SHATOI (Russia): Summer is the guerrilla’s friend, and amid the rich, green foliage of the southern mountains Chechnya’s separatist rebels are able to roam free, blithely defying Russian attempts to capture them.

The sombre forests of the Shatoi region, 50 kms south of the capital Grozny, provide ample refuge for the fighters to rest between hit-and-run attacks on the federal troops who have been trying vainly for four years to quell their insurgency.

The Shatoi region could serve as a showpiece for Russia’s proposed new order, with promptly paid salaries and pensions, abundant crops of potatoes and corn and restoration work well under way, but for one thing.

It is also home to one of Chechnya’s best-known guerrilla commanders, Doku Umarov, and his fighters, according to both rebels and local witnesses.

“I was resting on my way home from the forest when some people came up to me and one of them said he was Doku Umarov. He asked me about our life, what kind of problems we’re having, and then wished me luck and said goodbye,” Eski Abdurakhmanov, a Shatoi local, recalled.

“I asked Umarov when this cursed war would end, and he said: Russia brought this war to us, and we will not stop until there is peace in our land and every Chechen is master of his fate,” he said.

In Grozny and the other large towns on Chechnya’s northern plain, rebels prefer to stage their assaults under the cover of darkness.

But in the south the guerrillas operate in open daylight, with the Russians reluctant to risk venturing into their mountain hideaways.—AFP