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A
Second Visit to Chechen Internally Displaced People,
IDP's, in Ingushetia
By Roswitha Jarman
A report of a 10 day visit in early March 2000 by
Roswitha Jarman working on behalf of the Agency of
Rehabilitation and Development, ARD, an NGO and charity
of Dutch Interchurch Aid, DIA, that started to work in
Chechnya in 1996. ARD has now a staff of over 30 local
people, most of whom are now in Ingushetia but some still
in Chechnya.
The general situation in Ingushetia
I travelled to Ingushetia without problems. I was on
my own this time but I did not feel in any danger. On
arrival in Ingushetia and before even leaving the secure
part of the airport a security officer came up to me and
asked me to accompany him to his office. He asked for my
details and asked for what reason I had come to
Ingushetia. He was very friendly and offered me a
security guard for my time in Ingushetia, but I assured
him that I would be met and would be accompanied
throughout my time in Ingushetia. Again on leaving
Ingushetia he recognised me and made sure that all had
been without problems for me. I found this little
exercise very reassuring even if I felt I could have done
without the gun swinging of the security guard.
It is amazing that life goes on in a calm and ordered
way in Ingushetia with the immense problems the refugees
bring with them. When we visited the little hospital in
Sleptsovskaya patients were tightly fitted into small
rooms some had to lie in the corridors. The needs of
wounded is stretching the local facilities to braking
point. Local people needing hospital treatment are
suffering. There are however no visible signs of
discontent.
On one evening we did a little sightseeing of
Ingushetia. Magamet, my Ingush colleague, wanted me to
see the new presidential palace. It is an impressive and
beautiful set of buildings. I commented that for the 300
000 Ingush this was a much more impressive set of
buildings than those of London which serve a population
of 60 million. 'We Ingush find it difficult to be second'
was Magamet's smiling response.
It is good to know that relations between Ingushetia
and North Ossetia are slowly improving and that there is
at least a trickle of refugees returning to the
Prigorodny District of those displaced during the 1992
war.
We held a seminar for our ARD staff in the new
gymnasium of Nazran. I had known the Director, Maryem
Yunosova Galayeva, since 1994, when she was dreaming in a
set of semi-ruined buildings of her future gymnasium. The
gymnasium is quite magnificent: I do not know of many
schools in England so beautifully set up. There is
however not enough equipment nor enough books. I imagine
a more modern approach to teaching may eventually come,
but to the eye it is a very beautiful building and the
pupils we saw in their neat dresses and white collars
looked exemplary.
The conditions of Chechen IDP's in Ingushetia and
particularly in the camp 'Sputnik' on the border with
Chechnya, and in other smaller camps.
On this visit I got a more accurate picture of the
conditions people are living in. I visited several
families in the tents in Sputnik, which is only one of
several such large campsites. About 8000 people live
there. I also visited other and smaller campsites and
individual groups living in farm buildings or
stables.
Words cannot describe the misery that people are
living in and will have to live in for months to come.
This is a major human disaster and ARD* can only do
little to alleviate the misery. But that little is most
welcome. All the aid agencies apart from UNHCR and the
Red Cross who are active in the camps are relatively
small. They liaise with each other to complement their
work.
Added to the misery of the living conditions of the
refugees, people hear day by day that their house/flat is
now destroyed, or that Russians are living in their
homes, or that all their possessions are gone, or that
the whole village is in ruins, and that people known to
them have been killed as they tried to escape, or have
been tortured in filtration camps. Very little is left of
any hope that something maybe salvaged to build on for
the future. Some positive news is received that some
villages have been liberated and that order has been
restored. Some IDP's travel into Chechnya to have a look
for themselves. They bring back whatever news they pick
up to the people in the camps.
In the camps many people are ill. They lie on horrible
beds in stuffy tents surrounded by other inhabitants of
that tent. One little heater serves some four or five
families to boil water and cook food. In some tents
little corners have been screened off for individual
families, the sparse possessions neatly arranged on
handmade shelves or under the bed.
People walking around in ragged clothes carrying water
or going about some other simple business. Some wrap
blankets around themselves and wear local galoshes that
may or may not fit. Many children have no footwear. Some
washing hangs on lines for those that have been able to
heat enough water for their laundry. Some tents are more
organized: a mud outside the tent, stones or wooden
planks to keep the worst mud outside, shoes, galoshes
neatly arranged outside tents. Some have dug a ditch
around their tents to lead away rain water. I also saw a
few cows and some chickens.
While I was there the weather was becoming warmer,
although there was still a very cold wind. One or two
days were however real Spring days filling the air with
the scents of Spring and the heart with joy and hope. On
many days bombers could be seen flying over the camp, the
children keeping a watchful eye, and on particularly one
day the nearby bombing was loud and prolonged.
The administrative tent of ARD is a busy place. A
constant stream of people comes to see the doctor who has
her place there. ARD is able to dispense medicines there,
which our staff find and buy as far away as Nalchik.
In other tents children meet and play, and tell and
draw their stories. ARD workers help children to rebuild
a trusting and supportive community. Some particularly
vulnerable children get individual attention. Adolescents
and women meet ARD staff in another other tent for
individual and group work. Women come together to knit,
or borrow books from our small library.
ARD has set up a schoolroom for senior pupils. It pays
for teachers and provides books. On the nearby volleyball
pitch there was a constant game in progress. For the
older children there is an evening club which focuses
mainly on learning traditional Chechen dances and
drumming. ARD are also providing shoes and clothing to
those who need it most. This is not an easy operation:
people are pushing to get to the front of the queue
claiming their needs to be the greatest.
I walked around the camp and through talking with
children was taken into several tents where I could see
the conditions people are living in. Many cannot go
anywhere because they have no shoes or clothes. ARD has a
huge task in this large camp with such great needs.
There is lively activity around the school tents and
those tents in which ARD workers meet with children and
young people. In two tents ARD works with children,
teenagers and women. The children meet in small groups
where they have time to talk, play, listen to each other,
draw and dance. Any child that needs special attention is
seen individually.
Teenagers individually or in groups of two or three
talk with our workers about their fears and problems.
Drugs are starting to be a problem and we try to help
some of the vulnerable youngsters to resist them.
ARD employs two people to supervise an evening
playgroup for children and a youth group where
traditional dancing is taught. The ARD volleyball pitch
is well used and is an obvious delight.
Any travel into Chechnya is strictly controlled. At
the time of my visit foreigners (and I imagine that
includes Russians) can only get permission to travel to
Gudermes. Within Chechnya it is difficult to move from
one place to another as we were told by Z. from Dubai
Yurt. She is one of our ARD staff who came to us quite
shocked. She wanted to travel to a village some way away
to make contact with other ARD workers. On the bus her
papers were checked and she was questioned: why was she
going to this village? Fortunately she has a sister
living there, and when she gave the name of her sister,
and the passengers in the bus had confirmed that such a
person was living in this village, she was allowed to
proceed.
Z. told us her story. She had for the first time left
Chechnya at the end of February. Much of the time since
the beginning of the war she and her family lived in her
cellar together with other people who needed shelter.
There were 36 of them including pregnant women. Their
village was only bombed occasionally at first. Then some
Chechen fighters settled into the hills above her village
and this frightened people. An elder went to the hills to
talk with these fighters and asked them to leave since
the villagers did not want to attract more bombing. The
fighters refused and as the elder left them, they shot
him in the legs. This disregard for elders is most
unusual in Chechen society; it indicates that these
Chechen fighters were influenced from outside. It is said
that amongst the Chechen fighters are many from Arab
countries and also from the Ukraine.
The inhabitants of Dubai Yurt realised that they could
not persuade the fighters to move away and they also
heard over the radio that the Russians considered there
were no more civilians in this village. Z. with other
women carrying white flags went to the Russian
authorities in a nearby village and asked for safe
conduct out of Dubai Yurt. A Russian officer agreed to
give them safe conduct, even though he said he risked his
life doing so. The villagers of Dubai Yurt were safely
conducted to a safe village. (There are many incidents
when safe conduct was not observed and Chechens were shot
at from behind). Z. and her team found out that the
Russian officer was safe but was transferred to another
town. Z with other women brought nearly 50 children with
them to the safe village, most of them orphaned.
I had been given some money for special needs of
Chechen IDP's. With this we were able to provide one
large family living by themselves in a small shed on a
farm with clothes and toys for the children. When ARD's
mobile medical team on their weekly visit came there a
few days later, this family was still raving with joy and
thankfulness for the gifts. Nobody had brought them
anything before. Magamet was also able to procure a
wheelchair for a man in his forties who had lost all his
family in one onslaught and who was paralysed and unable
to move. He was overjoyed to move about in the
wheelchair. With this money ARD also bought clothes and
shoes for one large tent in which nearly 40 people live
of which 22 are children, some of them invalids.
On the last morning we went to two of the twelve
special play centres, which ARD is setting up in camps
that have little contact with aid agencies. I met the
teachers who will play and work with groups of children.
The teachers and children were excited and thankful about
having been given the opportunity to do something for
themselves.
Whilst I was there we heard of a Saudi Prince visiting
another refugee camp. He cast around sweets and packets
of tea and announced that in one of the packets was a
$500 note. Naturally there was a humiliating scramble.
The people who reported this and our ARD staff were
horrified.
Terrible things happen in the Russian filtration
camps. People are tortured to confess that they were
fighters, some survive, and others die. If they die the
Russians offer the body to the relatives and ask either
for money or a Russian corpse instead. When our friends
in Dubai Yurt had such a request, they said they had no
dead Russians. Then the Chechen fighters said they could
find a dead Russian to exchange. Fortunately the people
in Dubai Yurt recognised the inherent danger in this (a
dead Russian means justification to fight and bomb) so
they said they did not want that and found the money to
pay for the body.
Footnote
It is difficult to obtain information on what is
really happening in Chechnya or of the situation of IDP's
in neighbouring regions. Newspapers report little and
anyway are too expensive for the ordinary citizens to
buy: they rely on television. The few news reports on TV
I saw painted a fairly positive picture of the
effectiveness of the Russian army. Showing for example
thankful villagers in liberated villages or areas of
Grozny. On my last evening the news report showed with
great pride some new guns that generals of the army were
examining and praising highly as being several times more
accurate than previous guns. The general feeling is that
the Chechens on the whole are bandits or terrorists and
Russia is freeing its citizens from this terrorism. That
the Russian military in the process is more ruthless and
violent than any terrorist is of course not reported on.
People understandably do not want to know what is really
happening. That would be painful; no doubt they have
their suspicions.
An Ingush woman who had been in Rostov on Don said
that she saw Russian contract soldiers from all over
Russia and the Ukraine gathered around the railway
station in an undisciplined and drunken manner. These
contract soldiers were waiting to go to Chechnya. She
felt these were fearful people who could be capable of
anything. There have been reports by Chechens who have
spoken with Russians who are uncomfortable with the
situation and who told them their instructions were to
eliminate the whole Chechen population.
What I saw of the Acting Russian President Vladimir
Putin on television made me very worried. I do not know
how clear an image our politicians who have been meeting
with Putin have of him. I fear he may be a very dangerous
man who is able to present a front that is quite
different from the reality of his actions. When I talked
to a Russian Orthodox Priest about him, I was told that
Putin observed Russian Orthodox customs like kissing the
upheld palms of the priest with perfect naturalness and
correctness. He knows what to do in an Orthodox church:
he can present a perfect front.
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