Neser Boha
upgrade your gray matter
Very interesting article that traces back two alleged Beslan suicide-bomber sisters back to their native Chechnya while uncovering a lot of the geopolitical reality behind the Russo-Chechen 'conflict'. Worth reading.
Sisters in arms | World news | The Guardian
An excerpt from the article:
Sisters in arms | World news | The Guardian
An excerpt from the article:
They stayed while the republic collapsed into its first war in 1994. That bloody bid for independence led to a peace deal with the Yeltsin administration in August 1996, but only after Grozny had been carpet-bombed and an estimated 73,000 Chechens and 5,700 Russian soldiers died.
News of the capital's devastation reached them via refugees and local TV. Asma describes how the girls in the family cried when they saw "our beautiful city" in ruins. "We could see with our own eyes what was happening. Of course, anyone gets angry when they see normal people being killed."
It was during the republic's brief spell of independence, before the second war in 1999, that Amnat first showed her business prowess. "Amnat was particularly good at knowing what would sell," says Asma. With the money she earned from selling basics like pasta, cooking oil, shampoo and washing powder, Amnat would buy the family clothes. Trade went well, until raids by Shamil Basayev into neighbouring Dagestan, and a series of blasts in Moscow, sparked the second war in September 1999.
Tevzani faced massive aerial bombardment by the Russian military, killing many civilians. Yet it was not until after Russia had retaken Chechnya that the Nagayev family experienced its first loss. The brutality of the second war was surpassed by years of zachistki, or "clean-up operations", as the Russian military rounded up men with separatist connections or merely those of fighting age, interrogating them, beating them, and often executing them. Memorial, the human rights group that documents abuses on only a third of the territory of Chechnya, estimates that since the second war ended in 2000, nearly 3,000 people have been abducted. Most are thought to be dead.
"Zachistki started in Tevzani in 2000," says Asma. "They would surround the village with trucks and armoured personnel carriers. You'd look out and see men combing the streets with AK47s. They went from house to house, taking gold, money, arms. They did not touch the women but took away the men."