Chechens Feel They Are Being Squeezed Out of Nearby Region

By Peter Baker Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page A18

SLEPTSOVSKAYA, Russia -- Tiny Azamat chose a particularly wretched corner of the world for his arrival. His mother lives in dingy clothes in a dingy tent that has only three narrow metal bunks for the eight people who call it home. His father disappeared weeks after his birth, dragged away by cursing Russian troops in a predawn raid.

"We're little people," said Muslim Chabkhanov, the 3-month-old infant's grandfather. "We live like bugs."

Walk down any of the rutted dirt paths of the Satsita refugee camp, stop at any of the tents flapping in the wind and someone will recount a similar story. They are the refugees the world has largely forgotten. They fled war in Chechnya to neighboring Ingushetia. Now, they are no longer at the top of the agenda of international relief organizations, overwhelmed with places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. The Russian government would just as soon the refugees go back to Chechnya, pressuring them to decamp by periodically cutting off the power or closing a tent city.

Yet as bad as things are here, tens of thousands of homeless Chechens still figure it is better and safer than returning to their shelled and lawless homeland. Among those who remain, few here believe that the war is over, even after last week's Kremlin-orchestrated election ratifying its appointee, Akhmad Kadyrov, as president of the Chechen republic.

"We don't want to go back to Chechnya," said Vera Chabkhanova, 46, who rocks her grandson in a handmade wooden cradle tied by string to a metal bunk. "I'm afraid for my sons. One is 15 years old, almost grown up now. I don't know what would happen to him."

The Satsita camp sits in an open expanse of muddy land in the Ingushetia region near the Chechnya border. It is a hodgepodge of tents, some fairly sturdy ones provided by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, others cobbled together by inventive Chechens from whatever raw materials they could find.

Life, dreary and dreadful, continues despite it all, with the first refugees having fled the renewal of war in their homeland in 1999. For four years, people have made do, waiting for the day they could return. Young boys have grown taller, young women have gotten married and babies such as Azamat have been born.

Human rights groups estimate that as many as 100,000 refugees remain in Ingushetia -- the government counts half that many -- with most staying with local families or in garages, abandoned buildings or other crude housing. The tent cities have become such a sore spot for authorities that they recently set up checkpoints to keep out human rights workers and journalists without official permission to enter, although it is not hard to sneak into the camps by other routes.

The first Russian campaign to close the camps ended abruptly last year after an international outcry at the heavy-handed tactics. This year, authorities have tried a more subtle approach -- promises of cash accompanied by quiet threats -- and the outside world has not complained much.

"It's like a soft form of squeezing them out," said Eliza Moussayeva, head of the local branch of Memorial, Russia's most prominent human rights organization. "They come to the tents and say, 'Get out first because you'll have to go anyway.' "

Authorities finally closed the Bella camp two weeks ago, driving out the last of the 1,000 people there after weeks in which electricity and gas were sporadically cut off. Altogether, authorities boast that 1,200 refugees have left tent cities in Ingushetia in the past two weeks to head home, leaving 7,900 in the camps and 46,000 elsewhere in Ingushetia. But those leaving one refugee center often wind up in another; nearly 25,000 Chechens returning home are now living in two dozen temporary settlement camps in Chechnya instead of Ingushetia.

Many of those who remain see no reason to follow that path. Most of those forced out of Bella simply moved to Satsita, according to refugees, and some of those who do return to Chechnya wind up back in Ingushetia eventually.

"We didn't want to move," said Zarema Alsultanova, 45, who was among the last to leave Bella and now lives in Satsita. "We were forced to."

At one point, several refugees said, officials came to Bella to intimidate them. "I know how to break you and I will," they quoted one official as telling them. They said another warned, "If you don't go of your own free will, we'll bring tanks here and open fire on you."

None of the threats, however, sounded worse than Chechnya, where middle-of-the-night zachistki, or mop-up operations, round up civilians as well as rebels. "When people talk about Chechnya, they feel panicky, scared," said Lorhen Gunter, 43, a Chechen refugee of German heritage. "No one thought of going back."

The Chabkhanov family was in Satsita when the newcomers arrived from Bella, just as they have been since fleeing Chechnya in March 2000 after their home in the capital, Grozny, was bombed and burned with all their possessions. Muslim Chabkhanov, 47, used to be a Chechen police captain, but now he scavenges to provide for his family.

Over the years in Satsita, he has tried to improve their living conditions, using scrap canvas, bamboo sticks and pieces of wood to expand their U.N.-provided tent. They have accumulated a television, several lights that burn bare bulbs, a hot plate, some stuffed animals and toys for the children.

They get a care package once every six months from the Saudi Red Crescent Society, an Islamic relief agency, that includes a few bars of soap, toothbrushes and some detergent. Most nights they eat potatoes or porridge. Just once a year do they get meat, also from the Saudis in celebration of the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"It's field conditions," Chabkhanov said. "When it's hot here, it's really hot. When it's cold, it's really cold."

"It's not just physically hard," added his wife, Vera. "It's mentally hard."

Even rare moments of joy seem to turn sour, sometimes tragically so. Their daughter, Bella, got married a few years ago to a young Chechen, Ramzan Nakayev. In keeping with Chechen custom, Bella was "stolen" one day while visiting Grozny by Nakayev and his friends, who whisked her away for the beginning of wedding ceremonies.

The marriage led to the birth of a son, Adam, last year and then a second, Azamat, on June 28. The proud new parents took Azamat to show Nakayev's parents in Grozny. They stayed in an empty apartment, but somehow the Russians found out they were there.

"They came at four in the morning, pulled open the door, came in and threw him on the floor," Bella, 23, recalled about what happened to her husband. "They didn't allow him to get dressed. They just put his hands behind his back. They had me at gunpoint and wouldn't let me leave."

That was July 16. Nakayev, 22, hasn't been seen since. "I don't even know if he's alive or not," said Bella.

The family has been to authorities repeatedly without success. Muslim Chabkhanov called on his old friends in the Chechen police to help, but they told him they could not find Nakayev and did not know who took him.

So Muslim Chabkhanov has decided enough is enough. After nearly four years in the tents, he plans to sell everything he has -- the television, the hot plate, the tent itself. He will pack up his family and try to take them away -- not to Chechnya but to Poland, he hopes, or maybe Belgium or Norway, if any country will let them in.

"I want to take my kids abroad. I need to take her out," said Vera Chabkhanova, turning to Bella and starting to weep silently. "She saw the men who took away her husband. There's no guarantee that they're going to let her live."

And then there are her own boys, the 15-year-old and his 12-year-old brother. "I don't want my children to be interested in war."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company