Dead City's Tale
Dead City´s Tale
The latest Chechen war may be over for now but life in capital Grozny is still a nightmare
By Josef Pazderka, Grozny
(First published in Czech weekly Respekt on July 24, 2000)
The second war in Chechnya (since September 1999 until now) provoked strong reactions all over the world. Meanwhile, as in the first conflict in 1994-96, the fighting has devolved into low-level guerrilla warfare and disappeared from international media headlines. However, the consequences of Russia‘s onslaught remain like an evil dream, with people living like animals amidst the debris of Chechnya´s smashed capital of Grozny, dubbed a "monument to overkill" by the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
Children no longer talk
Heda Azhigova, 34, peeps from the ruin of a five-story house in Grozny´s Partyzanov street. "Who are you? Who sent you here? Nobody lives here, everyone left," she says, confused and without looking at the visitors. Our credibility is immediately enhanced with four magic words: "We are not Russians." With tears in her eye and face buried in her palms, she invites us in with a silent gesture of her hand. In darkened corridors of the abandoned house the rumbling echo of our steps resonates. Stairways are covered with a layer of fallen plaster and broken glass, the floor covered with an awful mess of filthy clothes, broken glass, bricks and broken dishes. Her house had been torn in half by a bomb. Where Heda‘s flat used to be on the second floor, a grenade and gunfire has changed it into a shell of blackened walls. „We are now staying with children in the cellar here. Don´t say that to anyone," says Heda with an alert look around. „Here, one never knows." A dark cellar room is lit with two gas lamps and a flame that licks from the split end of a gas pipe. „We brought beds, some clothes and some dishes from upstairs. Then the flat was hit, so there was nothing more we could save from there." Around her legs, 10-year-old twins Rizvan and Zara never stop swarming. At first glance, it‘s impossible to tell which is the girl and which the boy. Each has unkempt dark hair reaching to the shoulders and wears dirty yellowish trousers with a green jersey. They talk only with their eyes, restlessly watching people and the surrounding walls. „The winter was horrible. The rumbling of bombs did not cease for a single minute,„ says Heda. There is a nasty smell from decaying potatoes, dust and burnt gas. „Our neighbour left a few sacks of potatoes. That was what finally saved us." During the bombing Heda spent days together with neighbors in the cellar. Women prepared meals on makeshift gas cookers or open fires with supplies hidden before the fighting began and whatever else their men could find on hasty wanderings around the city. „A day to celebrate was when a relative from Ingushetia got here through the checkpoints. Then we had a few fresh groceries for a short while," she says. She thought about trying to make a getaway from the city at the beginning, but then changed her mind. „I regret we didn‘t leave after the first bomb exploded, when two-thirds of our neighbors left. Later, you couldn‘t think about it. Getting through a firing range of ‘safety corridors‘ was much more difficult than staying here and hoping that no Russian would come to rob or kill you. In that sense, we were terribly lucky."
„Above all, don´t remember what is past"
Thousands of people suffered the same fate in Grozny when the Chechen capital again made world headlines last winter. Today, months after Russia‘s „anti-terrorist campaign" ended, Grozny is reminiscent of Dresden in the days after World War II. As a foreigner, it is almost impossible to believe even upon seeing it with your own eyes. From time to time, the Russian army organizes special flights departing from the North Ossetian town of Mozdok for journalists to visit the destroyed capital for a few hours. Others are forbidden to enter. Only a few humanitarian workers have received special permits to enter, including field coordinators for the People in Need Foundation, which operates within the region. To arrange such permits takes weeks, and a lucky permit holder then has to negotiate a dozen checkpoints on the so-called „Bakin road" connecting Grozny to neighboring Ingushetia. Approaching the city is a shock. There are burnt-out tenement houses, factories and administration houses everywhere around you. The closer to the center, the more devastated is the area. What the Russian army did not have time to destroy with bombardment and artillery fire during the first Chechen-Russian war in 1994-96, it has now completed. From November to February, a constant wave of artillery fire and air attacks swept away two-thirds of the city, leaving only a vast empty ruin of Grozny‘s best-known square, „Minutka." Pavements remain covered with a mixture of broken bricks, pieces of concrete and glass. There is a permanent gray-black cloud over the city, the smoke from burning oil wells that gives reeking, smarting smell to the air. With the exception of the least damaged parts of Staropromyslovsky district, there is no electricity anywhere, and the gas network is being repaired at a very slow pace. Drinking water is distributed once a week on average, but sometimes fails altogether and people must drink from unreliable and often contaminated wells. Of Grozny‘s 400,000 original inhabitants, about 60,000 remain in utter poverty while another 30-40,000 former residents commute irregularly from outlying regions and Ingushetia. Improvised marketplaces have materialized at central locations where one can buy biscuits, chocolate, sunflower seed and lemonade. Other essential foodstuffs have become available more recently but are expensive and only a few can afford to buy them. „I don´t think there is extreme hunger here. It was worse before. These days you can go out and get something, but it consumes all of your time" explains a visitor to one of the marketplaces. During the day, people look for food and black market petroleum, repair holes in their houses and search for relatives. Every morning, Heda takes her children from their house in Grozny´s „Baronovka" neighborhood and makes the long trek over to the central square in front of the Leninsky district city hall, whereamobile kitchen used to give out warm porridge twice a day. „Children felt sick from this meal, but there was nothing else to feed them. We still go there now even though the kitchens are closed. Occasionally, some people bring humanitarian aid and you can exchange or buy something. However, it takes about two hours to get there and back, and along with that, always inspections at the army checkpoints. When I arrive home I only have time to bring water, and by then it is dark." Heda survives with her two children in the debris of Grozny thanks to money fromrelatives in Ingushetia. „What will be next, I don´t know," she whispers sullenly. „It is necessary to survive, and above all not to remember what is past." As to why she does not leave and join her relatives in Ingushetia, she remains silent for a long time and then says, „The worst is over, and anyway, our home is here."
Memories of Dudayev
How did such a tragedy come to repeat itself ? The ruling machinery of the Russian state is of course chiefly blamed, but it is possible tohear self-critical voices as well. Grozny was established in the 19th century by a Russian general while campaign against the rebellious Chechen tribes and was a relatively prosper centre in the North Caucasus during the Soviet era. The „city of petroleum and verdure" was well-known for its well-stocked bazaar, refineries of high quality petroleum, a thriving university, and despite the dreary aesthetics of Soviet communism, for beautiful architecture, which in summer was enhanced by a profusion of flowers. In addition to Chechens, who culturally and linguistically are closely tied to Ingushetians, the city‘s population included established communities of Jews, Armenians, Azeris and Russians. In the early 1990's a former Soviet general, Dzhokhar Dudayev, skillfully maneuvered his way to power, often with less than scrupulous politics. Dudayev counted with many enemies, but his new brand of primitive nationalism emphasing traditional Islam met with enthusiastic support from most Chechens. After decades of a „weatherless" political climate, he offered the militant Chechens a clear view: Russians were to blame for the problems of the communist era and for suppressing Chechen culture, language, and Islam. The only solution, he insisted, was freedom and independence. Many heeded Dudayev‘s call to arms in the first war of 1994-96, which ended with a Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. However, in some respects it was a pyrrhic victory, said Ali Musayev, a former house builder in. „All of sudden, it was apparent that in the cases of a number of field commanders, Islamic values were not as important as their personal benefits. Although Dudayev fell, we won the war, but we did not know how to handle our newly gained freedom. Our society fell apart into old schemes of family clans which make enemies of each other. Cronies were granted important positions and functions, groups of terrorists kidnapped and executed foreigners. The Russians fueled all this with provocations and intelligence games. So I‘m not surprised that some people here pulled out and went elsewhere in Russia, or if they were lucky, went abroad straight away.
The mother of all battles
The outbreak of the second Chechen-Russian war in September 1999 brought Grozny to its final destruction. Russian army generals were eager to avenge their humiliating loss, and the thrust into neighboring Dagestan by Chechen warlord Samil Basayev served as a ready-made excuse for them to launch an all-out „anti-terrorist campaign." As if on cue, a series of bombings of apartment blocs in Russia that claimed 300 civilian lives provided further justification, although to this day the Kremlin has offered no clear evidence of Chechen authorship and many believe the bombings may have been orchestrated by Russian secret services as a pretext. After a swift and virtually painless occupation of the northern parts of Chechnya, Russian commanders focused their attention on conquering Grozny, where they met with fierce resistance. Federal forces surrounded the capital and cut off its supply lines from the south, but didn’t attempt to take the city by frontal assault - a tactic which resulted in catastrophic losses during the first war. Instead, they indiscriminately bombed and shelled the city from a safe distance, irregardless of the large percentage of unarmed noncombatants who remained there, estimated at between 15,000 and 30,000 people. By end-January the enormous Russian advantages in firepower and troop strength began to show, and federal forces broke through to Minutka Square. The remaining Chechen partisans fled the city under cover of darkness, the largest group (thought to be 3000 fighters) heading for the southern mountain. Several senior field commanders died in a minefield on the way out, including city defence commander Aslanbek Ismailov, Khunkar Pasha Israpilov and Lechi Dudayev. What bombing, shellfire and close quarters fighting had not already destroyed was then subject to looting by the occupying Russian forces.
What now ?
Despite the misery, many refugees are nevertheless coming back to Grozny. „What would we do elsewhere? This is our home," says 54-year-old Khadijat Surpayeva, mother of three children, one of those who decided to return to the city during the past weeks. She found her house half-demolished but managed to repair it temporarily with the help of her relatives. At the moment, she does not have a clear idea of how she will live with her children in the city. „We’ll survive, we don’t want to live anywhere else and we can’t." Many formerly rich Chechens had lost all their savings, belongings and homes in the war, and thus have no other choice now but to repair the ruins of their houses and wait for a miracle to happen. An overwhelming majority did not view this second war as their own and aren’t very supportive of the Chechen partisans. „I wouldn’t give a glass of water to a Russian after what they had done here, (but) I feel betrayed by my own people as well. Basayev’s mouth was full of independence and freedom and then he dragged us into another meaningless war. And we, ordinary people, are to pay for it again," says Hamsat Avturchanov (69), a tall old man who remained throughout the war in Grozny and lives in a flat full of firewood that he burns in an improvised stove. „We stuck together in the first war, it was a struggle for Chechen independence. This one is a dirty game of politics." The political and administrative representatives of Grozny and Chechnya, including President Aslan Maskhadov, fled the city or went under cover after the city was conquered. The new Grozny administration was chosen by the Russian Government. The new regime are people who haven’t lived in the city for a long time, some of them members of the „Urus-Martan mafia" and long-term collaborators with the Russian administration. The administration is headed by Nikolay Koshman, the first Russian „commissioner„ for Chechnya. Almost immediately on their arrival in country, he and his men built a reputation as looters intent only on getting their hands oil refineries, relief aid and reconstruction funds. Some reforms have recently been instituted by the recently designated second man in the civil administration, the Chechen mufti Akhmad Kadyrov. A former supporter of President Maskhadov, he is now a man of compromise intent on building at least a partially working administration that is independent of the Russian army, a superhuman task to be sure. Chechnya remains unstable from continuing rebel attacks, financial and political support from Moscow is inconsistent, Kadyrov has many enemies in the country, and none of the Russian leaders, including President Putin, has been able to give a reasonable explanation of what Chechnya should look like in a year or two. Many Chechens therefore call Kadyrov a voluntary „kamikaze." What are the expectations of a bomb-destroyed city? Local residents as well as experts on behind-the-scenes politics believe that neither the rebels nor the Russian army are interested in settling the conflict. „Soldiers at checkpoints all over the country can make good money on bribes," says Eliza Musayeva, director of the Ingushetia office of the Russian NGO Memorial, which monitors human rights in Chechnya. „They smuggle Chechen oil in lorries into many surrounding countries. The region is also a market for otherwise unsellable Russian weapons and ammunition. The army is in action, they are visible and play the role of being indispensable, which makes the generals feel flattered." When asked about the life of common people in Grozny and its surroundings, she only shrugs her shoulders: „We don’t expect any major struggles but instability and minor conflicts will remain around here for a long time. I wouldn’t like to stand in the shoes of the people living in Chechnya and having to decide what to do. I couldn’t advise on that."
Translated by Prague Watchdog. |
