Chechnya Video Report

Many buildings still lie in ruin, but Chechen civilians have taken the worst beating.

Note: This is a transcript of Kevin Sites' video report from

Kevin Sites on camera:
Chechnya has suffered through two major wars in less than a decade — The first: to stop it from seceding from the Russian Federation; the second: under the auspices of combating terrorism. But with 50,000 to 100,000 people killed and the capital city of Grozny left in ruins, it is the civilians here who have taken the worst beating.

Kevin Sites voice-over:
It is nearly perfect in its destruction. A drive through Grozny is like a drive through Dresden after the Second World War.

It is difficult — almost impossible — to find a building untouched by the two wars fought against the Russians here, which destroyed much of the city, forcing half the population to flee and the other half to live in the ruins.

Ramzan Izhaev, an artist, lives with his wife and five-year-old daughter in a building where there are only two inhabitable apartments.

The price is right and the utilities are free. But there is a danger, both physically and psychologically, from living within the destruction, especially after the trauma of the wars.

These students from Chechnya State University know that too well.

Hasmajomed Ismaelov, journalism student, on camera:
It becomes a kind of habit to see so much blood and dead people.

Kevin Sites on camera:
It became normal.

Mariam Achmatova, psychology student, on camera:
Each day I live I try to forget about the war.

Kevin Sites voice-over:
In the capital, the problems are exacerbated by 80 percent unemployment, but there are some signs of progress. Businesses and markets have reopened, as people try to patch together the pieces of what used to be a thriving industrial center before the conflicts.

However, the process is slow and riddled by corruption.

There are accusations the city is being run by gangsters, not the least of which its new pro-Russian prime minister, Ramzan Kadyrov — a 29-year-old with his own militia.

It is a militia supposedly set up to help quell Chechnya's separatist movement, which has shifted from its nationalist roots to one controlled by Islamic radicals — like the one responsible for the Beslan school siege in September 2004.

Militants seized over a thousand students, teachers and parents at the school and held them hostage in a booby-trapped gymnasium.

After a bungled rescue attempt two days later, 331 people were dead — half of them children.

Indira Tokhieva lost her 15-year-old son Azmat on that day.

Natalya Salamova's 29-year-old daughter Elena, a teacher at the school, was also killed.

Incidents like that, some say, have given Russian security forces and their Chechen allies like Kadyrov a green light to abduct and torture Chechen citizens, in an effort to stop terrorism.

But human rights groups says those techniques are just fueling the fire.

Katarina Sokirianskaia, case worker for rights group Memorial, on camera:
The problem is that terrorism in Russia is homegrown. It's domestic and it's rooted in war with Chechnya and unresolved conflict with Chechnya. I believe even such terrible crimes, they have to be combated within the frame of the law. Otherwise you have violence reproducing violence.

Kevin Sites voice-over:
And that's something that this war-scarred republic can hardly afford.

Kevin Sites on camera:
At least in the capital of Grozny, there's some rebuilding going on. But there's also rampant organized crime, kidnapping, and continued violence. And what has taken two wars to destroy, may take more than two generations to rebuild.

Reporting from the Hot Zone, I'm Kevin Sites in Grozny, Chechnya.

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