Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (23 page)

Their answers are extraordinarily consistent. “It is unlikely anybody will surrender to Kadyrov.”

There you have it, and this in a republic which is claimed to be infatuated with Ramzan, which is inundated with outward signs of deference. There are posters everywhere: Ramzan with Daddy, Ramzan with Putin, Ramzan on his own with a furrowed brow, and “You Are Our Hero,” and “We Are Proud Of You.” They are plastered along all the roads, at the entrance to even the smallest villages, in all schools and state institutions, on fences, doors and lamp posts, on the concrete blocks of disused checkpoints … Everyone in Chechnya just loves him so.

So why would people not be prepared to lay down their arms to him? This is where we can no longer name names. All my conversations on this subject took place on condition of complete anonymity.

“Why do you believe Ramzan has to be removed before people will
come out of the forests?” I ask an influential commander of the pro-Moscow Chechen security forces whom I have known for a long time. He trusts me and I trust him. We have had good reason for that in worse times.

“They will not come out to be slaves, and for us Ramzan is a continuation of the enslavement. They will come out when the rule of law is established, and not before. A second condition is that they should be guaranteed a job which doesn’t involve a rifle, not armed detachments they will be drafted into in place of the forest.”

“What do you mean? They want jobs waiting for them? That’s impossible. Unemployment here is the same problem for everyone.”

“No, I mean something else. Nobody in Chechnya today, including those who never fought anywhere and have nothing to be amnestied for, can be sure they will have a job tomorrow if Ramzan for any reason takes a dislike to them. They can’t even be sure that they will be alive if Ramzan takes a dislike to them.”

After that we talk about Eshiev. My informant has not the slightest sympathy for him, but what happened has to be discussed. Maierbek Eshiev, a well-known field commander from the mountainous Vedeno District whose radio code name was Mullah, surrendered along with his detachment under Ramzan’s guarantees after Maskhadov was killed. Let us have no illusions, Eshiev is a religious fanatic.

Kadyrov promptly appointed him Commander of the Anti-Terrorist Center for Vedeno District. Each anti-terrorist center has divisions in the towns and villages of Chechnya and its officers are drawn from the old A. Kadyrov Regiment in which former fighters could enlist. They were all directly subordinate to Ramzan Kadyrov. For a long time the ATC was his power base, but in spring this year it was disbanded. This was seen as a first move by Moscow to cool Ramzan’s ardour. Most members of the Anti-Terrorist Center were drafted into the North and South Battalions under the umbrella of the Interior Ministry Troops of the Russian Federation. On June 1 they swore the oath of allegiance to Russia.

Incidentally, this federal plan for taming Kadyrov Junior did enjoy some success. Many ex-resistance fighters who had become Kadyrovites
took this opportunity to distance themselves from him. Kadyrov reacted by becoming hyperactive and tried to ensure the next batch of amnestied fighters came his way. The idea for the present amnesty, which Patrushev announced after Basayev’s death, came partly from Kadyrov’s determination to restore his power base.

But to return to Eshiev. On November 10 last year, on Militia Day, Kadyrov put Eshiev forward for a medal, which he was duly awarded in a solemn ceremony by generals of the Interior Ministry. Many Chechen militiamen refused to enter the hall on that occasion. In the winter, however, a section of Eshiev’s detachment rejected Kadyrov and again took to the hills. There was fraternisation between Eshiev’s people and resistance fighters, and Ramzan accused Eshiev of treachery. It was claimed he had surrendered on instructions from Basayev solely in order to inveigle his way into Kadyrov’s confidence and kill him.

The upshot was that all the members of Eshiev’s family to be found in the Vedeno and Gudermes Districts were first abducted and then disappeared off the face of the earth. There were 24 of them, including women and a three-year-old child. Only one very ancient member of the family was left alive, on the grounds that he was too old to have children.

The fate of the Eshiev family became widely known in Chechnya and, naturally, among the resistance fighters. Nobody is going to be in a hurry to surrender to Ramzan now.

“Was Eshiev really going to betray Ramzan?” I asked people in the know.

“Yes,” they replied.

As the commanders of the pro-Moscow Chechen security forces point out, “loyalty” meant accepting total subservience to Kadyrov, not an attractive proposition, but those days are rapidly coming to an end. The situation now is that demonstrative loyalty to Ramzan, which helped many here to flourish, is being replaced by firm confrontation of him by the security forces. That was not the case before this summer.

On July 25 German Gref and Alexey Kudrin, respectively Russia’s
Ministers of Economic Development and Finance, flew into Grozny. There was a Party pow-wow on how to finance the rebuilding of Chechnya. Kadyrov, in his usual loutish manner, baldly demanded almost two billion roubles for projects which had already been completed, to which Gref and Kudrin responded in an unprecedented manner by demanding that he should provide them with full documentation, including invoices, on the projects.

The documentation is in a state of complete chaos. Building takes place, but there is no paperwork in respect of some four billion roubles. Gref was succinct in his reply: “Nice try …” The intonation, those present claim, was suggestive of “Up yours, Sunshine!” Kudrin said outright he had no intention of ending up in prison because of Ramzan: the money would be released only when full, receipted documentation for the projects was received. Kadyrov was indignant: “We’ll send you documentation by the suitcase tomorrow!” Kudrin was having none of it: thanks, but he would send his own valuation commission from Moscow to estimate how much the projects should have cost. Kadyrov went ballistic, but swallowed it.

There were a great many people present at that meeting, and none failed to register the change in the tone the federal ministers adopted with Ramzan. They also reminded him about the funds allocated for “flood damage,” which needed to be accounted for. Ramzan had no comeback. Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, the Speaker of the Chechen Parliament, was about to start singing his favorite song of recent months – to the effect that Moscow hadn’t given Chechnya a copeck in aid – but was cut off in mid-sentence.

There had been nothing quite like this before. In the past, those same federal ministers addressed the “Kadyrov team” only in the tone of indulgent fathers. Witnesses also noticed that the ministers declined to be transported from the airfield to the meeting in Kadyrov’s black Land Cruisers with their Moscow number plates, preferring Alkhanov’s presidential fleet.

Behind the scenes at that same meeting, the federal ministers were advised that if Kadyrov became President, half the Chechen Republic
would leave Chechnya. They were also told that nobody was likely to sign up to amnesties underwritten by Ramzan.

Word spread like wildfire around Chechnya to the effect that Moscow was dumping Ramzan. After this meeting, which felt as if a starter’s pistol had been fired, there came the first stirrings of mutiny.

Unrest was first evident in the so-called “Oil Regiment,” the Interdepartmental Security Service. The oil security guards refused to pay their tribute to the so-called Kadyrov Fund, and warned Kadyrov not to try to get them to attack their own people. They told him they would not shoot, and would take no further part in settling his gangland scores. They would hand in their weapons and leave. Next, the officers of the Ministry for Emergency Situations revolted and also refused to pay tribute – 3–4,000 roubles deducted from their salaries – submitting official complaints to the Prosecutor’s Office about those gathering the levies. The detachment commanded by Movladi Baisarov joined the rebellion and, although there are not that many of them left, they continue to be influential. The West Battalion, now formally subordinate to the Central Intelligence Directorate, were drawn in immediately after them.

It finally came to open war. Muslim Iliasov, commander of one of the battalions transferred to the Russian Interior Ministry troops and himself a former resistance fighter who had surrendered to Kadyrov Senior, was a close friend of Ramzan. He nevertheless ambushed him. Other detachments were drawn in: the West, East, OMON, North, and South Battalions. These split internally, with some siding with Ramzan and others opposing him. The balance of forces was not in Ramzan’s favor, and Iliasov, who had instigated the rebellion, declared Ramzan his enemy. He explained why: for the humiliations, insults and derision, for the slavery. Ramzan raged but retreated because of lack of support.

“This will not last long,” said one of the commanders who took part in the events. “I would give it two months before it’s all over.” Another of his colleagues who will also be unable to avoid taking part in the showdown said “three months.” Everyone with detachments subordinate to them in the pro-Moscow Chechen security agencies agrees that
Ramzan’s removal from the scene is only a matter of time. “Although,” they add, “anything might happen.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“If Moscow decides to keep him, they will keep him.”

“But who is Moscow, in your opinion?”

“Putin personally. Ramzan has been requesting an urgent meeting through Surkov.”

A meeting did indeed take place in the Kremlin on August, but Ramzan got relatively little out of it: his face on television, but no money.

Let us return to what happened after the revolt. What happened was August 3, the Day of the Oath, of swearing allegiance to Ramzan Kadyrov on the Quran. Poor Quran.

“We were all summoned to Khosi-Yurt (another name for Tsentoroy) to a sacrifice,” one of the participants relates. “It was some anniversary of Akhmat-hadji Kadyrov (fifty-five years since his birth). They took us to the gym and said we were to swear allegiance to Ramzan on the Quran. All the battalion commanders were there. The Mullah read and everybody was supposed to repeat it. The cameras were on. For several days after that they were showing our lips moving on television. I personally swore loyalty to my father.” Another commander laughs: “I swore to be faithful to my wife.”

For the participants this oath was by no means the first. My interviewees smile; “We saw people there who have sworn allegiance on the Quran to different leaders five times before, and broken the vow. They will break this one at the first opportunity.”

That is no more than the truth. The enforced oath only irritated more of those who are now opposed to Ramzan.

“This oath-taking was a panicky affair,” one of the commanders says with conviction. He, incidentally, did not go to Tsentoroy on August 3. “Ramzan was trying to show Moscow that he has everything under control, that he is in charge, but what he showed Chechnya was that he is in a blue funk.”

“How many people do you think Ramzan will have when it comes to the showdown?”

“Between 50 and 100.”

“His very closest circle?”

“No, only those who see that deserting him will leave them facing prison. Not one of them will be accepted back in the forests now. His closest circle will be the first to betray him. That’s the kind of people he has lured to his side.”

So, what change has there been in the situation in Chechnya at the end of this summer? The declaration of the amnesty and the killing of Maskhadov’s successor as President of Ichkeria, Abdul Khalim Sadulayev, and of Basayev which preceded it suddenly dispelled the inertia. These events prompted people to think about where they were, about the wider picture in Chechnya, what it might lead to, and who was who. That is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.

There is change also in the fact that, where previously almost everyone in Chechnya believed that in time Ramzan would be removed by those who had raised him up – “the Russians” – those in the security forces, and I emphasise that these are the pro-Moscow Chechen forces, now say that they will have to free Chechnya from him themselves. They see Chechnya’s major problem today as being not the jamaats, but Ramzan, the Kadyrovites, and the widening conflict associated with them.

Why? “Because the Kadyrovites are the best machine yet invented for exterminating Chechens. This is something a majority of people now recognise.”

That is the explanation I was given about the present-day Russo-Chechen political situation by a certain wise person, a Grozny resident I know, who under Maskhadov lived in Moscow because he found the Wahhabis unacceptable, who returned when power was transferred to the Russian Government’s representative, Nikolai Koshman, and now finds it almost impossible to live under Ramzan.

“The problem is that they can’t make up their minds in Moscow whether to force Chechnya to obey the law or not. Until Moscow decides, Ramzan will continue. Ramzan is a symbol of lawlessness. Those
who want to come out of the forests are waiting for the law to be re-established. People want legality.”

“But it is not simply a matter of Moscow failing to make its mind up,” I reply. “The problem surely is that you Chechens periodically demonstrate that you don’t want to live under the law. How is Moscow to make its mind up if at every turn people here say ‘Khyo nokhchi vats?’ (‘Are you not a Chechen?’). What is the way out? How are Chechens to be compelled to live within the law? Even if they want to surrender to the law, and not to Ramzan’s lawlessness, will they be able subsequently to obey it? That is the snag. Incidentally, Maskhadov faced the same problems in the late 1990s. In 1998 he told me in an interview, in the presence of a group of journalists, that the only way to force Chechens to observe the law was to impose Islam.”

“Maskhadov was wrong. What is needed is not Islam but the Adats, the ancient Chechen rules of life. They are full of wisdom. Paradoxical as it may seem, the Chechens can be compelled to live in accordance with Russian laws through the Adats.”