Under Cover in Chechnya: Here, The Terror Ends

Lars-Terje Lysemose ~ 29 Dec 2000

Posted to: chechnya-sl@egroups.com

Eye Witness

The war has become a part of everyday life in Chechnya, more than a year after Russian troops crossed the border to the rebellious republic. While the generals claim to have reconquered the trackless mountain terrain, ambushes and assassination attempts have become daily events. And the guerrilla warfare does leave a mark on a population living in daily fear and terror.

By Lars-Terje Lysemose, Mozdok, on the Russian border between North Ossetia and Chechnya.

I wake up with a start, bathed in sweat, to the banging sound of rotors ploughing through the night.

The sound has long ago become a part of everyday life to the inhabitants of Mozdok, a small town by the Terek river which the Russians used as their military headquarters during the invasion of Chechnya on 30 September last year.

But the sudden sound of chopping helicopters in the night is certainly not part of an everyday life to a Western journalist who, without the knowing of the authorities, has sneaked into the heart of the Russians' military operation as if I were about to join the Chechen fighters for a free Ichkeria - through one checkpoint after the other, ever crisscrossing through the Caucasian steppe land to avoid being discovered.

Without the required papers and stamps, my presence in Chechnya is to be considered a crime. And with no press officer to escort me around in the war zone, I must blindly rely on my Russian guide Vadim, a good acquaintant in the middle of his twenties, who insists on showing me the Chechen reality such as his parents and siblings experience it at the place where they live.

Fortunately, the helicopters disappear just as quickly as they came. For whereas the sound of helicopters in the air one year ago was a warning of the Russians' enormous offensive into Chechnya with almost 100,000 soldiers, it now merely indicates s a new load of wounded soldiers returning to the overly crowded military hospital of Mozdok.

Here are 400 beds but that's far from enough. And so, the building of a new and bigger military hospital in the town is already well under way.

Canon Feed

More than a year after the invasion, Chechnya is still a bloody battlefield. To date, what authorities persistently label an anti-terror operation has officially cost 2,700 soldiers their lives, wounded more than 7,800 and killed 3,000 rebels. Add to that, the unknown figures of killed and wounded civilians. Moscow talks about 13,000 civilians, whereas the Chechen side claims as many as 45,000 civilians have been killed.

"The war has long ago become a part of everyday life. Nobody cares about the cruelties that continue to happen every day," says Barbara, a middle-aged warmhearted woman I meet the following morning, busy bandaging a wound.

She is Russian and a doctor in Mozdok and only know all too well about the conditions for the wounded at the town's old military hospital. Together with the one in Vladikavkaz this is the only facility the Russian military has for qualified surgeons in the devastated province.

"It is tragic that so many youngsters have to serve as canon feed in that way. Indeed, it is incomprehensible," she sighs and tells me about her own son at 25 who is a fighter pilot in Moscow.

"I pray every day that he won't be sent to the battle field," she confides in me and shows me a photo of a smiling young lad, sitting in a cockpit radiant with pride.

Outside, in the streets of Mozdok, scrutinizing eyes, military trucks and security police fill in the town setting while the inhabitants are trying to get on with their lives despite a number of perpetual military checkpoints.

Most of the time, though, soldiers are only on the lookout for darker skinned Caucasians. In Mozdok that amounts to about half the population. People with a European complexion, though, are just being waved through the checkpoints without even having to flash as much as a passport.

Mafia Boom

The small town on the banks of the roaring Terek river, where North Ossetia meets Chechnya, has experienced an economic boom since the Russians conquered the separatist republic back, thanks to the many soldiers, a number of shady affairs and numerous routes of smuggling through the trackless mountains.

"The banks here have mushroomed like wild sponges after a heavy shower," Vadim says when I ask him about the many impressive marble facades on the main street. "They are all owned by mafia," he says with a smile.

With 15 kidnapings in Mozdok just recently, I don't need any requests for keeping a low profile. Arms, kidnapings and drugs have become common commodities in these quarters. The main street of Kirov, for instance, is openly being frequented by a couple of undisguised mafia types with tiny bags in their inside pockets whose content is white as snow. Nor is there any lack of willing girls from Korea who speak excellent Russian and cost next to nothing at the local soldiers' hotel.

One week in the field and one week back at the base in Mozdok. That is how a war, costing the army a monthly 88 million US dollars/200 million D-mark, becomes a routine. And with wages of up to 70 dollars/160 D-mark in daily war allowances, the officers in this town have more than enough for booze, sex and drugs.

That is a princely amount of money in Russia. With only some 4.6 billion dollars/10.4 billion D-mark on the military budget for the incumbent year to cover salaries to 1.2 million soldiers, maintain an enormous fleet and at the same time pay for a nuclear arsenal of super power dimensions, these officers clearly belong to the absolutely best paid in all of Russia. Their salaries are in sharp contrast to the conscripts who will have to be content with a meagre 45 dollars/100 D-mark - a month.

The Burnt Fields

My Russian driver Vasily, a middle-aged round man with a firm handshake, is making a fortune driving his taxi, quite often even at night, for diplomats, journalists and Chechens alike - up to 3,000 dollars/6750 D-mark for a return trip out of Chechnya's dusty back roads.

He insists on driving free of charge, though, since I am a friend of a friend, as he says. Besides knowing every dirt road, he also knows how to slip a white lie, like when we were being waved over to make a stop on the road between Mineralnye Vodyy and Mozdok at one of several checkpoints and my guide Vadim suddenly becomes my Russian brother - or at least, that is what Vasily with a pounding heart makes the soldiers believe.

"Caucasus has always been and will always be a powder keg," he claims while our car, a white Volga with a taxi sign on the top, rushes through the quarters of the newly rich who, behind shuttered windows and iron fences, are making lucrative deals on the war and seem busy building new houses. Black money is quickly converted into something of lasting value, thus the sudden boom in building houses and the many new cars.

The district of the newly rich, with black Mercedeses in the drive ways, are quickly replaced by the hutment villages on the other side of the Terek river, where refugees from the turbulences in both Chechnya and the province of Abkhazia in neighbouring Georgia have found a refuge.

After the barracks a naked open No Man's Land follows, marred by the war's burnt fields and fried stumps of tree where there used to be glades. A couple of burnt-out railway wagons stand there as empty shells and a reminder of how occupying the republic and at the same time subduing the Chechens after dark are two things quite apart.

In Sniper Land

The Volga accelerates as we head out for the village of Znamenskaya on the road towards Groznyy in what locals have dubbed a snipers' paradise because the open plains at the edge of the magnificent mountains covered with foliage are often used as hiding places for Chechen ambushes.

An old red bus, chugging out on the road towards Groznyy, is full to the point of breaking with head scarfed Chechen women.

The women are the only Chechens who venture to cross the Terek. Even 12-year-old boys and old men are being apprehended at the Russian checkpoints under pretexts of being guerrillas and are being sent to the dreaded infiltration camps where reports of torture, murder and rape are well-known. Usually, the women will have to pay ransoms to have their men released.

After a thirty minutes' drive we reach the first checkpoint on this side of the river, surrounded by barbed wire and some 50 soldiers. A big sign painted with the colours of the Russian flag announces that we are now entering the Chechen republic. A long row of black Mercedeses with tinted windows, military trucks and a couple of buses, filled with Chechen women, are waiting in line. Vadim and Vasily are obviously nervous. They risk their lives whereas I myself will probably only face an expulsion out of the country if caught.

"Give me your passport," Vasily says as a couple of soldiers signal to him to hold over and he stops the car. Vadim and I remain in the car while Vasily walks the 150 meters to the checkpoint and disappears behind a door to a small office.

Meanwhile, the soldiers open the trunk and examine the car, on the lookout for anything suspicious. The minutes count and it feels like eternity before Vasily gets back.

"Let's get out of here," he laughs nervously.

"Welcome to Chechnya," he adds as we pass the barbed wire, the sign and the Russian soldiers.

Russian Efficiency

Vasily puts his foot right down on the accelerator as we drive out on the ruler-straight road towards Groznyy, the Chechen capital that once had almost half a million citizens. Now, the city has been completely demolished to gravel and some 300,000 civilians have been driven to flee out of Chechnya.

I ask Vasily what the soldiers said to my passport.

"Nothing," he laughs. "I hid your passport in my inside pocket and only gave them Vadim's and my own." We laugh relieved, well aware of the fact that there are only a couple of kilometers to the next checkpoint.

Here, the same sequence is repeated: Vasily steps out of the car with three passports in his hand so that the soldiers surrounding the car don't suspect a thing, and then puts one of them back in his pocket as he enters the little office where the passports are being cross examined with a computer listing all those who are being suspected for aiding the guerrillas. Nobody notices that a third person is sitting at the back seat of the car. So much for Russian efficiency.

Fled Out of Groznyy

After about a two hours' drive, we finally reach the village of Znamenskaya where Vasily has a couple of good acquaintants he thinks I should meet.

Adam and Maka are a middle-aged married couple, Chechen Muslims who fled out of Groznyy during the Russian bombardments last year. Now, they are stuck here at the road in a self-made house of about 20 square meters, because their eldest son at 16 lost his papers of identification in the chaos that followed the Russians' invasion. And with no papers to identify him, they don't dare to try to manage to get through the Russian checkpoints.

"We lost everything in Groznyy," Maka explains. "What you see in this shed is everything we have." There is anger and scorn in her voice but also a certain coming to terms with the way things are.

The small family of four is living in daily fear of their eldest son being nabbed and taken to one of the Russian infiltration camps. Most of the time, they try to keep him hidden inside. Otherwise, they live like the rest of the village, by selling mineral water and fruit and vegetables to the few who make a halt in the village on the road towards Groznyy. Once a week, Maka takes the bus to the market in Mozdok to buy groceries. Their nearest relatives live in Abkhazia on the other side of the closed border to Georgia, so from that side there is no help to fetch.

The situation for this family is not unique. Approximately some 150,000 people continue to live like Adam, Maka and their two boys in tent camps or temporary places whereas some other 170,000 have fled to the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia.

Russia has earmarked some 265 million dollars/ 597 million D-mark for the restoration of Chechnya but there is not much restoration to spot in Znamenskaya where sheds and houses with bullet holes in their walls are the only buildings in a landscape where the war has left its obvious trails.

A Nightly Encounter

Darkness has descended upon the landscape as the white Volga heads back towards Mozdok. On the road, we make a stop in the village of Terskaya where Vadim asks for an old school mate he hasn't seen for several years.

We meet Aslan, a 27-year-old Chechen, at the memorial of World War II, where the youngsters of the village meet every night over a couple of bottles of cheap vodka next to the eternal flame. Aslan is a qualified lawyer but apparently there is no need for the likes of him in today's Chechnya. Instead, he drives a truck for a company in Mozdok. He frankly tells us about the war and the mafia groups he believes are responsible for its outbreak.

"This war is not about fanatic Muslims. It is a war that has been set off, only because a number of mafia groups have the intent to make war," he explains.

"My brother Adlan at 22 joined the rebels this past spring," Aslan says. "He was kindled by the rhetoric of a free Ichkeria, of an independent Chechenistan. But he was caught in a web of treachery and crime. It's the mafia who is calling the shots, neither Putin or Maskhadov." (the Chechen president democratically elected by the people - editor's comment).

"One day, my brother kidnapped a wealthy Armenian from Mozdok, the police was chasing him and almost caught him but he managed to find a hiding place out in the mountains. That was the last we heard of him. Rumours circled that he had been killed but I didn't believe that until three months ago when some strangers came to my house and showed me a video recording of his corpse - his head had been parted from his body and he had been made almost unrecognizable."

"They told me he had encountered a group of soldiers out in a forest and that the soldiers had made it a quick death. But there is something that doesn't tally with that explanation. Why would the Russians behead him? The Russians don't do that kind of thing. It's only Chechens who disgrace corpses like that."

Indomitable Youth

Silence has set in while Aslan has been speaking. But now, he is interrupted by a tall slender young guy.

"The Russians are no worse or better than us," he exclaims, triggering a hefty discussion among the group of seven. The young lad's name is Timur, he is a Chechen, lives in Groznyy but is currently visiting friends in Terskaya.

"I'm studying philology at the university," he says when I ask him what on earth he is doing in Groznyy.

"My studies had originally been estimated to five years but because of the war it has become six," he says and adds that the university in Groznyy reopened in September and currently has some 900 students.

I ask him if he sees a future in Chechnya.

"Sure," he says. "We Chechens are indomitable. When I finish next year, I want to become a journalist and work for Ichkeria." (the independent Chechen republic - editorial comment)

It gets late before the vodka bottles have been emptied and we make our parting with the youngsters in Terskaya.

Early the next morning, Vadim and I set out on the journey back out of the Caucasus. It's a four hours' drive of crisscrossing through tortuous dirt roads, passing gypsies' horse driven wagons and tent camps, before we reach the resort town of Mineralnye Vodyy at the bottom of the mountains.

As the train sets off, and we leave Mineralnye Vodyy behind, Vadim opens his first beer and puts up a big smile.

"Here, the terror ends. Congratulations. Mission accomplished," he laughs and takes the first pull.

I look out the window, at the snow covered mountains in the horizon, the hills and the graveyards that roll past us, and nod, relieved that Chechnya is behind us.

Lars-Terje Lysemose is a 25 year-old freelance journalist.

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Russian Politician Issues Rare Criticism of Chechen War

AP ~ Dec. 28

MOSCOW, Dec. 28: In rare criticism within Russia of President Vladimir Putin's policies in Chechnya, a leading liberal politician on Thursday said Russia's army in the region is falling apart as a fighting force, and afflicted by alcoholism and drug addiction Boris Nemtsov, head of the Union of Right Forces faction in parliament, said Russia should end the war by opening negotiations with Chechen guerrilla leaders.

The comments came after Nemtsov met with a rebel envoy in the southern Russian city of Nazran on Saturday in what some saw as a back door contact for Russia's government with the rebel forces.

Nemtsov said he later met with Putin and the Russian president approved his efforts to engage the rebels in dialogue.

Nemtsov's claim contradicted a television interview with Putin this week in which the Russian leader asserted that the war will go on until all militants in Chechnya are killed or surrender. He did not mention any problems in Russia's forces.

But Nemtsov said the army in Chechnya is deteriorating. ''When troops stand still, they are getting increasingly demoralized,'' he said. ''They are plagued by alcoholism, drug-addiction, prostitution and looting.''

Military prosecutors have opened 748 cases involving crimes committed by servicemen in Chechnya and neighboring Caucasus regions since fighting began in August 1999, Russian news agencies reported the Kremlin's spokesman for Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, as saying Thursday. The crimes include murder and illegal arms dealing, the reports said.

Foreign governments and human rights groups have said Russia's ground troops are too blunt an instrument to solve Chechnya's complex problems. But few Russian politicians have criticized the war, which remains popular with most Russians despite mounting casualties.

Six Russian soldiers were killed and 23 wounded in ambushes and mine explosions in the past 24 hours in the province, an official in Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration said on condition of anonymity. In the Shali district in the mountainous southeast, rebels attacked a column of Russian armored cars, wounding six soldiers and destroying one vehicle, the official said. In the capital Grozny, an armored personnel carrier struck a mine, killing two soldiers and wounding seven others, the official said.

Chechnya won de facto independence after guerrillas defeated Russian forces in 1996. But Russian troops moved back into the region last year after militants staged cross-border raids on villages in the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan and after Russian cities were hit with terrorist bombings the government blames on the Chechens.

(Copyright 2000 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Moscow Eyes Political Dialogue in Chechnya

Reuters ~ Dec. 28, 2000

More than a year after sending troops into Chechnya with a vow to stamp out separatist rebels, Moscow is cautiously eyeing a political solution to the conflict, a leading parliamentarian said on Thursday.

Boris Nemtsov, who held talks with representatives of the Chechen rebel leadership last weekend, said he had informed President Vladimir Putin in advance about his contacts and later briefed the Kremlin leader on their results.

"I doubt the president would have allowed these meetings if he did not realize the importance of political dialogue," Nemtsov, head of the liberal Union of Rightwing Forces party (SPS) in parliament, told a news conference.

He described Putin's reaction to his report as "good".

Putin himself said in an interview last week that there was nothing wrong with Nemtsov's discussions, cutting short hostile comments by some Kremlin officials, one of whom called the parliamentarian's move a "stab in the back".

Russian generals have also said on many occasions that any contacts with the rebels were out of the question unless the aim was to negotiate conditions for the rebels' surrender.

In Chechnya, Russia said its helicopter gunships carried out more raids against rebel positions on Thursday, destroying four bases and an ammunition-loaded truck, Interfax news agency said.

The raids followed an upsurge in fighting over the last week, in which Russia said several of its servicemen had been killed and dozens wounded. Russia has also said it had killed dozens of rebels in response, although both sides regularly exaggerate enemy casualties.

Putin's hard attitude to the rebels was popular in Russia, and Moscow's troops reported initial successes, seizing most of Chechnya's territory in a matter of months.

But they have since failed to bring peace to the region or capture the main rebel leaders, and critics say the low-intensity conflict now looks a replay of a 1994-96 campaign which led to Russia's withdrawal from the region.

Troops Forced To Wage A Low-Intensity War

Rebel groups have killed hundreds of Russian troops over recent months in bomb and hit-and-run attacks, and also assassinated pro-Moscow Chechen officials. Russia says it is nearly impossible to distinguish rebels from peaceful civilians.

Nearly 150,000 Chechen refugees who fled the Russian onslaught live in miserable conditions in neighboring Ingushetia, some of them in tented camps. Moscow had said it hoped they would return home once heavy fighting subsided.

In an attempt to turn the tables in the seemingly endless cat-and-mouse confrontation, the military has said it would pull its troops out of the relative safety of army bases and deploy them in small contingents across the region. Putin has said the move, certain to expose troops to greater danger, would have to be thoroughly thought out first.

Nemtsov said Moscow's troubles in the region were made worse by a lack of coherent policy from the Kremlin, which had as many as seven different officials responsible for Chechnya. He said his trip had revealed that the soldiers were indulging in looting, heavy drinking and drugs. "We are bogged down in Chechnya and we are bogged down for a long time," he said.

(C)2000 Copyright Reuters Limited.

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New Peace Plan Would End Chechnya Independence Claims

AFP, Moscow ~ Dec 28

The head of a Russian delegation which held key talks with rebel leaders of Chechnya presented a peace plan on Thursday under which the rebel republic would give up claims to independence.

If the scheme failed, it would be necessary to partition Chechnya, linking loyal northern territories with a neighbouring Russian region and isolating rebel territory, former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov said.

Nemtsov, a leading liberal in parliament here, told journalists he had presented the five-point plan to President Vladimir Putin.

It includes negotiations to end the present 15 month-old conflict, aid to refugees, renunciation by the Chechens of the right to independence, and a change in status abolishing the rank and title of president of Chechnya.

The current president, Aslan Maskhadov, is not recognised by Moscow.

"President Putin's reaction was generally positive," Nemtsov said.

Nemtsov, head of the liberal Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) in parliament, also proposed creating the post of governor-general of the southern republic. This figure would be concerned with security and civil affairs and finances, Nemtsov told a press conference.

Current responsibility for security in war-torn Chechnya is shared between about a dozen top officials.

Nemtsov this month led a Russian delegation which signed a five-point declaration with Chechen separatists at a meeting in neighbouring Ingushetia.

The Kremlin spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, distanced the government from that meeting, saying it had taken place without the knowledge or approval of the Putin administration.

But Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper claimed Tuesday that Putin had in fact given it his backing.

Nemtsov told journalists on Thursday: "The president was informed in advance of our talks. He would not have accepted such a meeting if he had not been aware of the need for political dialogue."

Nemtsov said implementation of his five-point proposals would take three to five years.

"If it fails, it will be necessary to partition Chechnya, linking loyal territories in the north with (the neighbouring Russian regional of) Stavropol and isolating rebel territory," he proposed.

Northern Chechnya, whose population is of Cossack origin, has traditionally been more loyal to Moscow than the rest of the ethnic minority republic where Islam is the main religion.

Chechnya, in a strategically key mountain area of southern Russia had a population of some 1.2 million people before the 1994-96 war, including more than 400,000 ethnic Russians.

Russia relinquished control over the republic in 1996 after its failed military intervention launched in December 1994 against a Chechen independence campaign.

Under the previous agreement with Moscow, the separatists were left to run the republic while officially postponing a decision on independence until 2001.

In August 1999, Islamic militants in neighbouring Dagestan launched a rebellion spearheaded by guerrillas from Chechnya.

Russian troops re-entered Chechnya in October and Putin ruled out a compromise with what he called Chechen "terrorists."

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No Talks With Chechen Separatists

Interfax ~ Dec 28, 2000 -- (BBC Monitoring)

Gudermes, 28 December: The Russian authorities do not intend to hold official negotiations with representatives of the Chechen separatists and bandit formations, deputy presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District Lt-Gen Vladimir Bokovikov told Interfax on Thursday [28 December].

No official negotiations between politicians representing the federal center and any representatives of the Ichkerian (Chechen) regime or guerrillas will take place, for "this is pointless and illegal", Bokovikov noted.

The envoy so commented on the opinions of certain politicians on possible negotiations with separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov and the recent meeting between right-wing Duma deputies and members of the Chechen parliament elected in 1997.

"The president's position is that negotiations are impossible," Bokovikov recalled.

Furthermore, "these politicians (with whom the right-wing Duma deputies met) do not represent anybody but themselves and the interests of small groups, and as for Maskhadov, he does not enjoy any influence at all", the envoy said.

Therefore, "it is pointless to enter negotiations", Bokovikov said. "The federal center must complete on its own what it started, that is, to end bloodshed and restore peaceful life in the republic," the general said.

Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 0816 GMT 28 Dec 00

(C) 2000 BBC Monitoring

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Chechen Rebels Converge on Volgograd

Gazeta ~ Dec. 28th

On December 27, law enforcers in the Volgograd Region, Southern Russia, detained more Chechen rebels who, reportedly, belong to the notorious warlord Arbi Barayev's force. The suspects are said to have arrived in the region in order to carry out terrorist acts.

On December 24th twenty-four suspected Chechen rebels were arrested and on the 25th and 26th three more "bandits" were detained in the Volgograd region.

The operation to foil the terrorists' plans involved all the regional law enforcement agencies: the Prosecutor's Office, Federal Security Service (FSB) department, Interior Ministry's chief department and the regional department for organized crime.

None of the agencies involved provided any detailed account of the operation and reported Press only gave the numbers of arrested suspects.

It has been revealed that all the men had been instructed to penetrate into the Volgograd Region, blend with local residents of Chechen nationality, who have long since been settled in the region, and plant bombs and kidnap people.

Investigators are now questioning the detainees. Two of them are suspected of planting a bomb in May in the vicinity of 11th garrison. Two soldiers were killed and fifteen injured in the explosion.

A spokesman for the Volgograd FSB dept Igor Kouznetsov said on Wednesday that in the regional law enforcement agencies would hold a news conference where they would show a video recording of the questioning.

According to unofficial sources, all law enforcement units in the region are now on full alert.

They fear that not all rebels that came to Volgograd have been arrested. Some may still be at large and may even attempt to free their detained comrades. Some sources assume that the rebels had been under FSB's surveillance from the moment the group left Chechnya. The rebels were left to travel to Volgograd, whereupon law enforcers waited until the arrivals got in touch with local criminals. Only then were the rebels arrested.

The local law enforcers apparently did not plan to arrest so many rebels all at once. At first they hoped to keep the arrivals and local mafia under close surveillance, to get to know their ways, to learn more about local criminals.

But, suddenly, on December 24th, the day of the regional governor elections, police learned of the rebels' plans to plant explosive devices in crowded districts and near the polling stations. The law enforces had to change their tactics and arrest all the suspects in order to prevent a tragedy.

Unsurprisingly the leaders of the Chechen community in Volgograd were perturbed by the rebels' arrival. The majority of Chechen nationals in Volgograd have long since settled in the region and started their own businesses and are unhappy about being in the police's attentions.

Reportedly, some local Chechens left the city, frightened that they would also be detained.

However, they have not made any public statement.

A leading figure of Volgograd's Chechen community Vakhit Shamayev is avoiding communication with the press. When the first suspects were detained, Shamayev said that some of them were his friends and that they supported the federal authorities, not the separatists.

Later he switched off his phone and is refusing to talk to anybody.

28 dekabra 19:08

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Nemtsov Says Political Dialogue Possible in Chechnya

Gazeta ~ Dec. 28 (from Nemtsov's web site)

More than a year after sending troops into Chechnya with a vow to stamp out separatist rebels, Moscow is cautiously eyeing a political solution to the conflict, the leader of the Union of Righwing Forces, Boris Nemtsov said on Thursday.

Boris Nemtsov, who held talks with representatives of the Chechen rebel leadership last weekend, said he had informed President Vladimir Putin in advance about his contacts and later briefed the Kremlin leader on their results.

"I doubt the president would have allowed these meetings if he did not realise the importance of political dialogue," Nemtsov, head of the liberal Union of Rightwing Forces party (SPS) in parliament, told a news conference.

He described Putin's reaction to his report as "good".

Putin himself said in an interview last week that there was nothing wrong with Nemtsov's discussions, cutting short hostile comments by some Kremlin officials, one of whom called the parliamentarian's move a "stab in the back".

Russian generals have also said on many occasions that any contacts with the rebels were out of the question unless the aim was to negotiate conditions for the rebels' surrender.

Nemtsov said Moscow's troubles in the region were made worse by a lack of coherent policy from the Kremlin, which had as many as seven different officials responsible for Chechnya. He said his trip had revealed that the soldiers were indulging in looting, heavy drinking and drugs. "We are bogged down in Chechnya and we are bogged down for a long time," he said.

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Maskhadov Will Only a Accept Unconditional Talks: Aide

(AFP) ~ Dec. 27

Chechen rebel president Aslan Maskhadov will only enter peace negotiations with Moscow if they are unconditional, one of his close aides told AFP on Wednesday. Russian President Vladimir Putin's representative in the Caucasus region, General Viktor Kazantsev, said in an interview published Wednesday that Moscow would only deal with Maskhadov if he publicly apologized for his actions. "Maskhadov is the president of an independent state and it is inconceivable to impose such conditions on him," Said-Hassan Abumuslimov told an AFP reporter in Nazran, in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, by telephone. "I hope Kazantsev will advise the president to begin talks with Maskhadov on an equal footing without prior conditions," the aide added. But Abumuslimov said it would be hard for Putin to negotiate, as "it is the war that brought him to power."

Russian troops poured into the secessionist southern territory on October 1, 1999, in a self-declared bid to wipe out "terrorists" blamed for a series of bomb blasts in Russia which killed 292 people the previous month.Two people, including a Russian intelligence (FSB) agent, have been killed in Chechnya in the past 24 hours, news agencies reported Wednesday citing Russian military sources. The FSB agent was killed and two other agents wounded late Tuesday when their vehicle hit a mine in eastern Chechnya, interior ministry sources said. One civilian was killed and seven wounded Tuesday in separate incidents involving mines, the Russian army command said, without giving further details about how or where the incidents occurred.

Russian troops have dismantled some 40 mines in the past 24 hours in Chechnya, the army command added. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Maskhadov addressed a message to Muslim Chechens to mark the end of the Ramadan fasting month, his office told AFP. "Today, the Chechen people, hostages of a bloody war, celebrate this holiday in conditions of humanitarian catastrophe," Maskhadov said, according to a text of his message on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr. "Hundreds of thousands of people are without shelter, tens of other thousands have been killed, more than 100,000 people have been wounded and 20,000 disappeared," the rebel Chechen president added. "Still we are not defeated but determined to be victorious," concluded Maskhadov, whose legitimacy has not been recognised by Moscow since the start of the Russian crackdown in Chechnya in 1999.

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Top Russian General Does not Rule out Talks With Maskhadov

AFP ~ Dec. 27

General Viktor Kazantsev, top Russian official in charge of Russia's volatile Caucasus region, said Wednesday that talks with Chechnya's rebel president Aslan Maskhadov are not ruled out. "Maybe we will have to negotiate with Maskhadov," Kazantsev, who is Russian President Vladimir Putin's representative in the Caucasus, said in an interview with Vek weekly. However, Kazantsev added that the talks "may occur only after he publicly acknowledges all he has done and makes an appropriate statement."

This shift in the tough-spoken general's unyielding stance comes shortly after Putin himself allowed for such a possibility in a televised interview on Monday. Moreover, a leading Russian liberal politician Boris Nemtsov briefed Putin late Tuesday about the results of his recent negotiations with Chechen rebels, later telling the media that the president's response was "normal". This is a marked change from Moscow's previously staunch refusal to hold any talks with Chechen leaders and even recognize Maskhadov's legitimacy as president. Still, Kazantsev did not conceal his reluctance to trust the Chechen separatist chief, whom Moscow accuses of supporting terrorists and harboring criminals. "I don't want to talk with Maskhadov, simply because we did have long negotiations two years ago and last year, too, and he did not want to listen. The result of that was deplorable," Kazantsev said. Russian forces are still subject to daily rebel attacks more than 14 months after Moscow launched a military crackdown in Chechnya on October 1, 1999.

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Russian Moslem Leader Urges Peace Talks in Chechnya

NTV, ~ Dec. 27

[Presenter] Today is one of the main Moslem holidays, Uraza-Bayram. [omitted: known facts] The head of the Council of Muftis of Russia, sheykh Ravil Gaynutdin, is live on air. Good morning, esteemed sheykh Ravil.

[Gaynutdin, speaking from the NTV studio in Vypolzov Pereulok in Moscow] Good morning. Salam aleikum [peace be on you].

[Q] Esteemed sheykh, in the recent time people both in the West and here quite often speak about the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism. Does it really threaten Russia, and what is the general situation with the development of Islam in this country?

[A] Islam is not a new religion for the Russian Federation. More than 30 nationalities living in Russia are Moslems. For many centuries Russian Moslems were Sunnis. Thank God, the Moslem clergy in Russia is developing traditional Islam. We can responsibly say that Moslems and Islam pose no threat to our country and the world peace.

[Q] Esteemed sheykh, the situation in the North Caucasus remains very complicated. Can the Council of Muftis of Russia help to bring peace to the North Caucasus, I mean, to Chechnya?

[A] The Council of Muftis of Russia always stood side by side with the Chechen people. We have always been concerned about what was happening in the North Caucasus and about the continuing tragedy in the Chechen Republic. We always supported the efforts by the Moslem clergy of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. We always supported the muftis of Chechnya, Albagachi Alsabekov, and [his successor] esteemed sheykh Akhmad Kadyrov. Now we are working in close contact with Chechen mufti sheykh Akhmad Shamayev.

The Moslem clergy of Russia and the heads of the regional Spiritual Administrations are rendering humanitarian aid to Chechen refugees. In 2000 the Council of Muftis of Russia provided to Chechens the aid worth several hundreds thousand dollars. We see the following way out from the current situation. Undoubtedly, the conflict cannot be solved by military means. Efforts are needed to promote peace settlement of the Chechen conflict. We hope that our politicians and the leaders of this country will find an opportunity to pass to a peaceful solution of the conflict in the territory of the Chechen Republic and start negotiations with those who now possess real power in the territory of the Chechen Republic.

[Q] Esteemed sheykh, did you, as the head of the Council of Muftis, propose to the federal authorities, the secular authorities, your mediation in talks with the real force you have mentioned? Whom do you mean by "real force" in Chechnya?

[A] Yes, definitely. After the war in Chechnya began I met the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Interior Minister Vladimir Borisovich Rushaylo and the chief of General Staff [of the Russian armed forces Anatoliy] Kvashnin. We offered the opportunities we had and expressed our readiness to participate in peace talks and act as intermediaries. We also suggest that the presidents of several Moslem Republics of the Russian Federation should be actively involved in peace process and negotiations with real forces that exist in Chechnya now.

[Q] Did they support your proposals?

[A] In general, they were accepted and we continued consultations on this issue but, unfortunately, we have failed to achieve a peaceful solution of the conflict so far.

[Presenter] Thank you very much.[broadcast at 0835 GMT] Source: NTV, Moscow, in Russian 0530 GMT 27 Dec 00

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Chechen Takes Russian Government to Court for Bombing His Home

(Agence France Presse) ~ Dec. 27

A Chechen lawyer whose house was destroyed during the war in the breakaway republic is taking the Russia government to court in the first legal action of its kind since the conflict began. Abdullah Khamzayev, 62, said on Tuesday that he wants the government to pay damages and costs caused by the airforce when it bombed his home in the town of Urus-Martan on October 19, 1999. Six people were killed when aircraft bombed the residential area, Khamzayev said. Initially, he complained to the army chief of staff who said in a letter, which AFP obtained, there was no bombardment on that date and that only rebel bases were being targeted.

After an inquiry, a Chechen court found that two Russian aircraft did bomb Urus-Martan without authorization, but no action was ever taken. "I have dedicated 40 years of my life to reinforcing Russian justice, and the fact that they don't answer my calls, and violate the laws and the constitution of the country, is a profound insult," said Khamzayev, who worked in the Russian courts. "I could plead for my compatriots but they are scared of reprisals from the Russian forces," he added.

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Russians For the Independence of Ichkeria

Kavkaz-Tsentr ~ Dec. 27

In Russian there is organized and actively acts "Russian movement for the independence of Chechnya." The activists of this remarkable, in the conditions of contemporary Russia, organization do not hide their purposes. They openly call to recognize the independence of Ichkeria and refuse from the criminal and perspectiveless militry adventure.

The Appeal by the Russian Movement for the Independence of Chechnya to the Citizens of Russia Compatriots! We have been not able to stop the monstrous war. Our guilt to the Chechen people, our unwillingness to be hostages of Russian state require immediate action.

Taking into account - that the Chechen Republic was arbitrarily included into the list of the subjects of the Russian Federation in the text of the Constitution of RF, as the Republic was not signing the federation treaty and did not accept the Russian constitution on the referendum,

- that the large scale and long term war with the lawfully elected government of Chechnya itself does not mean anything else as a recognition of the state independence of the Chechnen Republic of Ichkeria,

- that this war is not possible without the support by the Chechen people of its lawful government and its army,

- that the people of Chechnya is put on the edge of extinction, tens of thousands of Chechens are killed, hundreds of thousands are left without shelter and the means of existence,

- that for the performing the criminal political course directed toward the total extermination of the Chechen people the President and the Government of RF a due to be punished according to the International Law,

- that the threat increases every day for Russia to turn into an openly terroristic and axpansionist country/state ("derzhava") which is hostile to its own and to neighbouring nations

- that the collective guilt for the annihilation of the Chechen Resistance would allow the Moscow regime to "connect by the shared/coommon blood(-shed)" with it the governments of the world's leading countries and would be a guarantee of the further impunity of Moscow, we are declaring our determination to:

- organize the collection of signatures for the recognition of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria as a subject of the International Law,

- to appeal to the internaitonal organization with the request of a fastest recognition of ChRI,

- assist to the breakdown of the informational blockade created by the Russian regime,

- start a large scale human right campaign for the saving of the POWs of the Chechen Resistance and to demand the punishment according to the international law of all those responsible in killings of Chechen POWs,

- strive for finishing the prosecution of the participants of the Chechen Resistance by the Prosecutor General's office,

- demand that the compensation to Chechnya for the lawless war by Russia would be conducted according to the international law and under the strict international control, We appeal to all citizens of Russia to recognize their responsibility in the face of their own and the Chechen people and take part on our activity.

The Movement is open to all citizens and public organizations of Russin which share the principle and the program of actions in the present Appeal. signatures:

Evstifeeva Lyudmila Igorevna, Moscow 264-9750

Lyuzakov Pavel Borisovich, Moskow 488-5813

Minachev Evgenij Minachevich Moscow 138-8065

Alekseevskij Kirill Michailovich, Moscow 921-3609

Vasilkova Margarita Alekseevna, M. 263-2140

Evreinova Elena Vladimirovna, M. 229-9488

Tenenbaum Michail Matveevich, Smolensk oblast,

Ugranskij region, village Ivankovo

Terentjev Aleksandr Mihajlovich, M. 927-0560

Frumkin Evgenij Vladimirovich, M. 157-4133

Shiyabetdinov Shamil Syamiullovich M. 908-4933

Raskina Lyubov Vladimirovna M. 465-9768

Fridman Alla Grigor'evna M. 978 4423

Allamova Muslima 394-6119

Drozdova Anastasiya M 150 4573

Edelev Gleb, Ekaterinburg (3432)51-6830

Stomahin Boris M. 406-3741

Derevyankin Andrej M. 924 6601

Kozyrev Igor M. 516-6490

Najdenovich Adel M. 268-8213

Podrabinek Pinhos Abramovich M 305-6196

Televnaya Nataliya Maksimovna M. 598-0407

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What Will Happen in Chechnya Next Year?

By Ilya Maksakovm, Nezavisimaya Gazeta ~ December 27

In fact, there were few novel elements in "the Chechen part" of Vladimir Putin's interview to ORT, RTR and this newspaper. The president said again that Chechnya had become a territory "occupied by bandit groups and religious extremists" in the years of its "independence," a territory that "was used as the bridgehead for attacks at our country and for rocking it from the inside." It was not the first time that Putin said that "to withdraw, to leave everything again would be an unforgivable mistake" and that we "should bring the operation to a conclusion from the military viewpoint."

Speaking about the latest Moscow decisions, in particular the appointment of a minister for the social and economic problems of Chechnya, the president stated that "the spotlight will now be on social rehabilitation and economic recovery." On the other hand, Putin could allow himself to repeat things that he had said many times before when summing up the results of the year, which was the most important year in his life. The new elements were the president's words to the effect that "there will be only one centre of power" in Chechnya - "Akhmad Kadyrov." But Putin should know that his decree made Kadyrov not the centre, but an outlying region of power. Kadyrov himself is repeating this whenever he can, demanding broader powers. He understands that he is not a centre of power because he does not control the power departments. Kadyrov does not even hint that he should be given control of the army and the militia; instead, he wants only economic and political independence.

On the other hand, Putin most probably had a good reason to speak about "the centre of power." He is bound to know about plans for reforming the management of Chechnya, which are circulating among his supporters and the leading political forces of the country. By the way, these plans are being translated into life by means of draft presidential decrees. Some of them provide for the introduction of the post of governor general, who would be a vice-premier or the plenipotentiary envoy of the president with broad powers. Others stipulate the broadening of powers of the current Chechen administration and the creation of a Chechen government.

It appears that the letter would not result in the centralisation of power. On the other hand, Vladimir Putin did not snub the advocates of yet another variant, saying that Kadyrov would "fulfil his duties until we go over to other methods of resolving political problems of this kind." The president met with journalists the next day after a group of Duma deputies, led by Boris Nemtsov, met with representatives of Aslan Maskhadov in Ingushetia. It was clear that the president was not as categorical in his evaluation of such contacts as his assistant, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, who said yesterday that contacts with the other side should not take place behind the back of the command of the Joint Group of Forces and the Kadyrov administration.

But Putin pointed out that political contacts were not harmful and did not do considerable damage to the morale of the troops, because "the final say belongs to the president." He also said that if somebody wants to talk with Maskhadov, "we will not interfere; but I do not think that this will be a fruitful way." To preclude misunderstanding, the president reminded journalists that "everyone who has weapons should be brought to trial." Consequently, the interview of Vladimir Putin left the impression of impending political changes. If we are wrong, this means that the president disregarded the recommendations of his own team and the growing social dissatisfaction with the drawing out of the Chechen conflict. Putin's words can be also interpreted to mean that any power in Chechnya would be able to independently tackle many political problems, but it would also be held responsible for its actions.

No wonder that Kadyrov's envoy, Shamil Beno, called for appointing a special federal representative to Chechnya, who would supervise, among other things, the operation of the power departments. It was the first time that this Chechen administration voiced such an idea. Besides, Beno supported the idea of talks with representatives of the side that is fighting the federal authorities, but only those who, like Ruslan Gelayev, have the authority to make decisions.

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Russia Tightens Security Measures in Chechnya

Interfax ~ Dec 26

The Russian military governor of Chechnya said on Tuesday that he has ordered tighter security measures for the region during the coming New Year's celebrations. "Yesterday, the heads of the district administrations of the republic and district military governors had a conference in Gudermes at which measures were worked out to ensure the security of citizens during the new year holidays," Ivan Babichev has told Interfax.

He said the measures include curfews, beefed-up street patrols and checkpoints and steps to reveal "possible bandit emissaries." However, "roads have not been blocked off," nor have there been any orders to that effect, in as much as "doing this during the Uraza Bairam holiday [end of the holy month of Ramadan], which is sacred to every Muslim, when hundreds of people visit their relatives, is utterly disrespectful and inhuman," Babichev said. He also dismissed reports that large numbers of rebels have moved from the mountains onto the plains of the region and that about 1,000 rebels have entered the Chechen capital Grozny. "We've got no bandits walking around freely," Babichev said, noting that he has no evidence of any "increase in the number of rebels in the towns." Reported threats of bombings during the New Year's celebration are "more likely so much propaganda than real possibility," Babichev said.

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Official Russian Casualties: Juggling with False Figures

Prague Watchdog ~ Dec. 14

Russian authorities manipulate even the already false numbers of casualties among federal forces in Chechnya. Casualty numbers are often used by a combating party to demonstrate its successful operations and influence public opinion. So why might it prove useful to keep track of the officially reported numbers of casualties? Because sooner or later these either confirm or question the information provided. On September 13, 2000 Prague Watchdog published within its coverage of the information war a comparative report on casualties officially announced by either of the combating parties. They were the numbers provided by Chechen sources (KavkazCenter, Azzam Publications, and others), the Russian sources (General Staff, ITAR-TASS, AVN and others), and sometimes also international news agencies and organizations (BBC, AP, Reuters and others). Following are a few comments on the Russian casualty numbers. For example, one of the last well-documented statements by the Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Manilov, dates back to August 3:

Russian soldiers killed: 2,585

Russian soldiers wounded: 7,505

Chechen rebels killed: 13,000

Chechen civilians killed: 1,000

Between August 10 and October 5 the General Staff of the Russian Army informed the public about weekly losses on the Russian side: Week Killed (Defense + Interior) Wounded (Defense + Interior) Source

Aug 10 - 17 38 (22+16) 116 (79+37) MoD, CTK

Aug 17 - 24 17 (7+10) 52 (27+25) GAS, ITAR

Aug 18 - 31 15 50 Manilov

Aug 31 - Sep 7 19 90 MoD

Sep 7 - 14 9 66 MoD

Sep 14 - 21 19 51 MoD

Sep 28 - Oct 4 20 48 Manilov

Oct 1, 1999 - Oct 4, 2000 2472 (1644+828) 7076 (4603+2473) Manilov

The history of two months shows that officially every month some 65 Russian soldiers were killed and 220 wounded on average. According to Manilov's statement of August 3, the number in late September should stand at around 2,700 killed and 7,900 wounded. Manilov, however, changed the initial date for counting to arrive at lower numbers. Fighting in Dagestan started in August 1999, Chechnya campaign was launched on September 1, but Manilov indicates October 1 as the initial day for his counts.

Thus on Oct 4, 2000 Gen. Manilov came out with 2,472 killed (of which 1,644 were servicemen of the Interior Ministry) and 7,076 wounded. One and a half month later, on Nov 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of 2,600 (1,670) dead. Compared to Manilov's statement of August 3 (2,585 dead), this sounds very unrealistic. Still, we do not know what date Putin meant was the initial date for "his" count. An important and recurring feature of manipulation with casualty numbers is obvious here: Shuffeling with numbers includes also shuffeling with dates.

Starting from early October the Russian Defense Ministry stopped publishing weekly information on casualties in early October, apparently for two reasons: - the information became contradictory in such an obvious way and was questioned so much that it lost the last rests of trustworthiness and it proved better not to provide any information at all - despite various statements made by Russian generals, politicians, and pro-Russian administration in Chechnya, no end to the military operations was in sight, meaning that the total casualties would keep increasing for an unknown period of time.

This and other cases of juggling with figures are not only embarrassing but also absurd at the same time because the official numbers of casualties simply do not correspond with the truth. As stated in our previous article, the numbers reported by the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia (UCSMR) are much higher than the official figures. Current estimates of the UCSMR double the official counts provided by the Russian army officials. The statement of the UCSMR on casualty counts in the second Chechen war can be found here (below).

Once again, the reason for putting these numbers together is to document the evidence of the Russian authorities' manipulation of public opinion. But the numbers mean real people who lost their lives for the course of their leaders. Here is a list of dead Russian soldiers, which had been published by the UCSMR in Russian military weekly Nezavisimoye Voennoye Obozreniye. We publish this list because every wasted human life is a tragedy, regardless of the ethnicity or the nationality of the person. The list of all human lives that have been wasted in the conflict would be much longer. However, such a list will never be put together.

A Comment on Casualty Counts in the Second Chechen War

What is the difference between official statistics and real casualties among Russian forces?

The Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia ~ Dec. 14

The Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia (UCSMR) estimates that the real numbers of losses in the second war in Chechnya are at least twice as high as those presented by officials (the same was happening virtually throughout the first campaign in Chechnya).

The UCSMR's counts are based on the following:

1. facts given by regional soldiers' mothers organisations (contradicting statistics that military authorities introduce and actual numbers coming from "burial" regions);

2. information received from the Centre of Forensic Medicine in Rostov (contradicting officially admitted daily losses and the number of killed soldiers transported to the Centre for identification);

3. the flawed system of counting casualties Commanders who give the number of fatalities among their subordinates can list only those having died in the field and with clearly established identity. Soldiers wounded and killed when being transported or those who died at the place of medical service are not counted in official figures; they are listed in separate medical statistics. The total number, officially presented by the military authorities, does not include this category of casualties. What is more, due to various circumstances, missing in action, captured or killed soldiers, whose remains are not found, or the bodies of "soldiers forgotten" for various reasons in the field, are automatically included in the category of "consciously deserting their troops". Consequently, these also cannot be found in official statistics.

4. it is important to be aware of the fact that the military commanders undoubtedly want the number of losses to be as low as possible, for their figures are presented to their superiors; as a matter of fact, military departments seek just the same, as each of them does its own statistics (the Defense Ministry, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, frontier-guards, railway-guards etc.). As a result, while counting human resource losses in total, it is necessary to consider the following aspects:

1. Estimates primarily depend on an individually accepted methodology of actual counting. The UCSMR counts all sorts of casualties linked to the war in Chechnya.

2. There are no exact number of losses at any moment. Collecting precise figures is a long process. Experience shows that the estimates of public organisations and those of the soldiers' mothers in particular are far closer to reality than the official versions of the military authorities. When the first war in Chechnya began, members of the UCSMR handed over their statistics to the General Staff. The list included more than 700 captured and missing in action soldiers, exceeding official military figures by a factor of ten.

3. The disputes over losses as well as the official declarations of casualties by the military authorities suggest that the statements of soldiers' mothers organisations have had a significant impact on public opinion. At the moment, military departments are making eager efforts to prove that they take extreme care of their soldiers and attempt to limit the number of casualties. In addition, the present system of counting and competition among individual military structures as well as secrecy about the total number of soldiers "undergoing" the military campaign in the federal army in the northern Caucasus and Chechnya in particular (i.e. those who serve in Chechnya permanently as well as those sent on their missions for a fixed time and replaced by other troops), raise the possibility of significant casualty underestimating on the "Russian side". An important fact, making loss estimates difficult, is an information embargo on the total numbers of the distribution of federal forces in the northern Caucasus, particularly in Chechnya.

The situation gets even worse when it comes to counting casualties on the Chechen side. As a rule, military authorities overstate the number of killed guerrillas and underestimate casualties among civilians at the same time. Nobody really knows the true number of killed, with each side giving false information in conformity with their political and propagandist aims. The UCSMR made attempts to offer Aslan Maskhadov their own technique of counting losses at the time of the first Chechen war. However, this proved impossible to realize.

An EXAMPLE (a hypothetical one) showing the possibility of federal casualty underestimation: A group of ten soldiers was ambushed:

1 - killed, the body was found and transported

1 - captured in the fight, unaccounted for after the fight, killed while in captivity

1 - killed, no remains found

1 - seriously injured, evacuated by helicopter, died immediately after transport

1 - suffering shell-shock, transported to a field hospital, released from army then died of unforeseen shell-shock consequences at home

1 - deserted the field, having taken shelter in woods, died of starvation and cold

1 - drafted in a bad condition, evacuated from the field to a hospital, died of an illness

2 - survived

As a result, the commander gives his superiors the following figures:

1 - killed

3 - injured (including the shell-shocked)

In fact, the real losses total eight soldiers in this case. The UCSMR estimates that from August 2, 1999 to December 1, 2000 the total number of killed soldiers in the northern Caucasus reached six thousand and the wounded from 12 to 15 thousand.

I. Kuklina

UCSMR Translated by Prague Watchdog

***********************************************************

The Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia (UCSMR), until 1999 called the Commitee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia (CSMR), is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization protecting the rights of recruits, conscripts and their families. During the first Chechen war (1994-96) the CSMR was one of the major activists against the Russian campaign that contributed significantly to the change in the public opinion in Russia, and, eventually, to the end of the war. The UCSMR may be contacted as follows:

Luchnikov pereulok 4 Entrance 3, Room 5 101000 Moscow Phone: (095) 9282506 Fax: (095) 2068958 E-mail: usm@glasnet.ru

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Rebel Leader Distances Chechnya From Wave of Georgia Kidnappings

(AFP) ~ Dec. 13

Chechen rebel president Aslan Maskhadov has sought to dispel international concern at Chechen links to a wave of kidnappings in Georgia by vowing to strip those involved of their citizenship, media reported here Wednesday. Newspapers published in Georgia, which borders Chechnya, carried a statement from Maskhadov that all crimes, including kidnapping, carried out by ethnic Chechens in Georgia were "crimes against the Chechen nation." Maskhadov said he was speaking out because the Russian authorities were seeking to sow discord between Chechens and Georgians by recruiting Chechens to undertake criminal acts in the former Soviet republic.

Last week Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze decreeed a state of emergency in northeastern Georgia, heavily populated by Chechens, after a wave of kidnappings. Six men, including a Russian and two Spanish businessmen, are currently being held hostage in the Pankiyski gorge, labelled Georgia's crime capital, where some 10,000 Chechens live. Meanwhile, two UN military observers abducted last weekend in the buffer zone between Georgia and its northwestern separatist region of Abkhazia were still being held Wednesday after the kidnappers failed to deliver on a pledge to release them overnight.

Two Spanish businessmen, Jose Antonio Tremino and Francisco Rodriguez, were abducted on their way to Tbilisi airport on November 30 by four masked and armed men, who were reported to speak with Chechen accents. Addressed to his "Georgian brothers and sisters," Maskhadov's statement -- dated December 5 but only now released -- said kidnapping "should be regarded as a crime against the Chechen nation." He added that any Chechens found responsible "should be stripped and the death penalty pronounced. "The lack of punishment by other governments, such as Georgia's, is not a mitigating circumstance," he added. He urged all Chechens in Georgia to hand over criminals to the Georgian police.

Half of the Chechens settled in the Pankiyski gorge many years ago, while the rest are thought to be refugees from the 14-month war in Russia's breakaway republic.Russia has repeatedly accused Tbilisi of allowing up to 2,000 Chechen rebels, currently based in the gorge, to move freely across the 80-kilometre (50-mile) mountainous border, and earlier this week imposed a visa regime between the two countries. The Georgian interior ministry has voiced its exasperation at the latest wave of kidnappings, noting the hostages were being held "in remote parts" of the former Soviet republic. "It is very difficult to predict this type of kidnapping and therefore to combat such phenomena," interior ministry spokeswoman Maya Mosidze told AFP on Monday.

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Love Reaches Over Chechen Battle Lines

By Mark Franchetti, The Sunday Times ~ Dec. 11

They fell in love at first sight across a market stall in Chechnya, but Indira Dudurkayeva, 19, and Sergei Goncharov, 25, came from different worlds. She was a native of the breakaway republic. He was a Russian soldier who had fought there in two bloody wars. Only by taking terrible risks could they be together. Goncharov smuggled her out of Chechnya in a military vehicle and took her hundreds of miles away to the southern Russian town of Krasnodar, where they were married.

Now, 10 months later, Dudurkayeva is in fear of her life: by marrying a Russian soldier who is also a non-Muslim, she has brought shame on her family and her village. If she is found, the penalty will be death. According to the strict moral code of the Chechens, her relatives have no choice but to kill her if they are to clear the name of their clan. "They will never forgive me for falling in love and marrying Sergei," Dudurkayeva said last week as she played a videotape of her wedding in the tiny room in Krasnodar where they now live.Dudurkayeva was working at a market in Tolstoy-Yurt, a small town close to Grozny, the bombed-out Chechen capital, when her life was transformed. It was a late January day, at the height of a bitter war that had claimed thousands of victims.

Goncharov, a Siberian who had fought as a conscript in the Chechen war of 1994-96, had returned as a career soldier for the second campaign. He caught her eye as he bought a bottle of beer during a break from patrolling the streets. He visited her every day for the next three weeks. "We were very careful not to show our feelings to anyone," Goncharov said. "Of course we both knew that we were playing with fire. Had anyone understood that I wasn't coming to the market just to stock up on provisions, Indira's life and mine would have been in severe danger."

Then, on a freezing February day, Goncharov told her that his battalion was leaving. He asked her to go with him and get married. She knew that to do so would be to defy her family and turn her back on her strict Muslim upbringing. "Sergei told me this was our only chance," she said. "I told my sister, the only person who knew that Sergei and I had fallen in love. She warned me that if I left with him it would be for ever and that there would be no return. "I left carrying only the clothes I was wearing, without money, personal possessions, not even my passport. I couldn't even say goodbye to my mother. If anyone had understood what was happening, Sergei and I could have been killed."

It took 10 days to get out of Chechnya. Hiding from Goncharov's commanding officers and from her relatives, Dudurkayeva was kept first in a tent at a Russian base. She was then smuggled onto his convoy, hiding in the back of a tank transporter, and finally was concealed in a military train carrying troops across the border. The danger was not only of being discovered by the Russians: there was a risk that the convoy would be ambushed by Chechen rebels. "It was a scary journey," Dudurkayeva said. "I was terrified that my relatives, especially my elder brother, would come looking for me. I was also apprehensive about the future, about leaving everything behind, but I love Sergei and I trusted him."

Once outside Chechnya, the couple were briefly detained by the army and Goncharov was severely reprimanded. For weeks afterwards they had nowhere to live, moving flats several times in fear of Chechens seeking revenge. They married in the summer. Dudurkayeva received Russian papers and the local authority provided a home: a dilapidated room lacking proper heating or sanitation, with a bed that rests precariously on a wooden crate.

Despite the miserable conditions and the uncertainty of their future, Dudurkayeva says she does not regret her choice. "I had relaxed a bit since coming here, but last week I bumped into an old neighbour who is now a refugee," she said. "He told me that if I hadn't been on a bus surrounded by people, he would have killed me. He was deadly serious and I was terrified." To her husband's dismay, Dudurkayeva plans to return to Chechnya briefly to make peace with her sick mother. "I hope that at least she can begin to forgive me," she said. "As long as nobody else sees me or hears that I have gone back, I think I will be all right. I must try to explain to her that I left because it was the only way to be with the man I love."

At least 22 civilians, many of them children and teenagers, were killed and 52 injured when a car bomb exploded in a market in the south-eastern Chechen district of Urus-Martan. Russian authorities blamed the blast on separatist rebels.

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War's New Phase

By Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor ~ Dec. 11

In an operation local residents say is typical in Russian-controlled areas, men in camouflage uniforms and black ski masks arrived in an unmarked armored vehicle on Mozdokskaya Street in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and whisked away 10 people. Among the detainees were Haji Said-Alwi Gakayev's three daughters, who have not been heard from since the incident last June. "I brought them up to be cosmonauts, but I don't know if they have gone to heaven yet or not," says the white-bearded Mr. Gakayev, tilting his traditional red-velvet hat forward in resignation.

A Muslim spiritual leader in Gudermes, the center of the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration in this breakaway southern republic, he now takes care of all eight of his grandchildren. "Every night I come home, and they ask, 'Where is Mama?' " Gakayev says. "And every night their grandfather starts weeping." Continued efforts to find his daughters - including letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin - have so far failed.

War's 'new phase'

Russian commanders say their acts are aimed at quashing separatist Islamic rebels. But as the 14-month Russian occupation of Chechnya grinds on, Russian forces have been using brutal methods against civilians - from summary executions to kidnapping, say rights groups, Chechens, and even some soldiers themselves. "The war ... has entered a new phase," said the Nobel Peace prize-winning humanitarian group Medecins sans Frontieres, in a late November report. "The Russian forces have transformed Chechnya into a vast ghetto," the report says. "In this ghetto, terror reigns ... every civilian is a suspect, and freedom of movement is denied. Each and every checkpoint is a 'Russian roulette' which puts their lives at stake."

It is known as bespredel, a Russian slang term that means excessive abuse of power, and, in Chechnya especially, "unlimited violence." "It's worse than I thought," says one young conscript at the main Russian base of Khankala, 10 miles east of Grozny, while eating a breakfast of tinned tuna and boiled buckwheat. "I thought this was a war, but it is bespredel." "No, no - keep that to yourself," warns an officer, apparently aware that Russia's image has been tarnished by persistent reports of Russian abuses here.

Critics have launched a chorus of complaints about alleged Russian atrocities since federal troops reentered Chechnya in September 1999, with the stated purpose of restoring law and order in a region that had fallen into lawlessness under Chechen rule. Russia's post-superpower prestige disintegrated at the hands of guerrillas in the first Chechen war of 1994-96. A sense of revenge, analysts say, has partly motivated Moscow's second campaign. So winning Chechen hearts and minds has not been a priority. Grozny's central market was entirely destroyed by Russian armored vehicles on Nov. 27 - this year, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Rebel attacks are expected to increase at this time. Pro-Moscow Chechen authorities say that in November alone, 18 Russian soldiers were killed in or disappeared from the market. But Muslims traditionally end daytime fasting during Ramadan with a feast, and the market was an important source of food and income for thousands.

Russian forces have largely pushed the separatist fighters out of Grozny and into the snow-covered mountains along the southern border with Georgia. Moscow is aiming to cut back troop strength to about 25,000, down from 90,000 at the beginning of the year. The price of continued conflict has been high for civilians. Acts of violence are "designed to humiliate civilians: arbitrary executions and mopping-up operations, arrests and disappearances, extortion and racketeering of cadavers," last month's report by Medecins sans Frontieres notes. Officially, more than 10,000 Chechens were arrested in the first five months of the year alone.

Detailing severe beatings and the impunity with which federal forces operate here, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch reported in October on the "cycle of torture and extortion faced by thousands of Chechens whom Russian forces have detained in Chechnya."

Caught in the middle

Testimony is not hard to find, even on a brief visit to Chechnya organized by Russian officials. "People are being exterminated by federal forces - that is the truth," says a woman who works for the pro-Moscow administration in Gudermes. Two of her nephews have disappeared. But she is no supporter of the rebels, either, having been held hostage for eight months in 1998 by kidnappers linked to a Chechen warlord. "Troops catch everybody, military or not - they just disappear," she says. "It's bespredel, like the extermination of the nation. If it keeps going on, all the people will either be exterminated, or they will rise up."

Some senior officers are not convinced. "We have declared an amnesty [for rebels deemed not to have been involved in crimes], so state officials do not want them exterminated," says Col. Igor Yegiazarov, commander of Russian forces in northern Chechnya. "As for the mass execution of the Chechen people, I have not ever seen that. It's better to talk to the Chechens themselves," Colonel Yegiazarov says. "I do know of officers and generals who tried to prevent local murders and looting [by soldiers]. If things like [bespredel] happen, then the guilty will have to be responsible before a criminal court, like any other army in the world."

Extreme measures from Moscow are not unknown to Chechnya. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin - accusing Chechens of supporting Nazi Germany in World War II - ordered the mass uprooting of the entire Chechen population to Siberia in 1944, an event still remembered annually on Deportation Day. The pro-Moscow administration has warned Russian troops that abuses further undermine their tenuous credibility. "We have certain problems with federal troops, but we know the Army is against a very cunning enemy," says Abdullah Bugayev, a deputy administrator in Gudermes. The administration pursues some cases of wrongful detention.

For instance, Gakayev says the mayor of Gudermes is helping to find his three daughters. "I wouldn't dramatize it," Mr. Bugayev says, when asked about bespredel. He notes that several pro-Moscow officials have been killed, some brutally: "You can't just look at one side." Conditions on the ground are tough for young soldiers, who often say they were lured by promises of high combat pay. "This is a dirty war, people shoot you in the back," says one Russian soldier, leaning over a fire at dusk at the muddy Khankala camp. "There is no heroic fighting, like in a real, classic war. There is nothing romantic at all."

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Alkhan-Yurt Residents Appeal to Russian President, Chechen Administration

(Interfax) ~ Dec. 10

Residents of the village of Alkhan-Yurt in Chechnya, who on Sunday gathered to attend the burial of those killed in the December 9 terrorist attack, have made an appeal to be addressed to the Russian president and the military and civilian administration of Chechnya. "The car in Alkhan-Yurt on Saturday was stuffed with explosives and left there by a well-known bandit serving in the Chechen interior department's special police unit," the appeal reads. The document does not specify the name of that person. "The tragedy was made possible because of unskilled actions by the military" who tried to disarm the explosive device planted in the Moskvich car, the authors wrote.

The villagers urged the president "to purge the Russian Interior Ministry's department for Chechnya and its branches of bandits, who have penetrated its ranks, and officials who contributed to this." The Alkhan-Yurt residents read the appeal to the Main Military Commandant of Chechnya, Lt. Gen. Ivan Babichev, who has been in Alkhan-Yurt since this morning, and requested that he pass it on to Moscow. "Those who committed this act will answer to the fullest possible extent of the law," Babichev said. "Take my word that the bandits will be brought to justice." Head of the Alkhan-Yurt administration Ramzan Vakhidov, who read the appeal at his fellow-villagers' request, and his deputy Suleiman Makhmatkhadzhiyev refuse to name the police officer they accuse of the terrorist attack, noting only that "information on this person was reported to the prosecutor, the military commandant and head of interior department of Chechnya today."

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Russia's Hold on Chechnya is Seen as Tenuous

(AP) ~ December 10

At least four people have been arrested in connection with a car bombing that killed over 20 Chechen civilians, around half of them children, in the breakaway republic. The bomb exploded near a mosque in the village of Alkhan-Yurt, just south of the Chechen capital Grozny on Saturday. Russian officials called it a terrorist act and were quick to point the finger at Chechen rebels. Four people, one carrying the identity card of a Chechen police officer, have been detained in Alkhan-Yurt on suspicion of setting up the attack, the army's first deputy chief of staff told the Interfax news agency. "This fact proves the rebels are trying to place their people in the Chechen law-enforcement agencies," said Colonel General Valery Manilov. The blast's death toll rose to 21 on Sunday, with four more victims dying in a hospital in the neighbouring town of Urus-Martan, the hospital's chief doctor Ruslan Visarigov told Interfax. The same day seventeen victims were being buried in Alkhan-Yurt.

Children among bomb victims

About half the dead were children, Ramzan Vakhidov, head of the local administration, told Interfax. Chechen rebels attacked Russian facilities more than 20 times over the weekend, killing four Russian servicemen and wounding 11, according to an official of the pro-Moscow administration in Chechnya. Another two soldiers were killed when their armoured personnel carrier struck a landmine outside Grozny, the official said. Chechen rebels stage daily attacks on Russian checkpoints and Chechen civilian administrative buildings, but casualties are usually small and usually target Russian troops or pro-Moscow Chechen officials.

The attacks underline Russia's shaky hold on the region, even after more than a year of war and repeated claims that the rebels are near defeat. The rebels won de facto independence in a 1994-96 war. But Russian forces rolled back into Chechnya in September 1999, after rebels raided the neighbouring Russian region of Dagestan and a series of apartment bombings in three Russian cities killed some 300 people, which Moscow blamed on the rebels. Since then, at least 2,500 Russian troops have been killed.

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Moscow Boosts "Anti-Terrorist" Drive as Chechnya Buries Dead*

(AFP) ~ Dec. 10

A small Chechen village began burying its dead Sunday from one of the worst single attacks on civilians in the 14-month war, as Moscow tried to recover from another setback in its campaign against separatist rebels in the breakaway republic. Twenty-one people died Saturday after a powerful car bomb ripped through a square near the mosque in Alkhan-Yurt, south of the capital Grozny. Doctors in the Urus-Martan district hospital fought all night to try and save the lives of 22 injured villagers, but lost four of their patients.

Security services had received a tip-off and detonated one explosive device earlier in the day but another bomb was hidden under the bonnet of the same car and exploded as villagers looked on. "In one night, we used up a whole month's supply of blood, bandages and medicine and the last few operations had to be carried out without the use of an anaesthetic," chief doctor Ruslan Visarigov told Interfax news agency. Russian President Vladimir Putin's presidential envoy to the southern federal district encompassing Chechnya, General Viktor Kazantsev, denounced the rebels for not respecting the Islamic holy month of Ramadan by "causing death and destruction."

"It is obvious that nothing is sacred to the terrorists, they are showing that they have nothing in common with Islam or the Holy Koran," Kazantsev was quoted as saying by Interfax. However a spokesman for the rebels, Movladi Udugov, accused the Russians of being behind the attack. "This terrorist act aimed at Chechen civilians was committed by Russian forces. We have dozens of witnesses proving they planted the mine in the vehicle," Udugov told AFP. "We categorically deny the accusations that Chechens were behind the attack," he said.

The Russian military arrested four Chechens for the bombing and said it had been masterminded by rebel field commanders Khattab and Shamil Basayev, as well as ousted president Aslan Maskhadov. Udugov said he represented Basayev, but would not say whether he was also speaking on behalf of Maskhadov. One of the arrested men, who were all in their 20s, was believed to be a member of the Chechen unit of the OMON, Russia's elite paramilitary force, the deputy chief of the Russian general staff, General Valery Manilov, told Interfax. "This proves that the rebels are trying to enter the ranks of the Chechen police," he was quoted as saying by the news agency.

Grozny mayor Bislan Gantamirov had earlier accused the top pro-Moscow civilian head in Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, of appointing separatist fighters in his administration. Kadyrov had fought on the side of the separatists in the previous 1994-6 war. The attack was one of a series of bomb blasts in the North Caucasus that began on Friday, the day Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo announced Moscow's intention to wipe out the remaining 1,500 rebels within the next three months. The top Russian military commander in Chechnya, General Ivan Babichev, promised Alkhan-Yurt villagers Sunday that a police station comprising local residents would be added to a planned military garrison of about 40 servicemen. Babichev also said that a list of suspected rebels would be posted in every town and village to prevent their infiltration. Russia said Friday it planned to deploy permanent garrisons in 200 of Chechnya's 375 towns and villages in order to protect the local population and their administrative leaders.

Separatist fighters have been actively carrying out punishment attacks against so-called Chechen "collaborators," particularly targetting local pro-Moscow administrators, including the former head of Alkhan-Yurt, who was assassinated by rebels last summer. Meanwhile, rebel fighters continued to attack federal positions late Saturday, killing three soldiers and wounding at least 11, the Russian North Caucasus military command told Interfax.

Three people died Friday when nearly simultaneous blasts ripped through two cars parked some 150 metres (500 feet) apart in the centre of Pyatigorsk in the Stavropol region, which borders Chechnya. And nine Russian soldiers were wounded -- one died later in hospital -- when a truck loaded with some five tonnes of explosive drove into an interior ministry base in Gudermes, in a rebel suicide attack. Udugov said separatist fighters had carried out the suicide attack in Gudermes, but that 32 soldiers had been killed and almost 150 injured. He also claimed that 11 civilians had died in southern Chechnya in bombing by the Russian airforce.

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At Christmas, Just Think For a Second...

By P. Jendroszczyk, Rzeczpospolita ~ Nov. 30

The refugees from Chechnya, not even mentioning people from Grozny, are in bigger need then those in Kosovo. But Kosovo has had much more access to the media. Besides, Chechnya is very often identified with terrorism.

A LIFE - FOR A FEW DOLLARS

On the faces of children from a camp, very seldom one can see a smile, but many of them are haunted by nightmares from the recent past, sounds of shootings, explosions, wandering life and shortage of food. In the camp of Chechen refugees "Morning" in Ingushetia, a "Polish" daycare is working. It's been established thanks to the effort of the Polish Humanitarian Action (Polska Akcja Humanitarna). It can bee seen that Ramzan Vidayev hasn't washed himself a long time. He's dirty, tired and resigned. He's sitting on a sofa in a bureau of the Polish Humanitarian Action in Nazran - Ingushetia and is explaining that he can't live in the overcrowded tents of Chechen refugees like himself any more. His all possessions, that were taken with all the hardships, inspite of endangering his life from bombed Grozny, burnt a month ago. The next tragedy hit his family in a camp for refugees - "Sputnik", where he was living. It happened at night. A gas stove in Vidayev's tent, suddenly had changed to a column of fire, probably because of a rapid increase of gas pressure. A second later, the whole tent was burning.

A similiar tragedy was taking place in two neighbouring tents. Ramzan, his wife and five children rushed to escape, but pieces of burning canvas were wrapping around them like ivy. The man pushed his children outside. Then, he heard his wife screaming. A gown, made from nylon was burning on her. When he dragged her out, she was already unconcious. Doctors weren't giving much hope, that she survives. The burnt woman was taken care of by an Ingush "paramedic" Fatima Blokova, who somehow saved her. Fatima came to the bureau of the Polish Humanitarian Action together with Ramzan with a request for help. Ramzan's family has already got a new tent, but still doesn't have a stove, any dishes and even very important in the camp's life, a pail for water. Maria Gozdecka - Mimka, as everyone calls her here, who's managing the bureau of PHA in Nazran also doesn't have those things. But, she knows some representatives of other organisations who can help.

A few telephone calls and after 20 minutes, we're going to the Red Cross for a new, safe stove. It's already waiting for us. We're hardly made it, just in time before a warehouse of the German organization HELP closed. There, Ramzan picks up his longed-for water pail, plastic containers, a kettle, matresses, bunch of toothbrushes, some washing detergent and a big box of woman's hygienic pads. He doesn't need all those toothbrushes and pads in such a quantities. But, he's taking everything. Things not needed, can be sold on the bazaar for cash.

Ramzan is lucky that he found Mimka. Similiarly as Zula Elmuzayeva, 42-old Chechen woman with breast cancer, who's Mimka found in one of the camps in Chechnya. Zula was dying, because she didn't have money to travel to a hospital in Rostov-on Don, where at one time she was undergoing treatment. Mimka, together with Janina Ochojska - the chief manager of the PHA, took Zula with her husband to the bureau in Nazran, a week ago. The next day, the were sent by train to the hospital in Rostov. " The life of this woman was worth a few dollars. That's the cost of a train ticket" - says Janina Ochojska, who phoned the hospital in Rostov and found out, that Zula's life can still be saved. In the Chechen camp three children are waiting for her.

The mission of the Polish Humanitarian Action in Nazran is taking cases like Ramzan's and Zula's apart from conducting a normally planned, detaily programmed work , written on several pages projects confirmed by sponsors. Without this and all bunch of documents you can't work, but if you're helping thousands of people touched by this misery, it's impossible to be unaffectionate to the tragedies of particular persons.

It's not easy to find money

The Polish Humanitarian Action is present in Ingushetia from February of this year. It started as the food convoys. Janina Ochojska knows these areas pretty well, way back from the time of the first Chechen war. The bureau of the PHA in Nazran has been established in the spring. The Action is conducting four humanitarian help programs in Grozny. Several trucks are hauling drinking water free. That's the only drinkable water in the whole city. It's been being filtrated from a water line, that one part is supplying water to the city from a water intake in Chernorechye. The filter system was given by a Swedish humanitarian organization. The PHA is paying wages from it's own funds to the truck drivers and for the tankers. The filter gives 120 cubic meters of water every day. That's a drop in the sea.

The second program of the PHA is to organize feeding of the sick in the Grozny's hospitals. A kitchen building of the #9 Hospital has been already repaired and soon meals will be prepared and delivered to the other hospitals. A word - "hospital" in Grozny's circumstances that's actually a misconception. Ochojska's organization is also trying to open a daycare in Grozny. Own monies is not enough, but other organization like UNICEF or World Food Program are helping."We need roughly 5,500 dollars per month for the realization of all the programs" - thinks Ochojska. The problem of getting money in Poland for Chechnya is huge. "During eight months, till this summer, we've collected only 400,000 zlotys (approx. 90,000 USD - M.L.).

For comparison, for the aid of the refugees from Kosovo we had collected not even in a month - 1,5 million zlotys (340,000 USD)- she says. In her belief, refugees from Chechnya, not even mentioning people from Grozny, are in the bigger need. But, Kosovo had much more access to the media. That's one reason. The second is , that Chechnya is identified with terrorism in Poland. - "When we were doing the collecting, two Polish women were hold hostages in Chechnya. I even had telephone calls, that I was robbing Poland and hauling the loot to Chechnya" - says Ochojska.

Mimka in Nazran

Mimka or Maria Gozdecka is coordinating the whole program of the PHA in the Caucasus. She talks about herself reluctantly. She's been working since this February in Nazran. The first she came to Russia as a tourist ten years ago. She was at that time, a little bit more than 20 years old, looking for a place in her life. After that she travelled to Russia a few times more. She was helping in the rescue operation after the earthquake in Neftyegorsk on Sakhalin Island. She was cooperating with some American humanitarian organizations in the Urals. She had also established a small help organization for the East. She had settled even for a while in the Krasnodar region, where she bought a tiny house in the mountains. Her passion is the snowboarding. That's all what you can find about Mimka. She's been living in a rented by PHA house, in a district built by Slovaks a couple years ago. There is the bureau of the PHA, and also several other humanitarian organizations from all over the world. It doesn't mean that the aid is distributed efficiently and is reaching all the needy ones. The main barrier to get into Chechnya is the war, that's been going on there.

Nobody wants to risk. Shooting the trucks carrying the aid is not that rare. All the organizations from Nazran thus are helping the refugees in Ingushetia and sending aid to Grozny through different agencies. One of these is the PHA. Mimka not that long ago has set up a bureau in Grozny. That's a small room in the only one, half-ruined hospital in the city. In the rooms of the PHA in Nazran piles of books delivered by UNICEF. Mimka distributes them in the schools in Chechnya and in the refugee camps. In a text-book of the Russian language for the fourth grade.

There is a story about Natasha Kachuyevskaya, a heroic military nurse, who in 1942 in the fight with fascists blew herself up with a grenade after she had run out of bullets. " Why the Russians don't understand that we're fighting with them as they were fighting Germans ?" - children are asking Milana, a teacher in an orphanage in Pliyev, set up by the money of the German charitable organization Cap Anamur. But, the refugees don't understand many other things. Why the Russians have stopped the distribution of humanitarian aid, liquidated the field kitchens in the camps and in contrast to the period from the first Chechen war they're not distributing building materials, that people could return to their houses in Chechnya.

"It's true, they begun to pay pensions, but can the eight-person family survive on 560 roubles ( 20 USD - M.L.) of my father's pension?" - is asking a rhetorical question Rizvan, from the "Morning" camp. He can't afford to put timber floor in his tent. For now it's warm, all the time his gas stove is burning. At least they have electricity, TV set and a fridge. The family was able to move these goods under bombardment from Grozny. In the "Morning" camp there is a daycare for twenty children organized by the PHA. Three tents, a kitchen, food. The kids from the camp are spending a few hours there in the warmth. These are luxury conditions in comparison what's going on in Grozny.

....Petra in Grozny

"In the ruins of Grozny 60 - 70 thousands of people is living"- claims Patrik Koshicki from the Czech humanitarian organization " People in need" ("Clovek v tysni"). Patrik knows, what he is talking about, because this small Czech organization is delivering to Grozny threequarters of all the food aid. The rest is distributed by the Danish organization Danish Refugee Council, called here by all as"Datskiy Soviet". Without this assistance the people in the rubbles of Grozny would have died from hunger. The Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations long time ago has quit on all the help for Chechnya.

On the lists of both organizations are around 60 thousands people. They both divided the city into four sectors, in which several points distributing food are working. A food ration, that's for example: 10 kg of flour, half kg of sugar, some edible oil, pasta, whatever is floorstocked at the very moment in a warehouse. These are the monthly portions. The Czechs are getting the merchandise from other organizations, mainly from the World Food Program. Nor this one and the other UN organizations can work according to the rules in Chechnya, because that's still the area of military operations and there is a possibility of putting life of persons involved in help in danger. The points of food distribution are surrounded from the early hours. Food is delivered by truck convoys from Ingushetia.

In the Groznyan district of Kalinino, the distribution of Danish food is taken care of by Petra Prohazkova, probably the most known journalist in the Czech Republic. Not that long ago, she's got a state award from president Vaclav Havel. But, that was for the journalistic work. She came to Moscow as a correspondent of "Lidove Noviny" eight years ago. Shortly after her Ph.D in philosophy, she was 25 that time. She had been to all sore spots in Russia, Abkhazia, Karabakh, Tajikistan and of course many times in Chechnya. She was crossing with her camera the Russian lines to find Maskhadov, Basayev and other fighters. At various times she was in deep troubles. Few months ago in Dagestan, a Russian armored personal carrier got destroyed by a mine, when she was travelling in it.

Miraculously, nothing happened to her. Her pictures and interviews were broadcasted on TV all over the world. The Russian authorities were trying to take away her acreditation. She told that on the popular Russian channel NTV. The story came into notice. She's stayed. She has closed her bureau in Moscow and left for Grozny in the spring. Using Caritas money she's rebuilt a small house in Kalinino. Today, there is a daycare for 25 children, orphans and from families in the worst material situation. Petra lives herself in a barrack, in the conditions not much better that thousands of Grozny's inhabitants have been living. Every morning she gets in her car she's brought from Moscow and goes to look for people who are not able to reach the food points. She's a special pass, only she knows how it's been obtained by her. She is looking for them in the basements, in the ruined houses. She brings what she finds in the warehouses. She is the only foreigner who lives permanently in Grozny. Why is she doing this? Somebody has to help these people.

"This will not done by the big organizations like the UN, WFP and others. They have been sitting in comfortable hotels in Vladikavkaz, in Moscow or Nazran, happy with their high salaries. That's beside the question" - she said being interviewed in the Czech TV. "I had a lot of difficulties because of that" - she recalls. We are talking in her barrack in the late evening in Kalinino. Behind the window an electric generator is rattling. Ingenious Chechens converted it to work on city gas, that's been brought to this place. But, even this noise can't deaden the series of shootings from machine guns and sounds of distant explosions. Nobody pays any attention to it.

Every day is like this. Nobody even moves, when Petra's body guard, a policeman from Bislan Gantamirov's unit is hunting an exceptionally big rat in the middle of the night. "It's not easy to work here. The desperate people don't understand, that we're not able to help all of them. It happens, that they're screaming profanities on us. There is no shortage of macabre rumors, that in our daycare we're selecting children for their sale abroad, to kill them there to sell their organs. Also, they are different surrealistic situation. Not that long ago, a sanitary control from the new administration showed up in our daycare. They were interested what we were doing with the sewage.

On the whole our street, there is not one house that hasn't been bombed, sewer system doesn't work, thousands of people live like animals and they in white gowns are threatening us with closing the daycare. It turned out, that 50 roubles - less than two dollars, had convinced these inspectors, that's everything's O.K. Well, from the start that was obvious" - tells Petra. She knows, many people won't survive this winter in Grozny, first and foremost the elderly and disabled that has been left to their fate in the cold and moist basements. But, she can't do for them anything more.

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Russian Media Prepare the Russian Public for a Withdrawal from Chechnya

Qoqaz Net ~ Dec. 8

Civilian rallies continued in Grozny and Kershloi protesting the Russian occupation and the human rights violations of the Russian soldiers especially indiscriminate arresting, torturing, and murdering of young civilians. The protesters compared Putin to Stalin, who was known for his hate of Islam and extremely severe persecution of Muslims in Chechnya. In recent weeks, Russian command allowed Russian media to cover these protests and rallies. Insha-Allah they are trying to prepare their public for an upcoming withdrawal. Furthermore, Russian newspapers stated that some of the Russian commanders are now in favour of holding talks with the Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. Russian commanders a few days ago reported that they were holding talks with various Chechen commanders. These reports were completely denied by the Mujahideen who insist that there is no negotiation with the Russians until they comply with the Chechen demands, the first of which is complete withdrawal from Chechnya.

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Chechen Rebels Step Up Attacks

The Times ~ Dec. 7

Chechen rebels have ambushed Russian military postions, killing 12 soldiers and wounding more than 14 others. The rebels attacked 30 Russian positions in Chechnya in the past 24 hours, including checkpoints in the capital, Grozny, the northern city of Gudermes and the eastern town of Argun. A Chechen official said the rebels struck at the heart of Russian positions, in contrast to their usual practice of attacking remote or isolated areas. Eight soldiers died and more than ten were wounded in attacks on checkpoints. Four more soldiers were killed and four were wounded when the rebels blew up military trucks in Argun and Alkhan-Kala, near Grozny. Two Russian soldiers were also killed while trying to defuse a land mine on the road leading from Grozny to the neighbouring Russian region of Ingushetia

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Six Dead Including Two Russian Policemen in North Caucasus

(AFP) ~ Dec. 7

Six people were killed including two Russian police officers in overnight attacks in the Caucasus republics of Chechnya and North Ossetia, news agencies reported Thursday citing police. Gunmen threw grenades at a police post stationed on the border between the republics of Ingushetia and North Ossetia before opening fire with automatic weapons, leaving two Russian policemen killed and three injured. Two of the gunmen were also killed in the battle, ITAR-TASS said, suggesting that the attackers had come from Chechnya.

Two rebels were killed during a clash with federal forces in the southern Alkhazurova village, the Russian command in Chechnya told ITAR-TASS. A number of civilians were hospitalised Wednesday after being injured by explosive devices planted by rebels, Interfax reported. Two landmines wounded local farmers and another one exploded under a civilian car, the Russian military told the news agency. Separately, Russian warplanes and attack helicopters staged more than 30 raids over the separatist province in the latest 24-hour span, concentrating on Chechnya's southern mountains where most of the remaining rebels are thought to be based. Russia has been fighting a 14-month war against the rebels in Chechnya since launching a self-styled "anti-terrorist" operation in the troubled republic on October 1, 1999.

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Crime Capital of Georgia Overrun with Chechen Rebels

(AFP) ~ Dec. 7

Police in the former Soviet republic of Georgia warned Thursday of a possible conflict with Chechens living in the Pankiyski gorge, labelled the country's crime capital. "Almost all criminal activity is connected in some way to the Pankiyski gorge's eight villages where some 10,000 Chechens live," the chief of police in the northeastern Akhmeta district, Temur Arabuli, told AFP. "Georgian police cannot carry out operations there because they fear a conflict with the local population," said Arabuli. "Not a day goes past without a car or some cattle going missing, or a robbery happening, and that's not to mention the frequent kidnapping of foreigners," the police chief noted.

Six men including a Russian and two Spanish businessmen are currently being held hostage in the gorge by rebels. Half of the Chechens settled in the gorge many years ago, while the rest are thought to be refugees from the 14-month war in Russia's breakaway republic, which borders Georgia. Russia has repeatedly accused Tbilisi of allowing up to 2,000 Chechen rebels, currently based in the gorge, to move freely across the 80-kilometre (50-mile) mountainous border and earlier this week imposed a visa regime between the two countries.

"Drug trafficking, arms sales and hostage-taking is flourishing there," Russian President Vladimir Putin's top spokesman on Chechnya told Moscow's Echo radio Thursday. "Tbilisi did not respond to our calls for joint action and Georgia lacks the strength and means to guarantee the safety of the Chechen border by itself, so we were forced to introduce a visa regime," Sergei Yastrzhembsky added.

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze on Wednesday accused "foreign secret services" of destabilising the situation and declared a state of emergency in the Kakhetia border region. Three armed Chechens were arrested by Georgian special services late Thursday in the gorge, Kakhetia's police chief Vanu Mgebrishvili told AFP. The arrests prompted a group of armed Chechens to descend from the mountains, threatening police and demanding their comrades' release, he added.

However, Georgian secret services were actively involved in escorting Chechen rebels across the border, a police source in Kakhetia's Akhmeta district told AFP Thursday. "In the end of October when there was a lot of talk of Chechen rebels crossing into Georgia, I saw a convoy of three trucks filled with Chechen rebels, entering the Pankiyski gorge without being checked," the police official said. "I stopped a car on the outskirts. The passengers were Chechens and I wanted to check their documents, but a Georgian security ministry official was accompanying them. He forbade me to search the car and threatened me."

A Chechen fighter and his wounded brother told AFP that they crossed the border into the Pankiyski gorge two months ago paying both Russians and Georgians. "We came to treat my brother's wounds, who was injured in Russian bombings, and then we will return to Chechnya," said 35-year-old Mansur. "The war is far from over and we need to take a breather. We are not Georgia's enemies, we are not bandits, we are grateful to the Georgian people for their hospitality," said Mansur. Georgian police fear the Chechen contingent will remain in the region until the snow blocking mountain passes melts in April, and warn that the Georgian armed forces are too ill-equipped to clamp down on the rebels.

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Russia Tough on Georgia Over Chechens, West

Reuters ~ Dec. 7

Moscow has defended its imposition of visa controls on Georgia because of fears of infiltration by Chechen rebels but analysts said on Thursday Russia's move revealed anger at Georgia's efforts to forge closer ties with the West. After months of accusations that Georgia has been harbouring rebels from Russia's restless Chechnya region, Moscow launched a visa system for travel to and from the Caucasus state this week for the first time since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Analysts said the visa move meant more than just a headache for travellers but had implications for Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze as chronic unemployment regularly forced thousands of Georgians over the Russian border to earn money. ''(The visa regime) is very serious for the many people who come over to Russia to trade,'' Andrei Piontkovsky, head of Moscow's Centre for Strategic Studies, told Reuters. ''But I think it can be seen as part of a wider political campaign. Maybe it is to discredit Shevardnadze and find someone more attentive to Moscow's demands; Moscow was never happy with (his) overtures to the West and NATO,'' Piontkovsky said. Russian-Georgian relations have deteriorated during the course of the latest war against separatists in Chechnya, the second in six years, with Moscow criticising Georgia for letting guerrillas and weapons filter through its mountainous frontier.

POWERDERKEG BORDER REGION

The Kremlin has focused on the potential powderkeg of the Pankisi Gorge, where Georgia's small Chechen community has been flooded with at least 8,000 refugees flowing into a rugged border region over which Tbilisi has little control. Both governments accuse the other's border guards of letting Chechen fighters cross the remote frontier at will, and Russia has laid hundreds of mines to hamper rebel movements. An anti-tank mine blew up two Georgian border guards in October. Chechens are believed to be involved in the kidnapping of two Spanish businessmen last week on the main highway to Tbilisi airport. They are reportedly being held in the Pankisi Gorge.

The plight of the men is another blow to Shevardnadze's authority after two Red Cross officials were seized in the region earlier this year. They were freed without a ransom being paid. Shevardnadze has said he was ready to take ''emergency measures'' to restore order in the gorge, sending troops to the area after Georgian villagers demanded Tbilisi reassert its control. But analysts said he was caught in a dilemma. ''Georgia cannot exert control over the area but Shevardnadze cannot compromise his independence by allowing Russian troops to go in there. It's a totally dead-end situation,'' said Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

RUSSIAN ASSERTIVENESS, GEORGIA EYES WEST

Shevardnadze also said he thought the unrest could be part of a wider plan to discredit him. ''Behind all these similar acts lie certain destructive forces, and that does not rule out the possibility of foreign states' special forces.'' Malashenko said Russia's tough tactics may be a bigger threat than criminals to Shevardnadze's public standing, after Moscow used last week's summit of the post-Soviet Commonwealth of IndependentStates (CIS) to demand tighter security on Central Asian and Caucasian frontiers. ''On one hand (Russian President Vladimir) Putin wants to show Shevardnadze who is boss and on the other to show the rest of the CIS who is boss.

He was very forcible at last week's summit,'' Malashenko said. The other issue irking Moscow is that Shevardnadze has said he wants Georgia to be knocking on the door of NATO by 2005 -- again raising the threat of Russia's Cold War foe encroaching on its borders, this time from the south. Georgia also stood against Moscow by backing the West's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia when Russia opposed it. In an interview in Thursday's Krasnaya Zvezda Russian army newspaper, Georgia's ambassador to Moscow Zurab Abashidze touched upon Tbilisi's attitude to NATO and the Kremlin. ''One of my friends was asked: ''To what extent is Georgia drifting to the West?' And he answered: To exactly the (degree), that Russia pushes her that way,'...this is part of the right way to look at the problem,''

Abashidze was quoted as saying. To add to Shevardnadze's worries, Russia has the bargaining tool of the gas and electricity it pumps into Georgia and which it has threatened to turn off due to unpaid debts. Russia's strength in this area was highlighted when thousands of Georgians last month flooded Tbilisi's darkened streets to protest at the country's parlous energy provision. Transport stopped and television and radio went off the air.

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Rights Group Slams "Carnage" in Chechnya, Holds Out Hope in Balkans

(AFP) ~ Dec. 7

The international community failed to act to stop the "civilian carnage" in Chechnya and has done little to prevent the rise of authoritarian regimes in central Asia, US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its annual report Thursday. The report, published ahead of Human Rights Day on Sunday, painted a bleak picture of the overall human rights situation in parts of Europe and Central Asia. But HRW said it held out hope for peace in the Balkans, following the ouster of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and the death of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman."Milosevic's departure from power meant new hope for the rule of law and human rights protections in Serbia," the report said.

It issued a stinging rebuke, however, against Western governments for turning a blind eye to Russia's crackdown in breakaway Chechnya."The blatant impunity for war crimes in Chechnya cried out for accountability, but there was none," the report said. "The international community lacked the political will to exercise leverage with Russia to press for a halt to the massive abuses perpetrated by Russian forces in Chechnya."

It said that unlike the situation in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, where world leaders acted quickly to stem the conflict and help ethnic Albanian refugees, the civilian population in the Chechen capital Grozny has largely been left to fend for itself, with food, medical care and other needs provided haphazardly. The rights group denounced the fact that Western governments failed to condition economic aid to Russia to halt the violence in the small north Caucasus republic.

Russia poured forces into breakaway Chechnya on October 1, 1999 in a bid to wipe out separatist fighters blamed for a series of apartment bombings throughout Russia and for rebel incursions into neighboring Dagestan."The international community often lamented that it had no significant influence over Russia, but squandered real opportunities for leverage or sanctions in favor of political expediency," Human Rights Watch said. The report noted that little had been done to prevent the further entrenchment of authoritarian governments in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and other parts of the former Soviet Union."Once again, the international community chose not to use available policy tools to effect change or take a principled stand," it said.

It lamented that torture was also still widely used in various European countries, including Uzbekistan, Russia and Turkey. "Torture remained common in Turkey and was used to coerce testimony and confessions in both common criminal cases and security-related cases," the report said.However, one positive development was the publication this year by the Turkish parliament's Human Rights Commission of several reports documenting the persistence of torture, the report said. While it hailed positive political developments in Serbia and Croatia, it regretted that following the fall of Milosevic, the international community had wavered in its commitment to press for cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It also pointed out that rights violations had been reported by ethnic minority groups returning to Bosnia and Croatia.

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Where's The Money?

Daily News Service ~ Dec. 7

As Federation Minister Magomed Gireev had warned, the distribution of hot meals and bread was stopped yesterday at "Soglasie" refugee camp near Karabulak city, where 4950 people are sheltring. Most of the catering services have refused to supply the camp because of its huge debt. The Ingushi say the debt has reached 80 million rubles, though the Federation Ministry is reported to have transferred 43 million, which seems to have never reached those feeding the refugees. Meanwhile, the dropping winter temperatures are only increasing the tide of refugees.

Over the past two months their numbers have reached 9613 persons, who have not been registered by the Russian Ministry of Federation. In just the past day some 2000 refugees arrived in Ingushetia through "Kavkaz" checkpoint and 1841 left the republic, headed back to Chechnya.Only international organizations are continuing to send aid to the refugees. A UNHCR convoy bringing humanitarian aid is due to arrive today from Stavropol. 141,000 refugees received aid in November as part of the UN family food program. The same number is to also receive help in December.

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Jihad Will Proceed

Kolumbus ~ Dec. 4

One of the known Chechen commanders, emir Dzhambulat has stated in an interview to Kavkaz Center's correspondent that the actions of the Chechen divisions do not allow the occupants to really control the situation in the occupied territories of the country. In his opinion, the forces of the Russian aggressors are in impasse and do not know what to do next. The complete partizan war forces the enemy to stay in defense or to make senseless retaliatory actions against the civilian inhabitants. Emir Dzhambulat emphasized that the Jihad of the Chechen people and of the muslims of Caucasus will proceed anyway.

He emphasized that the mujahideen have enough of forces and means to break the backbone of the aggressors. It will take place earlier or later, told emir Dzhambulat. The Chechen commander told about one of the last operations of special units of mujahideen. The fighters of his division attacked at the enemy in the area of Novoye Atagi. In the short fight a Ural lorry and more than ten Russian soldiers were destroyed. In return the aggressors bombarded the village, destroying some houses, and wounding about 20 villagers.

A military formation blown up

Some details have arrived concerning the destruction of a Russian military formation in the vicinities of Argun. On Saturday at 12.20 p.m. local time a group of Chechen fighters blew up a military formation of the enemy with armoured equipment and other military machines. The explosion was made on the road between Dzhalka and Argun. As result of the explosion about armoured vehicles were put out of action. Not less than 7 aggressors were killed. After the explosion the mujahideen fired at the formation with automatic devices and machine guns. The Chechen party informed that the explosives were detonated after the armoured train had passed. It is interesting that even if there was an explosion and a fight thereafter, the train did not stop, but continued with full speed to Khankala. 20 minutes after the explosion Russian helicopters arrived to the place of the wrecked formation and fired at the environs for 3 hours.

In Dzhokhar fights continue On Sunday in Dzhokhar a mobile unit of Chechen mujahideen from the division of Abu Shamil fired in the city centre a movable post of the occupants. In the course of the clash a BTR was destroyed and 4 Russian soldiers were killed. Among the mujahideen there were no losses. A couple of hours later another group of Chechen fighters attacked a blockpost in the factory area of the city. 3 aggressors were killed and some soldiers were hardly wounded. Both of these attacks were carried out in the bright daylight.

The command of the mujahideen informs that within the last two days, several locations and patrolling groups of aggressors in Gudermes were exposed to attacks. Near the bridge through the Gums river a patrolling group of the occupants was destroyed and near the bus station a BMP was blown up. During the night between Saturday and Sunday a building of the occupational command was attacked with grenades. Exact information of victims is not available, but according to the Chechen investigation, some 4 aggressors might have been killed. Kavkaz Center's correspondent has been informed by the the Chechen staff that the mujahideen now hold in captivity plenty of occupants, including about 40 Russian officers. Some of them were working with confidential military objects in the high-mountainous areas of Chechnya. Many were killed and wounded under the bombardments of their own forces.

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Moscow to Deploy 200 Permanent Garrisons Throughout Chechnya

Agence France Presse ~ Dec. 9

MOSCOW, -- (Agence France Presse) The Russian military announced Friday it was planning to deploy permanent garrisons in 200 of Chechnya's 375 towns and villages in order to protect the local population and their administrative leaders.

"Police officers, interior ministry troops and FSB security service officials will be stationed at the garrisons," Russia's chief-of-staff General Anatoly Kvashnin said Friday, according to the Interfax news agency.

Each garrison will include a reconnaissance unit responsible for searching out rebels operating in the area, he added."We are entering a new phase of the operation which will focus on the restoration of constitutional order in the Chechen republic," said Kvashnin.

During the 14-month war in Chechnya, separatist fighters have been actively carrying out punishment attacks against so-called Chechen "collaborators," particularly targeting local pro-Moscow administrators.

((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)

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Nobody Wants Responsibility for Chechnya

Svetlana Nesterova, Gazeta.Ru ~ Dec. 9

Chaos reigns in Chechnya. It is not news - it is a fact. Gazeta.Ru has learnt that President Vladimir Putin is planning to hold a meeting dedicated to the Chechen situation and that the top officials of the so-called power ministries are bracing themselves for a severe castigation.

The chiefs of the power ministries, i.e. the Ministry of the Interior, The ministry of Defence and the Federal security Service (FSB) are very apprehensive about the forthcoming meeting with the president and are trying to figure out how to shift the blame from their respective ministries.

As from October this year, Chechnya ceased to be the top priority issue for the power ministries.

Gazeta.Ru sources in the special services report that operative data retrieved in Chechnya and reports compiled by their departments in the republic remain neglected for weeks, even months. They are not forwarded anywhere, nobody takes pains to process them and, consequently, the measures the situation demands are not conceived, let alone implemented.

According to our sources, the command of the unified military group in Chechnya is no longer capable of taking efficient and necessary action.

In fact, the decisions taken by the military commanders are nothing but a response to the actions of the Chechen rebels and bandits, and the federals have no elaborated tactics or any plans for of preventive measures.

Military units deployed in Chechnya's districts ( Shali, Vedeno and Vedeno district, Nozhai-Yurt, Khankala) have absolutely no operative tasks. All they do is carry out so-called `clean up' operations and impose temporary blockades of the areas where acts of terrorist are committed.

Some commanders act on their own initiative and send out reconnaissance units in search of rebels. But in doing so, those commanders realize full well that if rebels are found, the units will have to deal with them alone and that reinforcements cannot be relied upon. The same situation applies to Interior Ministry troops.

According to the reports from Gazeta.Ru's correspondent in Chechnya, it is absolutely impossible to determine what is the scope of duty and jurisdiction of the Army and Interior Ministry commanders deployed in Chechnya.

Gazeta.Ru sources in the special services and in the Kremlin administration report that the president has studied reports from the Chief Intelligence Department (GRU), and Federal Security Service (FSB) officials on the current situation in the republic. Our sources say that within the next two weeks Vladimir Putin will meet with the representatives of the power ministries to discuss the situation in the republic. It is highly likely that those in charge of the counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya will receive a severe castigation.

In order to safeguard themselves, the power ministries' top officials are taking action in advance. To be more exact, PR-action.

On Thursday, December 7, Chief of General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin announced the beginning of the new stage of the counter-terrorist operation. He said General Staff planned to station 10 thousand servicemen in 200 new mini-garrisons in Chechen population centres. But as soon as he Kvashin had announced those plans, the General Staff press service toned down the plans.

They explained that those would not exactly be `garrisons" as such, but `village units' comprised of local militia and that if necessary, the Interior Ministry's special mobile units would render them assistance. As for the army, only the 42nd division would remain in the republic, in Shali. But then, the General Staff officials emphasized that these were proposals, not plans.

The Interior Ministry's officials refused to comment on the Chief of General Staff's announcement, saying only they were Kvashin's personal ideas, and that Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo would soon present his plan.

Either way, the Interior Ministry was due to take full responsibility for the situation in Chechnya way back in March this year, when the military stage of the operation was officially declared complete.

However, due to the lack of proper coordination between the law enforcers, the military and the intelligence service, this never happened.

As a result Interior ministry troops still only conduct law enforcement activities and do not even take measures to prevent acts of terrorism. They only act after such attacks.

It is hard to believe that Rushailo, who must be well aware of the chaos in Chechnya, would agree to assume full responsibility for the state of affairs in the war-torn province.

In the meantime, Chechen rebels continue their subversive activities. On Friday seven Russian servicemen were killed by rebel gunmen and landmines and 18 were wounded and we have just received reports that 22 people were killed by a car bomb in Alkhan Yurt, Saturday evening.

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Chechnya Car Bomb 'Kills 16'

BBC ~ Dec. 9

Russian troops are frequently targeted by rebels. Reports from Chechnya say a car bomb has killed at least 16 civilians outside a mosque in the village of Alkhan-Yurt, south-west of the capital Grozny. At least 11 Russian soldiers and two civilians were also reported killed in separate attacks earlier in the breakaway Caucasus republic.

A local pro-Moscow official, Lecha Mamatsuyev, said the car bomb ripped through a square near a mosque in Alkhan-Yurt on Saturday, killing 22 people and injuring 52. Twelve of the injured are in a serious condition, he told the Russian news agency Interfax.

The war has displaced thousands of Chechens

Alkhan-Yurt lies in Urus-Martan district, about 25km (15 miles) south-west of Grozny.

The office of Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said 16 people were killed and 20 injured by the blast.

Rebel Attacks

Earlier, five Russian servicemen were killed and six wounded in an attack by separatist rebels, Interfax reported, quoting the Russian North Caucasus military command.

In another incident, two soldiers from the interior ministry's elite Omon force died when their vehicle hit a landmine, the news agency reported.

Rebels also broke into a hospital in Urus-Martan on Friday, killing two soldiers and two nurses, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass said.

Another soldier was killed and three were wounded in a shoot-out with rebels in Grozny, the Russian AVN military news agency said.

Guerrilla warfare

Russia sent troops back to Chechnya in September 1999 to crush separatist rebels, but they have been frequently targeted in guerrilla attacks.

Soldiers and policemen die every week in hit-and-run attacks and mine explosions, despite stringent security measures in the devastated republic.

Rebels in Chechnya won de facto independence from Russia in a brutal 1994-96 war.

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Water Truck Blows Up In Chechen Police Headquarters

Associated Press ~ Dec. 8

MOSCOW - Two men drove a water tank truck into the courtyard of a Chechen police headquarters early Friday and blew it up, wounding 12 police officers and leaving one missing, a Chechen government official said. The driver of the truck was killed, Russian news reports said. It was unclear what happened to the second man. Two successive explosions blew the truck to pieces and ripped apart cars that were parked in the yard of the Interior Ministry department in Gudermes, theseat of the pro-Russian Chechen government. The blasts also damaged the headquarters building, and windows in surrounding residential buildings were shattered. The explosions followed a bloody overnight grenade attack on a Chechen police truck, which killed two police officers and seriously wounded three, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The two attacks underlined the rebels' recent campaign to strike in the heart of nominally Russian-controlled territory and to target the Russian forces' Chechen supporters. But the official suggested that the attacks could also have been orchestrated by people who have been angered by the Gudermes police force's alleged brutality.

The water truck had been filled with ammonium nitrate and a large number of artillery shells, the Interfax news agency cited the head of the police department as saying. Security officers had let the water truck through checkpoints because such trucks delivered water at the same time every day, the Gudermes official said. Police closed off roads leading from the city, and were searching for the two men who had been in the truck before the explosion, he said. Early reports suggested they died in the blast.

Igor Botnikov, an aide to Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said that only four policemen had been wounded in the truck bombing. Thirteen Russian servicemen were killed and 11 were wounded in other attacks across Chechnya over the past 24 hours, the official said. Four of thesoldiers were killed when rebels attacked an armored personnel carrier in the mountainous Vedeno region. Rebels attacked Russian checkpoints 28 times over the period.

Federal airplanes dropped powerful bombs in the Itum-Kale district, near the border with Georgia, to create rock blockades across alleged rebel routes through the mountains. They also delivered strikes on the Vedeno, Shatoi and Kurchaloi districts, all in the south. Heavy artillery shelled all those regions, as well as the southwestern Urus-Martan district.

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Georgia Rejects Russian Claims Over Chechens

BBC ~ Dec. 8

The Georgian authorities have dismissed Russian claims that a large contingent of Chechen rebels are operating out of the remote Pankiyski Gorge in the north of the country.

Mr Imnadze said that if Russian authorities had knowledge of such an infiltration, then he would have expected them to mention it - something he said they hadn't done. He said that if Russia continued to antagonise Georgia, then Tbilisi would look elsewhere for partners.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

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Gunmen Raid Gantamirov's Home

Dmitri Nepomnyaschy, IWPR ~ Dec. 8

NAZRAN - Sentenced to death by the outlawed rebel government and locked in conflict with the Russian high command, Bislan Gantamirov has good reason to be paranoid

Grozny mayor Bislan Gantamirov is claiming that a force of 120 gunmen who staged a dawn raid on his home last week were in fact Russian commandos disguised as Chechen fighters.The Russian defence ministry has dismissed the accusation as "crazy and absurd" adding that "it has no relation to reality and is merely an exercise in disinformation".

But the maverick mayor, who is also deputy head of the pro-Russian civilian administration in Chechnya, insists that the kidnap attempt was planned and carried out by the federal high command.

Gantamirov was away from his home in the village of Gekhi, near Urus-Martan, when the raiders struck on the morning of December 5. They outflanked a Russian military checkpoint on the road into the settlement before making their way to Gantamirov's residence.

Finding their target absent, the raiders proceeded to ransack the house, then abducted two Chechen policemen who were stationed in the village.The incident marks the second attack on Gantamirov's home in less than a year. Last winter, 11 Chechen fighters were killed and 20 wounded in a concerted attempt to storm the building. On this occasion, the raiders captured a local militiaman whose headless corpse was found a week later.

Gantamirov has been a highly controversial figure since he was jailed for six years in 1998 for embezzling $5 million of government funds. Desperate to find an ally in the Chechen ranks, President Boris Yeltsin released Gantamirov from jail in November 1999 and gave him command of the pro-Russian militia.

Under Gantamirov's leadership, the 2,500-strong force suffered heavy losses during the battle for Grozny, taking on policing duties in the capital after the rebel forces had withdrawn.

In July, the Chechen leader was appointed deputy head of the civilian administration, under Akhmad Kadyrov, the republic's former mufti. Over the past five months, the bitter rivalry between the two men has become legendary and, on at least one occasion, Moscow has been forced to defuse a potentially violent confrontation.

Of late, Gantamirov has made no secret of his suspicions that the federal high command is plotting his overthrow. He believes that his outspoken criticisms of the Russian campaign in Chechnya have made him enemies in the Kremlin where he is seen as a political loose cannon rather than a valuable ally.

And, in Chechnya itself, Gantamirov has effectively burned his bridges. On November 15, all Chechens collaborating with the federal forces were officially condemned to death by President Aslan Maskhadov's outlawed regime. The announcement was followed by a spate of brutal assassinations. In late November, the head of a Chechen mountain district was decapitated together with his deputy. Days later, masked gunmen attacked the mayor of Gudermes, Malik Gazemiev, wounding his driver and his brother.

Last Thursday, a kamikaze raider exploded a bomb outside the police headquarters in Gudermes, killing himself and wounding several Chechen militiamen.

So far, however, none of the pro-Russian Chechen leaders have yielded to rebel pressure and abandoned their posts.

Meanwhile, Gantamirov has gone back on the offensive, accusing "chameleon" Chechen policemen of collaborating with the separatists. He has announced plans to reform local police forces by increasing the number of "freelance" officers.

All candidates will be interviewed by a special commission including FSB and interior ministry agents as well as representatives from the Grozny mayor's office - headed by none other than Bislan Gantamirov.

Dmitri Nepomnyaschy is a regular IWPR contributor

Copyright IWPR 2000

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Declaration

A. Zakayev, Vice Premier of the Government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Chechenpress ~ Dec. 8

Declaration (unauthorized translation from the Russian version by Norbert Strade )

The systematical increasing of tensions around the presence of Chechen refugees on Georgian territory has assumed a deliberate character. Already during the first months of the second Russo-Chechen war, when the Kremlin was in need of a victory, the Russian army blocked the Georgian-Chechen border and boasted that not even a mouse would be able to cross it. This winter, the Russian military bands have had a whole year to consolidate their positions, but in recent times it has turned out that almost all caravans with arms and other provisions warp on both sides of the border. In the latest international news it was told literally that a Georgian ship circulates inthe waters of the Black Sea, of course in Chechen interests, transporting mercenaries and arms from coastal countries. It's amazing that Russia hasn't declared war on Georgia yet.

The Chechen government has responsibly declared that the subversive, terrorist war against Georgia, which is typical for Russia, started long ago and is conducted unsuccessfully. From their own example the Chechens know that murders and kidnappings of foreigners with the alleged aim of ransom point in the direction of a specific, large-scale terrorist action to destabilize the internal situation and to discredit the country in the eyes of the international community. The following stage are "spontaneous" protests of the population, the systematical establishing of a hard and irreconcilable confrontation with the official authorities.

It is well-known that Russia has the habit only to wage "noble", "defensive" wars, which of course are never declared. Just so it liberated the "ancient Russian land", in this way it expressed the Slavic solidarity, also towards the Catholics in Poland and Ukraina, gave international proletarian aid to the whole world - in the jungles of Indo-China and in South America, in the savannahs of Africa, in the deserts of the Sahara, in the mountains of Asia, and so on. The Georgians and Chechens never had any demands against each other. We have grateful feelings toward the Georgian people and its leadership these days, for the temporary shelter which has been given to thousands of Chechen refugees. The Chechens regard the freedom of the Georgian people as aguarantee of their own freedom. The Chechen government is deeply concerned about the possibility of a soon to come "brotherly aid" to the Georgian people against "international Chechen terrorism".The dictatorship, whose beginnings the foreign minister of the USSR, Edvard Shevardnadze, warned of in 1991, has already been ruling in Russia for one and a half year. "Anti-terrorism" has been developed and passed by the Kremlin as an official ideology for the next enslaving of its own people and the renewed conquest of the former positions of the USSR. The Chechen Republic was giventhe role of a mythical Islamic threat, of the main source of "terrorism" and of a training ground for the "anti-terrorist" forces. It's no accident that the whole, several million strong Russian power structure moved to Chechnya, with an appetite for human blood and a passion for robbery and atrocities. In the light of its increasing pressure on Georgia, the Chechens are warning the CIS countries that the terrorist war against the Chechen people might turn out to be only an intermediate stage in the whole planned revanchist provocation and war from the Russian side. Without any exaggeration, the Kremlin can be regarded as a mad fireman who starts fires with the only reason to be called to help. Nowadays, Russia presents itself as a source of terrorism in the whole world.

Addressing the Georgian leadership, we express our hope that it doesn't lose its control and succesfully creates countering measures to all provocations to destabilize the situation, including the implantation of anti-Chechen emotions. The Chechens assure their Georgian brothers that they will defend their freedom with full determination and achieve that the occupants leave the country.

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Russia and Chechnya: From One War to Another,

Mikhail Sokolov ~ Dec. 4

Guryanova Street. The long, white block of flats I know so well has lost its middle. Only two wings remain. The central entrance halls have been replaced by a smoky void. The site, full of ruins, is teeming with rescuers. Onlookers pass by. The aftermath of the first bomb explosion in Moscow.

The house, with its smelly entrance halls in urgent need of repair and its views of cranes at the goods port and the grey fences of the Lenin Komsomol car factory, was home to friends of mine. Fortunately, they made money during the "Perestroika" mayhem and had left the proletarian district Tekstilstshiki. As would become evident later, they abandoned the place in time, having left behind peripheral workers in a place where it is unthinkable to run into a sober man on Saturday evenings and where the sound of a small accordion at a beer kiosk can be heard on Sundays.

On another day, bags with an explosive device were found in the cellar of a house at the standard housing estate Brateyevo. Then came one more explosion - in the Kashirskoye Shosse. A brick tower, built in the 70s for the workers, turned into a heap of ruins one morning.

Moscow was overwhelmed by shock. Scared people guarded the entrances to their buildings. Unapprehended bombers, having targeted civilians for some reason instead of officials and politicians, were a different story to the invasion of Shamil Basayev's bandits into Dagestan.

The newspapers published portraits of the "Caucasians" allegedly involved in the explosions. So-called democrats and defenders of human rights urged war.

A tough and massive campaign against Chechens began. They were arrested for the usual wrongdoings: possessing soft drugs like "grass", a piece of trotyle or a few bullets. Tens of people were accused of being the bombers' accomplices. Then they were quietly released.

Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, promised that all of the capital's unregistered would be turfed out. Frowning policemen, going from one flat to another in our building, were asking people whether they knew anything about our neighbour of Karachay nationality.

Hysteria in the newspapers grew. Only a few were dismayed by the case in Ryazan: the militia finds an explosive device in a cellar, but suddenly some KGB officials appear saying they are doing a training exercise.

The state TV channels called for revenge. The independent NTV, headed by Oleg Dobrodeyev, who left soon after to get a top post with state TV, for a while became "military television".

Vladimir Putin, the Prime minister, promised the terrorists would be "drowned in a restroom" for their actions.

Chechen leaders denied their being connected to the explosions. Russian troops were moving slowly towards Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The authorities duly promised the troops would stop at the Terek, the river at the foothills of the Caucausus.

Thus the second Chechen war, a revengeful one, began.As a matter of fact, I was in the white block of flats on Gurjanova Street several times. Furthermore, I used to pass the brick tower in Kashirskoye Shosse for a few years on my way to work. For some time, I even lived just next to the house in the Brateyevo housing estate, where the explosive devicewas found.

Clearly, these targets were an excellent choice. Noone of any importance became a target; it was just a crowd - those who have recently been drafted in to Moscow to work for big factories and live in cheap hostels.

The anonymous terrorists' task was to make people scared stiff and to show them that the war may be everybody's business.

As a result of this, flabbergasted Russians were willing to ignore any casualties or genocide, hoping the bomb attacks against the common people would not be repeated. A colonial war became a patriotic one. Whoever could fight with unprecedented and undefeatable power would receive the gratitude of the nation. V. V. Putin, a previous Chekist thus appeared. As a matter of fact, the feeling of apprehension instilled throughout the country got him elected.

Now, almost one and a half years after the blasts, it is not important whether somebody consciously ordered the explosions or randomly used terrorists. It is even possible to accept the feeble official version. It is actually the result, needed by the election winners, which becomes significant.

Opinion polls show that during the first war in Chechnya (1994 - 1996) the majority of Russians, by virtue of differing circumstances, felt a negative attitude toward the politics of Chechen leaders and Chechens themselves.

The reasons were various. The first group were just victims of xenophobia; the second abhorred the activities of Chechen criminal gangs; the third considered the stable Chechen communities living in cities unscrupulous competitors in business; the fourth group opposed separatism. Others were disgusted by violations of human rights in Chechnya during the former presidency of Jokhar Dudayev as well as by the recent "business" practices of seizures, ransoms and a slave trade.

However, that vast majority (60 - 70 percent) was apparently divided into two groups: "activists" and "isolationists".

The "activists" backed Boris Yeltsin in his leading of the war and approved of fighting to a victorious end, regardless of civilian casualties. As the survey suggests, this group makes up about a third of the population.

However, a similar number of people recommended a different policy. They advocated shutting Russia off from the strange, Muslim Chechnya that tends to extreme forms of Islam, declaring border and visa restrictions, and sending disloyal Chechens back to their own country.

This group's view is understandable. If we did not fight even for real "Russian" regions (where they speak our language at least), such as southern Siberia (Kazakhstan nowadays), Kharkovsthina, Donbass, Novorossiya and the Russian-speaking Crimea (part of the Ukraine), why should we insist on keeping Islamic Chechnya (where they speak a different language)? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a famous writer and the most significant holder of this view, expressed it some time ago. He suggested joining the "Cossack" part of Chechnya to Russia, stretching a border along the river Terek and thus giving the mountainous land of Imam an opportunity of living according to its own savage laws.

It was just these people purveying Solzhenitsyn's opinion, together with the quarter of the population that firmly opposed the war itself, that became the majority in 1996 surveys. The two camps forced Boris Yeltsin to give general Alexander Lebed carte blanche to sign the peace Treaty of Khasav-Yurt (a shameful Treaty-of-Brest-Litovsk-like one).

Opinion polls carried out in 1997 showed that if a referendum were held, the majority of Russians would vote for the independence of mountainous Chechnya, or more precisely, its exclusion from the federation. Indeed, this will happen one day.

The question of 1999 was whether the terror-stricken atmosphere shakes up the "isolationist" population. Using an overall fear of mass terrorism, the authorities' agitation made the "isolationists" join the "activists". The authorities, backed by the two federal TV channels using a blanket brain- washing campaign, managed to accomplish a temporary national-patriotic majority which welcomes any means of force by Putin's military apparatus.

Surveys carried by the All-Russian Centre for Opinion Polls (ARCOP) suggest the following: December 1999 (general election to the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, takes place; the victory of "Unity" and other Kremlin allies) - 70 percent of those polled agree with the continuation of the war to a victorious conclusion; April 2000 (the presidential election; VladimirPutin's victory) - 67 percent hold the same view. Putin's policy in Chechnya, as the main stimulus for their backing him, was decisive for 21 percent of those surveyed. Considering the patriotic front, the former Chekist and lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin outplayed the communist Zyuganov. The leader of the Communist Party of Russian Federation could defeat the present president only if he repeated Stalin and Beriya's campaign of banishing all Chechens from Chechnya.

Time goes on and support starts to weaken. As the war continues, the reports of casualties emerge and of guerrillas holding their posts. Leaders collaborating with criminals embezzle federal funds. The cleverest of them disclose Russian troop violations that slowly lead to demoralization.

"Triumphant" generals hurry to become politicians. Having received posts, they stand as candidates for governorship.

The number of those who support the war in Chechnya slowly falls: from 56 percent in April to 49 percent in September.

Even commander Putin seems to show less interest in Chechnya. When in talks with western leaders, he presents Russia as a sort of bastion against international Islamic terrorism, Bin Laden and Afghan Talibs.

There are increasingly more reports suggesting that Moscow does not really know what should be done with Chechnya.

The psychological turning point comes in October 2000. For the first time, the majority of those polled, as many as 47 percent, call for peace talks, while only 44 percent want the military campaign to continue. As casualties mount, the war is backed only by 34 percent, while as many as 55 percent of the population support peace talks.

The practice of suppressing passions is failing to work. The divide between "activists" and "isolationists" is coming to end. However, it would be hopeless to expect any serious peace-making acts from Putin's present apparatus established in the wake of fatalities in the Moscow explosions and war in Chechnya.

Although Putin's Russia is not completely based on military performance, it lends itself easily to restoring imperial-Soviet practices. 46 percent of the population welcome the idea of rehabilitating the former USSR anthem. More than half of those surveyed want the results of privatisation to beinvestigated and federal liberties to be abolished. Facing such feeling among the people, the power of Vladimir Putin, like that of Belorussian dictator Lukashenko, may strengthen.

In order to calm people, Moscow will pretend to lead peace-talks, putting mere marionettes in the spotlight. This is how Mr. Putin plans to ingratiate himself with 80 percent of those polled, who are dismayed with the failure to tackle the Chechen crisis and not end the military campaign.

The propagandist echo of the blasts in Moscow is fading in Russian hearts. However, today's Russia has no political power able to oppose the absurd campaign in Chechnya; what is more, Europe feels no interest in having disputes with Russia. To conclude, the bloodshed will continue for a long time- with Russia and the World facing an outcome similar to the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan.Mikhail Sokolov is RFE/RL correspondent.

Firstly published in the Czech weekly Respekt (4.-10.12. 2000). Translated by Prague Watchdog with the author's consent.