Chris Doss The Russia Journal ------------------
ORIGINS OF THE SECOND RUSSO-CHECHEN WAR
5. KIDNAPPING AND THE ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WAR
MAIN SOURCE. Tishkov 2001 (see item 4), chapter 13.
New information uncovered during the present war gives us a fuller picture of the Chechen kidnapping business.
The first well-known case of a person being kidnapped by Chechen fighters occurred in 1991 (E.L. Gel'man, former minister of education of Checheno-Ingushetia). However, it was in the period between the wars (1997-99) that kidnapping became a large-scale business. The names of almost 6,000 kidnapped individuals have now been established. Over half of them (3,400) remain missing. The total income generated by the business is estimated at about $200m.
Most kidnappings were carried out in Chechnya and other parts of the Northern Caucasus, although some occurred in other Russian regions (the Volga, the Urals, Moscow). Victims were held in prisons called zindans. A zindan could be a garage, a mountain dugout, or just a deep hole in the ground, but big operators had specially installed prisons in the basements of their homes or under the buildings where they held high-ranking government positions. There were dozens of such subterranean jails in Grozny. For instance, Tukhan Dudayev, a nephew of Chechen leader Jokhar Dudayev, had a four-room zindan in his house: up to 30 captives were held in three rooms, while the fourth served as a torture chamber.
The trade in captives was controlled by a small number of warlords, each of whom had his own sphere of influence. Thus Barayev and later Raduyev was boss in Gudermes, Movsayev in Shatoi, and the Akhmadov brothers in Urus-Martan (one of whom was the local police chief).
The biggest kidnapper seems to have been Arbi Barayev, who was known for his cruelty. Baudi Bakuyev, on the other hand, was reputed never to mistreat his captives. He was famed also for his generosity. When he got the ransom for Valentin Vlasov, President Yeltsin's representative in Chechnya, he gave every family in three local villages a gift of $100. As the ransom was (according to different sources) $3m or even $7m, he still had a little left over for himself.
Vlasov's ransom was apparently the largest ever paid. Gusinsky's Media-Most paid $2m to free a group of their television journalists. A pair of agents of the Federal Security Service (Ingushetia office) fetched $800,000.
A small-time kidnapper might seek permission to use the "trademark" of a big operator with a fearsome reputation like Barayev. In exchange for a suitable fee, he would acquire the right to put it about that the big operator was involved in his kidnappings. He could then exploit the rumor to extract larger ransoms.
Anyone with the money could buy a captive. You just had to go to the market on the central square in Urus-Martan or on the Square of Friendship of Peoples in Grozny, make an advance payment, and tell the trader what kind of captive you wanted (a businessman, an officer, etc.). Lists of people up for sale were also circulated.
Not only Russians and foreigners (including children) were kidnapped. Quite a few victims were Chechens, including four deputies of the Chechen parliament, although kidnapping a Chechen usually entailed a risk of revenge from his kinsmen.
The kidnappers employed Russian collaborators known as "liberators." Their job was to approach the victim's relatives and offer help in negotiating the ransom and getting the victim released. Many "liberators" claimed to be acting out of humanitarian motives; some even posed as activists in the fight against kidnapping. There were, however, intermediaries who really did have humanitarian motives, such as the military journalist Major V. Izmailov and the staff of General Alexander Lebed's Peacemaking Mission to the North Caucasus.
President Aslan Maskhadov was not himself involved in kidnapping, but many if not all of his top associates were, including vice-president Vakha Arsanov. (So was Dudayev's former vice-president Zelimkhan Yandarbiev.) In September 1998 Maskhadov initiated operations to free captives, resulting in an armed clash between his forces and Barayev's men over control of Gudermes. In the spring of 1999, Maskhadov created a new ministry "for struggle against banditry and crime." A Committee of Relatives of Kidnap Victims was also set up. A few dozen captives were freed and a few dozen arrests made, but Maskhadov made no further attempts to go after the big fry.
While most kidnappings were carried out for the sake of the ransom, there could be other motives. A captive might be acquired with a view to exchanging him for a relative in prison in Russia. Some captives were used as slave labor, especially in building work. And the fact that victims who turned out not to be ethnic Russians (or Jews) got better treatment suggests that some captive-holders valued the opportunity to give vent to their feelings of hatred against Russians. This is not to deny that torture also served practical purposes: videos were taken of torture scenes, both for sale and to encourage the victims' relatives to cough up the ransom money.
In addition, some kidnappings served political purposes. In particular, Maskhadov's opponents in the Chechen power elite made repeated use of kidnapping to torpedo his efforts to normalize relations with Russia and avert a new war:
-- In July 1997, two British teachers were kidnapped in Grozny to thwart a deal with a British Petroleum consortium which would have entailed agreement with Russia and Azerbaijan to transport oil through Chechnya.
-- In April 1998, new negotiations on oil with Russia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan were prevented by an attack on a General Staff convoy on the Russian-Chechen border and the kidnapping of Russian presidential representative Valentin Vlasov as he arrived in Grozny.
-- In October 1998, a meeting in Vladikavkaz between Maskhadov and Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov was undermined by the kidnapping that same day of six Russians in Chechnya.
-- In March 1999, General Shpigun, a representative of the Russian ministry of internal affairs, was kidnapped as he arrived at Grozny airport for consultations with Maskhadov's government.
It was after the kidnapping of General Shpigun, whose fate is still unknown, that the Russian government terminated contacts with the Chechen leaders. The author suspects that this incident also convinced the Russian power structures that another military intervention in Chechnya was unavoidable.
Editor's reflections
Undoubtedly the numerous kidnappings were also a major factor fuelling the hatred of Chechens which is now so widespread in Russia. This was no marginal phenomenon: the social trauma inflicted was quite comparable in magnitude to that associated with the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. If one considers that each of the 6,000 victims had relatives, friends, and colleagues anxious about his or her fate, one realizes that a substantial part of Russian society was personally affected, especially in the areas bordering Chechnya and among the business, political, and security elite.
Unaware that Chechens too were among the victims, all these people inevitably came to associate "Chechen" with the sinister figure of the kidnapper. They would have done so even in the absence of any prior conditioning to perceive Chechens in a negative light. The kidnappers bear a large share of the responsibility for the current suffering of their people.