ARGUN: No one is safe anymore from being abducted in war-torn Chechnya, where the kidnapping of civilians, once mostly restricted to combat-age men, is an increasing threat to women and teenagers.

Tamara Magomedova, an old woman living in Argun, east of the Chechen capital Grozny, has no sympathy for the separatist fighters. But that did not bother the hooded armed men, a mix of Russian speakers and Chechen speakers - giving credence to a belief they were forces from the local pro-Russian administration - who last September crashed into her house before taking away her daughter Khalimat.

Magomedova never saw her daughter again. Her tale mirrors that of countless families, who accuse pro-Russian forces of indiscriminately spreading terror throughout breakaway Chechnya.

In Soviet times, Magomedova was a deputy in the local supreme Soviet, and she still recalls fondly the day she was "decorated by Brezhnev in person."

She will not let anybody say that her daughter supports the Chechen rebels who, for over five years, have been fighting Russian forces in a brutal war. But she will talk openly about the day that turned her life into a nightmare, something very few here dare do.

"On September 12, at 5:00 am, hooded armed men wearing military fatigues came to our house. I thought they had come to take away my son, since they usually take the men," Magomedova recalled.

"Then, the kids started to shout 'They are taking Mom away, they are taking Mom away,' she said as she sat in her well-heated kitchen with her three grandsons, aged eight, 11 and 14.

"I came in running, holding her passport, but they did not even take it, and they drove away with her without even saying what they had against her," Magomedova said.

"Some spoke in Russian, others in Chechen," she said. This could indicate that her daughter's abduction was jointly carried out by men belonging to the Russian federal forces and pro-Russian Chechen troops, like the feared militia of pro-Russian deputy prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov.

In spite of everything, Magomedova wants to believe her 38-year-old daughter is still alive, and shows her visitor a letter she received from a department of pro-Russian Chechen interior ministry.

The letter came in an envelope imprinted with a floral motif and the words "Congratulations !"

Sent from Khankala, Russia's largest military base in the North Caucasus region, it informed Magomedova that her inquiry about her daughter, described as an "offer to cooperate," had been received and passed on to the interior ministry.

Like Magomedova, many Chechens cannot make any sense of the bureaucratic labyrinth that theoretically could allow them to ask the Russian general prosecutor's office to open a criminal investigation. Many others are simply too afraid to even lodge a complaint.

Based on this, some observers say the official number of people abducted in Chechnya is grossly underestimated. The pro-Russian Chechen interior ministry says 200 people were abducted last year.

Just a few blocks away from Magomedova's home, 15-year-old Usam Baruyev, a schoolboy, is also missing. He disappeared on December 7.

"I had sent him to a shop just around the corner around 2:00 pm. He never came back," said Usam's mother, Tabarka.

Late that same day, Usam's elder brother, 18-year-old Mussa, was arrested as he was about to spend the night at a friend's place in a nearby apartment block.

"Neighbours told me that hooded soldiers holding my younger son arrived in an armoured vehicle," Tabarka said. She then heard that her elder son had been briefly detained at Argun's military komandantura. That was the last she ever heard of Usam or Mussa.

With no verifiable information about their fate and no official investigation underway, all Tabarka has is rumours saying her younger son was about to plant a bomb at the local administration headquarters when he was arrested. Even she cannot fight her own suspicions about what her sons might have been up to. But above all, she wants to know what happened to them.

"If these children are guilty, we should be told and they should be tried. But we cannot be left in the dark like this," Tabarka said.-AFP