Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (21 page)

Akhmat-hadji Kadyrov is shown on Russian television side by side
with Putin far more frequently than the Russian Prime Minister, Mikhail Kasianov. Kadyrov it is whom President Putin insistently presents to East and West as “the face of the new Chechnya.” The new Chechnya is now in the second month of its existence. Nobody knows the whereabouts of Old Balu, and there is nobody to gainsay Kadyrov. Putin’s Chechen stalemate, Kadyrov’s land of despair. Late 2003, the “peace” after the “election.”

USING AN IMPRISONMENT PIT FOR A BALLOT BOX: CHECHNYA IS BACK IN THE MIDDLE AGES

November 17, 2005

In the six or more years of the latest war Chechens have become so used to frequent, dishonest elections that the imminent return of parliamentary elections has generated no discernible excitement. Popular apathy is consolidated by the racketeering which pervades the Republic. Everything depends only on whether you have paid or not; the officials and local security agencies either pay tribute, or levy it. Abductions continue to be a daily occurrence, and in that sense nothing has changed, except that now there are only two reasons for nearly all abductions: either somebody has not paid up (in the case of officials); or someone has not bought himself out (in the case of renegade resistance fighters).

My old friend Mahomet from Gudermes is a notable person in the Republic. A gentle, educated man, in earlier years he wrote a good book about the Chechen artist Pavel Zakharov. The blown-up Kadyrov Senior first made Mahomet, who had many orphans living in his house and was seriously in need of funds at the time, Minister of Labor and Social Development. Later also First Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs. But did Mahomet thieve?

Recently, the Kadyrovites kidnapped him and dragged him off to Tsentoroy, where the main Chechen “re-education base” is now located, numerous
zindan
punishment pits having been dug there for the purpose. They beat him up and presented him with a bill for $200,000
if he didn’t want to end up on the list of human rights activists disappeared without trace. The $200,000 was apparently part of a debt he hadn’t paid, plus interest.

Mahomet gave it to them, cash in hand, on the nail. They brushed down his suit, smoothed it, and returned the official, whose job is to support the socially deprived, to his workplace. In other words, one set of state officials extorted protection money from another civil servant.

A similar instance involved a promising young leader of the Shali District, Akhmed, who was also invited by Kadyrov Senior to work as Head of the Administration out of Togliatti. Akhmed too was recently abducted and taken to Tsentoroy, beaten up, and ordered to pay $100,000 for his release. He handed it over, but lost his job anyway because the Kadyrov extortion controllers concluded he was unreliable and they saw no prospect of coming to a satisfactory arrangement with him. He immediately fled abroad. Now the Head of the Administration of Shali District is absolutely one of their own, a certain Edward Zakayev, a friend of Kadyrov Junior rather than of Kadyrov Senior.

What are these debts we are talking about, on this kind of scale? And how in any case can such debts arise between state officials?

Even a year ago, in the months following the enthronement of Kadyrov Junior, “on side” in Chechnya referred to people who were considered loyal. Admittedly, “loyal” primarily meant “bound by ties of kinship,” but nevertheless loyal. Now “on side” means anyone who thieves and is capable of paying tribute. All officials and all security officers in Chechnya pay it to those above them – the Kadyrov gang – and the more highly placed an official is, the more he has to pay. A security official or a social welfare official pays on a regular basis. There is a requirement, for example, for a single local militia station to subscribe $1,000 for every person working there: 150 militiamen equates to $150,000 monthly, remitted to Tsentoroy.

And heaven forbid that anyone should try to conceal anything. The Kadyrovites have an enviably efficient protection racket control service, far more efficient than whatever outfit Putin kids himself is pursuing Basayev. If you don’t pay your tribute, or if you try to conceal something,
you get a smack on the head and the sum due from you is increased as an ongoing fine. If you fail to pay a second time you had better flee before you are abducted, with fatal consequences.

In other words there is a market, and it is ruled by bosses who do their rounds and get their cut. The bosses are a gang in private practice, and in Chechnya they enjoy the patronage of Russia’s most senior state authorities. Accordingly, absolutely anything goes in terms of robbery with violence or depravity, economics or politics, or the appointment of candidates to stand as Deputies. Not even membership of Putin’s United Russia party confers immunity. You need to pay and promise to keep paying.

One last example: a man who was close to the Kadyrovs, Taus, the most loyal of the loyal, their guard dog of Chechenisation. Taus lived with the Kadyrov family for a long time. He respected Akhmat-hadji. He served him and was inherited by Ramzan, whom he had known since he was little. Taus aspired to be a major politician. He was the architect of the agreement on how powers were to be divided between the Russian and Chechen regimes, and he was someone Surkov talked to in the Kremlin. He longed to be leader of the Parliament, and for a while enjoyed the rank of Chairman of the State Council of the Chechen Republic, a quasi-parliamentary institution which rubber-stamped political decisions on behalf of Akhmat-hadji and Ramzan.

But then there was an argument. In the end even the most loyal of the loyal could no longer tolerate the super-insolence of Kadyrov’s gang and the super-exactions they levied. Trading on his position as an old comrade, he had the audacity to make a remark to the totally berserk Ramzan, who beat him like a dog, in public, as he was accustomed to beat anyone he didn’t like. He punched him in the face and kicked him out.

Taus left and, even before the election, Ramzan appointed a different head of the Parliament, Dukvakha from the Ministry of Agriculture, to be Deputy Prime Minister. Incidentally, the Ministry of Agriculture pays even more than the other Ministries to Tsentoroy; Dukvakha had decided that might help his career along.

What am I getting at? On the eve of this latest round of “European-style”
elections, Chechnya has finally been turned into a big Bey’s bazaar where the Bey is the sole oligarch, complete with his Hummers and his golden WC pedestals, a completely brutal, repressive apparatus that stops at nothing, and other tell-tale signs of the Turkmenbashi syndrome. Do you know what Parliament does in Turkmenistan? It rubber-stamps the decisions of the Turkmenbashi. Well, in Chechnya a “European” façade is being built by a regime of total Turkmenbashism, a mechanism for rubber-stamping whatever Ramzan’s visceral urges dictate.

Of course, you have to feel sorry for the people racing to hand over money for the right to become nonentities, as Alu Alkhanov has in the past year by being “democratically elected” President of the Chechen Republic. But everybody makes his choice, and for those who wish to run and deliver the money there are others out there who were also urged to be election candidates but categorically refused.

One thing, however, is unbearable. What was it that thousands and thousands of people, from the start of the Second Chechen War in 1999, laid down their lives for? For this? And why are those who are still alive suffering so much, eking out an existence without any twenty-first-century amenities in the ruins and wrecked homes of Chechnya?

It is hard to admit, but we must: all the sacrifices that were made have been rendered senseless by the regime which has been installed. As election day 2005 approaches we are effectively back in 1997, the year when Maskhadov was an ineffectual head of state and Basayev’s gun law, raised to the status of national policy, was lording it over everybody.

The year 1997 led to the new war in 1999. Today’s arrangements cannot last long either. Another war in this land, which has already wept until it has no more tears to shed, is highly probable. Make a note in your diary: the elections take place in ten days’ time.

A VIDEO PREMIERE IN CHECHNYA

March 20, 2006

Last week that section of the Russian public which takes an interest in such matters was intrigued when a couple of photographs appeared
on the Internet featuring Someone Resembling Ramzan Kadyrov (hereafter, in the interests of brevity, referred to as “SRRK”). The photographs were stills from a video made using a mobile phone. This was said to be in the possession of a Canadian Chechen website. In the image SRRK is embracing an attractive young brunette in a crimson bra, and making no secret of how humanly happy he is.

A scandal erupted. The guardians of morality railed, the Chechen Prosecutor’s Office managed a turn of speed not seen for a long time by announcing that very evening that it was opening a criminal case against the perpetrators of this impertinence. Not, needless to say, in order to establish the identity of SRRK.

Those two photos, however, were mere child’s play. The “Bathhouse Video’, as it was titled, is nothing compared with other videos featuring that same SRRK and his henchmen, also made with the aid of mobile telephones, which have come into the possession of
Novaya gazeta
.

Right, then: Scene 1. Chronologically the first video, this was also the first to arrive at our office. A typical Grozny street, evidently in late autumn 2005, probably November. A trivial local incident: a road accident involving a federal armoured personnel carrier (there are no non-federal APCs in Chechnya) and a car belonging to somebody from the so-called Chechen security forces. Numerous people in the uniform of the Kadyrov “Security Service” run in from off-camera. Among the crowd there are also members of the Highway Patrol Militia. The crowd is rushing over to where Russian soldiers are lying on the ground, evidently from the APC involved in the accident.

One federal who is still on his feet is pushed by men in Kadyrovite uniforms to where the others are lying. The mob crowds round. Flailing arms, fists, rifle butts. The one-eyed mobile phone follows what is happening.

A member of the Highway Patrol shouts in Chechen, “Stop beating them! Disperse! Aslanbek!” Those filming with the mobile phone say in Chechen, “They haven’t had enough yet” and in Russian add, “The bastards.” And again in Chechen, “We’ll show them not to disrespect Ramzan!”

Eventually the crowd parts. The bodies of the soldiers, sprawled on the wet, muddy shoulder of a Chechen road, are left lying motionless, face down in the mud. One of them gets his head stamped on. He does not react. Either they are dead or completely unconscious. One thing is clear, they have been thoroughly beaten up.

Scene 2. Possibly January this year, or maybe December last year. A dense crowd of men wearing a variety of combat fatigues in a market, either in Grozny or Gudermes. From the loudspeakers of a market booth pour the lyrics of a Russian pop song: “There is harmony in the world …” In the middle of the crowd SRRK is visible.

The filming is being done from a car window. The two people involved in the filming are speaking quietly in Chechen. “What’s he doing, shoving him in the boot?” “Yes.” “They’re shoving another one in.” “Yes, two of them.” “Do you see? It’s a Lada 10.” “Is Ramzan getting into the 10?” “I can’t hear what they’re saying because of you!”

The crowd of men in combat fatigues is churning about in Brownian motion. SRRK is directing the process from the middle of the mêlée. The paramilitaries are manhandling someone, who is not resisting, into the boot of a white Lada 10. Then they start shoving in a second man who is less willing. One paramilitary sets about him. Finally they slam down the boot lid and the vehicles prepare to leave.

SRRK has already climbed up on to the car’s running board. In the heat of directing the abduction he throws his arm forward, like Lenin on the armoured car at the Finland Station in 1917. “What is he doing on that 10?” those taking the video exclaim. Quite so, bigwigs in Chechnya drive around fast in armour-plated jeeps.

Scene 3 is in effect the “Bathhouse Video,” two stills from which were made public last week. The significant thing about this clip is what was not shown. After SRRK embraces the lady in the crimson bra, there is some incomprehensible action. SRRK several times releases the lady in red then draws her back to himself, laughing. The lady tries to dance as he talks to her in bad Russian, but then he shouts in Chechen to somebody off-camera, “Go on, take your trousers off!”
Again, “Give him some shampoo [sic] so he takes his trousers off!” All this with much chortling. SRRK is enjoying himself, relaxed, unself-conscious.

Finally the scene becomes more comprehensible. SRRK wants his young lady to feast her eyes on someone off-camera who is lowering his trousers on SRRK’s orders. After that we see a harassed young man in a black baseball cap pulling down his trousers. He has either been beaten up or is mentally disturbed, or in a state of narcotic intoxication. He moves slowly, but obeys the orders.

SRRK on the other hand is clearly on a high. With joyful yelps he tears himself from the young lady and skips over to the other man in the baseball cap, by now with his mobile phone in hand, and starts photographing the lower part of the unfortunate man’s body. The young lady no longer figures, as the “cameraman” concentrates on SRRK squealing and enthusiastically continuing to video the personal attributes of the man in the baseball cap. SRRK is really enjoying himself. How? By photographing the extreme humiliation of someone who took his trousers down on his orders and is not even averting his face. Sex would have been preferable. This is sick.

The significant question, however, is who has decided to disseminate this material and why? Why right now? Who is the target audience?

Without the slightest doubt, those responsible were right by SRRK’s side, trusted bodyguards and soldiers, “brothers,” because nobody else could have done it. Or rather, they could, but they would have been killed as soon as it became evident that the videos had strayed beyond their own circle.