![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/Grozny.jpg\" "\\"Grozny\\"")
<\/a>Somewhere in the lost alleyways of Grozny, if you know the right place to go, you can hear Ruslan play his old records from before the wars.\u00a0 Zeppelin, Hendrix, Marley, the great jazzmen, the blues.\u00a0 According to Raisa Borshchigova, a Chechen journalist living in Grozny, Ruslan\u2019s nameless bar is tucked away like an old speakeasy, its walls plastered with old record covers.\u00a0 The d\u00e9cor, old furnishings and posters, she said, are reminiscent of another time.<\/p>\nThe bar is often empty, Borshchigova said, and you can always get a good table near the stage where, one day, Ruslan hopes to have a jazz band play.<\/p>\n
The music, Ruslan told her, helps him remember the happiest moments of his life, of a time before the wars destroyed everything.<\/p>\n
The Second Chechen War began in August 1999.\u00a0 A month into the conflict, Borshchigova, who was then living in Grozny, returned to her family\u2019s home in Davidenko, a small community 40 km away from the capital, on the Ingushetia border.<\/p>\n
She was not the only one to abandon the city.<\/p>\n
The advancing Russian forces, seeking to encircle Grozny, sparked a mass exodus of refugees from the Chechen capital, many fleeing towards the camps in Ingushetia.<\/p>\n
Borshchigova said the column of refugees passing through her village seemed to stretch into the horizon. \u201cThere were thousands and thousands of people,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cIt was a huge line of twenty-twenty five kilometers of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Borshchigova, the Russians closed the border crossing, preventing the refugees from crossing out of Chechnya.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody could go,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cEverybody was waiting till they opened the borders.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe women from our village went there and they just brought some food for these people who were outside,\u201d Borshchigova said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother went there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mass of refugees made an easy target for the Russian aircraft.\u00a0 According to Borshchigova, the Russian planes struck the column of refugees fifteen times.<\/p>\n
Though the numbers are disputed by Russian authorities, the BBC reported, after interviewing survivors, that approximately fifty people were killed in the bombings.\u00a0 Many more were wounded, including Borshchigova\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n
Her mother was taken to a hospital already teeming with the injured from the recent fighting around Grozny.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the most horrible time of the Chechen War,\u201d Borshchigova said. \u201cThe doctors couldn\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were no medical supplies, or even electricity.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo then,\u201d she said, \u201cmy mother just passed away.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family retreated to their house in Davidenko, mourning their mother as best they could in the cramped quarters of the basement, which they shared with fifty other people.<\/p>\n
A year after her mother\u2019s death, Borshchigova went back to Grozny in September 2000 to return to her studies, which had been cut short by the Russian invasion.<\/p>\n
The city was destroyed, its skyline punctured by ruined buildings and crumbling facades.<\/p>\n
A simmering insurgency had replaced the open combat of the initial Russian invasion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were trying to study and we were attacked by Russians,\u201d Borshchigova said.\u00a0 \u201cOur university was always attacked by Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n
They came, she said, to take her friends.\u00a0 To torture them, to kill them, to burn the cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne positive thing was that we could say everything that we were willing to say,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
According to Borshchigova, they could demonstrate against the war and the human rights violations.\u00a0 People could go to the prisons to protest kidnappings and disappearances.<\/p>\n
\u201cFreedom of speech was still alive at this time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It would not be for much longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt about 2003-2004, the policy was the \u2018Chechenization\u2019 of the conflict in which there was a local proxy, which were clans that had come over to the Russian side, primarily the Kadyrov family,\u201d said Andrew Kramer, a New York Times reporter in Moscow who has covered the Chechen conflict for more than a decade..<\/p>\n
They moved quickly to stifle dissent and began asserting their power through a brutal mix of patronage and violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cViolent tactics such as abductions, disappearances and murder became the tools for governance,\u201d Kramer said.<\/p>\n
Borshchigova\u2019s family would bear a heavy burden of this \u2018governance.\u2019<\/p>\n
In January 2003, Borshchigova\u2019s two younger brothers, Ibrahim and Rustam, were abducted from the family\u2019s home in Davidenko.\u00a0 Masked soldiers came, as they frequently did, just before dawn.\u00a0 Roused from sleep in the darkness of the morning, the two boys were taken away.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince this day, we didn\u2019t have any news from them,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cThey were just school boys.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lost them and we weren\u2019t together anymore,\u201d Borshchigova said.\u00a0 \u201cOur family was uncompleted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only Borshchigova, her two sisters and their father remained.<\/p>\n
Borshchigova left Chechnya in October 2006 to study in Paris and New York.\u00a0 She returned to Grozny three years later, in 2009, to a city transformed.<\/p>\n
The reconstruction of the capital was well underway.<\/p>\n
Russia is following, what C.J. Chivers, in an article for the New York Times, called \u201ca two-stage formula: extraordinary violence, followed by extraordinary investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya\u2019s authoritarian President, the reconstruction of Chechnya has continued at a hurried pace.<\/p>\n
After the war, Grozny, once described as \u2018the most destroyed city in the world,\u2019 was a hollow shell of its former self, marked by piles of debris and neglected buildings.<\/p>\n
Such sights are disappearing now as the city sheds its war-time image, undergoing a dramatic renewal.<\/p>\n
Portions of the city are beautiful now.\u00a0 Decaying apartment buildings have given way to open squares filled with flowers and trees.\u00a0 People might never realize that before the war, these were buildings, that people used to live here, Borshchigova said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
People are trying to erase the consequences of the war, Borshchigova said, but it\u2019s impossible.<\/p>\n
Despite Russia\u2019s announcement, in April 2009, that it was ending its counter-terrorism operations in Chechnya, peace remains elusive.<\/p>\n
Borshchigova, who returned to Chechnya six months after the announcement, found a population subjugated by a Chechen government that had adopted many of the methods the Russian military had used during the wars. \u00a0Counter insurgency tactics, according to Kramer, had evolved into political repression.\u00a0 The violence, far from being over, has escalated over the previous year.<\/p>\n
According to the Caucasian Knot, a human rights website that tracks violent incidents throughout the North Caucasus region, Chechnya has experienced \u201ca noticeable growth\u201d in deadly attacks.\u00a0 Their most recent report states that almost twice as many people were killed in the year after April 2009 as in the year before.<\/p>\n
Yet, according to Borshchigova, there are many Chechens who prefer life under Kadyrov because there is peace, or at least the absence of war.\u00a0 These people, she said, don\u2019t care about their neighbors being attacked by security forces.<\/p>\n
Many people think that life today is better, she said, but one day they will understand that they cannot live like this anymore.<\/p>\n
For Ruslan, the comfort of an old record evokes memories of another era, reminding him of the time before the wars destroyed everything.\u00a0 The songs, fighting to be heard amongst the sounds of a revitalized city, beckon others to come in and sit for a while.<\/p>\n
If Ruslan has his way, the records will soon give way to a jazz band.<\/p>\n
He has a stage where the musicians could play, Borshchigova said, but there aren\u2019t even any jazz bands in Chechnya anyway.<\/p>\n
But one day there might be and people will go to Ruslan\u2019s to listen and remember the time before the wars, when things were different.