-Caveat Lector-
> Gangs create terror zones at Russia-Chechnya border
>
> By David Filipov, Globe Staff, 07/28/99
>
>
>
> <Picture>ALYUGAYEVSKAYA, Russia - The last thing Lidiya Semyonova
> and her friends probably felt was the way their relief abruptly
> turned to terror.
>
>
>
> They were strolling back to their homes in this small, dusty
> border village late one night when a Russian police patrol
> offered to escort them. Here in the violent badlands that
> separate Russia and breakaway Chechnya, a little armed protection
> is never a bad idea.
>
>
>
> Only this time it was not enough. Sometime after midnight, gunmen
> opened fire from close range on the officers' jeep, riddling it
> with machine-gun bullets and rocket-propelled grenades.
> Semyonova, 24, three other young women, and two police officers
> died instantly. Two others were seriously wounded. The gunmen
> gathered the Russians' weapons and disappeared into the woods
> that mark the border with Chechnya.
>
>
>
> That attack last week - unexplained and senseless - was typical
> of the wave of bloodshed that has left dozens dead and hundreds
> missing, turning the territory surrounding the separatist North
> Caucasus republic into a virtual war zone.
>
>
>
> Russia lost control over Chechnya in 1996, when its troops were
> forced to withdraw after two years of fighting with rebels that
> killed 80,000 people by most estimates. Now, with the recent
> events on the Chechen border, Moscow is having trouble protecting
> its own territory.
>
>
>
> Armed gangs operating around Chechnya have already turned the
> border regions of Stavropol, Dagestan, and Ingushetia into zones
> of terror, where murder is common, hostage-taking for ransom is a
> daily event, and cattle-rustling and car theft are no longer
> looked upon as serious crimes.
>
>
>
> ''We demand Moscow's help with the border,'' said Yuri Samarkin,
> deputy head of the local administration, about Galyugayevskaya.
> ''But it's only getting worse.''
>
>
>
> In the last three months, the gangs have grown bolder, launching
> full-scale military attacks on the undermanned, poorly equipped,
> and woefully few Russian police checkpoints set up along the
> border. The shooting near Galyugayevskaya was followed by two
> more deadly attacks the next day, once again by unseen gunmen
> against Russian police patrols. This time, two Russian commanders
> were killed and seven police wounded.
>
>
>
> ''Officially, there's not supposed to be a war on, but the
> killing hasn't stopped and we find corpses every couple of
> days,'' said Sergeant Yevgeny Tkachenko, 23, as he and two
> comrades patrolled the sand dunes that span the unmarked border
> between the Stavropol region and Chechnya.
>
>
>
> The other day he came across the bodies of two fellow police who
> had been shot in an ambush, again at close range. The gunmen took
> the jeep and fled to Chechnya.
>
>
>
> Officially, Tkachenko and his men are just police officers
> patrolling their own Russian territory in the border town of
> Mirny - on cop's pay of less than a buck a day. But when they put
> on their 40-pound flak jackets in the sweltering heat and leave
> the heavily guarded police compound to patrol the border, they
> have the furtive, watchful look of soldiers in an occupying army
> - eerily reminiscent of the way Russian forces in Chechnya's
> capital, Grozny, used to look during the war.
>
>
>
> That is because gunmen from the other side can easily cross the
> border, an essentially unguarded and unmarked stretch of sand.
> The 200 men in Tkachenko's force are hard pressed to protect
> themselves, much less prevent anyone from crossing the 80 miles
> of no man's land they are supposed to be guarding.
>
>
>
> One night last week, someone crept up to within shooting range of
> the compound and had begun digging breastworks before they were
> detected and forced to flee.
>
>
>
> ''Most of the people in these villages are Chechens, and some of
> them are spies,'' Tkachenko said as his patrol lumbered over the
> dunes in a borrowed van. He was going to explain what that meant
> when a voice crackled excitedly over his walkie talkie: ''Get OUT
> of there RIGHT NOW!''
>
>
>
> The van spun around and sped away as quickly as it could. An
> armored personnel carrier rumbled in the opposite direction
> toward a nearby checkpoint that was under attack. The toll this
> time: four Russian servicemen wounded.
>
>
>
> Tkachenko, like many Russians here, would solve the problem by
> installing fences, watchtowers, trip wires, and a legitimate
> border guard force. But that would merely legitimize Chechnya's
> claim to independence, which Moscow refuses to accept.
>
>
>
> There is another reason people in Stavropol do not want the
> border closed. The huge, largely agricultural region depends
> heavily on trade with oil-rich Chechnya for fuel, which it pays
> for in grain and flour. A closed border would cause even more
> economic chaos in an already dirt-poor region. And closing the
> border would hardly improve the lot of the hundreds of ethnic
> Russians who still live in Chechnya and travel by day across the
> border to find work and goods, or the 2,400 ethnic Chechens who
> live on the Russian side.
>
>
>
> ''No one here in any position of authority supports the idea'' of
> closing the border, said Captain Igor Pogosov, a spokesman for
> the Stavropol region's police force. ''If our fields are plowed,
> it's thanks to the Chechens.''
>
>
>
> Instead, Russian forces have tried to fight fire with fire.
> Earlier this month, Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo vowed to
> use artillery and helicopters to defeat the gunmen. Yesterday,
> Rushailo said at a press conference in Moscow that the tactic was
> having a positive effect.
>
>
>
> On the ground, police tell a different story.
>
>
>
> ''They start firing out of those woods over there,'' said a
> Chechen war veteran manning a police border post called
> Checkpoint Number 7. ''We fire back. They start using mortars,
> rockets, heavy artillery. We have machine guns. We call in the
> helicopters, but by the time they get here, [the gunmen] are
> gone.''
>
>
>
> While the situation on the ground looks like war, it lacks two
> things all wars are supposed to have: a clear enemy, and a clear
> reason. While the Russian police routinely refer to their
> tormentors as ''the Chechens,'' in fact the only thing they truly
> know is that the attackers come from the Chechen side of the
> border. Are ''the Chechens'' trying to scare them? To test their
> resolve? To win more territory for their separatist state? Or is
> this all some dark political conspiracy dreamed up in the
> Kremlin? No one on the Russian side can agree on the answer.
>
>
>
> The makeup of the gangs is even harder to ascertain. Pogosov said
> police recently broke up a large kidnapping and rustling ring in
> which most of the members were Russians. The gang would leave
> clues to make police think they were operating out of Chechnya,
> when in fact they were herding captured people and stolen cattle
> to a neighboring Russian region.
>
>
>
> The Chechens themselves deny involvement in the crimes. Edelbek
> Ibragimov, until recently Grozny's chief envoy to Moscow,
> suggested that the upsurge in the fighting was a plot by Russian
> hawks to derail planned talks between President Boris N. Yeltsin
> and Chechnya's popularly elected leader, Aslan Maskhadov.
>
>
>
> ''We don't want the world to think we're bandits,'' Ibragimov
> said. ''Why do they blame every crime that happens in Russia on
> Chechnya? This is an open effort to discredit Maskhadov.''
>
>
>
> Ibragimov has a point there - every time a bomb goes off in
> Moscow, police, security forces, and the media start looking for
> ''a Chechen trail.'' But it is also true that the main effort to
> discredit Maskhadov is coming from within Chechnya.
>
>
>
> Maskhadov, a former Soviet military colonel who led Chechnya's
> lightly armed guerrillas to victory against Europe's largest
> military, has been unable to rein in his former lieutenants who
> say he is too close to Moscow. Some of these ''field
> commanders,'' as they are known in Russia, talk about setting up
> a radical, Islamic confederation that would include Chechnya and
> the neighboring Russian regions to the east and west, Dagestan
> and Ingushetia.
>
>
>
> Among the most notorious commanders is Khattab, who has a
> military training camp for Islamic fighters right across the
> Terek River from Russia's Checkpoint Number 7.
>
>
>
> Moscow accuses Khattab and the other commanders for the
> kidnappings of many of the 500 hostages in Chechnya - of police,
> soldiers, actors, journalists, aid workers, priests, youngsters,
> or anyone else who might win a ransom.
>
>
>
> ''Instability,'' said a captain at Checkpoint Number 7, who
> requested anonymity. ''He wants instability. And he has got it.''
>
>
>
> This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 07/28/99. ©
> Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
A<>E<>R
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