GROZNY, 27-04-2001 - Men with guns are everywhere in Chechnya's capital. A group of Russian soldiers marched onto the bombed-out campus of Grozny University last week and seized two male students who tried to run from them. When Rovzan Khairullayeva, a senior history student, screamed, "Leave our boys alone!" one soldier grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the bench where she was sitting. The soldier then stepped back, lifted his rifle and fired at the ground around her feet while shouting obscenities at her, Ms. Khairullayeva and a number of witnesses said. The two students were eventually released, but not before the Russian squad leader leveled his rifle and threatened to shoot at the large crowd of teachers and angry students pressing to recover their classmates.

Murder rate
The murder rate is soaring here as Chechen rebels, and men wearing masks who could be on either side, step up a partisan campaign in which terror is an increasingly devastating weapon against civilians. An unidentified man walked into the central market last week and opened fire on the fruit and vegetable traders, killing three women before he fled. Grozny's deputy prosecutor, Vladimir Moroz, was drinking coffee in a cafe when three men walked in and shot him 20 times. Two Russian women working for the electric company were gunned down in broad daylight late last month.

This city, laid to ruin by two wars of rebellion against Moscow since 1994, may be the most dangerous capital on earth. And though the first postwar government of Chechnya is finally taking up residence here in an old furniture factory, it will have to face the anger and frustration of a population desperately in need of reconstruction aid and, above all, protection.

"The city is full of bandits," said Ruslan Shavkhalov, director of Grozny's beleaguered health care facilities. "They need to stop the murders so there can be business, markets, and so that people can sleep at night, send their kids to school and go to work."

With the return of warm weather and the cover of foliage that has sprouted from Grozny's landscape of rubble, rebels are infiltrating the capital in significant numbers, officials here say. They are assassinating Russian residents who once formed the majority of the city's population, 12 of whom were killed last month. They are also setting mines and stepping up nighttime attacks on Russian "block posts" - fire bases and checkpoints comprising pillpoxes, razor wire and concrete barriers at key intersections around the city.

No police authority
The mayor of Grozny, Bislan Gantamirov, was recently asked how he was fighting the rebel activity with its alarming tally of civilian killings. "We don't," he replied. "Such crimes will continue until the police are armed and the government decides who is responsible for the situation in the city."

With 7,000 Russian troops stationed, the startling reality is that there is almost no police authority, law enforcement or security for civilians in Grozny, and this remains the most significant factor in Moscow's failure to persuade 150,000 Chechens still living in tent cities, garages and animal sheds in the neighboring region of Ingushetia to return home.

Today, Grozny's population floats between 90,000 and 190,000 as refugees from distant camps and other cities in Russia come to pick up pension payments and check on houses or relatives and then return to safety elsewhere. The population drops markedly with any threat of violence and, as occurred last week, many quit the city in the face of rumors that a rebel offensive to retake Grozny is imminent.

By day, the Russian military continues to conduct aggressive "mopping up" operations consisting of house-to-house searches and summary arrests. But at night the Russian Army retreats behind its fortified checkpoints, or within the perimeter of the main military base in Khankala, just outside Grozny.

There is no street lighting in the city, contributing to the lawlessness that intensifies after dark, when the city tunes up an orchestra of artillery, grenade and small arms fire. Almost all of the city remains without electricity.

Mayor Gantamirov publicly chides Moscow about its failure to create a transition from military to civilian authority here. "Recently, the rebels surrounded the house of my deputy for security," he told a Moscow newspaper last month. "He and his bodyguards fought them all night and no one came to their aid," not from any Russian checkpoint nor from any police station. Chechen policemen remain mostly unarmed and are subject to the 7 p.m. curfew under which the Russian military has authority to shoot anyone on the street.

The mayor's bodyguards fought with "weapons that they kept illegally," Mr. Gantamirov said. "We either have to break the law or die." Even when Russian soldiers patrol the city looking for rebels, they are regarded by civilians as another kind of threat, like the soldiers who barged into Grozny University.

Filtration camps or graves
To stop at any house that is still standing in Grozny is to hear bitter complaints about mopping up operations that have turned into acts of theft, humiliation and arrests of young Chechen men, who often disappear into "filtration" camps or, in the worst cases, into shallow graves.

These abuses, even when exaggerated in the retelling, reinforce the most negative perceptions of the Russian military and render Grozny a tense and poisonous place. "People cannot do anything until there is law," said Aslanbek Khasbulatov, a historian and deputy rector at Grozny University. "From the view of a historian, what we have now is stagnation."

The Chechen government's return to Grozny from the temporary capital at Gudermes is a calculated risk, officials here say. By moving the institutions of government, the offices of leaders and bureaucrats back to the destroyed city, Moscow and the Russian military command will be forced to address the security crisis, create an indigenous police force and dismantle the martial law apparatus that now smothers life, commerce and learning here.

"Good job"
If President Vladimir V. Putin is aware of the worsening security for civilians here, it was not apparent last week when he flew to Chechnya - avoiding Grozny - for a meeting at the Khankala base with his top generals. He praised the troops for "doing a good job." But several Chechen leaders privately complained to him that little progress was being made to rebuild the country or its capital, officials said.

"We hope the situation will improve radically," Dr. Shavkhalov, the health care director, said. "If order is established, even McDonald's could open here, but first they must remove the block posts, end the curfew and not allow those rebels to appear here again."

Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times
Courtesy of Ichkeria Org