#15 - JRL 8220 - JRL Home
From: "Kirill Pankratov" <pkirill88@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: “Children of the War. The intifada has come to Chechnya”, JRL 8217, #4

Date: Sun, 23 May 2004

A. Politkovskaya’s article in the Newsweek on the “Children of the war” in Chechnya contains a gross distortion of facts. The only concrete example she gives about suicide bombings by children to “avenge their relatives” is an outright lie:

“Increasingly, they plant bombs or blow themselves up. It is no accident that the most famous of Chechnya's "live bombs" involved 15-year-old Alina. A half-Chechen, half-Russian native of the village of Achkhoy-Martan, she drove a truck laden with explosives into Grozny's pro-Moscow administrative buildings in December 2002. The building, along with more than 80 employees and visitors, was reduced to rubble. In this way, Alina avenged the death of her brother, also killed by Russian forces. Today the blasts of roadside bombs planted by children like her have become a daily staple of this forgotten war. These children do not go to the mountains to join Chechen resistance forces. They belong to no formal terrorist organizations. No adults equip them, or send them to do their bidding.”

This is demagoguery at its worst. The case of bombing of the government building in Grozny in December 2002, and of the young girl Alina who was the passenger inside the bomber’s truck, was thoroughly investigated and covered in Russian press (in particular, in several lengthy articles in Izvestia).

Alina was the daughter of Gelani Tumriyev, a Chechen who studied in veterinary school in Yaroslavl in mid-80’s, and a young local woman Marina Volodina. It turned out Tumriyev had another child, a son named Ilya, with another local woman, whom he briefly was married to. In the next decade he was in and out of Yaroslavl, taking practically no part in his children’s lives, and providing no material support, except occasional small gifts when he was around. Nevertheless, both women (who didn’t know about each other at that time) allowed him to see the children, and to take them out for a few hours. In 1997, during such visits, Gelani Tumriyev kidnapped his children, one after the other, and transferred them to his home town Achkhoy-Martan in Chechnya. Both women tried to bring them back, but since after Khasavurt agreement Russia had no control over Chechnya, this proved impossible. Several months ago Izvestia published interview with both mothers, as well as some other people who knew Tumriyev, and also scores of photographs and official documents related to the case.

In late 90’s some Chechens living in Yaroslavl helped locate Tumriyev and the children in Achkhoy-Martan, but efforts to return them stalled. Alina was reportedly very unhappy there and missed her mother greatly, so that even Tumriyev’s relatives tried to persuade him to give her back. Instead, Tumriyev by that time was already closely connected to the militant Wahhabi movement, and apparently tried to make his children brainwashed with extremist ideology. Alina’s half-brother, Ilya, at the age of 16 was made to join the insurgents and was reportedly killed in fighting with federal troops in 2000.

Being a young 14-years old Slavic-looking girl, Alina was certainly a big asset to extremists in avoiding suspicion, as the suicide bombing truck sped up towards the government building in Grozny. It is not clear whether she was aware, sitting in the passenger seat, of the suicide bombing mission, of her life being sacrificed by her own father. Politkovskaya’s phrase “Alina… A half-Chechen, half-Russian native of the village of Achkhoy-Martan, she drove a truck laden with explosives into Grozny's pro-Moscow administrative buildings” insinuating that the bombing was her own conscious decision to “avenge her brother” is a gross and reprehensible distortion of facts.

It is truly unfortunate that much of the western media relies in Chechnya coverage on the likes of Politkovskaya, whose writing is full of misrepresentations and lies, such as the above example.

Kirill Pankratov, Ph.D.
kirjana@fiam.net