March 27, 2000
These are appalling stories. Sometimes people say that to be on the safe side you should divide them by 10, or 100 or 200; but divide them as we may, they are still stories about atrocities.
On grey UN humanitarian aid blankets covering concrete barricades, a boy and girl are sitting, hunched and huddled. We try to talk about the future. I keep going on about prospects, the larger issues, the international dimension: “What plans do you have? What are you going to do with your lives?” Their replies relate only to the specific, the here and now: “Tomorrow we are going to the mountains to look for wild leeks. That is all there is to eat.”
I try again, about when things get better, what they hope for, about ordinary, human things: “Are there wild flowers already blooming in the mountains?” “There are unexploded bombs there, and a lot of soldiers,” comes the response, unhurried and unemotional, but behind the words hatred flutters like a banner.
These are Aslanbek and Rezeda, a brother and sister aged 18 and 20. In the First War they were in their early teens, in the Second they have hardened. If Rezeda still manages a fleeting smile, Aslanbek is as gloomy as the dirty concrete surrounding him. They both sat through all the bombing and shelling in cellars, until February 5 when their personal drama came to a head with the brutal killing by federal soldiers of their father, Salman Bishayev. He was 54 and was killed by federal troops in the courtyard of No. 3, Kislovodskaya Street in Grozny during a security sweep in Aldy, Chernorechiye District. They killed him and dragged the body away, and only after a 13-day search did Aslanbek and Rezeda’s elder sister, 30-year-old Larisa, find what they were dutifully looking for. It was she who scraped Salman’s brains from the walls into a bag in order to bury them. Then they all fled to Ingushetia.
Now home is a quarry on the outskirts of Karabulak, where a building materials factory once flourished and where there are still many half-ruined stone storehouses. Along with 30 housemates, 23 of whom are children or young people aged between 15 and 22, Aslanbek and Rezeda have taken up residence in one of these boxes in this concrete wasteland. They jokingly call their shack “The Disco,” but there is no music or dancing here. The furniture consists of plank beds, and the 23 boys and girls sitting on them have no light in their eyes, and their arms hang listlessly by their sides. The Disco’s inhabitants have bonds of distant kinship and the shared experience of recent security sweeps in which their fathers and grandfathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles were tortured and shot.
“What do you usually talk about?”
“For days at a time we talk about who has been killed and how it was done, and where someone’s grave has been found. It is dreadful,” 17-year-old Fatima Doldayeva tells me. She graduated from Grozny No. 2 High School in late 1999 with a gold medal. What Fatima says is true. By evening the talk is more than you can take. In the refugee camps of Chechnya and Ingushetia what people mostly talk about nowadays is death.
Sultan Shuaipov hastened to Magas Airport in Ingushetia very early in the morning, even though everyone told him he was wasting his time. He had heard on the radio that a Council of Europe delegation would be stopping off briefly in Ingushetia, and was determined to meet these solicitous foreigners the moment they got off the plane and tell them everything.
Sultan looks very old although he turns out to be only 45. His head of grey hair twitches, a nervous tic which keeps his eyes on the move, and his body jerks periodically. He is profoundly disturbed. On February 20, having spent the entire First War in Grozny guarding his house, he had to gather up 51 bodies from Shefskaya and the neighbouring streets, Lines 3–8. Twenty-one of the bodies he managed to bury, after first giving each an individual tag. When he was physically incapable of burying any more he laid the remaining 30 in the inspection pit of a car maintenance business on Line 3.
All 51 had been brutally murdered in a so-called security sweep in the suburb of Novaya Katayama during the night of February 19. Most of them were Sultan’s friends and neighbours. This is believed to have been the doing of the notorious 205 Brigade, retaliating for losses in the previous war.
On February 19 soldiers had come to Sultan’s street, Line 5, and warned local people who emerged from their cellars, “Get away as quickly as you can. The bunch coming after us intend to kill the lot of you.”
“The soldiers moved on,” Sultan relates, “but we, my neighbours and I, just laughed at them. Very clever! They want us all to run away so they can take their time looting our houses. Behind these soldiers came a rapid reaction squad. They were very decent lads, and again nothing happened. We relaxed. The nightmare began as night was falling. Federal soldiers of some description entered our streets in the twilight. My neighbour, Seit-Selim from Dunaiskaya Lane, was one of the first to be shot. He was about 50. He just asked a soldier what kind of troops they were. In the morning, when we were burying Selim in his courtyard, the same troops came by. They said, “What did he die from?” The soldier who shot him was the one who asked us that. We replied, “Shrapnel.” We knew by then that if we told the truth they would shoot us too. The one who had killed Seit-Selim burst out laughing at our lying. He was a young fellow, and he really enjoyed the idea that we old men were scared of him.
“But to return to the previous evening. When 74-year-old Said Zubayev came out of No. 36 on Line 5 he ran into the federals and the soldiers made him dance, firing their rifles at his feet to make him jump. When the old man got tired, they shot him. Thanks be to Allah! Said never knew what they did to his family.”
Sultan falls silent, raising his head very high, not wanting the treacherous tears to run down his cheeks. Nobody must see his weakness. With a toss of his head he drives them back into their ducts and continues.
“At about nine at night, an infantry fighting vehicle broke into the Zubayevs’ courtyard, taking the gates off their hinges. Very efficiently and without wasting words the soldiers brought out of the house and lined up by the steps 64-year-old Zainab, the old man’s wife, their 45-year-old daughter, Malika (the wife of a colonel in the Russian militia); Malika’s little daughter, Amina, aged eight; Mariet, another daughter of Said and Zainab, 40 years old; their 44-year-old nephew, Said Saidakhmed Zubayev; 35-year-old Ruslan, the son of Said and Zainab; his pregnant wife Luiza; and their eight-year-old daughter Eliza. There were several bursts of machine-gun fire and they were all left dead in front of the family home. None of the Zubayevs survived except for Inessa, Ruslan’s 14-year-old daughter. She was very pretty, and before the massacre the soldiers carefully set her to one side, then dragged her off with them.
“We looked desperately for Inessa but it was as if she had vanished into thin air,” Sultan says. “We think they must have raped her and then buried her somewhere. Otherwise she would have come back to bury her dead. That same night Idris, the Headmaster of School No. 55, was killed. First they battered him against a wall for a long time and broke all his bones, then they shot him in the head. In another house we found, side by side, an 84-year-old Russian woman and her 35-year-old daughter, Larisa, a well-known lawyer in Grozny. They had both been raped and shot. The body of 42-year-old Adlan Akayev, a Professor of Physics at the Chechen State University, was sprawled in the courtyard of his house. He had been tortured. The beheaded body of 47-year-old Demilkhan Akhmadov had had its arms cut off too. It was one of the features of the operation in Novaya Katayama that they cut people’s heads off. I saw several bloodstained chopping blocks. On Shevskaya Street there was a block with an axe stuck in it, and a woman’s head in a red scarf on the block. Alongside, on the ground, also headless, was a man’s body. I found the body of a woman who had been beheaded and had her stomach ripped open. They had stuffed a head into it. Was it hers? Someone else’s?”
What did people do the morning after the pogrom? On February 20, the men who had survived tore strips of clothing from the victims and tied them to branches of the trees under which they had buried them, so that later, after the war, people would be able to find the graves of their kinsfolk. Novaya Katayama, where so many trees are festooned now with scraps of cloth, wholly lives up to its strange Japanese name. In Japan they tie colored ribbons to branches as a sign of remembrance of someone they loved and still love.
“But why didn’t you flee Grozny when you had the opportunity? Why didn’t you get out to Ingushetia, you, and the Zubayevs, and Professor Akayev, and Idris, and Larisa the lawyer, and all the others who died?”
Sultan’s answer is devastating: “We often talked about it in the cellars while we were being shelled. We really believed the generals were telling the truth when they said that after the federal troops came, life would get back to normal. That gave us hope that things would get better, that is why we guarded our houses. We wanted to be first in line to get back to work after the liberation.”
They believed us! They trusted us! So we killed them!
Sultan went to the airport to do his bit but no delegation from the Council of Europe arrived. Instead some senior officials from Moscow emerged from their plane and right there, on the runway, got into cars sent to meet them, and that was that. Nobody listened to what Sultan had to say. “I suppose I should have doused myself with petrol to get their attention,” he says seriously, and slouches off, a lonely old Chechen who buried 21 bodies and hadn’t the strength to bury the other 30. His head bobs about more than ever, and every few moments he has to raise his hands to stop his hat falling off.
“How am I going to get through the checkpoints and back to Chechnya now? With a passport like this the federals will see immediately that somebody has tried to shoot me and are bound to arrest me. If I tell them the truth, they are even more certain to shoot me.” Kheyedi Makhauri, a refugee from Grozny, can barely speak and talks haltingly, but she desperately wants everyone she meets to see her red booklet. It really is an extraordinary sight: you can view the world through two bullet holes shot in her passport. The young Georgian woman who looks out at you from page 2 of the perforated ID has such delicate features, such an interesting face and exotic slant to her eyes, that you can hardly bear to look from the photo to the original standing in front of you today.
Kheyedi is crying. She knows exactly what you are thinking, and is certain she is doomed, that she will never be able to return to Grozny. She is afraid of people in uniform.
Her story is straightforward and appalling. Throughout the war she and her five children have lived far from home, in the hill village of Nesterovskaya in Ingushetia, under someone else’s roof. When she heard on television that Grozny had been liberated, she decided to return and see how her house at No. 201 Pugachev Street had fared. She wanted to see whether it would be possible to move back. She set off with Larisa Dzhabrailova, a Russian and mother of four who had been her friend and neighbour both in Grozny and Nesterovskaya. On the way they were joined by Nura, a Chechen acquaintance on a similar mission. They reached Kheyedi’s house the next day and found it was now a mere shell. They were on their way to look at where Larisa had lived when the thing which people most dread in Chechnya today happened: the three of them stumbled upon soldiers who were in the course of looting. The soldiers were loading mattresses, chairs and blankets into an infantry fighting vehicle, and when the women unexpectedly came out of a side street they came face to face with the marauders.
Kheyedi, Larisa and Nura were promptly arrested, blindfolded and bundled into the vehicle. A little later they were set down and ordered to walk forwards, holding hands. Then they were ordered to remove the blindfolds and found themselves against the wall of a ruined house. They knew immediately what was going to happen. First the federals shot Larisa. She pleaded for mercy, shouting, “I am Russian, I was born in Moscow Province! We saw nothing! We won’t say anything!” She was 47 and died instantly, without suffering. Next they shot Nura. She too pleaded, “I’m only 43! I have three sons like you!”
“I was third,” Kheyedi concludes her story. “They pointed a rifle at me and everything stopped. I came to when I felt a sharp pain, and only later realized what had happened. They had shot but failed to kill me. I’d been unconscious and the soldiers must not have checked if I was still alive. They dragged our bodies together, threw a nearby mattress over us and set it on fire. They wanted the bodies burned so nobody would know what had happened, and that was the pain which woke me. It was the fire licking at my leg. The soldiers had gone. I crawled out from under the mattress and just lay there for a long time before deciding to crawl away. I was found unconscious in the road by two Chechen women going to milk their cow, and came to in a cellar. There were other wounded people there and somebody found a bus for us and sent us all to Ingushetia.”
I met this woman who had faced execution in Ward 1 of Sunzha District Hospital, in Ordzhonikidze on the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia. Kheyedi is very ill now. Her body was riddled with bullets and she has a lot of pain from where a bullet passed right through her back, damaging the nerves. The upper part of her body is completely paralysed and she has no sensation in her arms. It is too early to make any prognosis.
“Why did they do it?” asks Kheyedi’s 13-year-old daughter, who is looking after her. “She is so kind and gentle. She just really wanted to go back home.”
A nurse comes in and begins bandaging Kheyedi. Her belly is covered with scabs over the holes left by her “passport” bullets. She does not remember what happened, unconscious as she was after the shooting, but guesses that before they left the soldiers riddled her stomach with bullets. That is where the bag containing her passport was hanging.
It is time to return to the quarry, to Aslanbek and Rezeda. I am sitting with them on those concrete blocks again and the boy is telling me about atrocities the soldiers committed in Aldy. They didn’t just murder, they desecrated the bodies. His father had every one of his gold teeth pulled out, along with all the others. During the “security sweep” their neighbour, old Grandmother Rakiat, had her mouth ripped open to her ears as they tried unsuccessfully to tear her jaw out.
Rezeda sketches a map of their street to show how the troop detachment advanced. “This is our house,” she says, “and this one belonged to our neighbour, an old-age pensioner called Sultan Temirov. Contract soldiers decapitated him and took his head away. Somebody told us they usually take the head if they suspect someone is related to resistance fighters. Before the war Sultan’s brother was the Speaker in the Chechen Parliament. That is why they threw the rest of his body to the dogs. After the federals had moved on to other houses, the neighbours managed to save his left leg and groin from the frenzied dogs. That is all they were able to bury.”
Witnesses believe more than 100 people were killed during the security sweep in Aldy. These are the only available figures so far. The greatest suffering was visited on those still living in Voronezhskaya and Matasha Mazayev Streets. (Matasha Mazayev was a Hero of the Soviet Union during the Second World War who was born and grew up in this village.) It befell them entirely by chance, simply because those are the first streets you come to when entering Aldy.
Rezeda continues, picturing the soldiers’ progress through the houses. “They did us, then Granny Rakiat and Sultan Temirov. Then they moved on to the Khaidarovs and shot the father and son there, Gulu and Vakhu. The old man was over 80. Beyond them was Avalu Sugaipov, an elderly man who had refugees living with him. We hadn’t even had time to learn their names, but they were two men, a woman, and a five-year-old girl. All the grown-ups they burned alive with a flame-thrower, including the mother in front of her daughter. Before executing them the soldiers gave the little girl a tin of condensed milk and said, “Run off and play.” I imagine she has lost her wits. The Musayevs lived at No. 120 Voronezhskaya Street; they shot old Yakub, his son Umar, and his nephews, Yusup, Abdrakhman and Suleiman. The only one they didn’t kill was Khasan, an old man who owned the house. He was considered the Elder of the whole of Chernorechiye, but they didn’t just leave him alone. The federals kicked the bodies of the Musayevs together and forced the old man to lie across all five of them and not to move. Then they fired a burst of semi-automatic fire and wounded him. They told him if he got up they would kill him, and then they stood around smoking. Khasan didn’t move and they went off, pleased with themselves. I can’t go on!”
Rezeda runs outside. Aslanbek crawls over the bunks into a far corner and turns away. Their elder sister, Larisa, takes up the story. She tells of deeds beyond the imagining of anyone but a psychopath. She tells how the trees in their street are now decorated with monstrous bloody blotches where neighbours were put up against them and shot. “You can’t clean it off! That’s why I will never be able to go back there. I just couldn’t live beside those trees where they murdered people I knew and loved. When we left Aldy we saw the men who had survived crying like women; young men’s beards had turned grey. When we were in Ingushetia I saw a television report on the security sweep operation in Aldy. They showed a female sniper they said was Chechen who had supposedly been shooting at the federals from houses in Aldy. They claimed that was why the reprisals were so severe. I couldn’t believe it. It was Tanya Ryzhaya. Everyone in Chernorechiye knows she is an alkie, and, incidentally, Russian. For more than two years her arms have been shaking so violently she couldn’t hold a spoon. We had to feed her, and here they are saying Tanya Ryzhaya was the justification for this whole nightmare in Aldy!”
A boy of about seven jumps down from the bench. He points a wooden rifle at me and shouts, “Are you a Russian?” The grown-ups shush him, but he yells, “You are a fascist!”
The war we are waging in the Caucasus dishonors our nation from top to bottom. Do you wonder how we can ever atone for this? How long it will take? Remember, Germany spent half a century trying to free itself from the tatters of its national disgrace. Throughout those decades, Russian children were playing games of fighting the Germans, and the grown-ups encouraged them. Are not we the Germans now? How long will it be before Chechen children stop playing games in which the most unpopular boy is the one who has to be the Russian?
January 31, 2000
The crusted wounds look painted on. The shaven head of a semiconscious child moves feverishly to and fro on an over-laundered greyish-brown institutional pillow. No groaning or whimpering, only a silence deeply unsettling in someone so seriously injured.
“She has small shrapnel fragments in her head, but don’t waste your time on that,” the emotionless voice of a middle-aged woman instructs me from a dark corner of the ward. “Much worse is that now she is an orphan. And take a look under the blanket!”
The shaven skull stubbornly continues trying to dispel its delirium. The little girl is five, her face jaundiced and sallow. Her name is Liana Shamsudinova, and from time to time her eyes flicker half open and stray disapprovingly over the ward without coming to rest on anyone. Her left hip is not covered by the blanket and is worryingly streaked with pus leaking from beneath an enormous dressing.
“You Russians count her as another resistance fighter,” the monologue from the corner goes on. “The girl needs specialist treatment if she isn’t to be crippled for the rest of her life, but she isn’t going to get that here, and we don’t get sent to clinics anywhere else in Russia, because we are Chechens.”
My invisible informant had correctly identified the most important issue that day. The setting was Sunzha District Hospital No. 1 on the Chechnya–Ingushetia border. Until recently every day saw a steady inflow of those most severely injured in the war zone in the security sweeps, raids, repeat raids and repeat security sweeps. Hundreds of people with amputated limbs: women, children, the elderly, Ingushes, Chechens and Russians. The wounds of most were neglected and festering because they had had to shelter two or three days in cellars waiting for the bombing to stop, unable to leave their villages. Then they had to wait as long again for soldiers at the checkpoints to relent and let them cross over into Ingushetia.
The result has been a wretched carnival of infection in the Sunzha hospital, destroying any remaining nerve endings. Along the corridors, spectral young girls swathed in bandages shamble with unfeeling, lifeless arms and legs. The nerves in some limbs have been severed, while others have succumbed to gangrene.
Who will pay for the intensive courses of treatment they will need for years to come? The same state budget which today is funding the war that crippled them in the first place? Where is our valiant state, conducting this war in accordance with its “overall plan,” expecting to find the money to provide artificial limbs for the hundreds of newly disabled it has created? Which of its plans contains the budgetary provision for that? Who is going to accept responsibility for the thousands of civilians whose health has been taken from them in the course of this fighting?
I hate battle-pieces. In paintings, as in life, detail is what matters most. It is the detail which gives the measure of our humanity. How we react to the tragedy of one small person accurately reflects our attitude towards a whole nationality; and increasing the numbers doesn’t change much. Little Liana Shamsudinova was born in 1994 in Martan Chu, Urus Martan District, and the recent details of her life are entirely typical of today’s Chechnya.
Fleeing the bombing, her family lived from October to December 1999 in a refugee camp in the hill village of Assinovskaya. From mid-December the refugees came under increasing pressure from Migration Service officials, who did not want them concentrating in one locality and urged them to return to their home villages, assuring them that peace had returned and their area was secure. On December 29 Liana’s mother, Malika Shamsudinova, finally fell for these lies, the family went back to Martan Chu, and just four days later Liana was orphaned. On January 3, 2000 at 8:20 p.m. their home on Pervomaiskaya Street suffered a direct hit from a tank shell.
There was no military engagement at that time in Martan Chu, but the soldier who fired the shell knew perfectly well what he was doing. He fired just for the hell of it. By current standards in Chechnya 8:20 p.m. is late at night. The federal command has ordained that absolutely everybody must remain in their houses. They are not even allowed out into their own courtyards to relieve themselves, on pain of being shot without warning. This actually happened in Novy Sharoy to Mahomadov, a refugee from Naur, who ventured out just as dusk was falling and was shot in his doorway by a sniper.
Liana’s house was wilfully targeted by someone well aware that it was inhabited. A lit oil stove, that surest sign of life, was visible through the windows. There is every reason to suppose that the shelling was an expression of drunken exuberance on the part of the tank troops deployed on the outskirts of Martan Chu. There was no other firing on the village that night. The soldiers simply loosed off a shell and their unruly emotions were placated.
“They were celebrating the New Year,” Liana’s aunt, Raisa Davletmurzayeva, surmises. This is what the villagers also concluded.
The result was that Liana’s mother, Malika, was killed. She was 28 and was breast-feeding her youngest son, Zelimkhan. The shrapnel split her head in two, and the neighbours who ran to the Shamsudinovs’ house found her body cooling, her breast exposed, and Zelimkhan pressed to it.
The little boy’s position was unchanged in death, firmly clasped in his dead mother’s arms. From beneath the remains of the roof the neighbours retrieved the bodies of Liana’s elder sister, seven-year-old Diana, and, next to her, of her 18-year-old aunt, Roza Azizayeva, who had come to help about the house. The neighbours carried Liana out, alive and crying. There were no other survivors and today she is an orphan, her father having disappeared somewhere in Ukraine after going to Belaya Kalitva in search of work a year ago.
Since then Liana has not spoken to anyone, and she was certainly not going to speak in Russian to me. She has been in shock since January 3, and only calls out from time to time in Chechen for her mother. In her lucid moments fellow patients have tried to communicate that her mother is dead. It is a Chechen tradition not to conceal misfortune, to teach children to be brave, even when a very young child is facing a lifetime of having to be brave.
“I will look after her of course,” Raisa tells me, “but there is a limit to what I can do. In the Sunzha hospital we had to buy everything ourselves, hypodermic syringes, drugs, drip-feeds. She needs a lot of medical care. Where am I to find the money for that?” By now we are talking in a different hospital, in Galashkino, a tiny primitive facility with only 40 beds. Nearly all the wounded have just been transferred here from Sunzha, which is closed for a thorough disinfection. Contagion spreading from neglected “Chechen” wounds had reached crisis levels.
Liana, although blameless, is also a carrier of infection, and now finds herself in the markedly worse conditions and reduced nursing care of Galashkino Hospital. The wards are cramped and overcrowded, there is little equipment, and it is freezing cold because the heating system is useless. With her major gangrenous fractures, Liana is unlikely to recover in such conditions. How can people survive when the Empire, sweeping aside all in its path, declines to rest its baleful gaze on those who happen to be in its way?
On January 4, the Shamsudinov family funeral was held in Martan Chu. In full view of the tank crews basking in the Caucasian sunshine, all the women and children they had murdered were borne to the cemetery. Not one of them even came to apologize for their New Year high spirits.
Similarly vile, but even more cynical behaviour was displayed in Shali. On January 9, the administration of this district center assembled people in the central square to issue the first pensions and benefit payments from the Russian-installed government of Nikolai Koshman. There is a school facing the square and Zarema Sadulayeva, its Deputy Headmistress and maths teacher, had also gathered the children to finish giving out New Year and Kurban-Bairam (Eid ul-Adha) presents.
They had no idea that at that same moment resistance fighters were entering the far end of this very large village. A tactical missile came crashing down, not on the enemy detachment but straight into the crowded central square. The fighters melted away, but in the square many people died or were severely injured. How many? Dozens? Hundreds? There is a large discrepancy in the figures given for the simple reason that the surviving villagers could not dig graves fast enough and many buried their relatives together, so that there were fewer graves than casualties. It was another Guernica, comparable in horror to the infamous missile attack on the central market in Grozny last October.
The nightmare was repeated in Shali the following day. Ali-bek Keriev, Zarema’s husband, took his severely injured wife away from the hospital, fearing that it too might be targeted. He asked his sister, a doctor, to come and care for her. Alas, 40-year-old Kisa was killed during an ensuing mortar bombardment, and since January 9 Ali-bek has been unable to sleep. He maintains a full-time vigil at his wife’s bedside. On January 13, he managed to move her, pregnant and close to death, to the central hospital in Nazran but the outlook is not good. He can’t bear to look at her dreadful wounds and watch her convulsions. She desperately needs powerful, intensive-care drugs but as usual they are in short supply. In his sleepless nights Ali-bek writes poetry, a personal appeal to the Being who may or may not be sitting on high observing everything that happens here below. All Zarema had done was to go out to distribute presents to children.
Whatever appeals may be addressed to the Almighty, relations between civilians and federal troops are just as soulless in Shali as in Martan Chu. There will be no inquiry into the killings in Martan Chu, the massacre of a family not meriting a criminal investigation. No prosecutor will question the shameless lies which tricked the Shamsudinovs into returning to their village. The implication is that the aftermath of the New Year crime is the personal problem of this luckless little girl and her Aunt Raisa, who now faces the task of trying to bring her up. Raisa views the future with unconcealed foreboding; in order to treat the child’s injuries adequately she would need a lot of money for the proper drugs, a top-class clinic and consultants, things she is not going to find in Martan Chu or anywhere else in Chechnya or Ingushetia today. Be that as it may, the Empire refuses to make an exception: Chechens are not allowed beyond the borders of Chechnya and Ingushetia. Not a single general is to be found with the decency to admit that he bears any guilt for Liana’s suffering, or that it is his duty to help her.
The situation is identical in respect of Shali: no half-witted gun-layer has been blamed for devastating the central square, no criminal charges are being brought for the murder of civilians. Nobody has so much as apologized.
Madina and Alikhan Avtorkhanov are cousins. Their mothers Khava and Aishat are sisters. Khava lived in Samashki and Aishat in Novy Sharoy in Achkhoy-Martan District. They were not far from each other, but the shelling left them separated by a whirlwind of deadly lead flying in all directions.
In this war family reunions take place outside operating theatres. The sisters met in the treatment unit of Sunzha Hospital. Khava was at the bedside of 22-year-old Madina, while Aishat was looking after her younger son, 18-year-old Alikhan. (Her elder son died during random shelling of their village during the First Chechen War.) Madina, only recently a beautiful young girl but now worn out by operations and pain, her parchment-colored face and body a shadow of what they were, has almost certainly been permanently crippled by the injuries she sustained on October 27. Some of her bone has been cut away and they need to find somewhere for her to have an operation, and then somewhere for her to convalesce because their house at 27 Kooperativnaya Street has been destroyed.
The history of Alikhan’s illness is no less grim. One leg has already been amputated above the knee as a result of the curse of gangrene. For several days the soldiers refused to allow the wounded to be taken out of their village. He has already lost the big toe on his other foot and so far attempts to stop the gangrene from spreading have been unsuccessful. Alikhan is a quiet, thoughtful young man who holds Russia responsible for destroying his life on October 23, the day he was injured. He has no plans for the future now. His only distraction is when one of the men visiting the hospital picks up his stump of a body and takes him for a “walk” along the corridors.
Alikhan tells me that none of his classmates are still alive. He left school along with eight other boys and eight girls. All the boys have since been killed. He is alive, but crippled. Everybody was sheltering in their cellars during relentless shelling of Novy Sharoy. When things quietened down at around nine in the morning Alikhan’s classmates quietly came together beside his house at 12 Tsentralnaya Street to discuss what they should do. Mortars were fired at them and all except Alikhan were killed. Who is going to provide the complex, expensive artificial limbs he now needs?
“Nobody, of course,” Alikhan says. “I am a Chechen. I can just crawl from now until the day I die.”
“Why do you get so het up about them?” the officers demanded when I tried to find out who would be responsible for supplying the artificial limbs and treatment required after these wicked acts against the civilian population. “They are not human beings, they are little furry animals. Don’t worry, they’ll soon give birth to plenty more new little furry animals.”
My present assignment to report on the war in the North Caucasus has immersed me in the suffering of our people, interspersed with this kind of insolent frontline and near-frontline cynicism. The war-zone slang is little better than what is going on there. They refer to Chechen men, even the resistance fighters, with the more or less respectable label of “Chechies.” All other Chechens, particularly boys, children, and young people generally they call “little furry animals.” Who does? The entire military and administrative infrastructure waging and servicing the present war. Even the hospital doctors have this wretched expression on the tip of their tongue. It is bad enough coming from sergeant majors, but a complete disgrace coming from the intelligentsia.
When this nightmare was inaugurated in September 1999, one did secretly hope in the depths of one’s heart that the state would catch terrorists and refrain from waging war against everyone in Chechnya. Some hope! Today it is obvious that the policy from the outset was genocide. The genocide of one people, however, soon leads to the genocide of another, a truism borne out through the centuries by successive generations of invaders and those invaded. For the totalitarian empire being constructed in front of our eyes, punitive expeditions give life meaning. Today one group is sent to the guillotine, tomorrow a different one. The day after tomorrow it will be the turn of little Liana, and later still, we need have no doubt, it will be our turn.
Perhaps the genocide would be justified if the villains who grew rich by holding hostages to ransom and selling oil illegally were totally eradicated? There is no chance of that happening. The kidnappers are quietly resuming their business under a different guise. Petrol tankers from the liberated regions of Chechnya are again turning up in Plievo in Ingushetia. Refining continues at full tilt. The Chechen oil irregulars have sat out the cataclysm and are back in business.
But what about the so-called Wahhabis, the Islamist extremists? Perhaps they have been melted down by the flamethrowers, or have slunk away to caves in the mountains? Wrong again! On January 18, Idris Satuyev, a Chechen refugee, Headmaster of the school in Alkhan-Yurt, was shot at point blank range by unidentified individuals in Maiskoye, Ingushetia, just for wearing a tie. “I told them that had been my custom throughout a long working life in the school. My lifestyle is European and secular,” the headmaster wheezes. He has survived but is now very ill in the overcrowded Nazran Hospital, in Ward 3 of the accident department. Idris lies there dreaming of the only way out of his situation: to emigrate once and for all from our sixth of the world’s land surface; no longer to be a Chechen obliged to live anywhere near us Russians.
June 9, 2003
On June 15, 2003, 17 people died and 16 were injured as the result of an explosion on a bus transporting military and civilian personnel to the military air base at Mozdok. The attack was carried out by a female suicide bomber. On August 1, as the result of another terrorist attack at the Mozdok military hospital, 51 people died and more than 100 were wounded.
Once again, words flood from the television screen … “suicide bomber,” “that bastard Basayev,” “Maskhadov knew,” “zombified by centers of international terrorism beyond the borders of Russia …” Instead of analysis, primitive ideological war cries: “Enemies of the political process, trying to keep it from developing;” “We will deal with Basayev and there will be no more suicide bombers.” Oversimplification of the problem to a level which only moves us further away from taking a sensible decision on how to deal with this new phase of Russia’s Chechen tragedy.
So, what is really going on? What is happening to Chechen women in this fourth year of the Second Chechen War? Do they really need to be brainwashed and “zombified” by centers of international terrorism?
No, actually they don’t. No external input is required to make a Chechen woman decide to become a disposable terrorist bomber, because the work has already been done. A typical Chechen woman today really is a zombie: she has been turned into one by the grief in which she has been immersed for year after year, by the environment surrounding her family. She has been trained to be a suicide bomber not in foreign training camps but by the brutality shown by the warring sides towards the civilian population in Chechnya. This is what has engendered an overriding desire in thousands of mothers, wives and sisters to take their own cruel revenge for their disappeared sons, husbands and brothers.
She does this not because of the dictates of a Chechen form of Islam or the traditional adats or laws which govern life in her country, but out of despair. The Constitution adopted by referendum on March 23 has only increased the numbers queuing up to join the women’s brigade for these special operations because there were high hopes that it might change something. Alas, the new Constitution has proved to be just so much paper. It has not stopped the Army’s anarchy and is protecting nobody.
The number of civilian men and women “disappeared” by the federals during the spring of 2003 has been far higher than during the same period last year. Worse, the authors of the fake political process leading up to March 23 unforgivably promised those searching for their abducted relatives that if they would just vote, some of the disappeared would return home; they would be released from prison. “The Kremlin has given the go-ahead,” they lied. “Just vote!”
Nobody returned, so let us not delude ourselves that the increase in terrorism since the referendum is a coincidence which Basayev is exploiting. It is all far more complicated than that.
Who is she, today’s Chechen woman? The traditional upbringing of a Chechen woman is ascetic in the extreme. Her obligation is to endure everything without complaint. She should not speak of her personal feelings. For her, virtue is concealment, the ability to hide her feelings deep down, not to show them – not only publicly but even at home in front of her closest male relatives. All her turbulent emotions are bottled up. But can that last for ever?
The devotion and love of a Chechen sister for her brothers, and especially of a Chechen mother for her sons, is passionate and absolute. The strength of feeling is volcanic, and most Chechen women believe that with the loss of a brother, a son or a husband their own life comes to an end.
During the first and second years of the war these private volcanoes did not erupt. The Chechen women were waiting in the hope that everything would come right. They said they had faith that their menfolk would fulfil their traditional role. A Chechen boy is brought up to believe that a man’s first duty is to defend woman and home. Unlike a girl, a boy can be spoilt; much can be overlooked by a woman in return for his willingness to die protecting her, if that should be required.
That is not what happened. The war dragged on, until finally all the traditions collapsed under the pressure of the style of war so mercilessly imposed by the federals. Chechen men found themselves having to be defended by the women. It was the women who haggled in bazaars in order to feed their families, and threw themselves under Army vehicles in an attempt to stop them kidnapping their men; while the men mostly stayed out of sight in cellars in order not to be abducted, “swept” or blown to pieces.
This is how Chechen women were propelled into the foreground of the struggle. They were radicalized more quickly than the men hiding behind them, even if the men continue to believe they still have at least some measure of authority. The Chechen woman finally found a way of letting her powerful emotions burst out. The volcano erupted with molten lava whose bounds are only those it sets itself, vigilante justice as the only effective response to unbridled violence. Women rose up to defend their families, inflicting personal retribution on those they themselves pronounced guilty of murder. They chose to die rather than go on living, unable to defend their sons, brothers, or husbands.
I can already hear my opponents protesting, “But Basayev claimed responsibility.”
Of course he did. He will claim responsibility for anything he can. The terrorist mantle of Salman Raduev, who “died” in prison, had to be inherited by somebody. Far more important is not who claims responsibility, but that there are women prepared to carry out the acts for which somebody else subsequently claims responsibility. There is no shortage of women prepared to blow themselves up, and their ranks are growing the longer the Army’s atrocities continue.
But what about the Chechen men? After the suicide bombings in Znamenka and Iliskhan-Yurt on May 12 and 14 many spoke harshly against the women who carried out those attacks. “They have humiliated us,” they said. “They have shown us we are impotent.”
And so they did. They did humiliate the men and show them they were impotent. The reversal of traditional roles was complete. The women had independently dotted the i’s. They would no longer rely on the men, discuss matters with them first, ask their advice. Instead, they would decide things for themselves, very quietly and privately, and the world would see only the result.
That’s the reality, but everybody keeps prattling on about al-Qaeda, that lifebelt for failed politicians.
What is to be done now? We really cannot take seriously the security agencies’ assurances that they are reinforcing checkpoints and sealing the administrative border of Chechnya, and that everything is “under control.”
In the first place, nothing is under control other than the sloshing of black market currency through the checkpoints. In the second place, imposing even more severe restrictions will not stop women participating in terrorist attacks. In the third place, it is absurd to demand that Maskhadov should call upon the women to abandon these tactics: the women have reached boiling point because of the actions of many men, including Maskhadov. They will simply ignore him.
In the fourth place, finally and most crucially, the mind of someone bent on retribution functions extremely efficiently. You will not keep up with it or be able to guess which weak point it has identified. Checkpoints and checking everybody’s documents will be ineffective against women carrying explosives on their person. “We will pass through your checkpoints ‘pregnant,’ ” some of them say. “Your lot are not going to look under our skirts, and you can’t keep a gynaecologist at every checkpoint.”
The only solution is to overhaul Russia’s policy towards Chechnya. We need to take a step in their direction if we want to survive. This means a complete clamp-down on the Army’s anarchy. It means beginning peace negotiations (nominally between Maskhadov – if you can talk to Arafat you can talk to him – and nominally the Kremlin), under the watchful eye of authoritative international observers, in order to effect a rapid demilitarisation of the Republic, cessation of hostilities, and bringing of war criminals to justice. The sole result of the referendum was to tack the title of “Acting President of the Chechen Republic” on to Akhmat-hadji Kadyrov. It is self-evident that Kadyrov, as someone incapable of anything other than feathering his own nest, should be removed.
The future political status of Chechnya? There will be time to think about that later. First, let’s survive.
Nobody can doubt that it will take a hero to disentangle this mess, and heroes are currently in short supply. We need, nevertheless, to find such a hero, because we have already burned every other bridge.
February 16, 2004
By March 1, officials promised Putin, there would be no refugee camps outside Chechnya. Anybody who persisted in their reluctance to move from a camp in Ingushetia to a camp in Chechnya would be “entitled” under the Government’s Guarantee to have their water, electricity and gas cut off, and would lose the right to medical care and education. Glory be to the Guarantee! That stout defender of the Guarantee, Ella Pamfilova, Chairwoman of the President’s Commission on Human Rights, has been appointed to oversee this massive violation of human rights and of the Constitution.
It would be difficult to call Okruzhnaya a township, a suburb, or even a farm. The most truthful name for it is simply a camp, consisting of unpainted huts hastily knocked together. There is no gas, no water, and there are no amenities, not even in the courtyards. The workers look at me warily for reasons which become apparent later. The so-called Renovation Board, which rules the roost here, is chronically incapable of paying them for their work, but takes the ideological approach: “Build a settlement! Just do it! Putin has spoken!”
“What work is that?” I ask Supian Sambayev, who introduces himself as the site foreman. He and I walk over an area strewn with wooden structures and a defunct lattice of rusting pipes which is the battlefield for the image of the President as Architect of Peace in Chechnya.
“For the houses,” the foreman insists grumpily. “They ought to pay us for them.”
“But what houses?”
Supian looks away. These half-finished shacks on the outskirts of Grozny have a history. They were hastily erected along the road shortly after last year’s flooding and were the material evidence of the budget resources allocated to aid the flood victims. Despite their desperate situation, the flood victims refused as one to move to this out-of-the-way site with no infrastructure. They decided they might as well stay in the ruins of their houses as move to a bare field.
Then the Chechen Government; Kadyrov’s Administration; Stanislav Iliasov, Minister for Chechnya; the Interior Ministry of the Russian Federation as represented by its Migration Service, which is responsible for forcing refugees out of Ingushetia and back into the zone of what the President calls the continuing “struggle against international terrorism;” two Boards for rebuilding, one in Grozny and the other in Moscow; all of them held a great big meeting and dreamed up a proposal to the Russian Government to turn this camp which the flood victims had spurned into, in Iliasov’s expression, an “excellent location for refugees choosing to return from Ingushetia.” It was a moment of pure bureaucratic black magic, although they didn’t tell you afterwards how they had done it. Commissions came from the capital and the Southern Federal Region. Grave gentlemen furrowed their statesmanlike brows, condemned the concrete floors which, according to the specification, were already covered with linoleum, and resolved that there should at least be floorboards.
They then pronounced the shacks (costed at 775,000 roubles apiece!) suitable for well-appointed occupation. Reports were sent to the Kremlin that everything was ready and only the wicked refugees, reeling under Maskhadov’s propaganda, were continuing to persist in refusing to enjoy their good fortune. The Kremlin set a deadline, March 1, before the election. The issue of the consequences of a war that had been started before the previous election was to be laid to rest. In January, Ella Pamfilova was sent here on behalf of Putin’s Administration to give her deeply sincere verdict.
“Pamfilova liked it. Why are you trying to stir things up?” the workers mutter darkly.
“Would you want to live here permanently yourselves?”
“What do you mean, permanently?” the foreman says. “It’s only for a time, until their own houses are rebuilt.”
“But you know yourself how things get rebuilt here! Has anybody gone back to their rebuilt houses yet?”
The brigade don’t reply. Nobody has gone back at all, and everyone knows it.
There are supposed to be two approaches to rebuilding in Chechnya. The first is to transfer money to people’s bank accounts and let them organise it themselves. The second is for the work to be done for you up to a set value, but for no money to pass through your own hands.
In reality these approaches merge like the confluence of two rivers. You don’t have to go far from Okruzhnaya to see the evidence. In fact, you only need to cross the road. The people living on Transportnaya Street are not those whom officialdom tried to force into the camp in Okruzhnaya after the River Sunzha burst its banks last year. The people here have experienced both the first and second approaches to “rebuilding.” They were supposedly paid compensation by the Government, and the relevant sums of money, to judge from the documents, were transferred to the citizens’ personal bank accounts so that they could repair their houses. But …
What do we see? The hovels are unchanged, only they have dried out. The occupants have patched them up themselves. The whole of Transportnaya Street looks like that. How were the payments to personal bank accounts made? Brigades arrived from the Grozny Board and said, “You are required to undertake work to a value of 771,000 roubles (the actual estimate by the Commission of the repair bill for a family whose name is known to Novaya gazeta), but we have to give the Kadyrov Administration a kickback, and also the Moscow Board, so we have had only 30 per cent of your money paid to us, and with that we can only put your roof back on.” Which they then did. The family signed for 771,000 roubles.
Things will be no better with the “rebuilt accommodation” for refugees returning from Ingushetia. Nobody doubts that the temporary huts in Okruzhnaya will become permanent dwellings the moment the refugees cross the threshold.
“Stop worrying. They will come and sort everything out themselves. Our people are hard workers. They have spent their lives doing casual labor elsewhere in Russia. We have knocked these houses up and they will take care of the rest. What’s wrong with that? Every family likes to do it their way. Isn’t that right?”
“Absolutely right, but it says here on the plan that there is a kitchen. Where is there any sign of that? A cooker?”
The foreman responds with a question of his own:
“And if there is a toilet here on the plan, does that mean we have to put in a WC pedestal even if there is no water?”
I hear the regular sound of hammering. Some way off a laborer is knocking together a chicken coop which is to be the refugees’ communal toilet.
“Excuse me, but you said yourself that there was going to be water.”
“Oh yes …” the foreman falters. “Only nobody knows when.”
“And when will they be getting a floor?” I ask, standing in one of the houses which is “completely finished.”
“That’s it,” he says, and points at what appears to be bare earth, or concrete. It’s difficult to tell under the layer of mud.
“But that’s just earth.”
“Well, what do you think they’ve got in their tents?”
The telephone is ringing and I know who it is. Vera, a Russian refugee from Grozny who is married to a Chechen. Her family, having lost their toehold in Grozny, have been languishing for over four years in a tent on the outskirts of the Ingush hill village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya.
“They drove us out of one camp,” Vera shouts through the “anti-terrorist” electronic jamming. “Now we are in another called Satsit, but they cut the water off here too yesterday. How are we supposed to live? Do they call this voluntary repatriation? Where are we supposed to go? To a new camp? Please, do something about it.”
“But Pamfilova came to see you,” I shout back in reply.
Our conversation is cut off, but I know that the travels through the North Caucasus of the Chairwoman of Putin’s Commission on Human Rights succeeded in bringing back to Moscow just one thing: legitimisation of the travesty being perpetrated, and an opportunity for the state’s leading lights to tell their VIP Western colleagues they have the situation under control, while continuing to trample all over the Constitution. Madame Pamfilova is a good-hearted woman, but she is now part of a state system insisting, against all logic, on sending refugees back to Chechnya. The bureaucrats are not prepared to listen to common sense. They want everyone out by March 1, so that before March 14, the date of the Russian presidential election, they will have had time to remove the tents, and their problem will have been solved. Why does it have to be like that?
One of the most persistent stereotypes of the Second Chechen War is that the refugees are enemies of Russia. They are not seen as living in tents because their own warm houses were bombed. They are not seen as having been deprived of their rights. They are not seen as innocent people unjustly accused.
They are enemies who must be crushed. They are part of Maskhadov’s power base, accomplices of the “international terrorism” which Putin has been fighting, is fighting now, and will continue to fight. To listen to the Army and the officials, you would think the refugees’ reluctance to return to Chechnya was solely because they want to be able to continue their propaganda against Putin’s policies to foreign journalists and human rights activists, who find it easier to get into Ingushetia than the closed zone of Chechnya.
This is the thinking behind the solution of the refugee problem whose apotheosis we are now witnessing. Victory at all costs. No negotiations or understanding. Cut off their gas and water and send them back to the security sweeps and the war. If they don’t do as they’re told, that’s their lookout. You don’t pussyfoot with the enemy.
A program of repression is being rolled out across Russia, sweeping aside everything in its path. It engenders resistance. Everything seems to be done in order to spite someone; everything is directed against someone. But against whom? Is it only against the refugees? No, it is directed also against you and me. History tells us that children from the reservations never forgive children from warm houses for their humiliating childhood.
July 5, 2004
First, the profiles of the candidates for the War Prize, awarded for unleashing and fomenting the Chechen tragedy of 1994–2004. It has been founded by Chechenskoye obshchestvo, unquestionably the best newspaper today published in Chechnya and Ingushetia, and the one most dynamically increasing its circulation. Its editor is Timur Aliev. Announcing the War Prize, Chechenskoye obshchestvo showed that it is also more in touch with the public mood in the North Caucasus than its competitors. The question, “Who bears the guilt for all this horror?,” is one people ask themselves when they wake, when they go to bed, and which they ask each other constantly.
The rules were that anybody could nominate a candidate, and also vote, the winners to be decided by a simple majority. The results of this popular poll exceeded all expectations in the accuracy of the choice, which testifies to high public awareness of the true nature of events. But of course, who else could the winners be if not Yeltsin and Dudayev? And who could be awarded the second prize, if not Yeltsin’s worthy successor, Putin; that No. 1 ideologist of blood-letting, journalist Mikhail Leontiev; and that lover of personal power and big money, Akhmat-hadji Kadyrov? Also, of course, Basayev who has given all the above invaluable assistance in discrediting the Chechen resistance and reducing it to the status of “forces of international terrorism,” thereby effectively eliminating any chance of its cause being espoused.
And the prizes? Those in second place, alas, get nothing but their negative rating. The winners of the first prize, however, receive certificates which they can collect from 52 Mutaliev Street, Nazran; a year’s subscription to Chechenskoye obshchestvo (very good analysis, we recommend it); and, most importantly, an all-expenses-paid three-day tour of the war zone in Chechnya. As Djohar Dudayev is no longer with us, Boris Yeltsin is duly awarded a six-day extreme memorial tour with an itinerary in whose construction he was actively involved.
February 28, 2005
The latest development in Russia’s history is that in the sixth year of the Second Chechen War the first Russo-Chechen declaration of intent to restore peace in the North Caucasus has been signed in London. It is in English, and is not available in Russian. It is called “The Road to Peace and Stability in Chechnya (the London Memorandum).” The signing took place on February 25, 2005 when women representing the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, after several unsuccessful attempts to find somewhere in Europe to discuss a peace settlement with Maskhadov’s representatives, finally came to London, the capital of the new Russian emigration. There they met with those whom Aslan Maskhadov had delegated to meet them on behalf of the Chechen resistance (Amina Saiev, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ichkeria, Akhmed Zakayev, Maskhadov’s Special Envoy in Europe, and Yaragi Abdullayev).
[The following account of the prehistory is taken from Anna Politkovskaya’s article, “The Struggle for Peace Is Deadly Dangerous,” Novaya gazeta, October 25, 2004.]
On October 9, a Saturday, when it usually becomes slightly quieter in the cramped Moscow office of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia and it is possible to think about something other than the immediate concerns of receiving soldiers, conscripts and their parents, Valentina Melnikova, a member of the Union’s Co-ordinating Committee, and Ida Kuklina, a member of the President’s Commission on Human Rights, sat down together. They discussed what is preoccupying nearly all the human rights organizations: the state authorities’ manifest inability to cope with the Chechen crisis, the continuing acts of terrorism, and what the Soldiers’ Mothers movement could do to change the situation. It was time to act.
Thus did the idea of writing an open letter to the field commanders of the Chechen resistance come into being. A further three days were spent revising and discussing it with members of the Committee, and on October 13 the following brief text was released to the news agencies:
We understand the cost of the armed violence in Chechnya; it involves immense and irreparable losses for the Chechen people. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or have disappeared without trace. There are refugees; ruins in place of cities and villages. Thousands of our sons, both soldiers and officers, have died. There have been hundreds of innocent victims of terror. A whole generation of young Chechens and Russian servicemen has been crippled by the experience of violence and lawlessness. Thousands of impoverished invalids are doomed to a life of penury. Tens of thousands of families grieve over the loss of those dear to them. Such is the cost of this war, which long ago exceeded the losses incurred during the Afghan War. Ten years of war have not brought the desired results either for you or for the federal authorities. Terror engenders anti-terror, and vice versa. Neither in Chechnya nor in Russia do people feel safe.
Commanders of the Chechen armed groups! You will kill or be killed without end. You will not be able to change anything until you are recognised as negotiating partners. The Soldiers’ Mothers appeal to those of you who truly seek the good of the Chechen people with a proposal to give peace a chance and open negotiations for a peaceful settlement. We are willing to travel anywhere, to meet those you authorise anywhere, in order only to halt this deadly race. In coming forward as the initiator of negotiations, we will make all necessary efforts to involve in the negotiation process representatives of the leadership of the Chechen Republic and the Russian Presidential Administration, inter-governmental and peace organizations, and influential and respected public figures. We await your reply.
Members of the Coordinating Council of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, Valentina Melnikova, Maria Fedulova, Natalia Zhukova.
The reply was not long in coming. The very next day Aslan Maskhadov communicated through Akhmed Zakayev, his envoy in Europe, that he and the fighters of the resistance welcomed the Soldiers’ Mothers’ initiative: for their part, they were willing to attend such a meeting. A day later, Zakayev rang Melnikova and their communications ceased to be only in writing. “We agreed that the meeting should take place in a European country in November,” Valentina explains briefly.
The Mothers flew to London on February 24. Their accommodation was decidedly acceptable: the Waldorf, one of central London’s most luxurious hotels, near the famous Waterloo Bridge across the Thames. They came down to the hotel lobby at about 5.00 p.m., at first behaving like secret agents behind enemy lines. They were very nervous. On this note the meeting began between Ida Kuklina’s group (and it was she, a colleague of Pamfilova and member of President Putin’s “Committee to Promote Civil Society,” who was running the Mothers’ show) and Zakayev’s team. The meeting was held in the hotel’s conference room from 5:00 p.m. until midnight. At first the Mothers demanded secret negotiations, which suggested that these representatives of civil society had secrets they wanted to keep from civil society. At 7.00 p.m., however, at the Chechens’ insistence, observers representing Novaya gazeta and Radio Liberty were admitted. It was clear that journalists, unlike politicians, just wanted to see somebody at last agreeing to seek peace in Chechnya, and doing something to make it happen. Yet it soon became apparent why the Mothers were so reluctant to admit outsiders. They had come to London without any proposals other than that “a Multi-Lateral Working Group should be set up to to begin considering preliminary steps for the negotiating process,” as Ida Kuklina put it.
“What, in your view, should be the mechanism for a ceasefire?” the Chechens asked.
“That is for the Working Group to decide,” the Mothers replied.
“But the Working Group cannot work while the war is continuing,” one Mother said doubtfully. “We need a ceasefire. That is the main thing.”
“That is a matter for the Working Group, not us,” other Mothers corrected her.
“We would like to propose two groups of delegates, one from each side, to establish their own ideas about the mechanism for a ceasefire, and then to bring them together.”
“No. Only a Multi-Lateral Working Group with everybody in it. With third-party observers.”
It was fairly pointless trying to discuss anything, and that looked decidedly odd. They had been moving towards this meeting for such a long time, and had presumably been preparing for it. Alas, I cannot write in detail about what was discussed at the Waldorf Hotel. The Mothers insisted I should convey only the gist, which I now do because it is particularly important for anybody who had high hopes for peace resulting from this meeting. The gist was that all proposals from the Chechen side were rejected. Not one made it into the final memorandum. As Ida Kuklina explained afterwards, “We will take them back with us and consider them.”
“And what action will you take?” Novaya gazeta asked.
“I don’t know,” Ida Kuklina replied.
“Why do you keep going on at us?” Valentina Melnikova added. “We are ill old-age pensioners.”
“So as to be able to write about this.”
“Write anything you like.”
This too seemed very odd. What had been the point of seeking this meeting if there was no sense of urgency? They had evidently come to London for some other purpose.
In fact, at the Waldorf Hotel flaccidity alternated with bursts of hyperactivity. “We cannot wait for Russian society to reach a consensus,” the Mothers declared. “We have been at the forefront for the past 16 years. We do not wait, we act as the situation requires. The only place where people can come for help is to the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers.” That is an exaggeration. They are not by any means the only place people can go, even in Moscow. It was followed, however, by a truly absurd exaggeration: “The generals will do what we tell them to.”
The Chechens were amazed. In that case, why had they not told them to stop the war long ago? Or was that not what they meant?
Zakayev’s group tried consistently to hurry the Mothers along. They tried to persuade them of the need for momentum. Time was not on our side: they explained that radicalism in their ranks was increasing, which it might soon no longer be possible to contain. The overall situation in the North Caucasus was highly volatile. The Mothers, however, were not budging. One thing at a time. “People are expecting a miracle from us, but there is not going to be one.” We heard that repeated again and again.
The Mothers’ belief that taking things slowly was a fundamental principle of popular diplomacy was supported by the observers from European institutions: “We are prepared to provide a venue for further meetings with the same participants somewhere in Strasbourg or Brussels, and we will continue the dialogue.” The European representatives who had flown in specially to London were Vytautas Landsbergis, the former President of Lithuania and today a Member of the European Parliament; and his Belgian colleague Bart Staes. Later, on February 25, they were joined by Andreas Gross, a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE); Lord Judd, former rapporteur to PACE on Chechnya, and Baroness Sarah Ludford, the main organiser of these Chechen–Russian meetings in London.
They broke up on February 24, having agreed the draft text of a joint London Memorandum which acknowledged the thousands of victims and the fact that the conflict cannot be resolved by military means.
* * *
Queen Anne’s Gate is the name of a London street near St James’s Park and here, on the morning of February 25, the parties met in the presence of European observers for a concluding two-hour discussion and press conference, which as a matter of principle was to take place on neutral territory, in the British office of the European Union.
Baroness Ludford presided, firmly and constructively. The aim of the meeting was to finalise a joint statement, the London Memorandum: “The Road to Peace and Stability in Chechnya.” Thanks to the superhuman efforts of the Baroness, it did eventually materialise. The main reason why the London Memorandum was adopted in English is because this was the Baroness’s native tongue and there was no time left to translate it. It was accordingly in the English language that the London Memorandum became part of the history of the Russo-Chechen War of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Incidentally, as regards the Russo-Chechen nature of what is going on in the North Caucasus, and the complicated and paradoxical climate of the London meetings, the Mothers spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to lower the emotional charge of the Memorandum’s language. They wanted to make sure that nobody officially labelled the war “Russo-Chechen,” but only, blandly and inoffensively, “this conflict,” in accordance with the Kremlin’s official position to characterise it as an “internal armed conflict.” The fact that the Memorandum will go down in history in a foreign language itself demonstrates that the conflict amounts to something more than an internal matter.
Queen Anne’s Gate closed at 1400 hours Greenwich Mean Time on February 25, 2005. The greatest positive result was that a meeting had at least taken place. For the time being, that is all. The Mothers saw that the other side are not devils with horns, don’t bite, are entirely reasonable and moderate. If on the 24th everything had got off to a nervous, edgy start, it concluded on the 25th with a joint photograph, although even that took some organising. It is to be hoped that these new insights will be taken back with them to the Kremlin. And then? Who knows?
Finally, who was paying for all this? People in Russia traditionally take an interest in that aspect whenever anything is happening in London. Was, perhaps, Berezovsky paying for this junket? Well, this time you can be reassured. I checked. All costs were paid by the European Parliament. The Mothers even handed its representatives their air tickets as proof of expenses. For that we owe the European Parliament a big thank-you, for saving us from damaging rumors.
The text of the proposals of the Chechen side, presented to the Soldiers’ Mothers, was:
Step 1. Ceasefire and fight against terror. The opposing sides, via special representatives, create a mechanism for an immediate ceasefire without preconditions. The Chechen side is ready to co-operate in combating terrorism, both within the framework of bilateral relations and as a part of the international coalition to fight terrorism.
Step 2. Demilitarisation. After an armistice is reached, the removal of Russian troops from the Chechen Republic and the disarmament of the National Militia take place simultaneously. The functions of providing safety are transferred to a temporary peacemaking contingent in connection with this.
Step 3. Transition period. During the period between the ceasefire and elections, the state functions are assumed by a temporary coalition government, created under international control. In questions of providing safety the Provisional Government relies on the peacemaking contingent. (The “Kosovo” option – AP) The legal basis for the creation and working of the temporary coalition government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is the agreement of 12 May 1997. (“Agreement on Peace and Principles of Mutual Relations between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria,” concluded in accordance with the Constitutions of the RF and ChRI. – AP)
Step 4. Elections. Based on the Agreement of May 12, 1997, the Provisional Government prepares and organises direct democratic elections with participation of all political forces of the Chechen Republic under the observation of international institutions.
Step 5. Economic reconstruction. The European Union is called upon to grant large-scale, direct economic aid for the reconstruction of Chechnya.
September 19, 2005
In the Chechen Supreme Court in Grozny the trial begins this week of those who were with Maskhadov at the moment of his assassination.
Was he killed? Did he commit suicide? Was the body planted? Was it a planned operation or did they happen upon him by chance? It is still debated how and why it was that on March 8, 2005 in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt death came to Aslan Maskhadov, elected President of Chechnya in 1997 and 1999. With the outbreak of the Second Chechen War, it was Maskhadov who led resistance to Russian federal troops and who gradually became the personal enemy of Vladimir Putin.
Before March 8 any conversation with Russian soldiers in Chechnya about Maskhadov and Basayev would conclude with them claiming that everybody knew where Maskhadov was, only the order had not yet been received to bring him in, and that was the sole reason why neither of them was already in prison.
Does that mean that on March 8 the order was finally given? After the killing, both the federals and indeed everybody else started concocting increasingly bizarre and contradictory accounts. He had shot himself. He had ordered his bodyguards to shoot him. He had been killed in a different place and the body had been moved to Tolstoy-Yurt.
Novaya gazeta is in possession of the case files of Criminal Case No. 20/849, relating to the circumstances surrounding Maskhadov’s assassination. The investigation was conducted by the same team from the Prosecutor-General’s Office as the Beslan cases. Four individuals were held from March to September in the Vladikavkaz pre-trial detention facility and gave evidence in the Prosecutor’s Office of North Ossetia. They are now in the dock in Grozny.
The four accused are: Ilias Iriskhanov, one of Maskhadov’s bodyguards who arranged his accommodation in Tolstoy-Yurt; Vakhid Murdashev and Viskhan Khadzhimuratov, Maskhadov’s bodyguards; and Musa (Skandarbek, according to his passport) Yusupov, owner of No. 2 Suvorov Street, Tolstoy-Yurt where Maskhadov stayed without leaving the house from November 17, 2004 to March 8, 2005). All four are charged under the Russian Criminal Code, Article 209, Part 2 (“banditry: membership of an established armed group”); Article 222, Part 3 (“illegal acquisition, storage, or bearing of firearms, explosive devices, military supplies, under the aegis of an organised group”).
The main question is, why was Maskhadov killed in March 2005, and neither earlier nor later? The whole of the last winter of his life was spent in the expectation that peace feelers were about to be put forward. We now know this is not speculation but a fact.
From the evidence of one of the witnesses: “He (Maskhadov) told me that negotiations with Putin were about to begin. On January 23, Aslan Maskhadov told me he had suspended the war on the Chechen side.” Similar testimony is scattered throughout the case. What were Maskhadov’s hopes based on? Who instilled and fostered them right up until his last day?
We know the answer to that. Mainly it was Andreas Gross, a Member of the Swiss Parliament and former rapporteur on Chechnya to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who visited the Republic under the vigilant monitoring of the Special Operations Executive of the Russian FSB, and accordingly became convinced by the winter of 2004 that he knew all there was to know about Chechnya. Also Akhmed Zakayev, resident in Great Britain, Maskhadov’s Special Envoy in Europe. Also members of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers.
Beginning in November, the very time when Maskhadov moved to Tolstoy-Yurt, Mr Gross began shuttling back and forth between European capitals and Moscow, preparing the ground for round-table discussions on Chechnya. He met a number of highly placed individuals, members of the Presidential Administration, and they assured him they were “ready for peace.” The only condition they put to Gross was that he should cut out all undesirable contacts, by which was meant that his shuttle diplomacy for peace should exclude all those who had been insisting on peace from the inception of the Second Chechen War. Among those deemed unacceptable were most civil rights activists, including the author of these lines. Those who were acceptable were the officials of pro-Moscow Chechnya: Khanid Yamadayev, Alu Alkhanov, even Ramzan Kadyrov, and Mahomed Khambiev, the former Defence Minister of Ichkeria who had defected from Maskhadov to Kadyrov.
Gross was completely sincere and committed to the tasks for “peace” which he had been set by Putin’s Presidential Administration, and to the whole business of shuttle diplomacy entrusted to him. He told me all about it himself in Helsinki during those winter months. The main stopover in his shuttle trips was London, where he assured Akhmed Zakayev that this was the best way to proceed. Zakayev was in constant contact with Maskhadov and it was he who passed on all these hopes of peace and encouraged Maskhadov to believe that the long-awaited negotiations with Moscow might soon start.
In the meantime, the London negotiations of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers with representatives of one of the belligerent parties collapsed. They collapsed for the very good reason that the Soldiers’ Mothers suddenly started adopting a hardline position in London, as if blithely unaware that failure was precisely what Moscow wanted from them.
This left Maskhadov with only one potentially promising, but in fact disastrous, way forward to peace: the “path of Gross.” He took the bait. Reassured by Gross’s blandishments, which he heard about from Zakayev and over the Internet, Maskhadov let down his guard and began regularly using a mobile phone. Russia had succeeded in killing his predecessor, President Dudayev, by locating him through his use of a mobile phone, and during all the previous years of the war Maskhadov had never touched one. Now his main method of communication became text messaging.
As one of the witnesses testifies: “Aslan Maskhadov used his mobile telephone for sending text messages. When I asked him why he didn’t ring anybody, he replied, ‘The whole world knows my voice. They would work out where I am instantly.’ ”
It was through mobile telephone traffic that Maskhadov’s whereabouts were established. More precisely, the intelligence services registered the fact that the source of the traffic was in Tolstoy-Yurt.
If we try to summarise what happened in the last months of Maskhadov’s life, we find that he was weary of the war and of living in hiding. He did his utmost to achieve peace by making major compromises; he accepted the need to take extremely radical steps, and, to demonstrate his willingness, announced a unilateral cessation of military operations on January 14, with an extension on February 23. In other words, throughout the winter of 2004–5 Maskhadov was, on the one hand, being drawn into the Kremlin’s games, but on the other was clearly outsmarting Moscow in the management of the peace process. “Management” is perhaps not the ideal expression, but it best approximates to what was going on during the winter on the Tolstoy–Yurt–Moscow–Helsinki-Brussels (where Gross’s round table was conducted)–London axis.
By March, Moscow was finding Maskhadov’s activity intolerable and the process moved beyond Gross’s control, even though he is an influential individual. “Maskhadov’s peace initiatives’ were a constant topic of conversation in the political salons of Europe: the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I know what I’m talking about because I was there. In the continent’s highest diplomatic circles Putin began to recede into the background, acquiring the reputation of a man who ‘would not compromise despite what common sense dictated,” a man “moving matters towards the next Beslan.” A moment came when Putin was clearly under considerable pressure from Western leaders as a result of Maskhadov’s peace initiatives.
So, what are we talking about here? About the fact that Maskhadov’s assassination was a direct result of his peace efforts last winter. He signed his own death warrant by seizing the peace initiative, if only briefly.
To all appearances, Maskhadov was very seriously preparing to declare a unilateral ceasefire, which he believed should be timed for the beginning of contacts between Akhmed Zakayev’s group and the Soldiers’ Mothers in London, as a sign of goodwill on the part of one of the warring parties. The ceasefire would be extended to coincide with Gross’s round table in Brussels.
In order to achieve a real armistice, however, Maskhadov needed to reach agreement with the principal actor in the Chechen War, Basayev. Accordingly, on November 13, 2005 Basayev, summoned by Maskhadov, appeared at No. 2 Suvorov Street and stayed for six days. There is some lack of clarity about dates in the case materials, where it is asserted both that Maskhadov moved to Tolstoy-Yurt on November 17, and also that on November 13 Basayev came to visit him there. Our information is that Basayev stayed in Tolstoy-Yurt from December 13.
He stayed for six days, and the amount of time they spent together is very important. In the first place it refutes rumors that Maskhadov and Basayev never stayed in the same place, let alone for so long, in order not to be killed simultaneously. But the fact is a fact: they remained together in a very small residence.
From the testimony of one of the witnesses: “He (Basayev) stayed for about six days in the old house (at that time the owner, Musa Yusupov, had two houses standing on a plot of 1,500 square metres: an old adobe house, and a new stone house). He and Maskhadov were together all the time and talked at length. When they were together they did not allow anybody else near.”
In the second place, those six days spent in conversation are clear proof that Basayev had no wish at all for a truce. Maskhadov did not let him off the hook and succeeded in bringing him round; Basayev deferred to Maskhadov and the truce was more or less observed by Basayev’s men. As even the official media later stated, explosions in early summer 2005 were the work only of malcontents taking revenge. These had long been a third, and very serious, force in Chechnya, taking orders neither from Maskhadov nor from Basayev.
Agreement to observe a ceasefire was achieved between Maskhadov and Basayev. This raises an agonising question, to which for the present we have no answer: if Maskhadov was able to influence Basayev in this matter, why did he not do so over Beslan? Why did Maskhadov not use all his influence to prevent the seizure of the children?
As the evidence of one of the witnesses relates: “Maskhadov also told me in conversation that the seizure of Beslan had been a mistake. He was very displeased about it.” A “mistake”? Not a catastrophe?
Now, some accompanying detail about the last months of Maskhadov’s life, which also tells us a lot. Would it have been possible for the federal forces to have arrested Maskhadov and Basayev earlier? Were they within their reach? Judge for yourselves, for instance, from the manner in which both were travelling around Chechnya last winter when, supposedly, everything had long ago been brought under control and, supposedly, operations were “constantly being mounted to track down those guilty of the Beslan tragedy.”
This from the testimony of one of the witnesses: “November 17, 2004. During the night we went to a meeting (with Maskhadov, near Avtury). We drove into Soviet Farm No. 4 at approximately 2130 hours. Some 200 metres from the bus stop we stopped the car, flashed the lights two or three times, and approximately two minutes after this a car standing at the bus stop drove off in the direction of Mozdok. (At the bus stop) stood Vakhid and Viskhan, who are distant relatives of Maskhadov, and Maskhadov himself. Beside them were five or so large bags. They had at least three rifles and one sniper’s rifle, black with a thick barrel. They also had three pistols. Maskhadov’s was much longer than those of his bodyguards. The three of them were wearing green combat uniforms. In one of the bags I could see a military combat uniform.”
There follows a description of how all this baggage was casually loaded by Maskhadov and his bodyguards into the boot of the car and the back seat, and they headed off towards Tolstoy-Yurt. Through all the checkpoints, through localities riddled with nocturnal secrets and patrols. Avtury, where Maskhadov and his two bodyguards were standing at a bus stop, is completely under the control of one of the regiments of the Interior Ministry’s troops, and there are legions of Kadyrovites there around the clock. Or at least, that is what the Kadyrovites claim. These details give support, if only indirectly, to the belief that in November 2004 no order had been issued to kill or even arrest Maskhadov. In late February 2005, however, it was.
Even more startling is the testimony regarding Basayev’s trip to Tolstoy-Yurt to meet Maskhadov: “Halfway to Farm No. 4 (again, in closely monitored Avtury) there was a vehicle. Some 200 metres before we reached it, the vehicle drove off and we approached Shamil Basayev. He was alone. Shamil Basayev had a plastic sack and a large sports bag. He was armed with a rifle. When I asked him what he had in the sack, he replied, ‘a sleeping bag.’ ”
If Maskhadov’s voice may not, in fact, be known to the whole world, Basayev’s face is surely familiar by now to everybody on the planet. Here he was, standing at a bus stop, completely alone, with no mask, carrying a rifle and a sleeping bag.
Let us recall the official version of why Basayev supposedly could not be caught. He was said to be hiding all the time in the mountain forests, lurking in a network of caves, and if he moved he was invariably surrounded by a host of men armed to the teeth, so that to capture him would cost too many of “our” lives. Does that mean that as of this date there were no orders for Basayev’s arrest? We have no answer to that question.
Maskhadov spent almost four months in Tolstoy-Yurt, hemmed in virtually the whole time, at first in the old adobe house, but then from the end of December he and his bodyguards went down to the cellar. The case materials give its dimensions as 2 × 2 × 2 metres. A cramped vault.
From the testimony of one of the witnesses: “They only came out of the cellar to pray namaz, at dawn and in the evening. Aslan Maskhadov, Vakhid and Viskhan (Murdashiev and Khadzhimuratov) had three computers which opened like a book, and two video cameras. Maskhadov spent practically the whole day at his computer. They sometimes videoed themselves with the cameras. In approximately early February 2005, a man who appeared to be about 40 years old came to the house. He had a short beard and was wearing civilian clothes. In conversation with Maskhadov they called this man Abdul Khalim (Sadulayev, Maskhadov’s successor. He just walked in, and equally easily left).
“On March 8, at about 9:00 a.m. armed men ran into the courtyard of No. 2 Suvorov Street shouting ‘Come out one by one with your hands up!’ They asked Musa Yusupov whether his house had cellars. ‘I showed them the cellar area beneath my new house. Then they started conducting a search and in the old house found the entrance to the cellar in which Aslan Maskhadov, Vakhid and Viskhan were living. The soldiers blew up the entrance to the cellar and after that one of them shouted, ‘I can see a body.’ They shouted through the opening they had made to ask if anybody was alive in the cellar, and shortly afterwards took Vakhid and then Viskhan out of the old house.”
At the moment the entrance to the cellar was blown up, according to the case materials, Maskhadov was closest to it and took the full force of the blast. That is why he died instantly. His bodyguards survived only because Maskhadov died.
Do you remember the television images of the dead Maskhadov, stripped to the waist, lying on concrete in a courtyard? That was the Yusupovs’ courtyard, despite all the official fairy tales suggesting it was Kadyrov’s.
The Yusupovs’ courtyard no longer exists. The adobe house collapsed during the operation on March 8, and some four days later federals arrived, laced the Yusupovs’ new house with ribbon explosives and destroyed all the evidence, thereby ruling out any tests or the possibility of an independent inquiry. One important question is: how sure were the soldiers that it was Maskhadov in the cellar?
Some three days before the operation they knew only that an important figure of some description was in this part of Tolstoy-Yurt. Maybe Basayev, maybe Umarov [Doku Umarov, a later President of Ichkeria], or maybe Maskhadov. That was all. By late in the evening of the seventh, however, from tracing the text messages it was evident that, with a high degree of probability, it was Maskhadov living on Suvorov Street. The information was sent to Moscow, and overnight a special Russian unit, answerable directly to the Director of the FSB, flew out. The reason why the culmination of the operation was not entrusted to soldiers of the Special Operations Center of the FSB, which is permanently deployed in Chechnya, was simple: mistrust even within a single Ministry, and particularly of officers who are permanently stationed in Chechnya. The problem of the selling of information is acute.
The special flight of Moscow troops, and the fact that they were waited for in Chechnya for several hours without anybody else moving to the concluding phase of the operation, is further evidence that they knew it was Maskhadov they were dealing with. The Moscow agents who flew to Tolstoy-Yurt were a group of Russia’s best commandos whose only task is to kill. And kill they did, because this time the order had come.
What resources did Maskhadov have for defending himself, if, indeed, he was intending to defend himself at all? What was found in the cellar?
It has to be said that there was precious little. He had a typical Chechen array of four assault rifles (between five men). Three of 5.45 mm calibre, and one of 7.62 mm. There were three home-made grenades, and one F1 grenade for blowing himself up. There should also have been the renowned Maskhadov Stechkin, his personal Army officer’s pistol. The Stechkin, however, disappeared. We find the papers of the criminal case peppered with the investigators’ questions about where the Stechkin had gone. Nobody kept an eye on it at the time.
Death, of course, is no laughing matter, but the morals among the Army in Chechnya, where looting has become ingrained over many years, make it difficult to suppress a wry smile. Even the operation to liquidate Maskhadov was not free of a spot of looting. To put it politely, the Stechkin was filched by the killers. Maskhadov had it when he was in the cellar but after the operation it was nowhere to be found. It’s not difficult to imagine the details: the Stechkin is now hanging on a wall, or perhaps it is in a safe, belonging to a member of the FSB’s special operations unit, and when he has had a drink or two its new owner shows off his trophy to his comrades-in-arms, or girlfriends, or, heaven knows, perhaps even to his children. The Stechkin will turn up at auction 50 years or so from now. It is the sort of thing that has happened often enough in the past.
So where does that leave us, in September 2005, as a trial begins at which the circumstances of the last months of Maskhadov’s life will be under scrutiny, full as they were of peace initiatives, the Internet, and text messages bleeping from morning until night?
Basayev and Sadulayev want to hear nothing about peace. Their answer to the assassination of Maskhadov is only a long war, a parallel clandestine government, and explosions, armed conflict, and people dying on all sides every day.
And against this background, we have the constant bluffing by government officials about how wonderful it is in the newly Chechenised and Kadyrovised Chechnya. Mike Tyson, a semi-naked Miss Sobchak, an aquapark, a Disneyland, free parliamentary elections, Zhirinovsky and the rest of them posing against the backdrop of Grozny to which peace has supposedly returned. In fact they are all in a bunker, in a besieged city within a city, a government complex where they have now even built houses for the bureaucrats so they don’t ever have to risk taking a step outside the confines of this stronghold. The reality – not the politicians’ virtual reality – is that there is a total absence of even elementary control of the country, and an equally total absence of security for people who have nowhere to run to, and are forced to survive by fair means or foul.
Could not peace have been given a chance?
December 5, 2005
The Supreme Court of the Chechen Republic has sentenced Vakhid Murdashev to 15 years’ imprisonment, Viskhan Khadzhimuratov to seven, Musa Yusupov to six, and Ilias Iriskhanov to five and a half. By recent Chechen standards these sentences are considered light. The young lads the security services seize, torture and force to confess to “terrorism” usually get 17–24 years.
Why this should be one can only guess. In throwing the book at boys nobody knows anything about, judges are taking no risks and ingratiate themselves with the authorities. In the case of Maskhadov’s associates the risk is obvious: there are plenty of pro-federal officials in Chechnya who continue to pay Basayev a “resistance levy” to buy their way out of trouble and avoid execution as collaborators.
That, however, is not the main reason. It did not become clear in the course of the trial who actually killed Maskhadov. The state prosecution, without producing a single witness, made public the conclusion of a ballistic test which claimed that Maskhadov was killed by a bullet fired from a Makarov pistol belonging to Khadzhimuratov, Maskhadov’s bodyguard and nephew.
Why should the court suppose he was killed by a bullet? The results of the post-mortem were not published, so the cause of death remains unknown and you can bandy about whatever ballistic “evidence” you choose. Khadzhimuratov did not admit responsibility for the killing and the court ended up falling between two stools, apparently accepting the claim that Khadzhimuratov had fired the shot, but not finding him guilty of murder.
The obvious conclusion is that the purpose of this trial was to create a myth about how Maskhadov died. The verdict makes clear what legend was required for public consumption: the federals had virtually nothing to do with the assassination, it was the Chechens themselves who killed their leader. Moreover, it was all within a single family: Maskhadov was killed by his nephew, so if there is to be any settling of scores it will be contained within the family.
Is this what we expected from the Maskhadov trial? Of course not. We expected to learn the truth about his death, but that has been kept secret, so we can look forward to endless rumors, inventions, gossip and myths for years to come, as was the case when Maskhadov’s predecessor, Djohar Dudayev, was assassinated.
September 21, 2006
On September 13, in a now notorious border checkpoint battle between the Chechen and Ingush militias, the Deputy Commander of Chechnya’s OMON Militia special troops, Buvadi Dakhiev, was wounded in the head and died shortly afterwards. The causes of the battle are clear enough and have been much debated and publicised. I want instead to describe some aspects of Buvadi’s character which could not be written about while he was alive. It is more than a tribute to the memory of a man who on a number of occasions helped me in my work during the war, at times probably saving my life.
Buvadi was a special person, riven by contradictions and with a split personality. He used to remind me of the monument on Khrushchev’s grave in the Novodevichy Monastery cemetery in Moscow, half of which is pitch black, while the other is white as snow.
On the one hand he was an archetypal member of the security services, like so many others in Chechnya, an officer of the pro-Moscow Chechen militia; but he dated from well before the present times, when criminals and former resistance fighters have started running at Kadyrov’s beck and call. He was typical of those who opposed President Djohar Dudayev, and from 1995 dedicated himself to serving in the Chechen OMON special operations units, which marked him out as a wholeheartedly pro-Russian officer when Chechnya was only a part of Russia. For this he received medals and the Order of Courage, and was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. Buvadi refused to live in Chechnya while Maskhadov and Basayev were in power, and when the Second War began, he was in the foremost ranks of those opposing them.
At times the things he was involved in were extremely cruel. Let us not beat about the bush: those working in the Chechen OMON are not children in ragged trousers sharing sweets. The people who work there do so in order to shoot, and they shoot to kill before someone kills them. The units arrested people who were sometimes never seen again. They beat them, and worse.
My last meeting with Buvadi was in August in Grozny. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and bit grimly and guiltily into a watermelon. He was on edge and devoured the red fruit as if he was starving, doing his utmost to move the conversation away from a Chechen student who had been “swept” by his units and was thought to have been in their custody before simply disappearing. Now Alikhan Kuloyev’s mother, Aminat, an old-age pensioner, had joined the ranks of other mothers frantically searching Chechnya, and was begging anyone she met to at least put in a word with Buvadi. Perhaps he would tell her where her only son was.
I did put in a word, but Buvadi was saying nothing. He had nothing to say. There had been that student and now there wasn’t. Buvadi said, “He wasn’t guilty of anything.”
“Well, why hasn’t he been released?”
Buvadi said nothing, tearing at the melon’s skin.
On the other hand, Buvadi could just as often be kind as cruel, where many others were never kind. Everyone working in the Chechen security agencies can be divided into those who think before they kill, and those who long ago ceased to think. Buvadi did at least try to establish who he had in his sights, and that saved the lives of many, including some who would ordinarily have seemed doomed under the rules of the Chechen meat-grinder.
A few people in Chechnya knew that Buvadi tried to rescue the widows of commanders, women who were supposed to be slaughtered out of hand as “black widows,” likely future suicide bombers. How did he rescue them? After the widows were abducted, Buvadi would take them to his own home, which was completely against the rules.
And then what? They were in a kind of custody, a kind of quarantine. Buvadi would return home from work and talk to them for nights at a time. His house resembled a barracks, and Buvadi would hold women there for many weeks who, without any exaggeration, were potential suicide bombers. They were entirely ready for the job because, before they ended up with Buvadi, they had been trained by their husbands and their comrades in the handling of explosives and driving a bus, so that when the order was given they would crash it into whatever they were instructed to.
“They all had children.”
“And did their children live with you?”
“Yes, they were here with their children. I wanted to see whether they were lost souls, whether they were still capable of bringing up their children, or were out of it already.”
In fact, none of the black widows left his house as a lost soul. The result of this odd re-educative work by Special Operations Agent Buvadi among the most spurned section of Chechen society was that mothers, often under-age mothers, were saved to bring up their own children. Buvadi’s processing really helped them to understand that their first duty was to be a mother.
“They would start by saying, ‘Just let me die for my husband.’ They wouldn’t accept a crust of bread from me,” Buvadi told me, “because it was infidel bread. They wouldn’t touch their children, as if they didn’t exist. They would just sit in their hijab as if they were dead, and that was it.”
“And then what happened?”
“Later they would talk, and after two or three days they would start to eat. A few even took off the hijab and just wore a headscarf in the Chechen manner. There was one who robbed us – she was a real Wahhabi! – but she was the only one. Later, when they had come back to life, I would fix them up with somewhere to live, either abroad or here in Russia. I looked for relatives they could live with, as far away as possible from big cities. I made phone calls, got agreements.”
I asked him about his motives: why did he do all this?
“What do they know, these girls?” Buvadi explained. “At their age we were in the Pioneers, going to Pioneer camps, going to the cinema, eating ice-cream. They have had none of that and that’s how they have ended up in this state. I feel guilty about them.”
“What is your conclusion about suicide bombers? Are they a lost cause?”
“No, for most becoming a Wahhabi is not the end of the story. It’s just that their empty minds have been messed with.”
I won’t name the names of young widows Buvadi saved. The point is that they know themselves who they owe their second life to. Having been sent far away from the Caucasus by Buvadi, they carried on phoning him, asking his advice on how to deal with particular situations, for example, right up until September 13 this year.
I think back to 2002, or perhaps the very end of 2001. It is the depths of winter and there is shooting and explosions, but at least Kadyrov Junior is still standing quietly in the corner while the grown-ups are talking. Grozny is teeming with underground jamaats, most of them consisting of people who are just kids aged between 14 and 16.
“I feel so sorry for them,” Buvadi told me. On more than one occasion he was in charge of operations to eradicate them. “We surround them. They know they’re about to die, and I can hear what they’re talking about over my radio.”
“Why are you sorry for them?”
“It’s the same as with the black widows. They’ve never had a life, never seen anything. I feel personally guilty that their childhood has been taken from them. How many times they have asked me, shouting from houses we had surrounded, ‘Uncle, let us die!’ I let them blow themselves up, because I know what would happen to them if we took them alive. There have been occasions when I passed on their final words to their parents.”
For some reason, this past August we spent far more time than usual recalling stories about the boys from the jamaats he had killed. Buvadi was glad that at that time the idiotic law had not yet been passed which forbade the return of their bodies.
“I gave their bodies to the parents myself. How could I do that now?”
In 2002 or 2003 we were discussing who he thought the Wahhabis were, and what should be done with them. At that time pro-Russian Chechens had only dreadful things to say about the Wahhabis, and killed them without a moment’s hesitation. Buvadi, however, took the liberty of saying out loud:
“There were some villains among them, but some were completely pure people. We killed them all indiscriminately.”
I remember exactly where it was he told me that: the second floor of the “white box,” the headquarters of the Grozny OMON Unit, in the office of the Commander, Mussa Khazimakhomadov, who was later killed. There were drunken officers from the Russian intelligence agencies, staggering around incoherently with the vacant eyes of killers. They were from the death squads of the Special Purposes Center of the FSB, and the GRU – Buvadi’s colleagues in the war. He set out some snacks, some bottles, and was telling this to them too.
“Pure people? How can they be pure if, as people say …” I repeated something monstrous about the doings of those they called Wahhabis.
Buvadi stopped me.
“My brother was a Wahhabi. He was completely pure. I never met anyone so pure before or after him. He was pure in every respect, in his thoughts and his deeds. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t swear, did nothing evil.”
“Did he try to recruit you?”
“Never. He never tried to impose anything on me.”
“Where is he now?”
“He was killed.”
After a long pause, smiling, with immense pride, even joy, as if he was telling me his brother had been awarded the Nobel Prize, he said,
“He died in battle. As was right.”
Those who were eating and drinking at that moment, stopped. Showing that kind of pride in a Wahhabi in the center of the anti-Wahhabi movement he might quickly have followed his brother.
Then it was the turn of Kadyrov Junior. How he hated Buvadi! He kept trying to nail him as a resistance fighter. “You are helping them!” For the whole summer he was trying to get Buvadi kicked out of the OMON, to drive him out of Chechnya. That was when the disgusting process of “Chechenising” the war was instigated, and being vile started to be considered as honorable as being courageous. People would remind Buvadi, this soldier to the marrow of his bones, about his brother, and accuse him of being soft on the fighters because of his efforts to redeem black widows.
But Buvadi never did cease to be proud of his Wahhabi brother’s purity, or of his private campaign to rescue mothers for their children. He never even attempted to hush it up. A lot of people in Chechnya are today in Buvadi’s situation, with brothers on opposing sides. The civil war so undermined family morality that it became acceptable to publicly denounce your brothers if they failed to surrender to the right flag.
There are two versions of how Buvadi died. The “black” version asserts that he came to a place where Chechen and Ingush militiamen were having a violent disagreement, punched an Ingush militiaman, and was promptly shot. I don’t believe that. He might have shot someone, but I don’t see him punching anyone in the face. That was not his style, and he would in any case have known only too well what would come next in an argument between the two Vainakh peoples.
The second version is that Buvadi was not there when the altercation started, but was nearby and moved in to calm things down. He got out of his car, tried to persuade them to cool it, and somebody fired a round at him from an assault rifle.
I think that is far more probable, and would like to believe that Buvadi was his own man to the last, trying to prevent bloodshed. I know he was an expert in firing at living targets, but I believe Buvadi nevertheless spent his last moment in his white half. “Everybody is completely fed up with the war,” he told me a month before he died. “We should all just make peace.”
There is a desperate shortage of men like him in official Chechnya today: not angels, but human beings who agonise and suffer. In Chechnya there are ever more people who are as rudimentary as amoebas, for whom killing is no different to sipping a glass of tea. Amoebas are incapable of understanding another person who has been declared an enemy simply because he lives his life in a different way.
What does “understanding” mean in Chechnya? It means, not to kill. That is how you recognise tolerance, and for the present there is no other way. Even now there are those who continue to believe that playing at amnesty games is an indication of tolerance on Kadyrov’s part as he supposedly saves fighters’ souls and preserves the nation. Stuff and nonsense! They are binding people together through even more bloodshed, and see that as fettering them to their cause. Buvadi wanted to bind people by offering them a chance to live without his involvement. That was fundamental. He gave them a second life, although his job was to terminate their first. He gave it from the goodness of his heart, and there is no one to replace him.
The last time I saw him, we took a long time saying our goodbyes.
“I hope they at least have a rifle in the house where you are going to sleep tonight,” Buvadi grumbled.
“There is no rifle there. I don’t want one,” I muttered. “I’m tired of guns. We have had them for seven years already. Are you really not tired of them yourself?”
Buvadi said nothing, but I felt his solidarity. He too was fed up with guns, with the constant fear. He was terribly weary of never being parted from his weapon, sleeping in combat fatigues, and living in a house that resembled a barracks. They say it is when people grow weary that they die.