Inside
Chechnya
Two
weeks ago I was in Chechnya and Ingushetia interviewing victims of war
for my graduate thesis. I wanted to see what daily life is like inside
Chechnya. On the drive into Grozny from neighboring Ingushetia, I wore
a long skirt and a head-scarf, as a Chechen girl would, to avoid being
discovered as an American.
What I saw there convinced me that conditions in Chechnya remain catastrophic.
Mr. Putin would like us to think that the Russian army is fighting terrorism
in Chechnya, but what I saw was a traumatized civilian population. Ending
this war must be a top priority on the agenda of the upcoming Bush-Putin
summit in September.
When I arrived in a suburb of Grozny not far from the Russian military
base at Khankala, I met with locals who told me about random shootings
by Russian soldiers and forced disappearances. "Not a single night goes
by without someone disappearing. Masked men come into homes and take
people away," one resident told me. I have read many reports by Russian
and international human rights organizations detailing forced disappearances,
torture, rape, and executions-- but it is hard to fully imagine until
you spend a night there.
At nightfall, my guides decided it would be safer to spend the night
near Grozny rather than risk going back to Ingushetia through the many
checkpoints when soldiers are drinking and their behavior is unpredictable.
We stayed at an ordinary home and ate a simple soup and bread before
we went to sleep. In Chechnya, whole families often sleep in one room.
I slept fitfully between the sounds of periodic gunfire and explosions
in the hills only a few miles away. I kept recalling the words of a
Grozny resident, "In Chechnya, we don't know if we'll be alive tomorrow
or even five minutes from now."
Morning came and my guides took me on a driving tour of Grozny. I concealed
a video camera and filmed the ruins of the city. There were fields of
rubble where 16-story apartment buildings once stood. Nearly every standing
building bore the scars of bullets and gaping holes from aerial bombardment.
Tens of thousands of civilians have died and 350,000 have been displaced
as a result of four years of fighting. And Chechens are not the only
victims; I saw pictures of the body of a Russian woman who was married
to a Chechen. She was executed together with her daughter. Their arms
were shattered by bullets as they tried to protect their faces.
Before we left Grozny, my guide stopped to buy some vegetables for a
family with very sick children. As I waited in the car, I saw that her
shopping bag had broken and tomatoes were spilling onto the road. Instinctively,
I jumped out of the van to go help her pick them up and suddenly saw
five Russian soldiers walking toward me. My driver shouted to me and
I climbed back in the car and looked straight ahead until the soldiers
had passed. That one simple mistake could have caught their attention.
The soldiers could have asked for my passport. If it had been revealed
that I am an American, my guides and I would have been in serious trouble.
As I was leaving Grozny my taxi stopped at one of the many checkpoints.
Spray- painted on the concrete barrier of the road block were the words,
"At this checkpoint I shoot without warning." A Russian soldier eyed
me in the car. For the first time in my life I felt what it is like
to be utterly without rights, at the mercy of men with guns.
Back in Nazran, Ingushetia, I met with the parents of Elza Kungaeva,
the Chechen girl who was raped and murdered by Col. Budanov. "What happened
to my daughter happens all the time in Chechnya, but most crimes by
the Russian army go unpunished," Mrs. Kungaeva said. I asked her if
there is anything she would like to say to Americans about the situation
in Chechnya. She answered, "Please, please, do something to stop this
war."
Catherine S. Osgood is a candidate for the Master's Degree at the
Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
Catherine S. Osgood