Friday, 18 February 2005By Oliver Bullough
GROZNY, Russia - Ibragim has little education, no prospect of work and faces several years in prison after
being caught red-handed robbing a shop.
Sitting in a gloomy basement cell in a Grozny police station, he could be the symbol for a generation of Chechens
who have missed their schooling and, knowing nothing but war, are forced into crime and violence to make a living.
In an effort to give such men jobs and stop them finding their way into the ranks of separatist rebels, the region's
Moscow-backed government is scrambling to resurrect the local economy but corruption and violence are deterring
investors.
"I went into a shop and stole money," Ibragim said, his Russian so bad that he had to ask his police guards to
translate for him. The police allowed the interview in exchange for a carton of cigarettes.
"I hardly ever went to school and now I have finished it. I can't find work," said the short and pallid 18-year-old.
A guard said the cells were full of such young men.
"We have a lot of those people here. There's no work for them so they have to earn money somehow," the policeman
said, shrugging as his comrades hustled Ibragim back to his cell.
The Kremlin has made economic reconstruction in Chechnya, which was once rich in oil and heavy industry, a
priority in its drive to cut the ground out from under the rebels, whom it has been unable to defeat militarily in 10 years
of war.
TURNING THE CORNER
The Moscow-backed government says the economy is turning the corner, and points to the arrival of state-owned
bank Vnestorgbank as a sign that the region is beginning to improve.
"Banks are coming here now. This is stabilisation. Businesses do not like noise or war, so if business is coming
then the situation is normalising," Taus Dzhabrailov, head of Chechnya's interim parliament, told reporters.
But the pistol butt poking out from under the jacket of his smart suit is a reminder of the danger faced by pro-Moscow
Chechen officials, and the security problems that are impeding the drive to rebuild.
New investors are taking no chances: Vneshtorgbank may have moved to the capital, Grozny, but its office is housed
behind the walls of the government's high-security compound.
The size of the task facing the government is clear to any visitor to Grozny. Once-giant factories are a wasteland of
twisted steel smothered in rubbish and weeds.
Truncated concrete pillars are all that remain of warehouses smashed by the weeks of heavy bombardment that
preceded the return of Russian forces to the region in 1999.
The vast sums of cash sent from Moscow to repair the damage have done little to help, and three-quarters of the
working population remain unemployed.
"We got 64 billion roubles in three years and look around you," Dhzabrailov said, sweeping his arm to the window,
which overlooks a wasteland of shattered buildings.
"Do you see an improvement? Do you see anything that has been rebuilt? This is a great amount of money but
nothing has changed in the economic situation ... The money has stopped somewhere. Probably in Moscow."
CORRUPTION
Corruption has long impeded Russian efforts to defeat Chechnya's separatist rebels.
Dishonest officers have sold arms to the enemy, while bribes have persuaded police to let rebels through
checkpoints on their way to attacks such as September's Beslan school siege when more than 330 hostages died.
Most Chechens blame local officials, not those in Moscow, for keeping them out of a job and embezzling
compensation promised for lost property.
"My husband is a carpenter but he does not have a job. If you have relatives on high -- in the government -- you can
get a job but everyone else can't," said Khalimar, who managed a hotel before the war but now runs a stall in a Grozny
market.
"We have never received compensation, nothing. We don't even have water, I have to buy it and then work 14 hours
a day. The staircase of our block is ruined. you never know if it will fall on your head when you walk under it."
And the government's ongoing failure to provide people like Khalimar's husband with a job is adding to the strength
of the rebels it is still failing to defeat.
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Friday, 18 February 2005
Reuters via Swissinfo
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