Chechens Believe Russia’s Aim Is to Obliterate Nation

Patima Ablusheva is a child of war, born nearly four years ago during the last fight for her homeland. As Russia’s shrieking, creaky military machine again rolls over Chechnya, she is one of the early victims of this reborn conflict.

Her head swathed in bandages and her hands blistered, Patima cries with uncomprehending rage. She was burned Oct. 18 when a bomb set afire her relatives’ home in a suburb of Grozny, the Chechen capital.

Hers are not the worst injuries at a hospital here in the neighboring Russian republic of Ingushetia. Several children have lost limbs. A young woman whose legs and arm were amputated is propped in bed in a dim corridor, her face pale, her features sagging with shock, pain and exhaustion.

Russia, defeated in the 1994-96 war over Chechen independence, pushed back into the southern separatist republic early last month after Moscow blamed guerrillas there for raids on nearby Dagestan and terrorist bombings in Moscow and other cities.

But Chechens say this war is not simply a repeat of the last. Refugees fleeing the bombs say the Russians seem harder and crueler this time. Many Chechens are predicting higher casualties. This, and the sense that the Russian media are ignoring their plight, leaves the Chechens feeling impotent, angry and betrayed.

Although the present war seems largely politically motivated, with Russian parliamentary and presidential elections approaching, many of the refugees are convinced that the aim is to obliterate the Chechen nation.

And remembering Stalin’s mass deportation of the Chechen people in 1944, many of them use the word “genocide” to describe what is going on. The killings are haphazard but calculated, they say. It is not possible to fire rockets into a market or village without a large civilian toll.

Satsita Abdulayeva, 28, a refugee here injured in the Chechen village of Samashki, said Russians gave civilians more warning of attacks during the 1994-96 war. “They are tougher this time around,” said Leche Ansarov, 40, another refugee.

“This war is different from the previous one because the frenzy of the Russian troops and the barbarity of the actions are more pronounced, compared with the war of 1994-96,” Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, who fought in the last conflict, said in a recent interview with The Times. “They even used cluster bombs. Cluster bombs and rockets are terrible things, especially when used against personnel and peaceful civilians.”

It’s a view supported by many analysts in Russia and the West.

“They are using indiscriminate bombing and using artillery in a direct-fire role of obliterating and destroying civilian buildings over the whole of Chechnya, not just in Grozny. And that’s a significant difference,” said Charles Blandy, senior fellow at the Conflict Studies Research Center at Sandhurst, the British Royal Military Academy. “This time they are not only occupying Chechnya but trying to obliterate the whole of Chechnya. They want Chechnya without the Chechens, basically.”

In a column in the English-language daily Moscow Times, analyst Andrei A. Piontkovsky wrote Thursday that Russians must ask themselves whether they approve “of the government’s decisive actions toward the physical elimination of one of Russia’s ethnic groups.”

Evidence of Civilian Casualties Mounts

There is mounting evidence of the civilian casualties, with 282 wounded Chechen refugees having been treated in two Ingush hospitals close to the Chechen border since early last month.

The Red Cross confirmed a Russian attack on a marked Red Cross convoy Oct. 29 that left 27 dead. On Oct. 21, several rockets slammed into Grozny’s crowded market and other sites, killing at least 118 people. Chechen officials later claimed that the number of casualties had risen to more than 280.

Human Rights Watch representatives in Ingushetia report that 27 civilians died Oct. 3 in the bombing of Urus-Martan, about 15 miles southwest of Grozny, and that dozens died Oct. 27 in Russian attacks on the village of Samashki, about 25 miles west of the capital.

And on Saturday, Chechen officials said, at least 32 people were killed in air and artillery bombardments of Grozny, including eight children and 12 women.

Yet the story of the Chechens’ suffering is not being told elsewhere in Russia. Television reports portray a conflict this time in which soldiers look decisive and strong instead of lost and desperate, in which terrorist bases and not civilians are being hit and in which Russian generals have the whiff of victory in their nostrils.

So far, the Russian government has successfully imposed a virtual information blockade on independent reporting of the war.

“The last time, Chechnya was open to journalists and aid workers. This time, they have decided to isolate Chechnya from the world. It means a very tight information campaign,” said Thomas de Waal, coauthor of the book “Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus.”

That may explain why Russian support for the war remains high. The conflict’s architect, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, is now the nation’s most popular politician because of his tough approach to the war. He plans to run in the presidential election in June.

“I think the war has very little to do with the stated aim of defeating terrorism,” De Waal said, “and a lot to do with the political agenda and the agenda of military leaders who lost last time.”

Although the toll in casualties would be horrific, Russian generals say they are determined to push through to the end this time--implying that their defeat in 1996 occurred because they were prevented from doing the job properly. Yet they face a steep challenge.

“They’re going to have to go on and on,” said Anatol Lieven, an expert on the former Soviet Union at the Independent Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “They’re going to have to take Grozny and occupy the mountainous regions, rake through every village and arrest tens of thousands of young men. The whole thing looks to me like a big nightmare.”

Lieven added: “Given the disproportion of the forces, if the Russians do keep going, slogging away at no matter what cost to themselves or the civilian population, then maybe they will win. But that won’t finish things. It will just mean there will be endless smaller attacks on the Russian forces in Chechnya and terrorist attacks in Russia and so on.”

Blandy agrees.

“Any military victory on the plains will be a hollow victory because the only way to settle things in the Northern Caucasus is a negotiated settlement with sufficient economic aid to places like Chechnya and Dagestan,” he said. “Until people have jobs and opportunities, Muslim fundamentalism will attract support.”

Refugees Flee to Ingushetia

Meanwhile, more than 200,000 Chechens have fled to Ingushetia, some living in rail cars, barns, tents and warehouses, but most with Ingush families. Beside a rail car at the Sputnik refugee camp outside Sleptsovskaya, newly washed garments flap on a clothesline like bright flags. Mud-caked shoes are in neat rows by the rail car’s door.

Maria Bakayeva, 61, was a child when she and her family were herded into cattle cars and deported to Kazakhstan in 1944. She remembers how people suffered and starved on the harsh steppes. But the bombing that hit her town of Urus-Martan last month was worse.

“All our street from beginning to end was bombed, and many died,” said Bakayeva, who is living in the rail car.

Jembulat Asmayev, 14, lost both parents when Russians stormed Grozny more than six years ago. A few weeks ago, the bombers were back and the Grozny orphanage where he lived with three of his four siblings was evacuated to Ingushetia.

“I was afraid. I thought, ‘It’s happening again,’ ” he said.

His description of the Russian attacks in late 1994 and early 1995 is chilling. “When the rockets hit the houses, we felt as if they were falling right on top of us. I kept thinking, ‘Is this the time they’re going to hit?’ ”

Jembulat doesn’t understand why the Russians bomb Chechens. And he doesn’t know the circumstances of his parents’ deaths, just that they were out of the house and were killed somewhere. But he does not hate ordinary Russians or soldiers who follow orders.

“I don’t know who’s to blame, but if I did know, I’d be so angry,” he said softly, all the time turning a small object over and over in his hands. It was a bullet.

Ask this child where it will all end, what he hopes for, and he looks silently into the middle distance. There is a long, painful pause--but no answer.

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Mayerbek Nunayev in Grozny contributed to this report.