I thought this article was interesting because 1) it is another incident of the media finally noticing that reality in Chechnya is not turning out to be what they had expected and 2) it is a telling rather desperate attempt to incorporate the incontrovertible reality into the old paradigm (e.g. in the opening paragraph).
Boston Globe November 14, 2007 A determined spirit guides Grozny By Ruth Daniloff Ruth Daniloff, a former Moscow correspondent, is a freelance writer based in Cambridge. GROZNY
AN IN-YOUR-FACE attitude rules Grozny these days. It is as though the city is telling the Kremlin: OK, you won the war. You killed 15 percent of our population and dispatched us across the world as refugees. You can still arrest us arbitrarily. But you cannot kill our spirit.
When I arrived in Grozny recently, I expected to see heaps of rubble similar to the pictures in the newspapers during the last 12 years of the country's war with Russia. Instead, I found houses going up, some of them on a baronial scale, with fancy brick facades and decorated gates leading to inner courtyards. Roads are being repaved, the Grozny aiport, rebuilt. The Turks are building what promises to be one of the largest mosques in the world. The Russian Orthodox Church has been restored and there are plans to open a synagogue.
"And all this has been done in one year," said one of the assistants in the mayor's office. Hard to believe, I thought, as I drove down the main street where small cafes and beauty parlors have sprung up. It must be a "pokazukha" (a showpiece) especially designed to show the world the Kremlin's success in turning off the war with Chechnya.
After spending 10 days in Grozny, I can affirm that the Chechen capital is no Potemkin Village. In the wake of war's devastation it is a return of the renowned Chechen vitality. The mood of the people has lifted now that they no longer face bombardments, flying shrapnel, and bullet-pitted walls. It will take years to forget the bloodshed and the lost relatives, but the city's new face lift raises spirits and the prospect of normal lives again.
As if to stress the return to normalcy, young women in head scarves negotiate the potholed street on 5-inch heels (shpilki) and tight black skirts decorated with glitter, zips, chains, safety pins, and silver studs. Men sport pointy black shoes so shiny you can see your face in them.
Everyone credits Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's 31-year-old president, for the turnaround. Chechens like Kadyrov for the same reason that Russians like Vladimir Putin. He is a law-and-order man who gets things done. He sets deadlines and sends minions out to enforce the orders. Forget democracy.
Where the money comes from for the reconstruction is something of a mystery. Everyone I talked to, including Grozny Mayor Muslim Khuchiyev, says that most of the financing comes from wealthy Chechens and the Kadyrov Foundation. Kadyrov is forcing wealthy Chechen criminals to return stolen money. So far most Chechens seem ready to overlook the cult of personality that is building up around their president.
It is hard to know how long an iron fist will continue to be accepted by people who have always prided themselves on being free. Human-rights abuses still take place. Unemployment runs at 80 percent. Beneath the astounding new construction lie social problems that even the traditional Chechen network of relatives cannot solve. Right now people are optimistic, but if Kadyrov is not wise enough to solve some of the other serious problems, their patience may run out.
At Grozny's Ninth City Hospital, a dentist treats her patients while rain water drips from the ceiling. The small room is picked up and clean. A Muslim people, the Chechens enjoy a tradition of cleanliness. But the dentist's equipment is old and makeshift. Crowds of people wait in a corridor with sickly green walls. The overhead lights have gone out and it is dark. A doctor examines a child who has a sausage-like protrusion growing off the back of her neck. She was born with it, the mother says, removing the child's jacket. "I have never seen anything like it," the doctor comments, rolling his eyes in disbelief.
"Chechens have the highest birth rate in Russia," the doctor says. "Even during the bombing, women got pregnant. From personal experience, I can say that the birth rate went up 20 to 30 percent. It's to make up for the loss of population."
Chechens may be repopulating their country. But because of post-traumatic stress and environmental pollution, Chechnya is producing a high percentage of children with birth defects. One child in 10 is born with some kind of anomaly that requires treatment, explains the doctor at Grozny's Children's Hospital. If the parents have the money, the children are sent to the neighboring republic of Dagestan, where treatment is marginally better. There are few diagnostic facilities in the hospital, no ultrasound machines, no specialists on genetic disorders. Doctors are lucky if they can find suture materials. The social network enjoyed by the medical profession in Soviet times has gone, and there is nothing to replace it.
Right now people joke when they see the portraits of the "Holy Trio" displayed all over the city: Ahkmed Kadyrov, assassinated father of the current president, Ramzan Kadyrov, his strongman son, and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who has succeeded in Chechenizing the country.
Still there is an underlying fear that Ramzan Kadyrov's popularity and power could go to his head and he could revert to his youthful out-of-control character. His personal peccadilloes are noted, his stable of fancy foreign cars, his tame lion, his huge palace, and several wives.
Meanwhile, some 50,000 Russian troops remain in Chechnya, discreetly billeted beside the airport, at roadside checkpoints, and at the enormous military base of Khankala. The pasty-faced Russian soldiers who man the posts keep out of sight, knowing how much they are despised. They know, too, that if serious unrest explodes, they will be called in to put it down. The Chechens know that, too, and sense that today's stability resides on a very fragile peace.
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