A woman from Chechnya, an invalid, sat by a mound of dirty possessions, her three grandchildren wandering in the dust nearby. Their refugee camp was emptying, but they were too poor to buy a ride on the trucks hurriedly heading out of here.
"I have been packed and waiting for three days," said the woman, Manzha Yansuyeva, 78. "I am hoping someone will pity us and help us move."
Following raids by Islamic guerrillas the night of June 21 in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, Chechen refugees are in motion once more, saying they are being blamed for the guerrillas' success and must leave or face retaliation in the night. They are deeply afraid.
PHOTOS: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
The guerrillas overran police stations and checkpoints here early last week, and, dressed in police uniforms themselves, systematically executed law enforcement and military personnel who tried to come to their besieged friends' aid. Nearly 100 people died before the guerrillas withdrew.
In the days since, Russian and Ingush police, wearing ski masks and carrying assault rifles, have accused Chechen refugees of assisting and sheltering the guerrillas.
They have been rounding up Chechen men for questioning and, the refugees say, for beatings.
Thousands of Chechens are heeding what they regard as an implicit message, now fleeing Ingushetia for Grozny, Chechnya's capital.
"We haven't slept for days already," said Yakhita Dzhabrailova, 57.
Grozny hardly invites. Having suffered two wars in a decade, the city is in ruins, occupied by the Russian Army and controlled by grim-faced armed men whose affiliation is rarely clear.
Civilians frequently disappear, seized in what human rights organizations and local residents describe as a mix of kidnappings for ransoms and violence against residents accused of supporting, even knowing, the guerrillas.
A cornerstone of President Vladimir Putin's effort to convince the world that Chechnya has been stabilizing has rested on Chechen refugees returning home.
During the height of the second Chechen war, more than 100,000 Chechens sought refuge on Ingush soil; the Kremlin had hoped that coaxing them home would demonstrate security and hope. But tens of thousands of refugees had not complied with Moscow's wish, choosing a suspended state of poverty and grief in Ingushetia over lingering horrors in Chechnya.
It took the outbreak of violence in Ingushetia -- an expansion of terror, not a reduction -- to put them to motion.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS