police department in Argun, to which the Chelyabinsk policemen are seconded, suffered the heaviest losses of any in the combined forces group in the North Caucasus. It was here this June that a suicide-bomber drove a truck crammed with explosive into the building at full speed. That's why the major is so convinced of the necessity of his work: it has been paid for by the blood of his comrades and he must do all he can to prevent a recurrence of that tragedy.
Unfortunately this local Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the only one of its kind in Chechnya. Zobov is unique. So it's too early to speak of achievements or results. But it represents a breakthrough. The officers have taken stock and realised that even if they pile up concrete blocks to the sky itself, that will not protect them if someone is determined to kill them. All it requires is enough explosive. So there is only one way out. You must look people in the eye, listen to what they say, and persuade them to try and revoke that death sentence.
Alas, the overwhelming majority of units are still very far from so thoughtful a response. A harsh and vengeful atmosphere predominates. An armoured train was blown up outside Gudermes and that very night the military carried out an operation to pacify and intimidate the population. Stupid and incompetent as always, because those it "pacified" did not cause the explosion. Others suffered merely because they happened to be nearby and, the soldiers argue, it doesn't matter, they're all bandits. Such a war will be endless. The victims of pacification will inevitably thirst for revenge and the next armoured train will fly skywards.
Meanwhile there is some chance, at least, for the men from Chelyabinsk and the people of Argun. I'm sure that Major Zobov finds his job a hundred times more difficult than those who take refuge in uninhibited vengefulness. For he is trying to change the course of a river, while Sidorov from the Petersburg OMON is merely riding with the current and heightening the fear all round.
School
We didn't just bump into Sidorov, by the way. We were sent to talk to him by the women living in the courtyard opposite his post in Grozny. They themselves were afraid to go. The Petersburg men are billeted in School No 18 and the mothers asked us to find out if they would leave the building before term begins on I September. The OMON men had no intention of going anywhere, but their commander was quite ready to "live" alongside the educational process in the school.
As proof of this, Sidorov invited us to tour the entire three-storey building. Whereupon it became clear that no co-existence of this kind would be possible. The former classroom walls were now a mural of soldiers' comments. The kindest of these read: ALL WOLVES DESERVE A DOG'S DEATH. The rest were obscenities from floor to ceiling, outlining in graphic terms what should be done to finish off the Chechens. It was a vivid textbook of ethnic hatred, past which Sidorov had marched as proudly as if they were tapestries on display at the Hermitage Museum.
The section of this textbook the pupils would pass in the school corridor as they went to their classrooms was especially elaborate and vicious. So children from Lenin Street in Grozny will not go back to their desks this autumn.
We discussed all this with Sidorov. He shrugged his shoulders and tried to persuade us that he was only a minor figure in the war and not himself to blame. But it's a matter of choice, isn't it? If we choose, we may find ourselves in an ambiguous position. It's up to us. We can also choose to find a way out.
CHECHNYA