BY NATASHA ROTSTEIN, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[to the related stories, A Chechen copes through Sambo fighting and Chechnya's war legacy]

When Khassan Baiev realizes the Boston traffic will keep him from arriving on time at his daughter Satsita's day care center, he quickly grabs his cell phone.

"I am stuck in traffic," he tells Magomed Amir Imakaev and asks if Imakaev can pick up his daughter.

Such is a typical moment for these two Chechen families, who moved to Boston to get away from the war in Chechnya.

The first Chechen War began in December 1994 and ended Aug. 31, 1996. The second war began in September 1999 and is still ongoing. It is estimated that roughly 250,000 Chechen civilians died between 1994 and 2003.

According to reports issued by the Human Rights Watch, Chechnya has become a dangerous place for civilians.

"We have also found compelling evidence of at least three sets of massacres, in which Russian forces summarily executed at least 122 unarmed civilians, many of them women and the elderly. Russian forces have looted Chechen homes with abandon, raped women, and arrested hundreds of civilians - men, women and children--on suspicion of aiding rebel fighters," one report says.

In one instance during a two-week period in 1999, Russian forces shot at least 17 civilians in the village of Alkhan-Yurt. In another, from the end of December to mid-January, Russian forces executed at least 50 civilians in the Staropormyslovski district of Grozny, mostly through shooting at close range , the Human Rights Watch reports.

It is from this world of violent deaths that the Baievs fled across the ocean to settle on the east coast.

The Baievs, including Khassan's wife Zara, 36, their four children Maryam, Islam, Markha and Satsita, and his twin brother's children Kahava and Adam, live in an apartment in Needham, outside Boston. It is a quiet neighborhood with pines growing behind the apartment building and a park with a swirly slide and tire swing for the children to twist on.

The Baievs are separated only by a wall from their Chechen neighbors. By walking next door they can find Marzet Imakaeva, 54, her son Magomed-Amir, his wife Kheda Saidova and their child Saida. As Baiev put it, there is always someone there to lean on.

The Baievs and Imakaevs are part of small Chechen communities that are taking root all over the world as people leave Chechnya in search of peace for their children. Although there are few Chechen families in America, the European Chechen diaspora has grown steadily. According to Refugees International, as many as 100,000 Chechens have moved to places such as Poland, France, Australia, and Belgium.

For the Baievs and Imakaevs, the "little Chechnya" they've created here feels like home. Marzet's daughter Seda told her son's school to call the Baievs in emergencies. When Marzet prepares pickled cabbage she brings some to Zara. And if a kitchen utensil is missing from Zara's kitchen, she borrows one from Marzet.

"It is the Chechen way, to be close with neighbors," said Khassan Baiev. "When a Chechen buys a home, he looks at who's his neighbor."

Often, Shamil Imakaev, who lives in nearby Wellesley with his parents Seda and Alikhan Dastaev, walks through the front door without knocking to play with the Baievs. He is over so much it is easy to mistake him for one of the Baiev's kids.

When things get boring at the Baievs, the kids take turns running to Imakaev's apartment. There 3-year-old Satsita can find ice cream in the refrigerator.

The Imakaevs used to live in Chelsea, Mass., when the Baievs appeared on their doorsteps after finding out another Chechen family moved to America. The families became friends and soon began running errands for each other, visiting on weekends and watching their children play together.

That's when everyone agreed it was time for the Imakaevs to move to Needham, and they did.

Because the Chechen community in America is small, they've created a close relationship with their neighbors and hope that any future Chechens who move into the area will feel welcome in the neighborhood.

But in other parts of the world, large Chechen communities already exist. Whether it is a group of students who regularly gather in Paris or families who want to encourage their children to succeed in school in Nice, many families are coming together after leaving Chechnya for better lives in other countries.

Life in France

In Nice, where 3,000 Chechens have settled, a Chechen Association was formed in December 2005 to keep close ties with the Chechens and also to educate the French about their culture.

Ouvais Dadachev, a 51-year-old from Grozny, was elected president and he hopes the organization will be useful for Chechens and the French.

"We want to show we're not bandits," said Ouvais. "We want to show we're hard working people and show our culture and mix it with the French culture."

The organization also wants to encourage its youth to study and participate in sports, which is very important in Chechen culture.

Dadachev said having an organization such as this is important in Nice because many refugees from Chechnya settle here.

The flow of people began roughly five years ago, and many of the Chechens in Nice and other parts of France have stories similar to those of the Dadachevs.

The family - Dadachev's wife Tamara, 51, and their three sons Magomed, 28, Said Magomed, 21, and Haas Magomed, 18 - lived in a three-bedroom villa in Grozny. Ouvais Dadachev was once a director of a livestock feed company and his wife worked alongside him as a manager.

After the first war, when the plant was bombed and people stole food from the facility, he and some colleagues fixed the plant and resumed work. The family had no intention of leaving Grozny, but when the second war began, they had no other options.

Because of Ouvais' high profile job, during zachistkas (mop-up operations) in Chechnya, forces came to their apartment one October evening in 2000 and took him and Magomed. The two were separated and tortured for two days. The men beat them and tortured them in an effort to elicit information about the whereabouts of Chechen rebels. But Ouvais said neither he nor his son knew where Chechen rebels were hiding.

Finally, Tamara was able to pay $500 for her husband and 3,000 Rubles for her son. They were released.

Such stories are not uncommon in Chechnya, where the Russian NGO Memorial recorded a total of 300 abductions in 2005. A German-based not-for-profit called the Society for Threatened Peoples also submitted a report to the Commission on Human Rights detailing killings, disappearances and torture by Russian forces in Chechnya.

"Extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture and looting are still ongoing in Chechnya in 2005 and stay generally unpunished," the organization wrote in a separate report.

That report, submitted on Feb. 13, 2006, states that "torture is still a key element of the anti-terrorist activity of security services in Chechnya and the decisions of courts on the cases related to terrorist activity or participation in illegal armed formations in a great number of cases are based on evidence extorted under torture and self-accusations."

Living through a kidnapping was enough to scare the Dadachevs into leaving.

"That's when we went to Ingushetia and paid a driver of a minibus to take us to Belarus," he said. "And the driver paid people off at check points.

Once in Belarus, the family didn't know what to do or where to go.

"Do you want to go to France?" their driver asked.

They agreed.

"We thought maybe we would go to Belgium, but the main goal was to get out of Russia."

The driver arranged for a truck driver to transport them to France. The Dadachevs sat behind boxes and were told if they hear three knocks on the truck that meant they would be allowed to exit to go to the bathroom. During their two-day journey they were able to get up from behind the boxes and go to the bathroom twice.

The third time they got out, on March 22, 2001, they were in front of the train station in Nice, a big grand building surrounded by hotels and bushes on a busy street.

"Where are we?" asked Ouvais.

"This is Nice; it is a very nice city."

Initially, they were placed in a hotel by a refugee organization and eventually received the apartment they currently live in. The two oldest sons married and live in separate apartments.

"To be in such a nightmare and then come to this," said Tamara. "Gradually, like a child taking her first steps, I started a new life."

As Tamara and Ouvais watch their children acclimate to life in France, they still want to maintain their Chechen traditions, which is why they believe having a Chechen Association in town is important.

"We want to continue this good feeling so our youth can get a good education so they can be specialists and be useful in their country," said Ouvais.

June 2006

[to the related stories, A Chechen copes through Sambo fighting and Chechnya's war legacy]

28-Jun-06 | 1:56 PM
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Filed under: Chechnya, Feature Stories, France



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