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"Mop-ups" are back in Chechnya and Ingushetia

By Umalt Chadayev

CHECHNYA – The military in south-western Chechnya have carried out a large-scale passport check of the residents of one of the villages there. Earlier, similar operations took place in several villages in neighbouring Ingushetia. This was reported to PW’s correspondent by a resident of Achkhoy-Martanovsky district. The source has no reports of people having been detained as a result of the operation.

“Yesterday Russian soldiers blockaded the village of Kotar-Yurt (Achkhoy-Martanovsky district). All entrances and exits from the village were blocked by armour and military vehicles. This was followed by a so-called 'large-scale mop-up' (masshtabnaya zachistka),” the source said. “The soldiers went from house to house checking people’s documents. Fortunately no one was detained."

Meanwhile, according to information provided by the Information Centre of SNO (Council of Non-governmental Organizations), on the previous day the military also conducted similar “operations” in the Staropromyslovsky district of the Chechen capital with the assistance of local police. There are reports that after checking the documents of a group of young men, mostly students who were making their way to school, the soldiers tried to take them captive. The youths were released only after the intervention of parents and family members.

In early May of this year, actions of a similar kind were carried out by Russian soldiers and local police in neighbouring Ingushetia. The villages of Ali-Yurt and Surkhakhi in Nazranovsky district were subjected to “mop-ups”, as was the settlement of Voznesenovskaya situated in the Malgobeksky district of Ingushetia near the administrative border with the Chechen Republic. The “enforcers” also circulated reports that as a result of the "passport check" in Voznesenovskaya they detained a native of Chechnya whose wife allegedly took part in the seizure of the “Nord-Ost” theatre in Moscow in the autumn of 2002.

In the opinion of some observers the recent increase in “mopping-up operations” in the villages and settlements of Chechnya and Ingushetia primarily demonstrates that the "enforcers" are seriously afraid of a sharp upturn in the activity of the armed underground, both the Chechen Republic and in neighbouring regions. At the same time, both the Chechen government and the Russian military command have repeatedly said that the forces of the Chechen resistance have been eliminated and that these forces no longer have either the strength or the ability to carry out any major attacks.

(D/T)

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