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Either Kadyrov does not know what is going on, or Putin’s promises were a lot of hot air. And believe me, where there is money around, Kadyrov knows all about it.

Akhmat-hadji Kadyrov is shown on Russian television side by side with Putin far more frequently than the Russian Prime Minister, Mikhail Kasianov. Kadyrov it is whom President Putin insistently presents to East and West as “the face of the new Chechnya.” The new Chechnya is now in the second month of its existence. Nobody knows the whereabouts of Old Balu, and there is nobody to gainsay Kadyrov. Putin’s Chechen stalemate, Kadyrov’s land of despair. Late 2003, the “peace” after the “election.”

USING AN IMPRISONMENT PIT FOR A BALLOT BOX: CHECHNYA IS BACK IN THE MIDDLE AGES

November 17, 2005

In the six or more years of the latest war Chechens have become so used to frequent, dishonest elections that the imminent return of parliamentary elections has generated no discernible excitement. Popular apathy is consolidated by the racketeering which pervades the Republic. Everything depends only on whether you have paid or not; the officials and local security agencies either pay tribute, or levy it. Abductions continue to be a daily occurrence, and in that sense nothing has changed, except that now there are only two reasons for nearly all abductions: either somebody has not paid up (in the case of officials); or someone has not bought himself out (in the case of renegade resistance fighters).

My old friend Mahomet from Gudermes is a notable person in the Republic. A gentle, educated man, in earlier years he wrote a good book about the Chechen artist Pavel Zakharov. The blown-up Kadyrov Senior first made Mahomet, who had many orphans living in his house and was seriously in need of funds at the time, Minister of Labor and Social Development. Later also First Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs. But did Mahomet thieve?

Recently, the Kadyrovites kidnapped him and dragged him off to Tsentoroy, where the main Chechen “re-education base” is now located, numerous zindan punishment pits having been dug there for the purpose. They beat him up and presented him with a bill for $200,000 if he didn’t want to end up on the list of human rights activists disappeared without trace. The $200,000 was apparently part of a debt he hadn’t paid, plus interest.

Mahomet gave it to them, cash in hand, on the nail. They brushed down his suit, smoothed it, and returned the official, whose job is to support the socially deprived, to his workplace. In other words, one set of state officials extorted protection money from another civil servant.

A similar instance involved a promising young leader of the Shali District, Akhmed, who was also invited by Kadyrov Senior to work as Head of the Administration out of Togliatti. Akhmed too was recently abducted and taken to Tsentoroy, beaten up, and ordered to pay $100,000 for his release. He handed it over, but lost his job anyway because the Kadyrov extortion controllers concluded he was unreliable and they saw no prospect of coming to a satisfactory arrangement with him. He immediately fled abroad. Now the Head of the Administration of Shali District is absolutely one of their own, a certain Edward Zakayev, a friend of Kadyrov Junior rather than of Kadyrov Senior.

What are these debts we are talking about, on this kind of scale? And how in any case can such debts arise between state officials?

Even a year ago, in the months following the enthronement of Kadyrov Junior, “on side” in Chechnya referred to people who were considered loyal. Admittedly, “loyal” primarily meant “bound by ties of kinship,” but nevertheless loyal. Now “on side” means anyone who thieves and is capable of paying tribute. All officials and all security officers in Chechnya pay it to those above them – the Kadyrov gang – and the more highly placed an official is, the more he has to pay. A security official or a social welfare official pays on a regular basis. There is a requirement, for example, for a single local militia