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IWPR's Caucasus Reporting Service, No. 240, 07/01/2004

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  • IWPR's Caucasus Reporting Service, No. 240, 07/01/2004

    WELCOME TO IWPR'S CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE, No. 240,
    July 1, 2004.

    CAUCASUS NEWS UPDATE JULY 1

    ARMENIAN-GEORGIAN MARKET LOSING ITS ROLE The decline of what was once
    the biggest wholesale market in the South Caucasus marks a change in
    the way Armenia and Georgia trade with one another. By Karine
    Ter-Saakian and Lela Iremashvili in Sadakhlo and Bagratashen

    NEW LAW TO HELP ARMENIA'S MENTALLY ILL New psychiatric care law
    provides better rights for the mentally ill, but state provision
    remains poorly resourced. By Naira Melkumian in Yerevan

    DAGESTAN'S FEUDING CLERICS Temporary truce is called as rival
    factions of Muslim clergy in Dagestan seek control of worldly
    matters. By Laura Magomedova and Musa Musayev in Makhachkala

    CHECHNYA'S CHECKPOINT LOTTERY The police's roadside presence looks
    intimidating - but anyone can get past by paying a bribe. By Aslambek
    Badilayev and Kazbek Vakhayev in Grozny

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    CAUCASUS NEWS UPDATE JULY 1

    June 30 Two Russians were sentenced to life imprisonment in Qatar for
    the assassination of former Chechen rebel leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev
    in February.

    June 30 The Georgian delegation said it would not attend talks with
    their South Ossetian counterparts, saying three Georgians were being
    illegally detained in South Ossetia.

    June 30 Four parliamentary deputies from the Republican Party said
    they were going into opposition in the Georgian parliament in protest
    at the conduct of the elections in Ajaria on June 20.

    June 29 The trial began in Dagestan of prominent Islamic extremist
    Magomed Tagayev.

    June 28 Armenian, Azerbaijani and Turkish foreign ministers Vardan
    Oskanian, Elmar Mamedyarov and Abdullah Gul held talks at the NATO
    summit in Istanbul.

    June 28 The Russian authorities said they had killed Magomed
    Yevloyev, the alleged leader of the attacks in Ingushetia the week
    before in which more than 90 people died.

    June 28 Georgia's deputy prosecutor Giorgy Janashia said that all
    criminal charges against late president Zviad Gamsakhurdia had been
    dropped.

    June 25 Seven Russian citizens formerly held in detention in
    Guantanamo Bay and held for four months in Pyatigorsk were released.

    June 25 Former deputy prime minister of Chechnya Yan Sergunin was
    murdered in Moscow and his wife was wounded.

    June 24 Armenian police said that they had suspended their
    investigation into the assault on opposition politician Ashot
    Manucharian after failing to find any suspects

    June 24 The World Bank approved three new credits for Georgia worth
    more than 47 million dollars.

    June 24 Kamil Etinbekov, head of Dagestan's FSB counter-intelligence
    department, was assassinated.


    ARMENIAN-GEORGIAN MARKET LOSING ITS ROLE

    The decline of what was once the biggest wholesale market in the
    South Caucasus marks a change in the way Armenia and Georgia trade
    with one another.

    By Karine Ter-Saakian and Lela Iremashvili in Sadakhlo and
    Bagratashen

    The bridge on the Armenian-Georgian border dividing these two villages
    used to carry some of the heaviest traffic in the South Caucasus, with
    traders waiting for hours to cross.

    Not now. A few pedestrians with large cellophane bags carrying fruit
    and vegetables or heavy trolleys trudge back and forth. Vehicles,
    however, now cross the border on the main Tbilisi-Yerevan road.

    The market on the Georgian side at the village of Sadakhlo is an even
    more striking sight. Once it was the most bustling market in the
    entire region, a magnet for Georgians, but more particularly Armenians
    and Azerbaijanis, who traded a vast array of household goods and
    provisions here. Now just a third of its stalls are working and the
    rest are empty.

    This, say the market-traders and custom officials, is a result of the
    new Georgian government's campaign against smuggling and tax evasion,
    launched by President Mikheil Saakashvili in January this year. In
    April - right at the start of the trading season - new officials in
    the customs department and financial police began tightening controls
    over customs procedures.

    At the same time Armenian patterns of trade have changed and the
    market is no longer the lifeline it was for Armenia.

    "The market at Sadakhlo either has to be closed or properly
    legalised," Vilen Alavidze, deputy director of the international
    economic relations and foreign trade department at Georgia's economics
    ministry, told IWPR. "Of course, the second option is better both from
    the point of view of the employment of the local population and the
    development of economic relations between Georgia and Armenia."

    Alavidze said the Georgian budget has been losing huge sums in unpaid
    taxes, as it has not been receiving any revenue from the thousands of
    ordinary traders who use the market.

    In the Sadakhlo market's heyday in 2001, the then Armenian finance
    minister Vartan Khachaturian said that traders there were doing
    business worth between 300 and 400 million US dollars a year -
    equivalent to Armenia's entire budget revenue - and neither the
    Georgian nor Armenian government was collecting customs duty on this
    money.

    The market was the main conduit by which goods from Turkey, Azerbaijan
    and further afield - everything from clothes and washing powder and
    tomatoes to petrol - could pass into land-locked Armenia, whose
    borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey are both closed because of the
    Nagorny Karabakh dispute. The Armenians in turn sold Iranian goods. It
    was called with some justice "the road of life".

    In June, the market is a sea of mud from the heavy rains. The
    once-large trading centre may have dwindled to more modest
    proportions, but commerce continues and five currencies still
    circulate here - Georgian lari, Armenian drams, Azerbaijani manats,
    Russian roubles and US dollars. The traders have up-to-the-minute
    information about currency rates and convert prices from one to
    another in the blink of an eye, without a calculator.

    In Soviet times Sabit, a 50-year-old Azerbaijani, ran a bakery and
    says that he "lived like a millionaire", but he has been involved in
    the wholesale trade business in recent years. "We are friends with the
    Armenians, we trade with them," he said. "I have friends in
    Bagratashen and we don't talk about politics. There's no time - we
    have business to do."

    Renting a stall generally costs from 10 to 20 dollars, sometimes as
    much as 50 dollars a day, depending on its location. The buyers come
    from all over Armenia and Azerbaijan and the locals handle the
    transactions, the local Armenians dealing with the incoming Armenians
    and the local Azerbaijanis negotiating with their compatriots from
    Azerbaijan.

    Armine, who travels here on a minibus from Armenia, is one of a slowly
    dwindling number of traders who make the journey.

    "It's a difficult journey but I have to feed my family somehow," she
    said. "I generally buy clothing for around 500 dollars, plus there are
    expenses on travel and what I have to give customs officials on both
    sides. They are people too." Armine makes about 200 dollars from the
    resale of the goods.

    But increasingly freight traffic is coming into Armenia direct, by
    rail or road, bypassing the wholesale market.

    "The Sadakhlo market is losing its importance relative to the
    Poti-Tbilisi-Yerevan railway," said Eduard Agajanov, a leading
    economist and former head of the Armenian government's statistics
    department.

    "I believe that if economic development continues like this, this kind
    of border trade will stop altogether. This will end the flow of
    black-market capital into Armenia which a few years ago was worth
    twice the annual budget."

    Officials on both sides of the border say they want to legalise their
    bilateral trade, to the advantage of both countries.

    "We are not exploiting the economic potential that exists between our
    two countries effectively," said Alexander Chelidze, head of the
    international economic relations and foreign trade department in
    Georgia's economic ministry.

    According to Georgia's statistics department, trade between the two
    countries was worth 43 million dollars in 2003. Both official imports
    and exports have risen this year.

    Gagik Agajanian, who runs the Armenian freight company Alaven, says
    that business is becoming easier and the current road tariff rates are
    quite acceptable. The cost of ferrying a 20-ton truck the 400km from
    the Iranian border to Yerevan is 220 dollars, and then from Georgia to
    the Russian border is another 300 dollars.

    Armenian traders say that because of the anti-corruption drive in
    Georgia, it is now easier to drive from Sadakhlo to Tbilisi without
    being continually pulled over and stopped by traffic police demanding
    bribes.

    The main losers are the local traders from the Sadakhlo region, who
    now fear for their future.

    "Without the market we will die of hunger here," said Sabit, a native
    of Sadakhlo. "But recently the Armenians have stopped coming so much
    and the main trade is with them. There are not many Georgians, just
    some women from Tbilisi."

    "More than half the people in our village feed their families from
    this market," said Azerbaijani Niyaz Ahmedov, who trades sweets from
    Tbilisi. "It's become much harder now, and it is our only source of
    income."

    "I grow cucumbers and other vegetables and then sell them," lamented
    his neighbour Leila Suleimanova. "There is no other way of earning
    money in the village or anywhere round here. I've a long way to go
    till I get my pension and then it will only be 14 lari [seven
    dollars]."

    Karine Ter-Saakian is a freelance journalist based in Yerevan. Lela
    Iremashvili is a correspondent with Black Sea Press news agency in
    Tbilisi.


    NEW LAW TO HELP ARMENIA'S MENTALLY ILL

    New psychiatric care law provides better rights for the mentally ill,

    but state provision remains poorly resourced.

    By Naira Melkumian in Yerevan

    Armenia has passed its first piece of legislation on psychiatric
    treatment since independence, to provide legal safeguards for a
    vulnerable group which the state has insufficient resources to treat.


    The new law gives a much more precise definition of mental illness
    than the previous Soviet-era legislation, and lays ground-rules to
    prevent people being wrongfully committed to an institution -
    although
    there is some controversy over how this will be decided.

    The legislation, drafted by the health ministry, was adopted by the
    lower house of parliament swiftly and signed by President Robert
    Kocharian on June 21. It is due to take effect on July 1. The authors
    of
    the law say they were under pressure to fill the legislative gap to
    comply with demands by the World Health Organisation and the Council
    of
    Europe.

    "A mentally ill person must be entitled to social protection by law,
    so that he or she can feel at home in their community," Armenian
    health minister Norair Davidian told IWPR.

    Armenia has about a dozen hospitals - all state-run - providing
    psychiatric treatment and care. The state provides around five US
    dollars
    a day for each psychiatric patient, which has to cover meals,
    clothing and medication. That means the state hospitals and day
    clinics
    cannot afford the most effective modern drugs because they are too
    expensive.

    "As time goes by, new and more potent pharmaceuticals and technology
    are appearing on the market, but we are still using the old Soviet
    techniques for treatment," said Professor Samvel Sukiasian, director
    of
    Armenia's Stress Mental Health Centre.

    IWPR visited the hospital in Sevan, in the north of the country,
    which numbers a once-famous actress among its 320 inmates.

    As you enter the women's wing, you inhale a complex blend of chlorine

    and pharmaceuticals. The whitewashed walls are peeling, and the wards

    have as many as 40 bunks in a row.

    The faces of the patients appear to mirror an inner anguish. Among
    them is Donara Mkrtchian - a former star of stage and film in
    Armenia,
    and widow of Soviet screen legend Frunze Mkrtchian.

    Donara has been in this hospital for 20 years. With her vacant stare
    and trembling face and hands, she is barely recognisable as the
    fine-looking woman and brilliant actress she was before chronic
    schizophrenia set in. There are traces of cigarette burns on her
    hands and
    lips.

    "There is no one in this body," said psychiatrist Aram Alexanian,
    deputy director of the hospital. "The individual is gone. This is the

    final stage of her illness."

    "Let me go home," Donara asked the doctor, evidently not for the
    first time. "I've got my pension to pick up at Sundukian's theatre,
    so
    that I can go and get some groceries."

    "Donara has no home or family to go to," said Alexanian. "Her husband

    and two children have passed away. Her actor friends used to come and

    see her, but it's been years since the last visit."

    Dr Alexanian sees social upheaval and hardship as the cause of many
    other psychiatric cases now seen in Armenian.

    "The psyche of Armenians has been traumatised by a succession of
    misfortunes and turbulences, starting with the 1988 earthquake, the
    Karabakh war, followed by social and political upheaval, the collapse
    of
    the Soviet Union and the emergence of newly independent states - with

    all the social and economic adversities this entailed," he said. A
    more recent contributory factor, he added, was unemployment and the
    separation of families as men go abroad to find work.

    Professor Sukiasian believes there are large numbers of people with
    psychiatric disorders. The official statistics show 30,000 mental
    patients, and another 50,000 to 60,000 people seeing psychiatrists
    every
    year. But Sukiasian believes the real numbers are "significantly
    higher".

    Dr Alexanian disagrees, saying "There has been no rise in the number
    of mental patients, it's just that you see more of them on the
    street. They used to be isolated, but not any more. Also bear in mind
    that
    whereas before it was 30,000 mentally ill people in a population of
    three million, now it's the same 30,000 in a much smaller population
    that's been depleted by emigration."

    There does appear to be growing evidence of stress, depression and
    neurosis among the population. There are two institutions in Armenia
    that specialise in cases of stress, Professor Sukasian's Stress
    Centre
    and the Neurosis Clinic, but they cannot cope with the demand for
    their services.

    "The worst thing is that until the illness really gets out of
    control, no one will go to see a doctor, especially a psychiatrist,"
    said
    Gagik Karapetian, director of the hospital in Sevan. "People will
    conceal their condition, whether it be neurosis or depression, and
    thus do
    irreparable harm to their health."

    Under the new law, a person can be forcibly committed for treatment
    only by court order, and only if a panel of psychiatrists has
    pronounced him or her both mentally ill and a danger to the
    community.

    But the legislation fails to specify how such a panel of experts
    should be formed, and who should sit on it. The ministry of justice
    has
    stepped in to fill the gap, and plans to issue regulations
    streamlining the mechanism for enforcing a compulsory treatment
    order.

    Psychologist Vadim Georgiadi thinks it is a bad idea to delegate
    powers to a non-specialist agency such as the justice ministry, and
    says
    parliament should take full control of the way the mental health law
    operates.

    "The community itself should determine whether a person is a menace
    to it," said Dr Alexanian. "It is also important to protect the
    patient from his family or guardians, who may be driven by mercenary
    interest such as control over the person's property."

    The mental ill are vulnerable to losing out on the benefits due them,

    either through theft by relatives, or because of bureaucracy. At the
    social security ministry, IWPR learned that some mental patients are
    not drawing their disability benefit of around 5.5 dollars a month,
    because they have not applied for it. "Usually it's the patient's
    family or guardian who does it for them," said Rosa Mkrtchian, head
    of
    the pensions department.

    Even with this new law, Armenia's mentally ill remain the most
    vulnerable members of a poor society.

    Naira Melkumian is a freelance journalist in Yerevan


    DAGESTAN'S FEUDING CLERICS

    Temporary truce is called as rival factions of Muslim clergy in
    Dagestan seek control of worldly matters.

    By Laura Magomedova and Musa Musayev in Makhachkala

    After a long-running row that has split Dagestan's Muslims, the
    republic's powerful religious body, the Spiritual Department of
    Muslims,
    has lost its monopoly over travel arrangements for the annual
    pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj.

    Earlier this month, a new government-sponsored council authorised
    five tourist companies to arrange trips to Saudi Arabia for the next
    Hajj. Only one of the firms is sponsored by the Spiritual Department.


    It is a heavy blow to the organisation, headed by Dagestan's Mufti,
    Akhmad-Haji Abdullayev, which has for many years claimed sole rights
    to direct all areas of Muslim life in the republic.

    The decision to break its monopoly over running the pilgrimage trips
    follows a row over who exercises ultimate authority - on worldly as
    well as spiritual matters - over the Muslims of Dagestan,
    traditionally one of the major centres of Islam in Russia.

    Opponents of the Mufti also won government approval to call a new
    "council of alims", an influential body composed of theologians and
    religious teachers that elects members of the Spiritual Department.

    "The conflict is now over," said Akhmed Magomedov, chairman of
    Dagestan's government committee for religious affairs, told IWPR last
    week.

    But the damage has already been done to a republic where virtually
    all the two million-strong population is Muslim, and which has
    suffered
    from an influx of radical Islam over the last decade.

    The Spiritual Department of Muslims has strong links to government,
    as the heir of a Soviet-era body founded in 1944 to allow the
    authorities to control Islamic affairs. It gets its income from
    donations
    given by believers, as well as a publishing house, a restaurant, and
    organising the Hajj.

    Ordinary Dagestanis say variously that the "religious" row stemmed
    from politics, ethnic divisions or the lucrative earnings to be made
    from the Hajj - last year, pilgrims paid 1,350 US dollars each for
    the
    two-week trip to Saudi Arabia.

    The formal reason given by the authorities is that the tour firm
    Barakat, which enjoyed an exclusive license from the Spiritual
    Department
    to send pilgrims to Saudi Arabia, failed to arrange trips for 1,600
    people last year.

    The Spiritual Department said the unsuccessful pilgrims were late
    with their applications, and that they then tried and failed to book
    places with another Russian air company instead. The pilgrims said
    they
    not only missed out on the Barakat trip but were obstructed from
    flying with another firm by the Spiritual Department.

    This fiasco crystallised long pent-up dissatisfaction with the
    Spiritual Department, and on March 17 its opponents called a "Mejlis"
    or
    assembly of Muslims.

    Many imams or preachers said it was time to create a different kind
    of Muslim organisation, but as imam Shamil Mirzayev told IWPR, "We
    have not set ourselves the goal of creating an alternative Spiritual
    Department.

    "People have come to express unhappiness that has built up over a
    long time. They wanted to know why, for example, 1,600 pilgrims were
    unable to complete the Hajj. Who bears responsibility for that?"

    The chairman of the Mejlis, Ilyas-Haji Ilyasov, said that the current

    leadership of the department was only there because it had seized
    power. Others were nostalgic about the former Mufti, Bagautdin-Haji,
    who
    was ousted from office when he was away from Dagestan in 1992.

    Mukhamad-Said Abakarov, imam of the mosque in Khasavyurt, said, "We
    all elected and recognised as our Mufti the late Bagautdin-Haji. He
    always consulted with us. But the current Spiritual Department
    ignores
    and sometimes even insults our alims [religious scholars]. The work
    done by the current Spiritual Department is not bringing unity and
    calm among our peoples."

    The Mejlis voted to call the current Spiritual Department
    illegitimate and to set about re-establishing the one that was
    replaced in 1992.

    In turn, the Mufti refused to recognise that the Mejlis had any
    authority. "There are many people in Dagestan who meet here and
    there, and
    shout that Muslims have to unite," he said. "It's just that everyone
    wants to be the winner and to unite people around himself."

    In part Dagestan's complex ethnic affiliations underlie the
    divisions. Members of the Mejlis alleged that the department was
    being
    dominated by Avars, Dagestan's largest ethnic group; while supporters
    of the
    Mufti say that Ilyasov, who convened the Mejlis, had formerly wanted
    to set up a Kumyk Spiritual Department, representing another ethnic
    community.

    A law passed by the Dagestani parliament in 1997 expressly forbids
    setting up religious organisations formed along ethnic lines.

    Confessional differences in this largely Sunni region seem to have
    little to do with the conflict. Dagestan's government and the
    pro-government clerics voice concern about the spread of radical
    Islamic
    tendencies, in particular the fundamentalist views they generally
    term
    Wahhabism.

    Opponents of the Spiritual Department insist they are not
    fundamentalists.

    Murad Magomedov, a devout Muslim who runs a private firm, accused
    leaders of the Spiritual Department of being "ignorant on matters of
    Islam".

    "I know people who have had a higher Islamic education in Saudi
    Arabia," said Magomedov. "They returned to Dagestan to practice Islam
    at a
    high level. But officials from the department called them Wahhabis,
    though I can't for the life of me understand how. When they are
    criticised they just react emotionally."

    The government says the row has now been resolved with the formation
    in May of a new "council for organising the Hajj", which has given
    five firms the right to make pilgrimage travel arrangements.

    But the established clerics are not happy about the change. "The
    Spiritual Department is against the creation of a council for
    organising
    and conducting the Hajj," deputy Mufti Mukhammadvakil Sultanmagomedov

    told IWPR. "The Muslim clergy will do everything it can to stop this
    council from working."

    All four imams in the new council are opponents of the Spiritual
    Department.

    Sultanmagomedov blamed Akhmed Magomedov, head of the government's
    religious affairs committee for meddling. "He wants to get hold of
    organizing the Hajj himself and to strip the Spiritual Department of
    Muslims of Dagestan of its unity and powers."

    "No one can determine how a pilgrim goes on the Hajj, and with whom,"

    commented Bekmurza Bekmurzayev, permanent representative of Russia's
    foreign ministry in Dagestan. "It's all there in the five holy
    pillars of Islam. So why try to invent something new?"

    Laura Magomedova is correspondent for the weekly newspaper Novoe Delo

    in Makhachkala. Musa Musayev is Dagestan correspondent for Severny
    Kavkaz newspaper.


    CHECHNYA'S CHECKPOINT LOTTERY

    The police's roadside presence looks intimidating - but anyone can
    get past by paying a bribe.

    By Aslambek Badilayev and Kazbek Vakhayev in Grozny

    "Stop, driver! Turn off the engine, tell the passengers to get out,
    show your documents and prepare your car for examination." But
    despite
    this stern message on a notice standing 10 metres from the checkpoint

    at Khankala outside the Chechen capital Grozny, the bus driver does
    not even think of stopping, still less discharging his passengers.

    Akhmad waves a hand in greeting to a special forces policeman as he
    steers the bus up to the checkpoint, and in return the officer just
    nods him through - no need for a security check.

    "This is my second run today," explained Akhmed, who drives the route

    between Argun and Grozny. "I registered in the morning, so I can be
    sure of a free drive for today."

    How much does this unofficial "registration" cost? "Fifty roubles
    [less than two US dollars] and you can drive anywhere you want to."

    What if you choose not to pay? Akhmad grinned. "In the beginning I
    tried being a hero. So they'd search the whole bus, detain the
    passengers, and complain about tiny things - 'why haven't you got
    this, why
    haven't you got that? - from a first-aid kit to a gas mask.

    "In short, they let me know that if I wanted to make money, I'd need
    to share it".

    At present, there are 48 checkpoints in Chechnya. That follows a 20
    per cent cut in the number of posts ordered by the senior Russian
    army
    commander there, Lieutenant-General Yevgeny Abrashin, who also said
    that traffic police and the local police force were taking greater
    responsibility for guarding the republic's roads.

    But although ordinary people are pleased that there are fewer
    checkpoints to negotiate, the general's predictions of improvements
    have not
    come true. The posts are manned by men in camouflage fatigues and
    policemen's uniforms, whose allegiance no one is sure of.

    Slowly Chechnya's checkpoints have turned into an extortion racket
    which has little to do with security or military strategy.

    Money decides everything. As the recent bloody raid by 200 rebel
    fighters into Ingushetia demonstrates, armed men are able to move
    freely
    around Chechnya. Only the smaller fish are liable to be caught in the

    net if they cannot pay up.

    Chechen driver Usman told IWPR about the time he discovered how you
    can even get a bomb past the security forces.

    "People who have a defect in their passport - no military service
    stamp, for instance - usually slip 10 roubles inside when they're
    stopped at a checkpoint. The soldiers understand, take the money and
    give
    the passport back, no questions asked," he explained.

    Usman had passed through one checkpoint on the border with Ingushetia

    when he remembered he'd put 500 roubles inside his passport for
    safekeeping, and forgotten about it when he handed the document over.
    Now
    the money had disappeared, so he went back to the checkpoint and
    asked to get it back, explaining it was a mistake.

    "They told me, 'how were to know that you weren't carrying a bomb and

    that now you've unloaded it, you have come back?'" For Usman, that
    was pretty clear evidence that for 500 roubles - about 20 dollars -
    you
    can take even a bomb through this particular checkpoint at least.

    Extortion is now so commonplace that it is organised and recorded
    like a form of taxation. At Khankala, a bus pays 50 roubles, a
    minibus
    just 10, and lorries between 50 and 500 roubles depending on what
    freight they are carrying. In Grozny, vehicles pay 10 roubles to the
    checkpoints that control the district they are in at the time.

    A black "registration" board with the number-plates of cars written
    down in chalk records who has paid and who hasn't.

    The record money-earner is the checkpoint known as Kavkaz-1, because
    it sits on the border with Ingushetia, controlling the main route
    that links Chechnya with the rest of the North Caucasus.

    At Kavkaz-1, a minibus driver will have to pay a bribe of between 150

    and 500 roubles. An ordinary bus has to pay 50 roubles, with each
    male passenger costing an additional 10 roubles.

    By the most conservative estimates, the Kavkaz-1 post alone pulls in
    150,000 dollars a month.

    Ruslan, who drives a minibus in Grozny, has not seen much improvement

    since pro-Moscow Chechen police took over from the Russian forces.

    "Every day I pay 50 roubles to the office controller and ten roubles
    to the checkpoint for each drive. There used to be Russians there,
    now it's local policemen. The fact that some checkpoints in the city
    have gone hasn't changed anything. One group has left and others have

    come in."

    The Russian military command knows about the widespread corruption
    associated with checkpoints, but says there is nothing it can do
    about
    it.

    "This kind of extortion exists everywhere, not just Chechnya. It's
    useless fighting it," said Oleg Guskov, military garrison commander
    for
    Grozny Region. "One of the most widespread forms of bribery is
    corruption by low-level officials. And it's not that easy to catch
    them at
    it. I think the only way out of this situation is to just not pay the

    bribes."

    The message is evidently not getting across. An unofficial sign at a
    checkpoint in Grozny advises, "Driver, 10 roubles is not a bribe."

    Aslambek Badilayev and Kazbek Vakhayev, are correspondents with Zov
    Zemli newspaper in Grozny.

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    CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE No. 240
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