Chechen refugees fear promises
of help mask drive to force them back to violent homeland
Sunday February 02, 2003
By JIM HEINTZ
Associated Press Writer
SLEPTSOVSKAYA, Russia (AP) A year after fleeing Chechnya to get away from marauding
men with guns, Khava Saltamatova now fears different men the ones who come to
her tent in a refugee camp with promises of help.
``They come from door to door and say, 'We already have trucks to take you back
whenever you're ready,' `` Saltamatova said. ``They say there are new apartments
waiting for us in Chechnya.''
And the men, whom she refers to only as ``they,'' say something else that sounds
both generous and ominous ``There will be assistance for 2,000 of us.'' About
4,000 people live in her camp and the implication is that those who wait too long
will be left with nothing
Promises that sound like threats are the latest phase in Russia's efforts to get
refugees in the Russian republic of Ingushetia to go home, even as the fighting
in Chechnya continues.
More than 100,000 refugees are estimated to be in Ingushetia the equivalent of
about 25 percent of the republic's native population and their massive presence
and sprawling tent camps are a visible reminder of Russia's failure to end the
Chechen war.
Some of the camps have become almost full-service communities, with new school
buildings, spartan but clean medical clinics and social programs including vacation
trips for schoolchildren and a foreign tour for a folk dance troupe.
In the months after the war began in 1999, Russia made some attempts to force
refugees back, including towing railroad cars loaded with sleeping refugees
toward Chechnya, which lies on the other side of a ripple of low hills from here.
Last year, officials closed down one camp and refugees said soldiers fired volleys
outside another.
Apparently stung by criticism, Russia has backed off from such methods, and has
promised no one will be forced back to Chechnya, say refugees and human rights
officials. But Russian and Ingush authorities have not disavowed a statement last
year that the camps will be closed, and the Kremlin is clearly eager to have as
many as possible back by March 23.
That's the date for a constitutional referendum portrayed as a major step toward
restoring order and undermining the Chechen rebels who draw blood daily from Russian
forces.
``Now, the government is being more sophisticated, more professional,'' said Aslanbek
Dakhkilgov, an official of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in
Ingushetia who monitors conditions in the camp.
Some of the men making the promises that Saltamatova and other refugees worry
about emphasize professionalism, making their pitch sound like a job recruiter
urging someone up the career ladder, a potentially powerful inducement for a man
crushed by the endless tedium of refugee life.
``We tell them that job placement is guaranteed,'' said Vakha Naliyev of
the Ingush Migration Service, who works in a camp just up the road from Sputnik.
``There are no kind of threats ... We propose that they return.''
His colleague, Isa Saralayev of the Chechen Migration Council, an arm of
the Kremlin-backed Chechnya administration, appeals to a sense of civic duty,
saying a mass return of refugees could influence Chechnya's future for the
good.
The men who urge the Chechens to go back also warn them about the possible cutting
off of the natural gas lines that warm the tents. In one camp, the gas lines feed
a communal kitchen where women and children gather to chat and bake mounds
of bread and sweet rolls that they proudly thrust at visitors.
The refugees hear those warnings as threats, but Saralayev says it's just a precaution
in case the owners of the land fail to deliver the gas.
Ingush President Murat Zyazikov says gas, electricity and water have never once
been cut off. But refugees say some camps have suffered sporadic outages.
Eliane Duthoit, the U.N. humanitarian affairs coordinator in Ingushetia,
notes that both Russia and the United Nations agree that refugees should
not be forced back, ``but what we need is a common understanding of what
those words mean.''
Also, refugees living at a derelict dairy just outside Ingushetia's main city
of Nazran say authorities have refused to register many of them, making them ineligible
for small welfare payments and raising fears they could be driven away from
their so-called ``spontaneous settlement.''
Zyazikov, the Ingush president, says about 64,000 Chechen refugees are in his
republic. U.N. agencies put the figure at about 103,000. The refugees doubt
the promises they hear from their mysterious visitors. Rosa Murtazaleyeva, a dairy
farm resident, said she had heard rom relatives that refugees who had returned
were getting food aid only every few months rather than regularly as promised.
Nor do they feel assured of a place to live. Usam Basayev, a worker for the human
rights group Memorial in Ingushetia, said refugees had been told of families in
Grozny that were ready to take them in, but when Memorial's Chechen workers checked
with these families, ``nobody knew anything about it.''
Although an average 500 people a month are returning to Chechnya, according to
U.N. figures, most refugees appear determined to stay put, fearing broken promises
and violence.
``At least in Ingushetia, no one is trying to exterminate me,'' said refugee Saithassan
Astamirov.
Ali Mutsuyev spoke passionately of wanting to see his homeland restored,
but when asked if he would go back to participate in the referendum, he snorted
bitterly and swept his arm around his cramped room at the dairy farm.
``We've already participated,'' he said. ``We're here.''