VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia - Fifteen-year-old Hussein, balancing his meager weight on two parallel bars, tries to take his first steps on legs that aren't his.

The legs that used to sprint him across the soccer field are a painful memory, stolen as much by the nightmare of the Chechen war as by the landmine he happened upon. Now, both his shins are metal tubes, his feet wooden blocks. One knee is a stubborn spring that Hussein cannot get to swing into place. The other fits awkwardly into a plastic mold. Walking becomes more a mental exercise than a physical challenge, one no less demanding than the process of accepting that these are the legs that will have to carry him through the rest of his life.

Hussein does not say a word. He just stares at the floor, glancing furtively from time to time at the therapist, too shy even to return his mother's loving gaze. And his silence says it all.

"The children, the boys especially, have a very hard time," said Ella Yeloyeva, a psychologist who counsels victims of landmines at the Vladikavkaz Prosthetics and Orthopedics Clinic. "They give up on their plans for the future. They don't see how they can have a future."

Some 30 Chechens - mostly boys and young men - come through the clinic every month, relying on aid from UNICEF and the World Health Program to replace what war has taken away. And that's just a drop in the bucket. Two children are injured every day by landmines in Chechnya, the United Nations estimates, and some 150,000 of the devices remain littered around the republic. That's about 15 for every square kilometer.

And that, too, is only a small part of the problem. Add to that a general lawlessness and a population in mortal fear of both fundamentalist warlords and often-brutal Russian soldiers. And if that's not enough, throw in a grinding poverty and a complete lack of even the most basic infrastructure into the equation.

The result is a clear picture of why some 160,000 Chechen refugees prefer life in Ingushetia - for many, in massive tent camps - to their prospects back home. It is not so much a choice between varying hardships; it is a choice between life and death.

Facing a third winter in the camps, more and more Chechen refugees, it seems, are choosing to get on with their lives. In the largest camp, dubbed Sputnik and home to some 8,000 refugees, volunteers have organized everything from a library to a traditional dance troupe. The librarian scrambles to plug leaks in the tent every time it rains, and the young dancers practice without music. But they still make life seem a bit more normal. And the camp's wrestling team put on a good showing in last week's friendly against visiting Urus-Martan.

"People are tired of waiting," said Anina Bokora, a refugee in the nearby Alina camp and the director of the camp's clinic. "No one knows when the war is going to end and no one can sit and wait forever. Life has to go on somehow. People are beginning to settle in and are looking for ways to improve their lives."

Perhaps the surest sign of that effort is that the camps' population is growing from within. In just the last three months, Bokora's clinic has been involved in some 70 births. And of Alina's 3,000 or so refugees - most of whom are women and children - more than 400 are pregnant. Officials at Sputnik tell a similar story.

Meanwhile, the children - 500 in Alina, 1,200 in Sputnik and similar proportions in the other camps - flood into tents and bare-bones school buildings six and sometimes seven days a week, following the full Russian school curriculum. And when school is out, they all clamor for spots in arts, sports and other recreational groups.

But none of that can change the dismal facts of refugee life. The depressed regional economy affords few jobs for the "internally displaced," even for those with valuable skills. Local officials are threatening to cut off electricity and gas to the camps if the Emergency Situations Ministry does not make good on more than 500 million rubles in debts. Already, they have stopped providing hot meals and have cut back food parcels to the bare minimum - oil, flour and sugar.

More than half of the tents themselves need replacing, while even new tents provide little comfort against the cold winds and driving rains that will soon descend from the mountains, to be followed by winter snow.

As a result, health problems abound. After two years in the camps, many children have developed anemia as a result of malnutrition, according to Fatima Yandeyeva, UNICEF director at Sputnik. Poor hygiene and generally unsanitary conditions have given rise to endemic dysentery and frequent outbreaks of hepatitis-A.

Where the government has fallen flat, charities are trying to step in. UNICEF - the United Nations Children's Fund - spends hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on projects like the Vladikavkaz clinic, schools and healthcare, often alongside the U.N. World Health Program. Islamic Relief - a Birmingham, England-based charity - funds camp clinics. The Danish Refugee Council sponsors rehabilitation programs. The Red Cross runs kindergartens and sends humanitarian aid. And the list goes on. Where they can, home-grown organizations such as Voice of the Mountains also help out, relying mostly on their local expertise.

And the government is not just relying on the international community to take care of the refugees while they are in Ingushetia. As part of the Kremlin's effort to prove that it has won the war and made Chechnya safe again, it is trying to enlist the aid agencies in its drive to get the refugees to return home as soon as possible. It is a request that UNICEF Director Carol Bellamy flatly rejected in a recent meeting with Gen. Viktor Kazantsev.

"She said very clearly that we will take no part in any forced migrations," said Anna Chernyakhovskaya, spokeswoman for UNICEF in Moscow. "If the refugees want to go back on their own, that's one thing. But we will not force them."

And the refugees clearly do not want to go back on their own. Those few who do venture back into Chechnya to check on their homes almost always return to the camps, aid workers said.

"Here they are safe, they have clinics and schools for their children," Yandeyeva said. "While life isn't good in the camps, there is nothing for them to return to in Chechnya. Everything has been destroyed."

That is a realization that is only just sinking in.

"It's not that we don't want to go back," said Bella Khadzhimuratova, a refugee and the director of the school in the Alina camp. "We want nothing more than to be home. It's all we dream about. But I'm from Grozny. My home was destroyed. Everything was destroyed. And we can't go home to nothing."

The fear, meanwhile, is compounded by the bad news that filter across the heavily fortified Chechen-Ingush border. Aslambek, for example, brought stories of still more landmine casualties, as he came to Khadzhimuratova's school to teach a mine awareness class, something he does under UNICEF auspices in the camps and in Chechnya itself.

"Once, one of the children ran out of the room crying because I mentioned the kind of mine that killed his mother," he said.

His most recent students, though, at the Alina camp, took the lesson more calmly. Most had already gotten the message that mines are dangerous. Many said they already guard their steps in order to avoid them.

Of course, it is too late for Hussein, and the lessons he is learning now leave him frustrated and tired. The depression etched into his young face eases only as he and a dozen or so other patients enjoy a farcical performance of the Russian fairy tale "Terem Teremok" that a local theater puts on in the clinic. Hussein even smiles as the audience - a bit too old for the story - cracks jokes in Chechen at the actors' antics.

But at the end of the play, one of the clinic workers carries Hussein out in his arms, the boy's devoted mother in tow. Hussein's new legs still don't feel right, and learning to walk again will take time.

(Sam Greene is a Moscow-based reporter who occasionally writes for the Russia Journal.)

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