Chechen fighters “dead” in Russia-backed leader’s village raid
Some 30 fighters attacked Chechnyan leader Kadyrovs village early on Sunday morning, a source in the North Caucasus Federal District police in the nearby Stavropol region, told RIA news agency. Only a few fighters shooting a video of the raid managed to escape, it said.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (L) speaks with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov
Five civilians and two policemen were also killed in the attack, RIA said, but it said it could not immediately confirm the toll of 12 fighters dead cited by Kadyrov and his office. (Turk Bulletin)
A shootout between the Chechen president’s personal protection detail and suspected separatist insurgents left 19 people dead early Sunday, including five civilians, officials and media reports said.
A shootout between the Chechen president’s personal protection detail and suspected separatist insurgents left 19 people dead early Sunday, including five civilians, officials and media reports said.
At least 12 suspected insurgents and two security officers were killed when the rebels entered Tsentoroi, Ramzan Kadyrov’s home village, his spokesman Alvi Karimov told The Associated Press. TV reports said five civilians were killed in the crossfire.
Kadyrov, who is thought to regularly supervise security operations in the field, was in the village at the time and directed the counter-offensive, Karimov said.
“We let them into the village so they couldn’t escape,” Kadyrov told Channel One television, which showed him examining the bodies of the suspected militants strewn across a road. “We forced them into a place where they could be eliminated,” he said.
An AP reporter at the scene saw fire-ravaged and bullet-ridden homes, with body parts lying among the rubble.
Resident Vargan Edelgeriyeva, 48, said the gunbattle started at about 3 a.m. at a construction site about 150 meters away from Kadyrov’s residence.
Militants entered local homes but were quickly surrounded, Edelgeriyeva said. In one house an insurgent detonated explosives, perhaps a grenade, killing himself and a 30-year-old resident, she said.
Police in 2009 averted a possible assassination attempt on Kadyrov, shooting dead the driver of a car suspected of containing explosives before he could reach a construction site where Kadyrov was due to make an appearance.
In a separate incident Sunday, security forces in nearby Dagestan province shot dead four suspected militants traveling in two cars when they refused to stop at a police checkpoint, according to police spokesman Magomed Tagirov. He said weapons were later found in the cars.
Russia’s volatile North Caucasus suffers daily attacks by insurgents seeking independence from Moscow, but this weekend’s bloodshed has been especially fierce.
On Saturday, nine suspected militants were killed in two separate shootouts with police in the Kabardino-Balkariya republic, while five suspected militants and two police officers were killed in another shootout in Dagestan.
Kadyrov previously fought on the side of the rebels but switched sides and was installed by the Kremlin as Chechen leader in 2007. Comparative peace has arrived in Chechnya and its capital, Grozny, since then, but rights activists say the price has been brutal.
They allege Kadyrov has directed widespread human rights violations, including abductions and summary executions of suspected rebels and sympathizers.
Associated Press writers Sergei Venyavsky in Rostov-on-Don and David Nowak in Moscow contributed to this report.
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Chechnya’s Islamic revival causes women to live in fear
Freedom Sack is Now Compulsory in Chechnya
“‘I don’t see the point in wearing it,’ says the student, whose long dark hair flows out from under her head covering. ‘But if I don’t, I know I will be punished. I am scared of that.’”
“Women Live in Fear During Chechnya’s Islamic Revival,” by Diana Markosian for VOA News, February 23 (thanks to JW):
At the entrance to a school in Grozny, the capital of Russia’ s Chechen republic, two security guards grip their guns as they order a woman to cover her head before walking into class.
“ You can’ t go inside with your head like that,” one of them yells, tapping his AK-47.
The young student rumbles inside her purse before pulling out a black silk scarf.
“Is this better?” she asks, covering up her entire head with the scarf, matching her kohl-lined eyes.
Under the Russia-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya is swiftly becoming a conservative Muslim state, a sharp change from the officially atheist Soviet Union when women in the Caucasus burnt their headscarves. Many Chechen women here are the first in three generations to cover their heads.
This has coincided with the almost complete disappearance of the ethnic Russian population in Chechnya. At the time of the Soviet collapse, 20 years ago, ethnic Russians account for 30 percent of Chechnya’s population. Today, they are less than one percent.
But now, “the headscarf is a symbol of purity and worth,” says Malika Omarova, head of the Union of Chechen Women in Grozny. “ When I was a student, I never wore a headscarf, not one person forced me. But, I want our women to wear them – it is in our blood. That is what makes us Chechen.” [...]
Zalina, a 19-year-old student and hair stylist, says wearing a headscarf is not really a choice.
“ I don’ t see the point in wearing it,” says the student, whose long dark hair flows out from under her head covering. “But if I don’ t, I know I will be punished. I am scared of that.”