Chechnya. Still calling for help

A decade after Russia's invasion, Chechnya remains battered and war-torn

NEWLY painted signs in Grozny suggest dialling the Russian emergency number 01 for help. They are part of Russia's attempt to show that normal life has returned to Chechnya. But amid the ruin and violence that afflict the city, they seem more like a cruel joke, for almost nobody has a telephone.

Over the decade since Russian troops invaded the rebellious republic in December 1994, tens of thousands of people have been killed in Chechnya. Kremlin claims that the war is over are plain wrong. This is a place where people are arrested by masked soldiers and not seen again; where rebels shoot police and soldiers in broad daylight; and where suspects blow themselves up to avoid arrest.

Nor is the horror confined to Chechnya. The war spawned the Moscow theatre siege in 2002, suicide bombings of two airliners in August and the Beslan school atrocity in September. There is every reason to expect more terrorist incidents in the future. What was once a local nuisance has drawn in Islamic radicals and extreme Russian nationalists, infected the rest of the north Caucasus and damaged Russia's international standing - as well as giving the Kremlin an excuse to cement its authoritarian control.

When President Boris Yeltsin first sent troops into Chechnya, his declared goal was to “restore constitutional order” and ensure “a normal, peaceful and calm life”. Moscow had done little when Chechnya declared independence in 1991: it was a mess, not a threat. But an unpopular Mr Yeltsin was persuaded by hawks in the Kremlin that a triumphant reconquest of the republic would boost his cause.

A 21-month bloodbath followed, ending in 1996 with ignominious Russian retreat and de facto Chechen independence. Even then, the damage could have been contained. Most Chechens wanted to keep close links with Russia, and their post-war president, Aslan Maskhadov, was once a Soviet army officer. But Chechnya needed help: financial, practical and moral. There was no work. Thousands of armed men bore the scars of war. The absence of a political settlement added to instability. But instead of working for one - perhaps extreme autonomy, if not independence - Moscow connived in the disintegration of Mr Maskhadov's authority.

Western governments decided that Chechnya did not justify offending the Kremlin. By 1998, the republic had fallen into a black hole. Kidnapping flourished; aid workers fled. Foreign Islamic fighters - hated by most Chechens, but appealing to extremists - began arriving. In 1999 Shamil Basayev, a long-serving hardline Chechen commander, led his guerrilla fighters on a bloody foray into neighbouring Dagestan. Shortly afterwards, Russian troops rolled back into Chechnya.

Chechnya may have been out of control, but renewed war was not inevitable. Several events in the run-up to it remain murky, notably the tower-block bombings in Moscow and elsewhere in 1999, which were widely blamed on Chechens, but with suspicion falling also on Russian security services. Kremlin power-brokers wanted to push the newly appointed prime minister, an unknown ex-KGB officer named Vladimir Putin, into the presidency. The new war made Mr Putin. When he vowed to corner the bandits “in the shithouse” and wipe them out, he galvanised Russians who were depressed by the late Yeltsin years.

Moreover, many Chechens fed up with the independence experiment were ready to welcome Russian troops. But despite promises of “surgical strikes” and “special operations”, the 1999-2000 offensive proved totally indiscriminate. Valentina, a Russian pensioner in Grozny, says she looked forward to being liberated. But the first soldiers she met called her a “bandit, prostitute and bitch” for living among Chechens. One fired his Kalashnikov around her feet. Others shot and burned out her neighbours. “That was Russia,” she says.

Some 10,000 Russian soldiers, by official figures (or 20,000, by conservative unofficial estimates), have died in the two wars. Chechen losses have been far worse: 50,000-200,000, out of a population of 1m. The war is now an underground struggle, in which rebels and security forces infiltrate each other, informers are rife and the gun rules. A compensation scheme for destroyed homes has brought new corruption. To receive the top payout of $13,000 can take a bribe of half that amount. Millions of dollars in reconstruction funds have vanished. Indeed, money prolongs the war: rumours abound of arms sales by Russians, not least to rebels, and both sides profit from smuggling and kidnapping.

Although the obliterated centre of Grozny bustles with traders in daylight, it is deserted at night. This is when snatch squads raid houses for those they suspect of helping the rebels. Masked soldiers never show their identity. Many prisoners vanish, or are found dead. Numbers have fallen from the peak in 2000, but last year at least 386 people were abducted, usually by security forces, according to Memorial, Russia's top human-rights group.

Comparisons are often made with the Stalinist 1930s. “One day you say something wrong, the next you disappear,” says a woman named Leila, as she collects water from a rusty street pipe. Even Chechens enlisted with Russian forces are fearful. “These type of people have the instinct of occupiers: that everything is allowed and no one will punish them,” one officer says. “People are sick of it. They were hoping for order. But whom can they turn to?”

Russian courts seldom hear Chechen allegations of murder or torture, and going to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is tortuous. No wonder so many flock to the armed resistance. For all the talk of al-Qaeda in Chechnya, it is the cycle of impunity, brutality and poverty, not Islamist ideology, that fills rebel ranks. “If they keep up these methods of so-called 'anti-terrorism', I think the problem will spread right through the region,” says Timur Akiev, at Memorial. “The Russians are creating terrorists.” Ah well, at least there's that emergency helpline.

A decade after Russia's invasion, Chechnya remains battered and war-torn.

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