Despair darkens Chechen lives

By Steve Rosenberg BBC correspondent in Chechnya

Moscow says that life in Chechnya is getting safer, growing more normal.

But normal is not how you would described our journey through Chechnya.

I am sitting on a Russian army bus.

As it bumps along the dusty road, it is accompanied by four police cars and at the head of the convoy is an armoured personnel carrier and a dozen special forces troops.

Some are wearing black masks. All are heavily armed with Kalashnikovs.

Many have fled the conflict

But then guns, grenades and military hardware, they are the images which still dominates here in the North Caucasus.

It is a tense journey. The military warns us that the road ahead could be dangerous.

After attacking the neighbouring Russian republic of Ingushetia, separatist rebels are retreating back into Chechen territory and they have hijacked two lorries full of guns - hardly evidence that life here is growing any safer.

Pervasive despair

When we arrive in the capital, Grozny, there are signs of normality.

There is a bustling street market where you can buy cans of drink and ice creams; there is traffic and a small cafe.

But there is also a deep sense of despair.

All the people in the Chechen republic, they're heroes because they live here Hava, bank clerk

There is not a single building in the street which has not been twisted and blackened by rockets and bombs.

Few people here have jobs or any hope.

"I was born and grew up here" a man called Shadip tells me as he waits at a bus stop.

"I'm the son of a simple peasant. But there is no life here and nothing good on the horizon."

Chechnya remains traumatised by violence. Rebels launch almost daily attacks on Russian troops.

Human rights groups document cases of torture and summary execution and there has been a wave of kidnappings.

Grinding hardship

Even Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration admits that nearly two thousand people have disappeared since 1999.

Alu Alkhanov is the republic's police chief and the man the Kremlin is believed to be backing as Chechnya's next president.

"Sadly, human rights abuses have taken place and we come across them even now," he told me.

"Each incident is carefully examined and criminal cases have been opened. The use of disproportionate punishment naturally helps to fill the ranks of the rebels."

The rebels burned down a police station in Nazran

But despite the unimaginable hardships for those who remain, there is no choice but to struggle on, like Hava, a young clerk in the local administration.

"To live here, it means to be very courageous.. every time we can help on something, every time can be killed," she said.

"When the people come here, they understand that it is very dangerous to live here and I think I am like the other people, all the people in the Chechen republic. They're heroes because they live here."

At the end of the day, at Grozny's main barracks, soldiers who had accompanied us into Chechnya are finally relaxing, watching a match from Euro 2004 on a crackly TV.

When I spoke to them earlier, few of them were surprised at the events in Ingushetia and, like the Chechens of Grozny, few seem to believe that a lasting peace here was imminent.