Return to the ruins Chechens trickle back to their ruined capit

GROZNY, Russia -- The muddy road to Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov's office runs through a war-pulverized factory complex, where a conveyor belt to a long-gone building vaults overhead like an unintended ceremonial arch.

"Welcome to Kadyrov's palace -- good luck," says a Russian officer at a checkpoint.

In the fifth year of Russia's war against separatist rebels -- the second war in Chechnya in a decade -- the republic's ruined capital mixes deep fears and high hopes emblemized by the presidential office building.

Though not palatial, it is new and shiny, with staff tapping away at computers. But the surrounding rubble-strewn wasteland is tightly guarded as a necessary security buffer -- the office is a couple of hundred yards from the government building destroyed in a suicide truck bombing.

Along the main streets, workers spruce up a few commercial establishments, painting the ground-floor exteriors of buildings whose upper stories are torn with huge holes from shelling. Old women with twig brooms diligently sweep sidewalks while soldiers a block away sweep for land mines.

The Kremlin does not give casualty figures, but an official in the Moscow-backed Chechen administration, speaking on condition of anonymity, says about a half-dozen Russian soldiers die in rebel attacks daily -- many in Grozny's suburbs.

Afraid to go home

Kadyrov and the Kremlin say the war, per se, is over and it is safe for some 60,000 refugees to return.

Yakha Gavarova, a refugee in a muddy dismal tent camp in neighboring Ingushetia, disagrees.

"We're staying here, because we're afraid," she said.

The refugees worry about the countless land mines lurking under the roads and fields, and about getting caught in Russian "mopping-up" operations in which soldiers round up villagers to look for rebels and their supporters.

They especially fear the night, when gun-toting men in masks grab young men on the streets of Grozny.

Oleg Dashayev, 16, was coming home from an after-school soccer game and struggling with the lock on his house's gate when two men appeared.

"They had Kalashnikovs, and took my money ... at 6 o'clock in the evening," he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Human rights groups blame many of these incidents on a security force commanded by Kadyrov's son, Ramzan, and allege he runs a private jail. The younger Kadyrov, meeting foreign journalists this month, strongly denied the allegations and later complained to Russian television that the reporters did not give enough attention to the state-funded sports complex -- named in his honor -- that he runs.

Although the refugees may be afraid, their options are narrowing. Russia has declared that the tent camps in Ingushetia, an embarrassing symbol of distrust in the government, will be closed within weeks. Gavarova's camp, which once held some 700 families, has shrunk to just 64 tents.

Many of the refugees live in temporary settlements such as derelict collective farms.

Nearly 18,000 refugees have returned to Chechnya since the beginning of 2003, Russian officials say. Many of them were enticed back by offers of compensation for their destroyed homes of up to $11,500 per family -- an enormous sum in Chechnya, where the typical monthly pay is $100-170.

But the cash is slow to materialize.

Said-Emin Gaitayev, a 38-year-old auto mechanic, left a refugee camp for Grozny with his wife and three children six months ago. Since then, they have been stuck in a one-time dormitory, crammed into one room with a single bed, hauling water up five floors in buckets. The only toilet is a reeking outhouse.

"They promise me money, but I haven't seen it. I don't know what the problem is," he said.

Akhmad Kadyrov admits the payments have been slow, but says that is because he is working hard to make sure the money does not fall into unscrupulous hands. So far, some 1,600 families have been compensated, said Usman Erikhanov, director of Chechnya's only functioning bank, sitting in his office with shrapnel-shattered windows.

Despite the frustrations, Gaitayev does not entirely regret his return.

"This is our land. You can't live in a tent your whole life," he said proudly.

Isa Khalidov is delighted to be back. He pockets as much as $20 a day snapping souvenir pictures in a newly built downtown park, where scores of people lingered on a freezing day, enjoying the uncharacteristic civic amenity.

"Life's great," he said eagerly. "I can eat, and that's all you need to be happy."

In her Ingushetia camp, Gavarova, who is in her 40s, does not buy the arguments for coming back.

"I want to go to any other country in the world," she said. "Give me just $1,000 and I'll go anywhere."