December 18, 2002	Wednesday	Shawwal 13, 1423

GROZNY: “Look around you. Isn’t it obvious? There is no peace here.”

Standing at the edge of one of the most heavily bombed districts of the Chechen capital Grozny, Omar Yarishev points to piles of snow-covered rubble littering what was once the lively Minutka square.

Minutka — its pavement cafes, homes and trees now buried under debris — was the scene of some of the fiercest street battles during Moscow’s two campaigns to crush Chechen separatists.

“The war is still continuing,” said Yarishev, whose wife died during the 1994 bombardments. “We hear blasts every day. People still disappear. Sweep operations continue.”

After almost a decade of fighting rebels, the Kremlin says the campaign’s “military phase” is over and that life is back to normal. It says Grozny is ready to house tens of thousands of refugees, under pressure to leave tent camps in nearby areas.

Russia refuses to negotiate with any Chechens who will not pledge loyalty to Moscow. It says the region is stable enough to stage a referendum for a new constitution and then elections for a Chechen president and assembly, already planned for next year.

But there are few signs of a durable peace in Grozny, once a leafy city of 400,000 now deprived of water, electricity and heating even in the freezing winter.

Residents, confined to their homes after dusk by a military curfew, do not venture out again until late morning, allowing Russian sappers time to clear mines laid overnight.

“You have to plan your trips to avoid the checkpoints. Sometimes university students cannot get to classes and we cannot get to work,” said Luisa Magomayeva, a researcher at the local television station. “Even elementary things, like going out to a cafe, are virtually impossible here.”

At Grozny’s main maternity ward, doctors say the curfew and the Russian checkpoints that dot the city force many expectant mothers, including those needing urgent care, to give birth at home.

“We have many stillbirths because mothers can’t get to the hospital at night,” said Magomed Silimov, head doctor at Hospital Number Nine. “Many wait until the second day, things get worse, and by the time they come, it is too late.”

Moscow has enlisted prominent pro-Moscow Chechens to marshal support for the proposed constitution, with several hundred holding a highly publicised congress this month.

For most Chechens, both the elections and the congress — billed as a forum of elders akin to the Afghan Loya Jirga — are part of a delusion that Russia can bypass peace talks.

But without a leader Moscow will agree to sit down with, negotiations are increasingly unlikely.

Chechnya’s ousted president Aslan Maskhadov, elected in 1997 when Chechnya enjoyed de facto independence, is in hiding and addresses Chechens through statements on Internet websites.

“We very, very much want peace,” said Danil Mutzayev, a father of three from the village of Urus Martan outside Grozny. “We need a leader. Without one there can be no agreement between warring parties. Without that there can be no end to the war.”

Moscow says negotiations are superfluous.

Russian forces, who poured back into Chechnya in 1999 after a three-year interlude, say they have full control over the region, and say their presence is being reduced. Only 1,000 separatists, they say, are still operating in the region.

“Without question (we have full control),” said Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for Russian forces in the North Caucasus. He added the number of “terrorist acts” carried out daily by rebels has slid — to three from 30 in April 2000.

“We wipe out two to five rebel fighters a day. That must seem like a small number, but it is proof we tell the truth. Otherwise we would claim hundreds of rebel deaths,” he said.

But nights in Grozny are still shaken by mortars and automatic rifle fire, with fighters coming out of hiding to lay mines and attack Russian checkpoints.

Shabalkin dismissed the nightly battles: “There may be some gunshots against isolated fighters, but that means nothing.”

NOBODY’S BUSINESS: The centrepiece of Russia’s campaign to prove Chechnya is ready to resume the life it left off in 1994 is the mass return of refugees who sought shelter in neighbouring regions. Tent camps, most in Ingushetia province west of Chechnya, were the strongest factor undermining Moscow’s claims of “normalization”.

Zoya, a nervous mother of five, left her children in the central Russian city of Saratov, where she fled only seven months ago, to see whether it was safe to return to Grozny.

“They say everything is fine, but look at the city!” she said, huddled against the cold, watched by Russian snipers.

“There is nothing for us here. They have done nothing for us. You’d think we were all bandits. We are nobody’s business.”

Many are not so lucky. Despite international appeals, Russia has closed at least one of the main five camps, and is preparing to pack up the remaining refugees still in Ingushetia.

The return, Moscow says, is voluntary.

But aid agencies say camp residents were asked, ordered and finally forced to return to Chechnya. Only a handful will find their homes intact or conditions as promised by authorities.

At one relocation centre in central Grozny, one family melted drinking water by placing bottles packed with snow underneath a bedridden grandmother.

“You see there is no water. The well is frozen over,” Yakha Yakhayeva said, gesturing at a row of aluminium buckets by a well. “I haven’t seen a drop in days. There is nothing.”

The refugees, promised 2,000 roubles ($65) on their return, say they have received nothing. Food packages no longer arrive.

Life, Grozny residents say, is quite simply far from what it used to be. Even under the auspices of a Kremlin-organized trip for foreign reporters — effectively barred from entering the region without official approval and military escort — it is hard to avoid the destruction, fear and hatred.

Russia has fought the Chechens since the end of the 16th century, trying to bring them into the Russian empire. Chechnya was not fully coopted into Russia until the mid 19th century.

General Yermolov, the most brutal of all military leaders who battled to subdue the region half the size of Belgium, once vowed he would not rest while a single Chechen was still alive.

For Chechnya, one woman whispered, history repeats itself.

“I don’t know about politics. We just want to survive,” she said. “Just tell them we are not enemies of the people.”—Reuters