`WOULD YOU LIKE ONE OF HIS EARS?'

Julian Manyon on how the Chechen war has become a series of personal vendettas

Chechnya IF something is strictly forbidden in Russia it normally just means that the price goes up. Thus we circumvented the firm inter- diction against foreign journalists travel- ling independently in Chechnya through a transaction with a Russian officer, which involved copious amounts of vodka and a sheaf of $100 bills. A little later we found ourselves jolting across the flat grey land- scape of central Chechnya, wedged uncomfortably in the back seat of a Rus- sian Lada car with blacked-out windows and no number-plates. Sitting in front of us were two members of a special opera- tions unit, each festooned with grenades and ammunition pouches and cradling automatic rifles on their laps. Readers will understand if I do not identify the men or their unit too closely. Suffice to say that their unit is involved in the dirtier side of this increasingly dirty war, and that the senior of the two — a well-built, dark- haired man with a passing resemblance to a younger but still jaded Robert De Niro — had the professional edginess and slightly glazed eyes of someone to whom killing means no more than a puff on the marijuana cigarettes he produced later in the day. His comrade-in-arms was a small- er, stocky figure, looking a little like a gnome in military uniform, and the proud possessor of a 12-inch knife with a steel spike attached to the handle, designed, he explained, for smashing skulls at close quarters.

Together we raced down the road from Ingushetia to Grozny, overtaking long columns of trucks and armoured vehicles churning through the mud towards the Chechen capital, a mere glimpse of our escorts' uniforms ensuring passage through the Russian checkpoints. In disconnected fragments we heard their views on a war which they see less as a political struggle than as a series of personal vendettas with various Chechen warlords that their unit has crossed swords with. Their jeep had been shot up and a friend of theirs killed a few days before in a Chechen counter- attack led by a certain Arby Barayev who had then returned to his lair in Grozny. Now a special operation was being pre- pared to snatch or kill Barayev. 'Maybe you would like one of his ears?' De Niro asked me wolfishly.

But as we reached the approaches to Grozny it became clear that the Chechen field commander would not be losing his ears immediately. In the wooded outskirts of the city Russian soldiers in dirty uniforms clustered round a light tank while the rattle of machine-gun fire and the thumping explosions of rocket-propelled grenades came through the trees from a little way off. `Strashnoye mesto' — a lousy spot — one of the soldiers told us as we huddled in the back seat of the car waiting for permission to go forward. Chechen snipers were in the woods around them, and the men set off smoke grenades to try to confuse their aim. From further down the road came a series of crashing blasts as Russian artillery zeroed in, but moments later the machine-gun fire started up again and we were told to turn around and go back.

Just what authority our hired special forces men had to show us around was never clear, but a picture of the Russian campaign emerged nonetheless. Thousands of men and immense quantities of equip- ment are still being poured into the siege of Grozny, and south of the city dozens of Grad missile launchers have been concen- trated to pound whole areas to rubble and blast a passage for what is once again being described as the final Russian assault. This appears to be an attempt to split the city in two along the line of the Sunzha river which runs through the middle of it. Further south, Shali, the scene of recent heavy fight- ing, is now a ghost town with Russian tanks moving through the streets by day and Chechen rebels coming in by night to snipe at Russian positions. We stood in a small Russian base, bunkers and trenches dug into a muddy hill just outside the town, and watched helicopter gunships, 'crocodiles' as the soldiers call them, blasting the nearby mountainsides where some 2,000 rebels are said to be holding the strategic Argun gorge, a vital supply route. The helicopters' mis- siles exploded in tiny puffs along one of the innumerable ridge lines and the sound of the explosions boomed across the valley. A few hours before there had been reports of fighting further east and a long column of trucks and armour was forming up to deal with it, the vehicles up to their axles in mud. The impression was of an unwieldy giant picking up his club to deal with a diminutive enemy dancing around his feet.

We had witnessed something of this duel between Chechen mobility and lumbering Russian strength the day before when we slipped across the border for the first time, in the company of a Chechen who, in the first war, had been a bodyguard to President Jokhar Dudayev. Dudaycv, who first pro- claimed Chechen independence and is still idolised by many Chechens, came to a vio- lent end in a mysterious explosion after more than a year of ducking and weaving all over southern Chechnya with Russian assas- sination squads on his tail. Our guide had learnt his skills in this period and quickly showed that he was telling no more than the truth when he boasted that he knew every inch of every road in Chechnya.

With an anthem to his late leader which included frequent drum rolls and chants of `Allah Akbar' — God is Great — blasting out of his cassette player, the man threaded his way through village after village, effort- lessly avoiding the frequent Russian check- points. Russke he would shout as the soldiers hove into view and he turned down a side alley, and as a gunship clattered overhead he waved a large fist from the window and bellowed what appeared to be his only two words of English: 'F— you!'

The man, who looked like a giant bear and had the disconcerting habit of scratch- ing his head on the car roof like a bear on a tree, suddenly brought his car to a screech- ing halt in one of the wooded lanes where we had spent much of the afternoon. In front of us was a small white Lada, and inside it we found two members of the Chechen resistance quietly eating sausage and drinking vodka from the bottle while they rested after taking part in an attack the previous night. One of them, a young man with sharp eyes and a surprisingly neat beard, immediately expressed his regret that the kidnapping of foreigners had deterred many journalists from reporting on their cause. Asked how the war was going, he gave a vigorous thumbs-up. 'We can hit them whenever and wherever we like,' he said, and then laughed when I asked if they had enough weapons and ammunition to fight on. 'We buy them from the Russians,' he told me and explained that they were hoping to get another two truckloads from a Russian base the following night, 'You can film them if you like,' he said.

But in Chechnya it is not easy to make appointments, for it turned out to be even more difficult to get out of the republic than to get in. On our first entry our Chechen guide had insisted on a large pay- ment to bribe the guards at a small border checkpoint while we waited in the car fur- ther down the road. But when we returned as darkness fell the border guards refused to co-operate a second time. There was nothing for it, our guide explained, but to walk around them. Stumbling in the muddy darkness we followed the man through the fields and hedgerows with the growing worry that our destination might not be the dubious comforts of the Hotel Assa in Nazran but a kidnap cell somewhere in one of the nearby villages. After nearly an hour of walking we came to a muddy hollow next to the road about 100 yards behind the Russian post. Our guide told us to get down and disappeared into the darkness. Another half-hour passed and we began to debate the merits of making a break for it and trying to walk to safety. Just then our guide returned and led us to a waiting car. Next to it, pointed towards Chechnya, was a truck packed with what looked like ammunition boxes, but this was not a time for explanations and we piled gratefully into the waiting Volga for what proved to be an uneventful drive to our hotel.

Our second departure from Chechnya the following night, in the company of the Rus- sian special forces soldiers, proved in its own way just as dramatic. On our way back from the Russian lines the man who looked like De Niro lit up a marijuana cigarette and then insisted on stopping to eat at a road- side stall half a mile from the border. A fat Chechen woman called Tamara brought us plates piled with skewers of greasy shashlik and the inevitable bottles of vodka. Toasts were made, enormous shots of vodka downed and De Niro danced with the mas- sive Tamara to music from the car radio. Finally, after night had fallen, we clambered drunkenly into the Lada and headed for the border. I regained full consciousness in the glare of bright lights pointing at the car and the sound of a harsh Russian voice demand- • ing my documents. A full reception commit- tee of soldiers, military intelligence officers and policemen was on hand, and while De Niro and my two colleagues remained in the car I was taken away for questioning in a nearby Portakabin. Perhaps the vodka helped but my Russian rapidly improved from appalling to merely execrable, and a series of blunt questions and evasive answers began. `Where have you been?' an earnest young intelligence officer asked. `Not far, well short of Grozny,' I lied. `What did you film?'

`Practically nothing.'

`Vy znayete,' said the Russian officer, a preamble which normally signals that a lengthy peroration is on the way. 'What you should understand is that this war is different from the last one. This time the Chechen people want us to clean out the bandits. . . . ' I was just mentally settling in for the evening when, in typically Russian fashion, relations suddenly thawed. Con- versation turned to the young officer's home town in Siberia which, by chance, I had visited, and after an exchange of com- pliments and some backslapping I found myself back in the snowy darkness with a warning not to do it again. However, another stumbling-block lay in wait.

Curiously, De Niro, the organiser of our furtive visit, had not been questioned and he now sat slumped in the driving seat of the car virtually unconscious in a drunken stupor. It turned out that his colleague, the gnome with a Kalashnikov, couldn't drive and De Niro resisted our attempts to move him from his place behind the wheel with grunts and mumbled curses. In the end we left the checkpoint, watched by bemused Russian soldiers, with De Niro's foot on the accelerator and the steering wheel con- trolled by our cameraman, Jon Steele, lean- ing over from the back seat. Fortunately the road was deserted and we wove and skid- ded our way back into Nazran.

Drink has always played its part in Rus- sia's wars and is once again fuelling the barbarity. But other historical vices are also contributing to this mounting tragedy. As Russian hopes for a quick victory fade, the war is visibly becoming institutionalised with Russian officers and, doubtless, Chechen rebels scenting that there is money to be made. Russian soldiers appear, once again, to be selling weapons to their supposed enemy and are behaving like a mediaeval army of pillage in the areas they control There are even claims, as there were in the last war, that Russian commanders have demanded money from Chechen villagers to halt the bombardment of their homes. The villagers of Kater-Yurt say they gave a Russian military official $5,000 and a big-screen television set to spare their community. Meanwhile, a clum- sy and often brutal security regime is being imposed on a civilian population which has clearly had enough of war, and Russian conscripts are being killed in numbers which Moscow seems determined to con- ceal. An organisation representing soldiers' mothers says that more than 3,000 have died so far, six times the official figure.

The only people who are happy arc those who can live no other way: the Chechen warlords displaying their tribal courage in front of their followers, and the professional killers of Russia's special units who, like De Niro, have learnt to live from war to war. For all of them there is a

ready epitaph: V i 'Voyna mat rodna' — war is

their mother as yet another generation of Russians is now learning to say.

Julian Manyon is reporting on the Chechnya war for ITN. This article is also reproduced for ITN online and can be seen at www.itrz.co.uk.