"Peace" lessons By Usam Baysayev, special to Prague Watchdog
Samashki, Chechen Republic
Last Monday I was in Achkhoy-Martan, a village with which I have a special relationship. After completing my studies at the Institute I worked on the local newspaper there for several years. I met interesting people, made friends. Some of them went away, others were killed or left for personal reasons, but some changed completely, retaining only the name and surname of the person I once knew.
The village has changed, too: a large number of new houses, asphalt where earlier there was none, a fountain in the square and a fairground where the park used to be. The surrounding area is also different now. For example, whereas before the centre and the administrative and farm buildings used to be "embellished" by red banners and signboards celebrating labour, peace and solidarity, now the visual propaganda with its green, Islamic flavour is just as tiresome to the eye.
But what really depresses and annoys me in Achkhoy-Martan is the presence on its streets of soldiers in dirty camouflage uniforms. That day they were especially numerous near schools. Outside the school gates were armoured Ural trucks and UAZ jeeps, and in the yards of the buildings themselves – a scattering of those soldiers in camouflage uniforms, some in bulletproof vests and others without, of course, and armed with assault rifles and machine guns.
On this occasion the soldiers were checking the schools for the presence of explosive devices. They were, in a way, providing security for the children in anticipation of the new school year. Here the question that burned in my mind was: “Who are they going to protect our protect our children from?" After all, it is not so long ago that the children were being hidden from Russia's military. “The children of bandits are bandits, too,” the general said.
In any war there are bound to be accidental victims. However, the children went on being killed even after the Chechen resistance units withdrew to the mountains and there was no more need for shelling of villages with guns and tanks. The children died during mop-ups, targeted operations or due to the fact that someone missed his aim while drunk. And the school buildings were used for all kinds of purposes, including the billeting of Russian troops. The middle school in the village of Shatoy did not see the troops go until last year. For all that time the children had had to have their lessons in canvas army tents, watching as their "temple of knowledge" was slowly but inexorably turned into a pigsty. In the end it had to be pulled down and rebuilt.
The boarding school in Urus-Martan, which in the early days of the war was promptly made to house the district military commandant's office, the local FSB headquarters and a temporary Interior Ministry department, turned into a symbol of the lawlessness that began to reign in Chechnya after the arrival of the federal troops. It was the site of summary executions and the torture of hundreds of people, including some who at the age of 15 or 16 were really little more than children. The term "boarding school" has become a byword in the district, having lost its original meaning and acquired a new and deadly one.
During the first Chechen war the Russian military destroyed two of Samashki’s schools (they have now just been rebuilt), while in Bamut they destroyed them all, along with most of the rest of the village. During the mop-up operations in Zumsoy and Alleroy they burst into classrooms and staffrooms, tore up the textbooks and teaching manuals and scattered them about, smashed the desks, defecated, wrote obscene slogans on rhe walls and blackboards, the more innocuous of which were things like "Death to the Nokhchi" and "Heil Hitler." And yet now they are apparently providing security for our children, giving them a chance to study in peace, gain learning and knowledge ...
I would be glad if this change in the behaviour of the military is a genuine one. But somehow I can’t believe in their sincerity – somewhere there is a catch. The catch is propaganda. After all, the message now is: “Russia's army is protecting Chechen children from the Chechen bandits.” But somehow I don’t want to take part in such games, and so on September 1 – Knowledge Day in the Russian Federation – and September 2 my children stayed at home.
Nor will they attend school on September 3 (the anniversary of the ending of the Beslan school siege). Who knows, perhaps the "peace lesson” (formerly the first lesson of every academic year in Soviet schools) has been moved to that date now. I don’t want my dunces to have it dinned into their heads that Russia's army came to Chechnya to save the Chechen people. In their lessons let them learn to read and write, but as for what happened and why – that is something they will one day find out for themselves.
Photo: kunstkamera.livejournal.com. (Translation by DM) (P,DM)
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