Mikail Eldin - The Sky Wept Fire - My Life as a Chechen Freedom Fighter

The commander of the group finds out which villages they come from and asks, ‘How long were you planning to fell timber today?’

‘We’re more or less done. And if there’s anything we can do to help, we’d be happy to.’

‘No, thanks, we don’t need your help. Although if you’d like to help, we suggest you join us on your way home. The place we’re going to is not far from where you live. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that we suspect you, but…’

‘Of course we’ll go back with you. We understand,’ the woodcutters say.

And one of them, a young guy, adds, ‘Even if they torture me I won’t tell them a thing. If you knew how those bastards treat us civilians. But when they’re up against you, they’re not the big men they pretend to be in the movies.’

The scouts lead them over to the column, then walk on ahead. The woodcutters go with the main formation, but not under guard like the man detained at the base. Seeing the number of guerrillas, the young guy turns to his companions: ‘If only those bastard traitors could see them now! Always talking about “a few dozen bandits in the forests”. In their dreams!’ The approaching dusk quickly turns into dense darkness as rain begins pelting down. The guerrillas stop in a forest clearing and set up a watch; they begin the late-afternoon prayer. There is no pressure on anyone to pray or perform religious rituals. We are all free to choose how deep our faith goes and how much to follow the rituals and rules. In Islam there is no compulsion. And this tenet is confirmed in the Quran. Anyone who forces a person into faith is violating this sacred rule, thereby showing disrespect for the Quran. But the overwhelming majority of the Chechen resistance fighters are deeply religious. Everyone believes in his own way, but the majority are believers. And faith can help a man cope with the stress which he faces every hour in those conditions. Watching the silhouettes of the fighters prostrated in prayer in the pouring rain and the intense darkness, men who in an hour’s time will be engaging in a battle with an unknown outcome, you feel sure that those who fall in the war will find their eternal rest in a better world. They are protected from hell as surely as gold is protected from rust.

The entire column of guerrillas silently enters the quiet but not yet sleeping village. The rain that has been falling now suddenly stops. The woodcutters have already been released, but the man detained near the base is still being guarded by one of the groups. He will be set free after the operation. No matter how silently the men try to walk, they cannot prevent the slurp of mud under multiple feet from being heard and people begin popping their heads over the fences, but a menacing holler at them in Russian is enough to make them vanish. For some reason today there are no patrols in sight. In fact there are no armed men at all. Could we have a traitor among us, could the enemy already know everything?

When all the groups have taken up their initial positions at the designated facilities, the command to attack comes over the radios. The cry ‘Allahu Akbar!’ flies from every throat as a tremendous salvo of fire bursts through the stillness of the night. But in response comes silence. Not a single shot or shout. The enemy are hiding in their shelters, behind concrete blocks and trench lines, and they remain silent. Silent in response to the guerrillas’ barrage of fire raining upon them. There is only one heavy machine gun firing from the roof of the FSB building; a shot from a grenade launcher silences it. The guerrillas spray the enemy-held buildings from their grenade launchers, machine guns and other small arms, but the enemy responds with stubborn reticence. They are incurring no appreciable losses and they won’t engage in combat. The guerrillas hadn’t been expecting to get much reaction from them. And they don’t have much need of an enemy sitting in shelters. If they start fighting, the guerrillas will of course fire at them and perhaps even start storming the buildings they’re holding. But that is not what really matters. The guerrillas have carried out operations like this plenty of times. This tactic was devised by the President and it has always brought guaranteed success. That is, until this night.

The guerrillas’ primary target is not the enemy forces in the village. They are essentially bait. The primary target is the forces in the fortified bases nearby. The tank regiment, the artillery battalion, the airborne battalion and the motorized infantry brigade, all based a couple of kilometres from there. And maybe somebody else will come blundering to the aid of their comrades. But they’ll only be playing into the hands of the guerrillas. If you attack a village, they’re supposed to come running to the aid of those under attack. And until now they have always done so. But here comes the big surprise: along all the routes available to them, the guerrillas have set up ambushes. What’s more, among the attackers are groups ready to split off and join the ambush units at the first sign of the enemy’s approach. Usually it takes an hour of fighting before the reinforcements rise to the bait. And it is when the tanks and the rest of the armoured vehicles head out to help their comrades that the bloodbath begins. Any unit on the move is particularly vulnerable. While deploying for combat in the open field, before they’ve even reached their comrades, it will all be over for them. The elite groups will ambush them from positions which have already been picked and prepared. But today, the guerrillas have been firing at the enemy for several hours and there is no sign of help being mobilized. Even the artillery remains silent. Civilians are popping out of the houses and trying to put food into the hands of the fighters, wishing them luck and victory. But the fighters coax them back indoors. Nobody knows why the enemy are silent and what they might do next.

If you analyse the enemy’s behaviour and inaction, it gives reasonable grounds to suspect that we do indeed have a traitor in our midst and he has managed to warn them in time about the operation. Otherwise how can you explain the extra defences around the facilities marked for attack that were not there yesterday? How can you explain their dogged reluctance to engage in combat and enjoy the advantage of defence? How can you explain the silence at the enemy base just two kilometres from the site where you’ve been clobbering their comrades for hours? And all the Chechen police and special forces have been secretly holed up for the past two days in their barracks. That is, they too have already taken shelter behind concrete blocks, which the guerrillas cannot destroy without time and special weapons. But time is just what they don’t have. Nor do they have heavy artillery. And the existence of a traitor is later confirmed when, through his fault, one of the best unit leaders, who also takes part in this operation, is ambushed near his base and dies in an unequal fight. Later they work out who betrayed them. After that ambush he openly goes over to the Russian side. When the enemy fail to rise to the bait (perhaps they’ve finally seen through our scheme and aren’t going to fall for it this time), the guerrilla formation slowly begins their withdrawal. They depart in several directions, but the bulk of the fighters need to get back to the main base. To throw the enemy reconnaissance off the track, we wade through the river. We have to walk waist-deep in icy water for the several hours left until dawn. And as dawn breaks over the forest, reconnaissance aircraft appear. When they fail to find any obvious signs of the guerrillas, they drop their bombs on the forest roads and tracks and fly off.

Despite the minimal losses to the enemy, the operation proves a huge propaganda success. The daring attack by guerrillas on a village considered one of the most secure in the republic, and around which are clustered, in addition to those already mentioned, several other formidable Russian Army forces, has demonstrated the strength, ability and morale of the resistance fighters. And although this time we haven’t managed to lure the enemy into our trap, the operation nevertheless has a surprising result. It spurs the enemy towards a peace initiative. Not long after, a team of mediators makes contact with the Chechen side to sound out the possibility of negotiation. But as has happened many times before, this attempt is thwarted by the Russian security services, who have no interest in ending the war. After all, this war has made them all-powerful. And some bastard with an inferiority complex – for the secret police across the world generally attract this sort – is feeling like a superman and glorying in that sensation of power.