Residents of Kenkhi have no hope for survival

The mountain village of Kenkhi is located on the border between Chechnya and Dagestan. Territorially it is a Chechen settlement, but mostly Dagestanis live there. Previously it was in the Shatoi district, and in 1993 it was included in the restored Sharoi district.

The life has never spoiled the residents of Kenkhi with inventions of the civilization and after the beginning of the war the villagers were cut off from the "big land." There is no motor way, no hospital, no electricity... Only animal-drawn transport. People here live by their own labor, consume what they can grow on their land, but it is no so easy high in the mountains. The residents of Kenkhi have no much land, and the climate there is absolutely different from the plain.

The war could not spare the villagers: it cut them off from the outside world. During the pre-war years the residents of Kenkhi could come to Shatoi, to buy salt, matches, detergents, necessary medicines, now they had to go to the Dagestani village of Agvali, which is far away and off roads.

In the beginning of the second Russian-Chechen war the village was heavily bombed. And almost twenty houses close to the mountains were damaged at that time. Those who know the principles of building in the mountains can imagine tumbledown houses of the residents of Kenkhi where a roof of one house serves as an inner yard for a neighbor living above. If one of these buildings breaks down, the rest also collapse as "card houses." One can imagine what happened there during the bombardments.

The villagers could hardly recover after the bomb strikes when another disaster followed: in June last year mudflows wiped off everything on their way, vegetable gardens, hayfields, the village cemetery, livestock and property of the villagers. That was a terrible disaster. The majority of the residents of Kenkhi remained under the open air, they lost almost everything they managed to accumulate during long years of living high in the mountains. They survived because it was summer outside and the villagers, accustomed to hard labor, began building shelters. At that time Stanislav Ilyasov and an NTV cameraman arrived by a helicopter. Later the aftermath of the catastrophe was demonstrated on TV.

The visit of the top official gave hope to the poor villagers. However, last fall several tens of families received from 20,000 to 50,000 rubles in compensation and the state did nothing more to help. However, the authorities promised on oath to compensate the damage caused by the mudflows in full. The promises remained hollow. Today the residents of Kenkhi desperately try to reach the pro-Russian leadership of the republic. For this purpose they send numerous messengers to Grozny. Unfortunately, none of them has managed to meet the so-called acting president [Akhmad] Kadyrov, or Chairman of the pro-Moscow Chechen Government [Anatoly] Popov.

One of the letters addressed to the present leadership of Chechnya was obtained by our correspondent in Grozny. It reads:

"We believed that after such great damages our state would not leave us in trouble. We sincerely believed the promises of compensations for the caused damage. No one helped us, no one even was interested in us, how we lived there, were we still alive."

The whole village wrote the letter. It was rewritten several times to make copies for the signal of distress to reach all those whose duty is to take care about the residents of Kenkhi. The letter contains not just a complaint of hard life - it sends a real signal of distress to the outside world:

"We are cut off from the big world. Our ill villagers cannot be taken to hospital in time - there is no hospital in the neighborhood. We use a stretcher and march for 30 kilometers through a mountain passing to take an ill person to the village of Agvili in the Tsumadinski district of Dagestan. Sometimes we fail and people die. Sometimes we were not allowed through a road-block. And people also died. During the last year we had to take our ill villagers through the Itum-Kala passing and then to drive them to Grozny or Khasavyurt. It takes half a day. The one who knows this neighborhood a little can understand such hard labor."

Meanwhile there is a large Russian military detachment some five minutes away from Kenkhi. Military helicopters go to Grozny and back all the time. Usually they fly in groups. I believe the authorities could have easily visited the village with the military to find out how people live there. It seems no one is interested in Kenkhi. Even before the so-called election: the voting resource is insignificant.

"Also we were not compensated the damage caused by the 1999 bombardments. Today our existence is in question. That was out Motherland, we were born there, we used to work there in severe mountain conditions. If the state does not help us to restore the village we are unlikely to continue living here. But we have no money to leave, to buy new housing.

Today it is necessary to establish communication with the village so that we can report about a serious patient. We have lost many people because we were not able to take them to hospital in time. Also we ask a commission to visit the village and assess the damage for further compensation payments."

The residents of Kenkhi send similar letters not only to the pro-Moscow Chechen authorities, but also to Russia's federal leadership. Each of them contains a signal of distress and a hope for salvation.

"Come and visit our village! Look in what conditions we live! Help us!"

This is how such letters - signals of distress from desperate people - usually end.


The Chechen Times [14.08.2003 7:01] A.Sugaipov