TITLE: Incidental Casualties in War on Chechnya - Russians' Rage Visits Caucasus

AUTHOR: David Filipov

PUB: Boston Globe

DATE: March 4, 2001

Aliyat Orzarbayev has a huge crater where his living room used to be, the result of a direct hit from a Russian shell that blew away half of his house, his garage, and his barn. He did not blame the Russian Army when it happened. He does now. Almost all the houses on Orzarbayev's street bear grim reminders of the Russian military assault 16 months ago on this Caucasus foothill town, on the tense frontier with Chechnya. There are rooms without roofs, shrapnel-scarred walls, gaping holes where windows were. Dozens of townspeople were killed in the battle that raged in Novolakskoye, a poor farming town in the Russian republic of Dagestan, just over the eastern border of Chechnya, in September 1999. But no one here was angry with the Kremlin or the Russian Army then. The federal force had been sent in to chase out a force of Chechen-led Islamic militants who had occupied the town a few days earlier. The toll in lives and damage was heavy, but back then the people of Novolakskoye seemed to see it as a price worth paying to drive out the Chechen invaders. These days, people here are not so sure. Their fields are mined, which means they can make a living only if they want to risk their lives. The one road leading into town is blocked off by a checkpoint; soldiers check everyone's documents. The border area is a war zone; troop carriers and tanks rumble along a fierce array of trenches and armaments. Another state-appointed inspector came by recently to assess the damage. As they always do, this inspector told Orzarbayev that it was not bad enough to merit any of the money that the Russian government had promised to rebuild Novolakskoye. None of his neighbors have received any compensation, either. And now they are mad at Moscow, too. It does not matter that Moscow has sent most of the money, and that it probably has been diverted by local officials. ''They promise us reconstruction, but for one and a half years, we have been living in the cold among the ruins,'' Orzarbayev said. The rumble of artillery over the border from Novolakskoye is a reminder that the conflict in Chechnya rages on, despite Moscow's assurances that the military stage of its ''antiterrorist operation'' is over, and that all that remains is to mop up a few remaining bands of militants. That has somehow not stopped the rebels in Chechnya from crossing into Dagestan to steal cattle or to take a respite from the fighting. 'This is not a life,'' Orzarbayev said. ''I had a home, I had a normal life. And this war has ruined everything.'' It is remarkable that anyone here would say that. Dagestan, and border towns like Novolakskoye in particular, suffered the brunt of the lawlessness and chaos that reigned in the Caucasus in the three years that Chechnya, de facto, was independent after the disastrous 1994-1996 Russian campaign against the rebels. In the three years afterward, and until Russian troops poured back into Chechnya in October 1999, dozens of people in Dagestan were kidnapped and held for ransom in Chechnya. Armed gangs frequently crossed over from Chechnya, stealing cars, cattle or anything else they could take back. Federal authorities were unable to pursue criminals into Chechnya, and the separatist government was either unwilling or too weak to put an end to the attacks. The Chechen anarchy soured the Dagestanis, who are predominantly Muslim, and who have supported Chechnya in its centuries of resistance to Kremlin rule. When militants led by a Chechen commander, Shamil Basayev, and a Saudi-born deputy, who goes by one name, Khatab, crossed into southern Dagestan in August 1999, Dagestanis rushed to form militias to help federal troops to fight off the invaders. ''We will not be able to forgive the Chechens any time soon,'' said Shamil Kerimov, mayor of the mountain town of Botlikh in southwestern Dagestan, the scene of heavy fighting. ''We were like brothers to them, and they destroyed our houses. That is not something we will forget any time soon.'' In other parts of Russia, and in the West, many people question the Kremlin's motivation for sending troops into Chechnya. One theory has it that the whole war was part of a dark conspiracy by security forces in Moscow to get Vladimir V. Putin elected president. Proponents of that theory have suggested that forces loyal to Putin set off apartment bombs in the Russian capital and elsewhere that killed 300 people. Few people support that theory in Dagestan. When a bomb exploded on Sept. 4, 1999, in the city of Bunaiksk, killing 58 people, suspicion fell not on the Kremlin but on a radical Islamic sect, popularly known as the Wahabbis, that is allied with Khatab. Dagestan's Supreme Court is preparing to hear a case against six men, all of whom are accused of having trained at a Khatab camp in Chechnya, and whom prosecutors accuse of setting off the Bunaiksk blast. The judge in the case moved the trial recently to a jailhouse in Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala, after he received a tip that Khatab had been planning to send some of his fighters to try to free the defendants. But if the anti-Chechen mood seems more intense in Dagestan than elsewhere, few people outside Russia seem to be aware of it. Most journalists who cover the war travel to Ingushetia, west of Chechnya, where most of the refugees from the fighting live in tent camps. When Mary Robinson, then the United Nations high commissioner on refugees, traveled to the Caucasus last year to investigate human rights violations against civilians, she refused to meet with Dagestani officials, and she canceled a visit to Novolakskoye. If Robinson had gone, she would have seen a town in ruins. By most accounts, the Chechens had left the village by the time the main army forces arrived. As has often happened in Russia's two recent campaigns in Chechnya, the town was probably empty of enemy fighters as federal artillery pounded it. ''After the first day, the Chechens were gone,'' said Sagit-batal Uzunov, the mayor of Novolakskoye. ''The police came in and started looting and burning houses. If anyone got in the way, they killed them.'' Someone almost killed Uzunov. A bullet hit him in the leg, and he spent seven months recuperating. Many townspeople left before the fighting, but some, like Akhyat Batiberiyeva's husband, stayed behind to try to protect their property. He died in the bombardment when their house took a direct hit, but Batiberiyeva said she has not received any compensation. Some locals were arrested when police went door to door looking for rebels. About 20 percent of Novolakskoye's population of 5,000 is made up of ethnic Chechens, and many of them were detained on suspicion of aiding the rebels. Zelimkhan Gamadayev and his two sons spent seven months in prison, where, he said, they were frequently beaten; he was freed when his wife, Malika, paid police $1,500. Corruption appears to play a big part in the reconstruction effort, or lack thereof, in Dagestan. Last March, prosecutors opened 15 criminal cases against officials who had been diverting money for victims of the fighting to relatives and friends. People in Novolakskoye say this is happening here, as well, although there have been no convictions. ''An inspector came over and told me I was not entitled to anything because my house is not so badly ruined that I can't live in it,'' said Isaak Yayayev, whose home is missing a few walls and roofs. ''They say you can get compensation if you know someone in places of influence.'' ''I don't know anyone of influence,'' Yayayev told a reporter as he walked back through the shrapnel-dotted gates of his home. ''Do you?'' END top