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by Arbi Arbiyev ALKHAN-KALA (AFP) - One year after war broke out in the breakaway Islamic republic of Chechnya life has become a daily ordeal with curfews, arbitrary arrests, desperate poverty, and little access to electricity, water or medicine.
Residents in Alkhan-Kala, a small town 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of Grozny, have been reduced to digging holes in their courtyards to make reservoirs into which tractors dump cisterns of water. The town has no supplies of drinking water or electricity. "One of my sons works in Rostov-on-Don [in southern Russia]. He sends us money. It's only thanks to him we can live," recounted 80-year-old Nasrudin Saifulayev, a father of 10. Nasrudin's family worries about his fragile health. There is a chemist's (pharmacy) in town, but its shelves are bare, lacking even the most basic medicines. There is no work anymore in Alkhan-Kala, where not a single business has been functioning for the past year. The 10,000 inhabitants (down from a pre-war population of 14,000) survive thanks to help from the Chechen diaspora and small-scale agriculture, despite the risk of stepping on a mine in their fields. "Over the past year, my wife and I were only paid our [monthly] pension twice. That's why I spend all the time in my vegetable plot and raise a few animals," said Alavdi Dachayev, 65, who also subsists largely on money sent to him by his son Alvi, a trader in Moscow. Last January, the population of Alkhan-Kala elected a pro-Russian administration, hoping to derive some benefits. "Our hopes were dashed. When we understood that the administration were not going to re-establish electricity we bought a generator together with a dozen other neighbors," Alvadi said. "Now we can watch television. We follow the news, hoping each night to hear that negotiations will start between the Russians and the Chechens to put an end to this war," he added. After several weeks of punishing bombardment, Russian forces captured Alkhan-Kala in November 1999, two months after the start of the war. Since March, there has been no fighting in the town, but shells regularly blast the outskirts, when the Russian army suspects rebel groups are hiding there. Meanwhile, special Russian police units carry out "mopping up" operations and arrest young Chechens accused of belonging to the ranks of pro-independence fighters. Families then go looking for them to buy them back, selling their livestock or home if necessary. The price of freedom ranges from 1,000 rubles ($36) to several thousand dollars, several families said. An independent Russian commission on Chechnya, led by former justice minister Pavel Krasheninnikov, confirmed that this abuse was rife during a fact-finding mission in September. Life in Alkhan-Kala brings daily privations and humiliations: no telephone, the need to get special permits or bribe soldiers to travel to another town, a curfew from 10pm until 7am, and the permanent fear of police raids. Nasrudin's only joy in life is to accompany his grandchildren to the local school, which reopened in September, even if he is worried by the trauma they have suffered from the war, etched into each of their drawings. "Everyone is sick of this horror. At every prayer, I beg Allah to send us peace," the elderly Muslim man said. |
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