I’m an American photographer who calls Tennessee home, but I’m doing my best to blend in with my new companions. I don’t speak the local language, but I spent many months in Chechnya in 1996, during the first war with Russia. Now I’ve returned to chronicle Russia’s second attempt to crush the rebels in the separatist republic. While I’m here, the Russian Army slowly closes in on Grozny. (Late last week, after I left, the Russians captured Gudermes, Chechnya’s second largest city.)
On my first night in the Grozny cellar on Oct. 21, three Russian journalists with satellite phones turn up. Russian missiles had hit the Grozny market earlier in the day, killing at least 140 people, and the mood in the basement is tense. (The Chechens seem suspicious that the Russian reporters are spies.) We sit at a table covered with bottles of vodka, plates of sausage and marijuana. Everyone is drinking but nobody offers a toast. Eventually, a fight breaks out between a very drunk Russian and a Chechen fighter, who wildly waves a World War II-era German Luger. Punches are thrown. It takes several people to break it up.
At night the fighters shout “Allahu akbar”–God is great!–in their sleep. During the day, in the short spells when I leave the cellar, I’m always with bodyguards. The Russians are bombing the city and I’m a prime target for kidnappers: Everyone is at risk–even ordinary Chechens–but the asking price for an American or European is $500,000 to $1 million. We race through Grozny in a dark blue BMW with tinted windows, blasting the cassette player. A popular song among the gunmen is “Believe” by Cher. Only rarely do they stop to let me shoot photos.
A Chechen commander known by his double-barreled first name–Aslan Bek–is my protector in Grozny. I sought him out when I arrived because I knew him from the first Russian war with Chechnya. At that time I traveled (as a journalist) with some fighters smuggling arms. We crossed Russian lines at night on horses, pulling carts of rocket-propelled grenades and heavy-caliber bullets. Aslan Bek was amused to find an American photographer among the contraband.
For nearly four weeks on this trip, Aslan Bek’s men move me from place to place. Before the bank cellar, I stayed in a Grozny orphanage. (The orphans, with help from some German journalists, were moved to Ukraine while I was there.) That was until Russian missiles hit places nearby, including the Grozny market. When the first missile hit, the windows in the orphanage shattered. I scrambled to the floor and then to a secure corner. When the second missile struck, I moved to the door, but it was locked from outside. Eventually, someone came to get me. The hands of the Mickey Mouse clock on the wall stopped at 5:11.
Sometimes my protectors take me outside Grozny to visit other towns and villages. Everywhere I go, it seems, the Russians are bombing: a school in Argun, village homes, empty fields. When we visit the village of Serzhen-Yurt in late October, Russian bombers have been there minutes before. Among the debris are dead rabbits, chickens and cows. I photograph a man carrying his dead sister in his arms; his grief hasn’t sunk in yet. Shortly after I take the photo, he begins crying and wraps her in a blanket.
One Chechen commander told me that here, in his country, “life is death and death is a new life.” It’s a depressing place. The Russians say they are attacking terrorists, but the Chechens invite us to inspect the maimed and the dead: “Who are the terrorists?” they ask, implying it’s the Russians. During my visit, Russia had closed the border to neighboring Ingushetia. I couldn’t leave the way I had come in. So I sought out Aslan Bek at the front for help getting out.
I stay with him in two buildings on a pitch-dark night. We eat chicken as he talks on the radio, trying to determine where incoming artillery is hitting. We hear the sound of a loud, nearby train whistle–an attempt by Russian forces to spook the Chechens. As Aslan Bek’s men move Stinger missiles and rockets from buildings to vehicles, he asks me if I’d seen that film with Kevin Costner, “A Perfect World.” He liked that one.
Aslan Bek puts me in touch with one of his fellow commanders who is trying to get another journalist out of Chechnya. The second commander decides that we’ll cross the Georgian border and assigns some guards in a new Lexus with leather seats to take us. Russian planes had been bombing the road, so we leave at 2 a.m. Rain is pouring, the vehicle keeps sliding off the road and the car alarm, which the Chechens haven’t figured out how to work, keeps sounding. We arrive at the border at 5 a.m. and follow a small mountain pass into Georgia. We pass hundreds of refugees beating their own retreat, but with nowhere really to go. Home is behind them, and ahead of me.
