Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (8 page)

They then pronounced the shacks (costed at 775,000 roubles apiece!) suitable for well-appointed occupation. Reports were sent to the Kremlin that everything was ready and only the wicked refugees, reeling under Maskhadov’s propaganda, were continuing to persist in refusing to enjoy their good fortune. The Kremlin set a deadline, March 1, before the election. The issue of the consequences of a war that had been started before the previous election was to be laid to rest. In January, Ella Pamfilova was sent here on behalf of Putin’s Administration to give her deeply sincere verdict.

“Pamfilova liked it. Why are you trying to stir things up?” the workers mutter darkly.

“Would you want to live here permanently yourselves?”

“What do you mean, permanently?” the foreman says. “It’s only for a time, until their own houses are rebuilt.”

“But you know yourself how things get rebuilt here! Has anybody gone back to their rebuilt houses yet?”

The brigade don’t reply. Nobody has gone back at all, and everyone knows it.

There are supposed to be two approaches to rebuilding in Chechnya. The first is to transfer money to people’s bank accounts and let them organise it themselves. The second is for the work to be done for you up to a set value, but for no money to pass through your own hands.

In reality these approaches merge like the confluence of two rivers. You don’t have to go far from Okruzhnaya to see the evidence. In fact, you only need to cross the road. The people living on Transportnaya Street are not those whom officialdom tried to force into the camp in Okruzhnaya after the River Sunzha burst its banks last year. The people here have experienced both the first and second approaches to “rebuilding.” They were supposedly paid compensation by the Government, and the relevant sums of money, to judge from the documents, were transferred to the citizens’ personal bank accounts so that they could repair their houses. But …

What do we see? The hovels are unchanged, only they have dried out. The occupants have patched them up themselves. The whole of Transportnaya Street looks like that. How were the payments to personal bank accounts made? Brigades arrived from the Grozny Board and said, “You are required to undertake work to a value of 771,000 roubles (the actual estimate by the Commission of the repair bill for a family whose name is known to
Novaya gazeta
), but we have to give the Kadyrov Administration a kickback, and also the Moscow Board, so we have had only 30 per cent of your money paid to us, and with that we can only put your roof back on.” Which they then did. The family signed for 771,000 roubles.

Things will be no better with the “rebuilt accommodation” for refugees returning from Ingushetia. Nobody doubts that the temporary huts in Okruzhnaya will become permanent dwellings the moment the refugees cross the threshold.

The foreman continues:

“Stop worrying. They will come and sort everything out themselves. Our people are hard workers. They have spent their lives doing casual labor elsewhere in Russia. We have knocked these houses up and they will take care of the rest. What’s wrong with that? Every family likes to do it their way. Isn’t that right?”

“Absolutely right, but it says here on the plan that there is a kitchen. Where is there any sign of that? A cooker?”

The foreman responds with a question of his own:

“And if there is a toilet here on the plan, does that mean we have to put in a WC pedestal even if there is no water?”

I hear the regular sound of hammering. Some way off a laborer is knocking together a chicken coop which is to be the refugees’ communal toilet.

“Excuse me, but you said yourself that there was going to be water.”

“Oh yes …” the foreman falters. “Only nobody knows when.”

“And when will they be getting a floor?” I ask, standing in one of the houses which is “completely finished.”

“That’s it,” he says, and points at what appears to be bare earth, or concrete. It’s difficult to tell under the layer of mud.

“But that’s just earth.”

“Well, what do you think they’ve got in their tents?”

The telephone is ringing and I know who it is. Vera, a Russian refugee from Grozny who is married to a Chechen. Her family, having lost their toehold in Grozny, have been languishing for over four years in a tent on the outskirts of the Ingush hill village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya.

“They drove us out of one camp,” Vera shouts through the “anti-terrorist” electronic jamming. “Now we are in another called Satsit, but they cut the water off here too yesterday. How are we supposed to live? Do they call this voluntary repatriation? Where are we supposed to go? To a new camp? Please, do something about it.”

“But Pamfilova came to see you,” I shout back in reply.

Our conversation is cut off, but I know that the travels through the North Caucasus of the Chairwoman of Putin’s Commission on Human Rights succeeded in bringing back to Moscow just one thing: legitimisation
of the travesty being perpetrated, and an opportunity for the state’s leading lights to tell their VIP Western colleagues they have the situation under control, while continuing to trample all over the Constitution. Madame Pamfilova is a good-hearted woman, but she is now part of a state system insisting, against all logic, on sending refugees back to Chechnya. The bureaucrats are not prepared to listen to common sense. They want everyone out by March 1, so that before March 14, the date of the Russian presidential election, they will have had time to remove the tents, and their problem will have been solved. Why does it have to be like that?

One of the most persistent stereotypes of the Second Chechen War is that the refugees are enemies of Russia. They are not seen as living in tents because their own warm houses were bombed. They are not seen as having been deprived of their rights. They are not seen as innocent people unjustly accused.

They are enemies who must be crushed. They are part of Maskhadov’s power base, accomplices of the “international terrorism” which Putin has been fighting, is fighting now, and will continue to fight. To listen to the Army and the officials, you would think the refugees’ reluctance to return to Chechnya was solely because they want to be able to continue their propaganda against Putin’s policies to foreign journalists and human rights activists, who find it easier to get into Ingushetia than the closed zone of Chechnya.

This is the thinking behind the solution of the refugee problem whose apotheosis we are now witnessing. Victory at all costs. No negotiations or understanding. Cut off their gas and water and send them back to the security sweeps and the war. If they don’t do as they’re told, that’s their lookout. You don’t pussyfoot with the enemy.

A program of repression is being rolled out across Russia, sweeping aside everything in its path. It engenders resistance. Everything seems to be done in order to spite someone; everything is directed against someone. But against whom? Is it only against the refugees? No, it is directed also against you and me. History tells us that children from the reservations never forgive children from warm houses for their humiliating childhood.

YELTSIN AND DUDAYEV SHARE FIRST PRIZE. THE SILVER GOES TO PUTIN, BASAYEV AND LEONTIEV

July 5, 2004

First, the profiles of the candidates for the War Prize, awarded for unleashing and fomenting the Chechen tragedy of 1994–2004. It has been founded by
Chechenskoye obshchestvo
, unquestionably the best newspaper today published in Chechnya and Ingushetia, and the one most dynamically increasing its circulation. Its editor is Timur Aliev. Announcing the War Prize,
Chechenskoye obshchestvo
showed that it is also more in touch with the public mood in the North Caucasus than its competitors. The question, “Who bears the guilt for all this horror?,” is one people ask themselves when they wake, when they go to bed, and which they ask each other constantly.

The rules were that anybody could nominate a candidate, and also vote, the winners to be decided by a simple majority. The results of this popular poll exceeded all expectations in the accuracy of the choice, which testifies to high public awareness of the true nature of events. But of course, who else could the winners be if not Yeltsin and Dudayev? And who could be awarded the second prize, if not Yeltsin’s worthy successor, Putin; that No. 1 ideologist of blood-letting, journalist Mikhail Leontiev; and that lover of personal power and big money, Akhmat-hadji Kadyrov? Also, of course, Basayev who has given all the above invaluable assistance in discrediting the Chechen resistance and reducing it to the status of “forces of international terrorism,” thereby effectively eliminating any chance of its cause being espoused.

And the prizes? Those in second place, alas, get nothing but their negative rating. The winners of the first prize, however, receive certificates which they can collect from 52 Mutaliev Street, Nazran; a year’s subscription to
Chechenskoye obshchestvo
(very good analysis, we recommend it); and, most importantly, an all-expenses-paid three-day tour of the war zone in Chechnya. As Djohar Dudayev is no longer with us, Boris Yeltsin is duly awarded a six-day extreme memorial tour with an itinerary in whose construction he was actively involved.

THE SOLDIERS’ MOTHERS GO OFF TO THINK ABOUT PROPOSALS FROM THE CHECHEN SIDE, BUT WILL IT STOP THE TERRORISM?

February 28, 2005

The latest development in Russia’s history is that in the sixth year of the Second Chechen War the first Russo-Chechen declaration of intent to restore peace in the North Caucasus has been signed in London. It is in English, and is not available in Russian. It is called “The Road to Peace and Stability in Chechnya (the London Memorandum).” The signing took place on February 25, 2005 when women representing the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, after several unsuccessful attempts to find somewhere in Europe to discuss a peace settlement with Maskhadov’s representatives, finally came to London, the capital of the new Russian emigration. There they met with those whom Aslan Maskhadov had delegated to meet them on behalf of the Chechen resistance (Amina Saiev, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ichkeria, Akhmed Zakayev, Maskhadov’s Special Envoy in Europe, and Yaragi Abdullayev).

[The following account of the prehistory is taken from Anna Politkovskaya’s article, “The Struggle for Peace Is Deadly Dangerous,”
Novaya gazeta
, October 25, 2004.]

On October 9, a Saturday, when it usually becomes slightly quieter in the cramped Moscow office of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia and it is possible to think about something other than the immediate concerns of receiving soldiers, conscripts and their parents, Valentina Melnikova, a member of the Union’s Co-ordinating Committee, and Ida Kuklina, a member of the President’s Commission on Human Rights, sat down together. They discussed what is preoccupying nearly all the human rights organizations: the state authorities’ manifest inability to cope with the Chechen crisis, the continuing acts of terrorism, and what the Soldiers’ Mothers movement could do to change the situation. It was time to act.

Thus did the idea of writing an open letter to the field commanders of the Chechen resistance come into being. A further three days were spent revising and discussing it with members of the Committee, and on October 13 the following brief text was released to the news agencies:

We understand the cost of the armed violence in Chechnya; it involves immense and irreparable losses for the Chechen people. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or have disappeared without trace. There are refugees; ruins in place of cities and villages. Thousands of our sons, both soldiers and officers, have died. There have been hundreds of innocent victims of terror. A whole generation of young Chechens and Russian servicemen has been crippled by the experience of violence and lawlessness. Thousands of impoverished invalids are doomed to a life of penury. Tens of thousands of families grieve over the loss of those dear to them. Such is the cost of this war, which long ago exceeded the losses incurred during the Afghan War. Ten years of war have not brought the desired results either for you or for the federal authorities. Terror engenders anti-terror, and vice versa. Neither in Chechnya nor in Russia do people feel safe.

Commanders of the Chechen armed groups! You will kill or be killed without end. You will not be able to change anything until you are recognised as negotiating partners. The Soldiers’ Mothers appeal to those of you who truly seek the good of the Chechen people with a proposal to give peace a chance and open negotiations for a peaceful settlement. We are willing to travel anywhere, to meet those you authorise anywhere, in order only to halt this deadly race. In coming forward as the initiator of negotiations, we will make all necessary efforts to involve in the negotiation process representatives of the leadership of the Chechen Republic and the Russian Presidential Administration, inter-governmental and peace organizations, and influential and respected public figures. We await your reply.

Members of the Coordinating Council of the Union of
Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, Valentina Melnikova, Maria Fedulova, Natalia Zhukova.

The reply was not long in coming. The very next day Aslan Maskhadov communicated through Akhmed Zakayev, his envoy in Europe, that he and the fighters of the resistance welcomed the Soldiers’ Mothers’ initiative: for their part, they were willing to attend such a meeting. A day later, Zakayev rang Melnikova and their communications ceased to be only in writing. “We agreed that the meeting should take place in a European country in November,” Valentina explains briefly.

The Mothers flew to London on February 24. Their accommodation was decidedly acceptable: the Waldorf, one of central London’s most luxurious hotels, near the famous Waterloo Bridge across the Thames. They came down to the hotel lobby at about 5.00 p.m., at first behaving like secret agents behind enemy lines. They were very nervous. On this note the meeting began between Ida Kuklina’s group (and it was she, a colleague of Pamfilova and member of President Putin’s “Committee to Promote Civil Society,” who was running the Mothers’ show) and Zakayev’s team. The meeting was held in the hotel’s conference room from 5:00 p.m. until midnight. At first the Mothers demanded secret negotiations, which suggested that these representatives of civil society had secrets they wanted to keep from civil society. At 7.00 p.m., however, at the Chechens’ insistence, observers representing
Novaya gazeta
and Radio Liberty were admitted. It was clear that journalists, unlike politicians, just wanted to see somebody at last agreeing to seek peace in Chechnya, and doing something to make it happen. Yet it soon became apparent why the Mothers were so reluctant to admit outsiders. They had come to London without any proposals other than that “a Multi-Lateral Working Group should be set up to to begin considering preliminary steps for the negotiating process,” as Ida Kuklina put it.