CHECHNYA LINKS LIBRARY

Residents of Kharsenoy visit their village destroyed at beginning of war

By Umalt Chadayev

GROZNY, Chechnya – On June 6 a group of residents of Kharsenoy in the Shatoysky district (southern Chechnya) visited this mountain village which they were forced to leave six years ago after the beginning of a so-called "counter-terrorist operation".

"After the start of the intensive bombing and artillery shelling of villages in the winter of 1999-2000, everyone who lived in Kharsenoy left the place. No one has been there since then," says one of the members of the delegation.

"We’ve tried repeatedly to get permission to go out to the village, until recently without success. It wasn’t until a few days ago that we got the necessary permission from the authorities and the military. The only people included in the group were elderly and old folk, and also Bazayev, the administrative head."

The group was escorted by soldiers from the Russian military base at Khankala and some other members of the armed forces. "It took us several hours to reach the place. The road was completely ruined and overgrown with trees. After all, no one has been there for more than six years," says the respondent.

"What we saw there came as a shock to me personally," he admits. "Kharsenoy isn’t really there any more. All that’s left are the foundations of a few houses and part of the wall of the mosque. Everything is overgrown with ferns and other bushes. There are enormous craters everywhere, almost as deep as the height of a man, and several metres wide. It looks very likely that depth bombs were used here." (These are heavy aerial bombs weighing up to several tons that were actively used by Russian aviation both in the present Chechen war and in the "first" one). "There was hardly one bit of ground that wasn’t strewn with fragments of rockets, bombs and projectiles. There was also a lot of unexploded ammunition, everything from rockets to mortar bombs."

"We were very shocked by the fact that the soldiers had destroyed the cemetery. Even in it there were bomb and rocket craters every four or five metres or so. Human bones lay scattered all over the place. Most of the gravestones were also destroyed. Why did they have to even bomb the cemetery? I can’t imagine," said the man.

"Initially we wanted to take a group of young folk with us to at least tidy up the cemetery, but they wouldn’t let us do that. They wouldn’t even let some of the old folk go. There was one young man with us, and they forbade him to take video film of what we saw in Kharsenoy. Now we’ve agreed that we’ll come here again next week, even if it’s just for a couple of days, and even if all we’re able to do is tidy up the graves of our relatives and close ones. The soldiers have promised to help and issue us with passes so we can get into the village without trouble."

According to the respondent, the republic’s authorities have promised to help the residents restore their village. But how soon people will be able to return to the ruins of their houses and when the restoration will actually begin, no one knows for certain.

Kharsenoy is the ancestral village of the well-known Chechen field commander and Ichkerian vice-president, Dokku Umarov. According to some reports, there were several places on the outskirts of the village where groups of fighters under his command were stationed. There are also reports that Umarov’s guerrillas still appear in those places from time to time.

Translated by David McDuff.

(MD/T)