(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[Caucasus] In our country, the fight against terrorism is called "special operations". Most often, these happen like the one that recently took place in Khasavjurt, a town in Chechnya's neighboring Dagestan.
It was Monday, but no one needed an alarm clock. Half past six the first grenade drones sounded. A wall was wrecked. Whoever slept on the other side is, as usual, not important. This time, the soldiers face Sultanov and Bijbulatov streets. Everywhere there are armored vehicles, soldiers from the federal forces and Dagestan police officers.
Women run out of the houses with bent backs and children in their arms. They are crying. At eight o'clock people gather. They do not understand that it should not be possible to catch "them" in a calm way – without shooting. Many doubt whether there were terrorists there at all. Maybe it was just ordinary people – who are killed today and declared terrorists tomorrow. There is total distrust of people with stripes and stars. "It's the secret services that do it for the sake of statistics." Old and young alike are confident in their cause.
The amount is getting bigger. Hundreds of cars and people are on the roadside. Soldiers in white camouflage suits bomb big cigarettes. In exchange, people demand information. "Is the operation over? Can we go home? "The soldiers answer," No. Do not you hear?"
And in fact: the grenades are ringing again. The soldiers bomb a house with only the shell left. They throw several grenades before slowly moving into the yard. It's like the crowd is watching a boring movie. People calmly discuss until there are three corpses in there: A woman, a man – and a three-year-old child.
"Is it supposed to be a rebel soldier, sort of?" The soldiers yawn and pretend not to hear. On the one hand, there is a special operation. On the other hand, no one – neither among the spectators nor the soldiers – believes that there are bandits nearby. Thus, it all looks like a computer game.
In the afternoon it is quiet. A two-foot-tall colonel in fur hat goes to the crowd, surrounded by soldiers with automatic weapons. It is Sergei Solodovnikov, the deputy commander of the Southern Federal Police District. "Three guerrillas have been killed," the colonel declares. "Two of them are unknown. The third is Letschi Eskiev. "
The crowd comments: "It is the soldiers themselves who are now mining the area and throwing out some Wahhabi literature to prove that there were guerrilla soldiers there." their children? And if the house was really mined, everything, including the neighboring houses, would have been in the air early today, when grenades were fired. "
Somewhere far away, between the ranks of soldiers, some corpses have been drawn. An armored vehicle hums. "It's jammed and doesn't come off the stain," comments the crowd. "No, it's not jammed," a Dagestan soldier whispers, "it squeezes one of the dead flat so he doesn't have to throw more grenades around him."
A non-bloody day in Khasavjurt goes towards evening. In the prosecutor's office, it is confirmed that the body of one of the killed was a must for stew. It is not possible to identify him, but it is probably the terrorist Eskiev. It was for him ...
At the guard's desk, a woman is wandering around with three crying toddlers. It's the widow after Eskiev. She takes one of the little ones in one hand and a plastic bag with a few belongings in the other. I ask where she is going. She doesn't know. The lips are blue. "How was your husband?" She replies, "He was an ordinary man."
The child is about to fall from her arm, but she catches it at the last minute. She knows that the body of the man will not be handed over, there will be no funeral, and everyone around her will be afraid of her compromising presence. This is how it is: You can't get around the killed terrorist's family, because then you are accused of being a terrorist.
Anna Politkovskaia is a journalist in the newspaper Novaja gazeta in Moscow.
Translated by Jardar Østbø
