GROZNY, 5 October 2003 — Hanging on a wall in Ingushetia is the reason why Russia’s long-running conflict with the bordering republic of Chechnya is likely to fester long after the Kremlin-organized presidential election today. It is a collage entitled “The genocide of the Chechen people” and it features graphic, gruesome photos of the human victims of the notorious “zachistki,” mop-up operations conducted by the Russian military since the start of the second war in Chechnya in 1999.
Today Chechens will vote for a president in a Kremlin-organized election that Moscow hopes will be the final chapter to that war, which it started four years ago against separatists in the independence-leaning republic.
But the wounds inflicted during the campaign run deep and permeate every level of Chechen society — from peasants in the villages to high-ranking officials in the republic’s pro-Moscow administration. They are unlikely to heal quickly.
Russia began the war as an “anti-terror operation” to wipe out Chechen separatists. The “zachistki” started months into the war, when the military began to look for “terrorists” hiding among the population.
The operations quickly turned into orgies of looting and violence, with reports of drunk Russian soldiers bursting into homes late at night, taking everything they could carry and humiliating the cowering civilians before them, rights groups say.
Hundreds of Chechens, especially young men, are believed to have disappeared during the operations, taken away by the soldiers on suspicion of aiding the separatists.
Some of them disappeared without a trace. The bodies of others turned up later, often with signs of torture.
Reports flooded that the military developed a human trade out of the operations — relatives could turn up at military posts and pay to retrieve their missing loved ones. Often they paid to retrieve corpses.
The military at first denied such reports, but they kept coming and on Feb. 24, 2001, 60 mutilated bodies were found in a mass grave near a Russian military base.
The collage in Ingushetia, hanging on a wall of the Committee for Chechen National Salvation rights group, records these images. They are not for the weak-stomached.
There is a body of a man with no head and no legs. A corpse with no eyes. A cut-off head. Feet of a dead man with broken toes. A body of a heavy woman in a navy flowered dress, her face unrecognizable.
The “zachistki” have spawned a generation of young Chechens who have seen relatives beaten and taken away, a generation burning with revenge against Russians.
“During the second war and the zachistki, the young have been radicalized,” says Ruslan Zhadayev who works for the committee. “The people often have no choice but to take up arms.”
A man who wandered in from the street points to the collage. “The relatives of these people are the ones who join the rebels. And they will continue to do so.”
It would not be an exaggeration to say that nearly every Chechen has either had a relative live through the horror of the “zachistki” or knows someone who has.
“May they get out of our sight,” spit young men in Grozny, glaring at Russian soldiers.
Even members of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow administration that is expected to remain in power after today’s election have difficulty keeping the venom out of their voice when talking about Russians.
“May they be cursed, all of them,” says one government official late at night, after several drinks and a recounting of the disappearance of his friend’s nephew.
The “zachistki” have carried away young women as well as men. “Each girl has brothers or a father who will avenge this,” Zhadayev says. “And so you have this vicious closed circle.”
