ALKHAN-KALA, Russia, Aug 26 (AFP) - At night in this wrecked town they melt away behind closed doors. Even the doctors and nurses are so frightened they desert its one hospital at night, leaving patients to fend for themselves.

Fear and poverty stalk this ruined community of Chechnya.

Young men fear arrest by Russian government troops suspecting them of separatist sympathies. And they fear the vengeance of separatists against collaborators, or actions taken against them for failing to fight against Russian forces.

Poverty has devastated the area. Landmines infest the fields, killing off not only anybody who steps on them but farming itself, the traditional local mainstay.

Farming was a major source of livelihood here before Chechen separatism escalated into conflict with Russian government forces sent south by Moscow to quell the insurgency. Today only about a third of the surrounding countryside is still being farmed.

"Our great problem is the mines," said Sultan Abdulayev, head of a local state farm: "They're all over the place in the fields."

"Lack of drinking water and electricity are also problems," Malika Umatova reminded him. She is a 50 year-old woman just elected head of the local pro-Moscow administration after her predecessor was shot dead by Chechen separatists who consider pro-Moscow administrators traitors to the cause.

"I'm not afraid," she said: "It's a feeling you can't afford here if life is to continue normally."

The 9,000 inhabitants of this town, five kilometres (three miles) from Chechnya's capital Grozny, have been desperately awaiting money from Moscow to start rebuilding on the ruins of their homes.

Abdulayev has no money to pay what is left of his workforce, so they get paid in the form of potatoes, carrots and cabbage. "It's still better than nothing," he said. The local people subsist on humanitarian aid brought up with huge logistical difficulties from Ingushetia by non-governmental organisations.

"We've no great hopes of seeing this war over soon," said Arbi, a young man just back from a refugee camp in the neighouring Russian minority republic of Ingushetia. "The Russians don't want to talk to our president (Aslan Maskhadov)."

Moscow refuses to recognise Maskhadov as Chechen leader, though he was elected in 1997 in what it regarded at the time as a fair vote.

"The Russians will take decades to beat the Chechens," Arbie said, adding: "Only when the Chechens are all dead."

Meanwhile there is no work here for him. "The only people who get any money here at all are pensioners," he said.

Source: Johnson's Russia List #5411, 27 August 2001