The total number of victims of the zachistki for the period 1999–2009 will be higher. But from 2003 the number of victims gradually
decreased, due to three facts. First, from 2003 fewer kontraktniki were engaged. Second, due to the collaboration of the Chechen mufti Akhmad Kadyrov,
the Russians were better informed and replaced widespread and massive zachistki by adresnye zachistki, sweep operations that targeted only the homes of selected suspected individuals.
And, third, there was the fact that at that time probably the majority of Chechen
fighters had already been killed. On January 20, 2003, the Russian press agency Interfax
set the figure at more than fourteen thousand rebels killed. (Quoted in Uwe Halbach,
“Gewalt in Tschetschenien: Ein gemiedenes Problem internationaler Politik,” SWP-Studie, Berlin (February 2004).)
24.
Alice Lagnado, “An Interview with Oleg Orlov,” Crimes of War Project (April 18, 2003).
25.
Herfried Münkler, Die neuen Kriege (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 2002), 32.
26.
Münkler, Die neuen Kriege, 31–32.
27.
That the special troops and Spetsnaz elite troops began to play a more important role from the end of 2000 becomes clear
from the fact that Putin (by Presidential Decree No. 61—signed on January 22, 2001)
put the FSB in charge of all anti-terrorist operations in Chechnya. All power structures
operating in the North Caucasus, including the army, were to be subordinated to the
new HQ. (Cf. Gordon Bennett, “Vladimir Putin & Russia’s Special Services,” C108, Conflict Studies Research Centre (August 2002), 29.)
28.
Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 63.
29.
Malek, “Russia’s Asymmetric Wars in Chechnya since 1994,” 93.
30.
Politkovskaya, A Dirty War.
31.
Halbach, “Gewalt in Tschetschenien: Ein gemiedenes Problem internationaler Politik,”
15.
32.
Droits humains en Russie: Résister pour l’état de droit, Amnesty International Report, 103.
33.
Krystyna Kurczab-Redlich, “Torture and Rape Stalk the Streets of Chechnya,” The Guardian (October 27, 2002).
34.
Sarah Karush, “A Grim New Allegation in Chechnya: Russians Blowing up Bodies,” Associated Press (March 13, 2003). In April 2003 also Oleg Orlov of the Russian NGO Memorial confirmed
that this had become routine practice: “Particularly over the past few months, security
forces blow up the bodies in order that they cannot be identified.” (Cf. Lagnado,
“An Interview with Oleg Orlov.”) This practice had a striking resemblance with that
of the Chekists just after the October Revolution. According to J. Michael Waller,
“the early chekist killing method was designed so as not to create martyrs around
whom opponents could rally. The doomed, naked prisoner would be brought to a normally
drunken executioner armed with a tsarist-era Colt pistol. The Colt was favoured for
its large caliber; when fired into the back of the head, the bullet would mutilate
the face upon exiting the skull, making the body unrecognizable. This method saved
the chekists the problem of dealing with relatives searching for bodies, and made
recovery of a potential martyr impossible.” (Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, 21–22).
35.
Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 63.
36.
Quoted by Maura Reynolds, “Krieg ohne Regeln: Russische Soldaten in Tschetschenien,”
in Der Krieg im Schatten: Russland und Tschetschenien, ed. Florian Hassel, 128.
37.
On January 1, 2014, the convention had ninety-three signatories and was ratified by
forty-one countries. The convention came into force on December 23, 2010. The Russian
Federation did not sign the convention.
38.
Felgenhauer, “The Russian Army in Chechnya.”
39.
Jonathan Littell, Tchétchénie: An III (Paris: Gallimard, 2009), 38.
40.
Littell, Tchétchénie: An III, 41–42.
41.
