Chechen refugees feel safe with their fellow Caucasians in Georgia, but terror continues to tear the region apart
LITTLE DISTURBS the tranquillity of Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge. From the open windows of Razet Oznieva’s tree-shaded house drifts the pitter-patter of an antiquated sewing machine. Children play in Zeinab Kavtarashvili’s garden, as bees buzz between rows of honey-filled hives. And in the carpentry shop of Anzor Gaurgashvili, warm sunlight slants through a cloud of wood shavings as his saw spins.
In the broad bed of the burbling Alazani river, cows drink as they are driven from one bank to the other, between villages that meander towards the Caucasus mountains that rise into the haze behind them.
What makes the peace of Pankisi so striking is what lies a few dozen miles away beyond those 4,000-metre peaks: Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, the most violent republics in Russia.
There, militants and gangsters kill policemen and soldiers almost every day, officials loyal to the Kremlin are regularly attacked, and Moscow-backed leaders are accused of using terror tactics to crush rebels, silence critics and cement Russia’s shaky hold on the strategic North Caucasus.
In the last two months, more than 30 security service personnel were killed across the region, the president of Ingushetia was blown up and badly wounded and his construction minister shot dead, and a leading human rights activist, a charity worker and a journalist were murdered.
The violence makes a mockery of Moscow’s claim to have completed all anti-terrorist operations in Chechnya, scene of two devastating wars in the 1990s, and suggests unrest is spreading across a wild and beautiful region that has never fully accepted Russian domination.
For the Chechens of the Pankisi Gorge, that can only mean trouble. About 7,000 Chechens made their way through the high passes of the Caucasus to Pankisi in 1999 and 2000, after Russia launched its second war of the decade with local separatist rebels. After the fighting died down to become a grinding guerrilla struggle, most returned home to rebuild homes and lives shattered by the two wars, which are thought to have killed more than 150,000 civilians and saw the capital, Grozny, once dubbed the world’s most bombed city.
Chechen refugees still make up about 1,000 of the 18,000 people living in Pankisi, among whom are some 9,000 ethnic Kists, whose ancestors crossed the mountains from Russia and settled here in the 19th century.
The Kists’ language and culture is very similar to the Chechens’, and the strong Caucasian tradition of offering hospitality to visitors in need has helped them settle on this side of the mountains.
“I don’t feel like an outsider here, because this is the Caucasus,” said Razet Oznieva, taking a break from sewing the dresses she sells in local villages. “My home in Chechnya was destroyed and five men in my family were killed – only my husband remains,” she says, gesturing to the courtyard where Salman is rinsing the petrol tank of a car.
“I would love to go home, even though there is only rubble there now. But it is too dangerous. It will be impossible to return for as long as Putin is doing what he does and that traitor Kadyrov is in power.” Vladimir Putin and Ramzan Kadyrov are names spoken with venom by the Chechens here.
As Russian prime minister and then president, Putin ordered the massive artillery and aerial bombardments that drove the refugees across the mountains, and he is seen as the driving force behind the dirty second Chechen war and the rise to power of Kadyrov.
Kadyrov is a former rebel who took over as the Kremlin-appointed president of Chechnya after his father was killed in a bomb attack in Grozny. His militia is made up of ex-guerrillas with a reputation for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people who get in their way, and the federal security services, controlled by Putin, seem incapable or unwilling to put a stop to their reign of terror.
Chillingly for his many enemies and critics, Kadyrov’s reach is alleged to extend far beyond his homeland. Rival Chechen clan leaders have been murdered as far apart as Moscow and Dubai, and a former member of Kadyrov’s militia who accused him of torture was gunned down in Vienna.
Kadyrov denies any involvement in the killings, but was blamed last month by the head of Russian rights group Memorial for the murder of its activist Natalya Estemirova.
After the still unsolved killing in 2006 of journalist Anna Politkovskaya – which many have also laid at Kadyrov’s door – Estemirova became probably the most prominent chronicler of life in Chechnya, until she was abducted and killed on July 15th. This week, charity worker Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband were also kidnapped in Grozny and later found murdered.
On the same day as the couple’s violent death, a journalist was murdered in Dagestan and, the following day, Ingushetia’s construction minister was shot dead in his office. His boss, president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, is slowly recovering from injuries suffered in a huge car bomb blast in June.
The intensifying violence has set nerves on edge in Pankisi, which Russia bombed in 2001 to flush out Chechen rebels who had taken refuge there. They were ushered back over the border by Georgian forces the following year, but Moscow officials have claimed in recent months that the remote gorge is once again being used as a training base for militants.
Coming a year after a war in which Russia briefly occupied swathes of Georgia and recognised the independence of two breakaway regions, government officials as well as residents of Pankisi fear Moscow may use the alleged rebel presence as a pretext for another invasion.
“In 1999 everything moved through here, it was like a little Chechnya,” says Anzor Gaurgashvili in the carpentry shop which, like many other small businesses run by refugees, was set up with help from the United Nations refugee agency and other groups. “Ruslan Gelayev and other field commanders were here, but that was with the permission of the Georgian authorities and the connivance of corrupt officials. It couldn’t happen now.”
“But Russia might cause us problems. It can’t look after its own people and so follows a policy of occupation and stealing other countries’ territory. They’ve always used the Caucasus to create trouble and, for them, all Chechens who disagree with their policies are terrorists.”
Seamstress Razet Oznieva fears she will never be able to return to Chechnya — and that the Russians will not let her live quietly in Pankisi. “I haven’t seen any Chechen fighters here for many years. The border is tightly patrolled now and this is the quietest place you’ll find,” says the mother of eight.
Gaurgashvili, a former policeman who survived abduction and the threat of execution in Chechnya, agrees. “Pankisi is safe. Here, we don’t have to be scared of anyone. If you look at what’s happening in Chechnya, to people like Estemirova, this place feels like heaven on earth.”