the companies, as opposed to the individuals that work for them, do not fall within
many aspects of international law and would not, for instance, come within the Statute
of the International Criminal Court. . . . Governments may see in PMFs [private military
forces] not only a means of saving money but a way to use a low-profile force to solve
awkward, politically sensitive, or potentially embarrassing situations that develop
on the fringes of policy. Since PMFs are willing to go where the government would
prefer not to be seen, they offer a way to create conditions for “plausible deniability”
and may be used to carry out operations that would be expected to meet with public
or legal disapproval, or operations that sidestep legislatively imposed limits on
military operations and force levels. . . .[11] [This includes, however,] the risk that PMF employees can get away with murder,
sex slavery, rape, human rights abuse, etc.[12]
This risk became a fateful reality in the Second Chechen War. The introduction of
kontraktniki had a deep impact on the character of this war. Conscript soldiers were certainly
no innocents or angelic young lads. They included the average number of sadists that
can be found in the general population. But the great majority of them were normal
guys, mostly from modest provincial homes, trying to uphold a minimum of decency amidst
these events. The kontraktniki were of another kind. According to Pavel Felgenhauer, “many kontraktniki enlisted,
but the process of screening volunteers for Chechnya was superficial and they were
sent into combat without any further selection or training. Many of these volunteers
have been drunks, bums and other fallouts of Russian society.”[13] The contract soldiers were not given military uniforms. Soon they developed their
own private dress codes: “the bandanas [pirate’s scarves], the fox tail hanging down
the back of the neck, singlet tops, sunglasses, and tattoos—all of these were emblems
of their status and self-aggrandizement.”[14] Thomas de Waal, who actually met them at checkpoints in Chechnya, described them
as follows: “They were often ex-criminals with tattoos along their arms and bandannas
[sic] on their heads, creatures more of gangland than a modern European army—and no friends
to journalists.”[15] The contract soldiers soon got the reputation of brutal killers, but also of thieves
who openly carried out their robberies from people’s homes.[16]
Zachistki
: The Purges
Together with the Special Forces (Spetsnaz) the kontraktniki would play a leading role in sweep operations by the Russian army in occupied territory,
the so-called zachistki. These operations were sometimes conducted at night or early in the morning, sometimes
also during the day. The army would encircle a village and hermetically seal it off
from the outside world. Thereupon small groups of six to nine men enter the village
and conduct street-by-street searches of homes. There were no official witnesses,
no search warrants, and the faces of the soldiers were, as a rule, covered by masks
or blackened to avoid identification. For the same reason the registration plates
of the military vehicles were covered. Hiding their identity was a priority for these
troops to carry out the most hideous acts. The official reason for these sweep operations
was to control the identity papers of the Chechen population and to identify members
of “illegally armed formations.” But in practice these zachistki degenerated into summary executions, torture, arson, and looting. A notorious case
was that of the village of Novye Aldy on February 5, 2000, when soldiers threw grenades
into basements full of civilians and set houses alight with the inhabitants still
inside.[17] During the same operation fifty-six civilians were summarily executed. The word
zachistka became one of the Russian catchwords in the winter of 1999–2000. In December 1999
the weekly Moskovskie Novosti published a list with “words of the year.” The word zachistka was number one on the list.[18]
Emma Gilligan has analyzed how the word zachistka made its way into the Russian media.
