An Angry Chechen Becomes Rebel With a Cause

He is a 31-year-old former oil refinery worker who grew up in Shali, a town in Chechnya that tried to stay out of the Chechen war. He was a “peaceful, normal guy” who decided not to fight with the rebels against the Russian army.

But Rasul, who gives only his first name, has become a killer who sleeps in the woods by day and shoots at Russian soldiers by night.

Meanwhile, the people of this dusty, ragged town, which surrendered to the Russians without a shot of resistance in November, feel embittered and betrayed after enduring rocket attacks and the random, drunken violence of the occupying army.

Nearly nine months into its ongoing war with separatist rebels in Chechnya, Russia has failed to win the hearts and minds of the people, or even their grudging respect. Nor has it stopped angry young men from joining the rebels to fight the Russians in a cause that seems hopeless.

The Russian commander in the North Caucasus, Col. Gen. Gennady Troshev, announced Sunday that Russian troops would stop bomb and rocket attacks on Chechnya, and declared that “the war, as such, is over.” A “reasonable” number of Russian units will remain stationed in the republic, he said, without enumerating how many.

In the 1994-96 war that Russia fought to crush Chechen separatists, Russian authorities repeatedly announced an end to their bombing, but the airstrikes continued.

Troshev said he reached an agreement on ending the airstrikes at a meeting in the town of Tsentoroi with the Moscow-appointed administrator of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov.

However, Kadyrov does not control the rebel fighters, and Troshev admitted that it could take another six months to a year to stabilize the situation and defeat the rebels. He estimated that 1,500 rebels remain in the republic.

‘I Am Not a Religious Fanatic,’ Rasul Says

The bitterness of Rasul and others from Shali, 21 miles southeast of the Chechen capital, Grozny, helps to explain why Russia is no closer to defeating the separatists.

“I’m not a religious fanatic who wants to go to heaven killing as many Russians as possible. I’m not fighting for money either. I have my own reason,” said Rasul, sitting in a ruined house one recent night when he found himself trapped in Grozny.

“The Russians killed a person who was very close to me,” he said, “and they left me no choice but to take up arms and avenge her death. You can’t win a war when you are up against people like me.”

A few minutes earlier, as he sat on the ruins of a broken wall outdoors, a group of Russian soldiers thundered past on an armored personnel carrier, raising dust. Watching with red, wary eyes, the fighter spat in the APC’s wake and suggested that indoors might be safer.

Usually, Rasul said, he joins about 10 other rebels nightly to infiltrate Grozny, attack some of the vulnerable Russian soldiers at the military posts and checkpoints there, then disappear into the dark.

“It is no problem at all to get into Grozny,” he said. “You just walk around the checkpoints. There are about 100 of them in town. Even if you have something bulky like ammunition or machine guns, you can always put it in a car and just pay your way in. Ten dollars opens any gate for you.”

Rasul claimed that there are many other bands like his. It takes two hours for his group to get into the city, a few minutes to attack some soldiers, half an hour to fade away and hide, and two more hours to leave, he said.

“We make their life hell. They must not be allowed to feel comfortable at any time during the night,” he said.

The Chechen guerrilla campaign is taking its toll on Russian morale, with the casualty figures in the war climbing steadily even as Moscow claims to be near victory.

“I know what I want, and I am not afraid to die,” Rasul said. “The Russian soldiers don’t know why they are here, and they are afraid to die. Russia will never prevail.”

In Shali, a town of about 60,000 including many refugees, roadside stalls sell cakes, bread, cigarettes, and soft drinks of doubtful color. Barefoot children scuttle in the dust. Men dressed in dark, shabby clothes squat on their heels, chewing sunflower seeds and spitting out the shells, discussing the latest bad news.

Soldiers Blamed for Civilian Deaths

Alibek Dakhayev, 43, a farmer, emerged from his house wearing his old black mourning suit, its elbows shiny from use. The house was full of people who had come to offer condolences for the death of his older brother Ali, 51.

Ali, buried a day earlier, was not shot or bombed by the enemy. Soldiers on an armored personnel carrier ran into his cart at the local market, where he had come to sell a calf, killing him and seriously injuring his 16-year-old daughter.

“They were dead drunk, so drunk that the unarmed Chechen men who were there at the market disarmed them, and were about to shoot them then and there, when the town elders intervened and prevented the lynching,” Dakhayev said angrily.

The Russian military authorities in Shali later paid the family 1,000 rubles, or about $36, for the funeral.

“You get run over by an APC and nobody is held responsible. The federal price for this outrage is 1,000 rubles,” Dakhayev said.

Others in Shali tell similar stories. Early in May, said trader Lyoma Aliyev, 45, an armored personnel carrier with drunken Russian soldiers aboard rammed into some civilian cars in the center of town, killing one woman and injuring several people.

“We still see many drunk Russians driving like mad around the town,” Dakhayev asserted. “I guess they are so tense and scared that they have to drink all the time.”

Presence of Military Doesn’t Ensure Safety

Ilman Kadyrov, 43, a forester, stood tossing grain to his chickens under a hazelnut tree near his house and explained why Shali surrendered to the Russians last fall without putting up a fight.

“We thought they would bring law and peace with the armor of their tanks,” he said. “We wanted to keep the town intact and save the lives of our families. But they are randomly killing us as if we are cockroaches and don’t deserve to live.”

At 1 p.m. on Jan. 10, he said, the Russian military fired three missiles at Shali after a group of about 50 rebel fighters had entered it. The center of the town was destroyed, and 248 civilians were killed, he said. Rockets hit the town Feb. 6 and again May 3, killing a total of seven more people, he said.

Rasul did not fight with the rebels in the 1994-96 war, and he had no plans to join up when the conflict resumed last fall. Now he claims that there are plenty of other civilian men joining the rebel forces because of their anger at the Russian military.

“The Russians can’t win over the population because they treat them all like enemies, and hate only breeds hate,” he said.

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Special correspondent Nunayev reported from Shali and Grozny, and Times staff writer Dixon reported from Moscow. Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.