I denne artikkelen gis det et sjeldent og unikt bilde fra innsida av Grozny.
Forfatteren dro selv inn i byen for å ta krigshelvetet i skue, og han
skildrer sivilbefolkningens lidelser.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/chechnya000110_pelton.html
Øistein Holen
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From the Inside:
Correspondent Tells of Life in Chechnya
By Robert Young Pelton
Jan. 12 The images remain: The 40-foot crater in the middle of a food market,
laughing children who went out for water and came back screaming, shattered
middle-aged women in fetid hospitals, the skeletal remains of a once
industrious
city.
I have just returned from rebel-held Chechnya and what I saw bothered me a
lot. The images of war are what you’d expect, but there is something
different,
something very beautiful and something very evil here. None of it is being
seen
by the outside world.
A Deadly Place
Chechnya is a place where journalists are killed and murdered (18 so far) and
arrested (nine in a recent week alone), people are kidnapped (more than
1,200 to
date), innocent aid workers and expatriates are executed. And the greatest
evil:
the countless deaths and wounding of soldiers and civilians every day.
I say countless because there is no one to count or verify the casualties.
Yes,
Chechnya is a dangerous place, but that is exactly why we must pay
attention to,
and stop what is going on there.
There are more than combatants being killed. People who are not fighting a
war.
People who want to live to play with their grandchildren, who were living
peacefully, trying to get by.
Until the Russians began methodically destroying their homes and killing the
people with rockets, artillery, gas, cluster bombs, napalm, mines, vacuum
bombs
and Scud missiles with the pretense that they are after terrorists.
Terrorists, Really?
Yes there are alleged “terrorists” in Chechnya. I met them, broke bread with
them safe in their bunkers. They have the means to cross Russian lines, even
slipping in and out of the country to raise funds. But these so-called
terrorists are not the ones dying.
The Chechen fighters complain that the Russians are too cowardly to fight,
that
they only kill the civilians from a distance. They say the real terrorists are
the Russians because they have instilled a terror in the population that will
never be erased.
There are large groups of journalists on the Russian side, highly skeptical of
the Russian propaganda but unable to cross over front lines to confirm the
carnage inside Grozny. They watch the tanks, the rocket launchers, the armored
columns. But they never witness what those weapons do.
It hit me when I first arrived over a secret pass last month. I had just
walked
over a mountainous path littered with air-dropped mines, and when we came to
Shatoi thought I had run the gantlet of missiles, bombers and gunships. I was
greeted with the sight of Scud missiles and Grad rockets landing on Grozny,
the
Chechen capital.
The impacts thundered through the cold, clear air. There was no anti-aircraft
fire, no sounds of battle, just the constant deep concussions of missiles
flattening houses and killing people.
My two mujahadeen escorts told me not to worry. “The fighters were safe in
their
bunkers. But the people,” they shook their heads, “they still live there.”
So that night I slept in a house instead of a bunker. If the people of Grozny
can survive, then so can I, I thought.
Daily Life Goes On
In the morning, I was surprised to find thousands of people still living in
Grozny, trapped by false promises of safe corridors and imprisoned by
poverty. I
didn’t need to hear their horror stories. I could see them all around me. The
twisted remnants of blasted refugee buses with personal effects scattered
around
the mangled frame, the packed hospitals, the traumatized elderly, the children
who cannot not speak anymore.
The dull yellow-orange flames from the Scuds and double concussions of the
Grads, Russian for “Hail,” were a furious sight and sound that would pale any
New Year’s celebration.
On Dec. 31, a joint U.S.-Russian Y2K monitoring group would blandly tell
assembled journalists that they only detected three missile launches, none
with
any apparent Y2K malfunction. Those missiles were in Chechnya.
Everyone had warned me against entering Chechnya. From the BBC to the State
Department. None of my advisers had actually been with the rebels, but they
told
stories of severed heads, million-dollar ransoms, evil gangsters and instant
death. Naturally, when I made it in, Chechnya was completely different.
In the apocalypse that is Grozny, there was fresh bread every morning, neatly
dressed people walked the streets, pausing momentarily to watch the jets drop
500-pound bombs. They waved at me and thanked me for coming.
They Saw in the Dark
A rocket hit a market stall, killing a young man and injuring two young girls.
When I was taken into the nearby apartment block to try to help the victims, I
couldn’t understand how the people could navigate through the pitch-black
interior.
When I came to the open window where a sobbing girl lay, I turned around to
thank the crowd of elderly Russian men and women pressing around me. I
could not
understand why they stared at the ceiling. Then someone told me. They were all
blind. I was in an apartment for the infirm and elderly.
They didn’t complain, they only asked me one question: “Why does the world not
care? We are Russians being killed by Russians.”
This is the slaughterhouse that is Grozny. A war we endorse by silence and pay
for with billion-dollar loans to Russia.
In Shali, as Russian tanks encircled the city, I was invited to tea. The
Chechen
family wanted to make sure I had enough homemade jam and fresh bread to eat.
“Would I like more tea?” they asked. “No, thank you,” I said. I had to leave
before the Russians came. Tank fire was exploding down the street. I asked
them
what they would do. “What can we do?” they answered.
‘Protect Us, President Clinton’
Soon their home would be ransacked, their lives turned upside down and their
world made an endless cycle of destruction and hatred. An old man came in,
asked
me to point my video camera at him. He took his fur hat off and asked very
politely if President Clinton could help them. “We are weak, you are strong.
Please protect us.”
Before I left they gave me a gift of a handkerchief. They apologized for not
having more to give me. When I tried to give them something they waved me away
and said, “We are Chechens, this is our custom.”
That night a writer, a cameraman and I barely made it past a 3-kilometer (2-
mile) front of grinding tanks and marching soldiers as we sneaked over the
border. When I finally made it to safety to the Georgian border I saw strange
colored lights. I had forgotten it was Christmas.
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