Defeating a guerrilla war

From the borders close to Piatigorsk and Nalchik, to the roads in Dagestan, every major crossroad is equipped with a watchtower, and barbed wire. At many more locations, concrete blocks and barriers lie ready to close the road at a moment’s notice. The Second Caucasian War rages on, but this time it is a guerrilla war, characterised by terrorist attacks on one side and a constantly watchful government on the other. The Caucasus resembles a fortress. On our travels through the Caucasus we are, as foreign journalists, regularly arrested and questioned by the police and security forces, particularly in the mountains, the primary base from which the separatists/terrorists/bandits – whatever you want to call them – operate. In Gimry, Dagestan – the birthplace of Imam Shamil – we are arrested and taken to Shamilkala before we can even reach the village. On our arrival in Shatoi, Chechnya, we are immediately locked up in an FSB bunker. In Ingushetia, despite months of bureaucratic form-filling and phone calls back and forth, we are never given permission to pass the checkpoints into the mountains. We learn the most about the insurgents from their victims, such as Beslan, the off-licence owner, or Safudin, Khasan Karachaev is the father of a murdered police officer. In 2010, he discovered his son’s body at the side of a road. “I had to bury him without his head,” he tells us. “Terrorists hacked it off and took it with them. They lured him to a nearby village under false pretenses and then decapitated him and a colleague.” The heads were later found in a fridge and buried alongside the men in their graves. Baksan, Kabardino-Balkaria Police-officers often fall victim first by the violence in the North-Caucasus. in Baksan, Kabardino-Balkaria, who found the decapitated body of his son, a policeman, on the side of the road. The head was missing, but a picture of it appeared some time later on a radical website. In Ingushetia, a friend gives us access to a small gold mine: the addresses of wounded police officers who have all survived an attack on confrontation with the insurgents. Their stories say a great deal about the boyeviks’ methods.

I'm going into the woods

We speak to a family in Derbent, an old harbour town in southern Dagestan. As we enter the house, the family is waiting expectantly. The oldest son has gone into the woods, as it is euphemistically referred to, while the youngest has been arrested and accused of possessing a grenade. In a matter of months, the family has lost all its sons. “My son Shamil was the Dagestani national judo champion,” his mother tells us. “He was such a good boy. One day, we found a letter underneath my pillow.” She searches through a thick photo album and finds the letter, written on paper torn from a school book. It reads: I’m going into the woods. I’m joining the Mujahedeen brothers. Don’t register me as missing; it will only result in unnecessary unpleasantness for you. I can’t come back. I ask you not to stop Nargiz from saying her prayers. Nargiz, his younger sister, is sitting on the sofa, clearly affected by the letter that her mother is reading aloud. She has now lost both her brothers.

Nargiz, sister of Aslan, who went to the forests (see letter on the right). “I’m going into the woods. I’m joining the Mujahedeen brothers. Don’t register me as missing; it will only result in unnecessary unpleasantness for you. I can’t come back. I ask you not to stop [my sister] Nargiz from saying her prayers.”

“It must have been well organised,” his mother continues. “We called all his friends, but nobody knew a thing. He turned his telephone off straight away. A few months later we heard that he had been killed during a military operation.” She shows us a newspaper article with a picture of an overturned truck, peppered with bullets. “He was unemployed and he was religious, but,” she sighs, “we never expected this.”

Father of Shamil & Nargiz "Everyone and everything is corrupt." Street where the Zaidov family lives, Derbent, Dagestan.

The father jumps to his feet. “Everyone and everything is corrupt,” he shouts bitterly. He reels off a long list of all the things he believes are wrong. “The elections here are rigged, the police are corrupt. Everything can be bought, even the coastline if you want it. At the same time, they celebrate their weddings with hundreds of limousines, champagne and gold bars. Here, if your father’s a judge, then you become a judge. But nothing works. All of the services and facilities are improvised. If you want to visit a mosque, you’re branded a terrorist and thrown into prison without trial. You can’t live here. It sometimes feels like it’s still 1937,” he laments, referring to The Great Terror under Stalin. “One of our sons is dead and the other is locked up. We can’t denounce the government. They were the ones who planted the grenade in my cellar, which they used to put my son away. If I take action, they’ll lock me up too.”

This is not a Salafist family. The father is a joiner and the family lives in a reasonably modern, middle-class house. Nargiz goes to school, is modern and assertive, and is not kept away from male visitors. The fact that even this family sympathises with the militants in the woods, despite losing a son to them, is poignant. Simply put, this is not the type of family one would expect to support the Islamic radicals.

Dangerous Salafists

Anonymous "We see ourselves as original Muslims." In an old factory in a suburb of Nalchik Nalchik Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia , the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, four ‘extremists’ are sitting around a table. They all have thin beards and all wish to remain anonymous. It was quiet in the early ʼ90s, they begin their story. Tourists no longer visited the Caucasus and Arabs from Syria and Saudi Arabia came to preach in the empty sanatoriums. The Arabs were beautifully dressed, the men recall. They handed out tickets to Mecca and Islamic schools in the Middle East. What was particularly striking, says one man, is how soft-spoken they were and how attractive and intelligent. The room smells of sawdust and male sweat. The four men set up this cooperation together because finding regular work was impossible. “We’re on the lists of the police and security forces. Even my 11-year-old daughter is on the list,” says the bald man in the group, “simply because we adhere to pure Islam, Salafism. We see ourselves as original Muslims.

The Nenkayev in Urus Martan, Chechnya (not related to this story) are under permanent pressure of the government. Two brothers were thrown in prison, under terrorism charges, in a court case still pending at the European Court of Human Rights in Strassbourg. Anonymous "We’ve always been a Muslim country. But the Soviet Union ruined it."

“The Arabs didn’t come to tell us that we should kill. They showed us how beautiful Islam is. They even said that the North Caucasus must be the paradise referred to in the Koran because it’s so beautiful. We don’t have to impose our laws on anyone. Of course, we hope that one day we’ll have an Islamic state governed by Sharia law. But that will never happen if no one observes the laws.” He continues: “I think that this has all happened because the government is unable to answer a number of questions. Why are the roads so poor? Why are there no jobs? Why are the hospitals so bad? And why are there no primary schools for our children? They’re using us as scapegoats to avoid facing the real issues.”

He tells us how his life is controlled by the security forces. “The day after my daughter, who lives with her mother, got internet in her room, an officer was waiting for her to ask if this was the first time she had used the internet.” He pauses to think. “Whatever it is, we’ve always been a Muslim country. But the Soviet Union ruined it. Many members of the government don’t understand anything about Islam. When they interrogate us, they beat us with the Koran because it’s such a thick, heavy book. They don’t understand how fundamentally wrong that is.”

Administration building in Baksan, Kabardino-Balkaria. Anonymous "You can beat us once, maybe twice, but then you can expect us to retaliate."

The government was alarmed by the turbulent rise of Islam in the mid-1990s. “In Kabardino-Balkaria, they responded by announcing that they wanted to close all the mosques,” says the bald man. “Not just ours. Some years it’s worse than others. A counter-terrorism operation was conducted throughout 2011. When we left our houses in the morning, we didn’t know if we would see our wives and children in the evening. Many of our brothers are in prison.” Another man, with a short grey beard, tells us that the government forgets that this is the Caucasus. “Fighting is in our blood. Our honour is sacred. You can beat us once, maybe twice, but then you can expect us to retaliate. If it happens again, then the best option is to head into the woods and take up arms against the government. What’s the alternative? To be beaten and tortured simply because of your religion. And if we’re killed, my son will ask my wife what happened to me, and as soon as he’s able, he’ll also take up arms to avenge his father.”

Counter-terrorism

In the war on terror, counter-terrorism operations are increasingly being used as a cure worse than the disease. Saidakhmed Nasibov from the village of Kirov-Aul Kirov-Aul Dagestan, Russia agrees. He is a confirmed Salafist and not afraid to say so, even though he knows it will cost him his life.

In late August 2012 Saidakhmed Nasibov was dragged from his car and shot dead in front of his wife, daughter, and sister-in-law. He was the last surviving male member of his family. His three sons and numerous nephews had already been killed by the shadowy, masked security forces that roam the North Caucasus, arresting and killing people seemingly at will. We had met Nasibov a few months earlier and talked with him about his sons and reli- gious beliefs. He was a Salafist, an adherent of an orthodox branch of Islam. The Salafists want to live pure lives, establish Sharia law, and reject the Caucasus’s traditional Islam, which has—they say—been corrupted by money and politics. Nasibov sympathized with the terror-sowing radicals in the mountains, but chose to wage his war using only words. In Dagestan it is easy to become a target of the eternally suspicious security forces and authorities. Too many people have already been illegally imprisoned, tortured, killed, or have simply disappeared over the years. For an outspoken figure like Nasibov, it was only a matter of time before the masked men would come after him.

"The real problem lies with the government," he says. "Everything bad is attributed to the Salafists, although much of the violence is caused by the security forces. The government is corrupt. They should tackle that and leave us alone. We are willing to talk to the government, to make it clear that if everyone abided by the law, no one would go into the woods." He continues: “It all began in the summer of 2000. At the time, the Russians and Chechens ran nightly operations to arrest and process boys and men. This soon changed and the operations became more random. After a while the arrests weren’t even registered.”

Foxholes at the foot of the mountains in Chechnya, near the entrance of the pass to Shatoi.

The practice spread throughout Chechnya and later the North Caucasus. The authorities initially used pretexts for arresting the men, which quickly became fabrications, human rights activist Amir tells us. These were soon dropped altogether. Each time, heaven and earth was moved to find the missing people. They would often disappear for days, held without food and interrogated without a lawyer being present. “Frequently, the sentence would already have been passed before a lawyer for either side was present,” Amir says. Almost without exception, the men were taken to camps in the far north of Russia. Only short sentences are allowed to be served in Chechnya.

Amir "On paper, human rights are well defined here."

“You’ll be surprised when I tell you that human rights are well defined here,” Amir continues. “But that’s just on paper. The moment that you’re up against a uniform and a gun, you can forget it.” He says that there are far too few lawyers who will represent these men. “We sometimes have the odd small success, when people are actually released, or when we win in Strasbourg. But the chance of getting justice is minimal.” Safudin, the man from Baksan whose son was beheaded, blames the terrorists. “They’re doing everything they can to destabilise us before the Olympic Games begin in Sochi. They know that a bomb there would be extremely damaging for Russia.” Yet he is also realistic. “There’s a potential army of people in the Caucasus susceptible to the bandits’ ideas. There are so many poor and unemployed people who are, by definition, suitable recruits for the boyeviks. That’s still no excuse for blowing up scientists, innocent people, police officers and politicians. It’s a system.” In a conspiratorial tone he continues, “The men in the woods are extremely rich. They’re the mafia. They extort money from shops. By killing the police, they weaken the police’s power and strengthen their own. That’s how the mafia system works.” He recounts a story he has heard. Last year, one of the bandits’ camps was shut down in the woods nearby. “The police found bags of money in large 5,000-rouble denominations. They also found beer, packets of condoms and drugs. Call themselves Muslims!” he sneers. His finger inadvertently lifts the paper under which he has hidden the photo of his son’s severed head. He quickly covers it again. “Bandits,” he mutters.

A way out

In Khazavyurt, a Dagestani market town as well as the capital of Caucasian wrestling culture and a hotbed of the insurgency, lawyer Adipgerey Umarov has his office. He represents Ismail, Isita’s husband (see the accompanying video), who was sentenced to 14 years in jail after being forced under torture to confess to supporting the boyeviks.

Adipgerey Umarov "The police here break all the laws."

“I have three children,” Umarov says. “I hope it will never happen, but I can truly imagine why they might go into the woods. The police here break all the laws. Can you imagine? Sympathy for the boyeviks in a family where the father is a lawyer and the mother a judge!” Umarov experienced first-hand the uncertainty of life in Dagestan, when he found his house surrounded by the FSB, police and a military unit. It was explained as a KTO. They searched his property but found nothing. “It may have been because of the sensitive cases I take on, or possibly someone with a grudge who tipped off the security forces about me.

“There are so many reasons to support the boyeviks,” he continues. “And the leaders of this country don’t do enough to stop that.” He summarises the many arguments. “First, they claim Islam. They claim to support the traditions of Imam Shamil. They blame the corruption on traditional Islam. It’s an argument that doesn’t add up. In Imam Shamil’s time, the Russians waged a real war against Islam. Today people are free, they can go to the mosque again.”

With a multiethnic team of soldiers from Russia and Tatarstan, Aleksandr Magomedov guards this checkpoint on one of the access roads to Makhachkala. It was here that a suicide bomber blew up himself and the van he was driving in May 2012. Minutes later, while police officers, soldiers, and bystanders attended to the victims, the bomber’s sister drove into the crowd and blew up her car. Fourteen people were killed and more than one hundred were injured. A month after the attack much of the damage has already been repaired; holes in the street and surrounding walls are the only evidence of the force of the explosions. Adipgerey Umarov, lawyer in Khazavyurt, Dagestan. Adipgerey Umarov “There are so many reasons to support the boyeviks.”

Another reason is the lack of prospects in the Caucasus, Umarov believes. There is such widespread unemployment and at the same time so much wealth, people become susceptible to propaganda. Yet nobody explains how hopeless it is to join the boyeviks. Once made, it is an almost irreversible choice.

“In short, the boyeviks offer an idea – something to fight for. They offer a lifestyle. They offer a way out. They are winning the battle of ideas with the government, and that’s extremely worrying.” Umarov believes that only the country’s leaders can change this, but adds that nobody has ever made any serious attempts to do so. “The elite earn too much money from the situation. They are overloaded with subsidies from Moscow. Half of the army and the Russian FSB receive huge allowances to work here. People have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.”

Adipgerey Umarov “The elite earn too much money from the situation."

It is the most commonly heard argument throughout the Caucasus: why so much violence? Because ‘they’ have a financial interest in maintaining it. On the other hand: how do the boyeviks survive? Because they are supported, Umarov says. “Georgia, the West, Arab countries, everyone has an interest in continuing instability in Russia. Zhirinovsky, an ultranationalist in the Russian parliament, once said, ‘We don’t need the Caucasus, just let them kill each other, we’ll even give them the weapons to do it.’ Perhaps there’s some truth in that. Just let us be.”

Evidence

The war on terror continues to cost lives. In an impressive report by Amnesty International from 2012, the Ingush president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, speaks openly about the disappearances. He blames the various security forces for operating across state borders without informing each other. “If someone is taken from their home by masked men in large jeeps and SUVs, who am I to say that Dokku Umarov’s terrorists are behind it?” he says. “It has to be the security forces.” Rustam Matsev is a scrawny young lawyer with thick glasses. He works from the basement of a block of flats in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria. Rustam Matsev The walls of his office are decorated with mirrors and posters of models. The floor is covered with mosaic tiles. “It was a barber’s shop,” he grins. “I could move in cheaply.” There is little glamour in the lives of human rights lawyers in the Caucasus. “The police kidnap people in order to get information,” he says. “They are often tortured.” He now has enough experience with these types of cases to make accurate predictions. “If someone is missing for more than three days with no sign of life, that sign rarely comes.” We think of Khava, who is still hoping for a sign of life five years after her husband disappeared. “Once,” Rustam corrects himself. “Once, someone was found alive after four months. He was locked in the basement of the Chechen Security Forces. He had been moved all over the place.” Rustam has an enormous collection of evidence on his laptop. He scrolls through endless galleries of incarcerated, tortured men. They look dejected, humiliated and in pain as they expose their arms, back, stomach and legs for the camera. They are covered in welts from sticks and ropes, burn marks where cigarettes have been stubbed out on their bodies and blisters caused by electric shocks. Aslan was tortured to death by security forces while being interrogated— although initially it was reported that he had been killed during an antiterrorist operation. He was suspected of being a Salafist (an adherent of an orthodox branch of Islam), an allegation that lawyer Rustam Matsev disputes, in part, on the evidence of these photographs.

“Actually, once you’ve been abducted you have almost no hope,” says Rustam. He summarises what normally happens. “You’re tortured for three days to get the first evidence. Then they bring in witnesses to make up a story and they fabricate a list of evidence that has been found, such as explosives and grenades. Then they put together the charge, which states in detail the sentence the judge should pass. Then at some point, the lawyer is allowed in.” His profession must feel pointless. “In 0.01 per cent of these cases an appeal results in a different verdict,” Rustam admits. He adds that judges can see from the charges how much has been fabricated, but they can do little but pass due sentence. They can, however, reduce the severity of a sentence, for example by assigning a convict to a prison close to home, rather than a labour camp.

Abduction by security forces, captured by security camera's.

“There’s only one hope for young men who are arrested,” says Rustam. “But it’s only an option for a few.” He looks over the top of his glasses, and emphasises every word as he says: “Never admit anything under torture. Whatever they do to you, however they treat you, keep saying that you haven’t done anything and that you’re innocent. However strange it may sound in the Caucasus, that’s what’s so perverse about the lawless legal system here. It remains a legal system and they need your consent. Without your ‘yes’ they don’t have a case. They can still murder you, or make you disappear, but the only way I stand a chance of getting someone off is if they keep saying no.”

Zainab and Adlan miss their son Imran, Khava Gaisanova misses her husband Mukhazhir. With them many thousands in the Caucasus miss their missing family members, friends and neighbours. Elena Burtina “Russia is incapable of taking care of its citizens.”

A powerless country

In another basement in distant Moscow is the Centre for Immigration. Elena Burtina is expecting us. She provides legal advice to refugees and immigrants. Many of them come from the Caucasus, although it is technically part of the Russian Federation. “Russia is incapable of taking care of its citizens,” she says. “I get so many refugees from the Caucasus. Not just because they’re persecuted by the government, but also because they’re threatened by the social conditions there, by conservative families, by brothers who want revenge for the pregnancy or failed bride kidnapping of a sister, by killing the sister or keeping it secret. I then have to try and organise an exit visa. They end up in Norway, for example. Nobody wants to go there. They don’t speak Norwegian and they want to bring their children up here. But Russia refuses to protect them.”

Elena Burtina “He had gone completely crazy. He howled like a wolf.” Isita's husband is sentenced to 14 years forced labor in a prisoner camp near Murmansk. Anonymous portrait in the Centre for Immigration, Moscow (a NGO). Huseyn doesn't want to be photographed at all. 'Anonymous' comes from Chechnya and is on the run for her brothers, who want to kill her. She divorced from her violent husband – it ruined the family's honor.

She disappears momentarily and returns with a boy who is clearly reluctant to talk. “He was kidnapped from his home,” she says, stroking his shoulder. “He was tortured for four days in Karabulak, Ingushetia. It’s unbelievable that he didn’t give in.” Hussein listens silently. Elena continues. “For one reason or another, the officers who had kidnapped him couldn’t bring themselves to kill him, so they handed him over to the Russians, but they wouldn’t do it either. The Russians took him back to the police where he was seen by a passer-by.” In the police cell, Hussein was beaten again. They switched their interrogation from terrorism to other possible crimes in order to get something out of him. They found an inflammable substance in his house and detonated it to demonstrate how dangerous it was – and to destroy any evidence. He denied everything, but was charged anyway. By this point Hussein was a complete wreck, Elena says. In court he was unable to talk, walk or hear anything. The trial was postponed. “That’s when we found him.” Human rights activists noticed him in the hospital. “He had gone completely crazy. He howled like a wolf.” Two months later he was released from hospital in a wheelchair. “But the case continued,” Elena says. “Together with Memorial, we brought him to Moscow to recover. He slept in my house the whole time.” Every time they received news about the case, Hussein had a panic attack. The fear is visible in his eyes. He never wants to return to the Caucasus. Elena and Memorial persuaded Yevkurov, Ingushetia’s president, to intervene. He ordered the case to be dropped and even brought a case against two of the boy’s torturers. It was a unique occurrence in the North Caucasus. Not that the police officers let it rest. Their colleagues in Chechnya made a video in which someone else accused Hussein of hiding weapons. And so the whole case has started anew. “They kept bringing up the weapons,” says Hussein. “But there really weren’t any.” He explains in detail what happened to him. He received electric shocks for one minute followed by a 15-minute break. The next time it lasted two minutes with a 30-minute break. “They continued until it was up to six minutes of electric shocks,” he remembers in horror. “They were laughing and shouting at me to scream louder! When I didn’t give in they said that I was good, a strong boy. But it got even worse.”

Huseyn “They were laughing and shouting at me to scream louder!"

They stopped giving Hussein shocks. “They told me that if I wasn’t going to talk they’d see if my little brother would. Five minutes later I heard someone screaming in the room next to me. They said it was my brother being tortured.” Torture is supposed to eradicate terrorism, but it is more likely that the often random kidnappings, torture and prison sentences will give rise to new vendettas and a generation of boys prepared – whenever they get the opportunity – to take up arms against their leaders and the Russians. Not Hussein. He wants to remain anonymous and hopes to be sent to far-off Norway, where he can live in peace.

Peace in exchange for justice

The three Salafists in Nalchik probably say it best. Why do these problems exist? Because the government is unable to solve even the most basic issues. Indeed, from an economic perspective, there is enough cause for dissatisfaction. Unemployment in the North Caucasus is sky high, the average income is low. With a history of war, deportation and violence, affinity with armed opponents of the government – as well as a religious agenda to reinforce this opposition – is hardly surprising. Russia, as Elena Burtina said, is incapable of taking care of its citizens. The Olympic Games on the other side of the mountains are putting additional pressure on local regimes and security forces, who operate with even less respect for human rights.

"Let our government be a reliable one."

From all the stories from lawyers, family members of victims and perpetrators, one appeal stands out: let our government be a reliable one, where law and order function as they should without corruption or prejudice. That would be a major step towards achieving peace. In this way, perhaps, support for the terrorists, separatists and bandits in the woods would finally dwindle. While the North Caucasian republics are technically colonies of the Russian Empire, most of the people we talk to still believe that they are better off under Russia's protection than as independent states – but only if Russia, the local authorities and the many security and police forces change their tactics.

Chapter IV looks at the history of the violence in the North Caucasus. Chapter III explains more about the economic situation in the North Caucasus. Read more about the North Caucasus, a history of conflict and violence, in The Secret History of Khava Gaisanova on ISSUU. The Secret History of Khava Gaisanova is also for sale in our webshop and in all bookshops. Two of The Sochi Project’s Sketchbooks cover the North Caucasus. Life Here is Serious, about wrestling (issuu + webshoplink) and Safety First, about Chechnya.

The secret history of Khava Gaisanova / De geheime geschiedenis van Khava Gaisanova Life Here is Serious Safety First

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