Mozdok Blast Widens Chechen War

The town of Mozdok is feeling the repercussions of the suicide bombing attack there last week.

Twenty bus passengers died on June 5 when a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside the vehicle, moments after the driver had closed the front door on her.

The bus ferried service staff to and from Russia's military airbase in the North Ossetian town. Most of those killed were women workers at the base who always sat in the front rows of the vehicle.

Although Mozdok is only 20 kilometres from the border with Chechnya and has been the main Russian military base in both military campaigns, this was the first strike against the town in all that time.

The local prosecutor Ivan Zuyev said that investigations were not complete and it was too early to analyse what had happened. But no one believes this was anything other than the work of a Chechen suicide bomber.

Chechnya's prosecutor Vladimir Kravchenko said that a preliminary investigation by his office and the FSB suggested that the explosion had been carried out by a terrorist group, headed by Shamil Basayev, known as the Black Widows.

Kravchenko said the blast followed the same pattern as the recent suicide attacks in Znamenksoye and Iliskhan-Yurt, which killed more than 80 people.

However, the pro-Moscow Chechen government of Akhmad Kadyrov in Grozny has been notably silent on the subject of the explosion. One reason may be that, however terrible the blast was, the name Mozdok has strong negative associations amongst most Chechens.

They think of it as the base of the Russian air force bombers, which have killed thousands of people, the point of departure for tank columns and as a "filtration centre" where hundreds of Chechens have been detained and many have not returned.

The bomber base was relocated at the beginning of the current war, but Mozdok is still home to a military helicopter unit.

Inside Chechnya itself, few are blaming the Russian security services for the explosion, as many conspiracy-minded Chechens have done over the recent suicide bombings.

Many people refused to condemn the explosion. Hearing a woman from Mozdok question on television what the suicide bomber was thinking when she blew up the bus, Magomed Matsiev, a 30-year-old resident of Grozny, countered, "And what were those pilots thinking about, when they bombed Chechen towns and villages? There were women and children there too and Russian ones as well."

Even those who did condemn the attack are mostly worried about how it will rebound on them.

"All these explosions just provoke a brutal response from the federal side," said human rights activist Tamara Kalayeva. "How many artillery and air bombardments, 'clean-up' raids on whole districts and villages have we had after just one column was fired on or one armoured personnel carrier blown up - and completely innocent people have died."

In Mozdok, officers and soldiers who serve there are reluctant to talk publicly about the incident, fearful that this could attract revenge attacks on them - as indeed happened on June 5.

But Major Vladimir Grechany, former deputy commander of an air squadron, said that he believed Mozdok had been lucky to escape attacks up until now.

"If we want to impose order, we have to cleanse the city of Chechen incomers," Grechany told IWPR. "They have a negative impact on ethnic relations. If everyone says 'no' to the Chechens, as they did in Krasnodar and Kabardinia, the situation will calm down."

Grechany said Mozdok natives might take up arms and attack Chechens.

Mozdok formally lies within North Ossetia, but is in fact isolated from the rest of the republic both geographically and ethnically. Of the 42,000 inhabitants of the town and the 100,000 residents of the region, only ten percent are Ossetian.

The narrow strip of territory connecting Mozdok to the rest of North Ossetia became impassable during the Ossetian-Ingush conflict of 1992 and since then the journey to the North Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz requires a long detour through neighbouring Kabardino-Balkaria.

The majority population is Russian - many of them Cossacks - and Kumyk, a small North Caucasian Muslim ethnic group. Official statistics show that 15 per cent of the Russian population has left Mozdok over the last ten years and other ethnic groups have taken their place.

Officially, Chechens comprise two per cent of the population, but Cossack groups maintain the real proportion is 12-15 per cent. They - and other Muslims too - now fear for their future.

"Why do they blame us that a woman came and blew herself up," exclaimed a local 40-year-old Chechen woman trader. "What has it got to do with me and my children?"

Alsubek Umarov, a Mozdok native and Kumyk, said, "No one has personally insulted me, but I feel the open hostility very strongly."

A member of the local assembly privately blamed the town authorities for being too lax, "We have played at democracy and this is the result. We should have put up a secure barrier on our border with Chechnya long ago."

Vladimir Stepanov, a Cossack ataman or leader in the village of Lukovskaya, was more threatening. "The security services ought to do their job more professionally," he said. "And we have to show them [the Chechens] how strong we are, that's the only language they understand."

All public events in Mozdok have been cancelled and school leavers are worried that their leaving dances will be cancelled. The town has the look of a frontline city.

The imam of the Mozdok mosque did not even want to answer our questions. "I have nothing to do with politics, I just pray to Allah all the time for peace," he said.

Olga Sinitsyna is a journalist with Mozdoksky Vestnik newspaper. Timur Aliev is a frequent IWPR contributor from Nazran and Grozny.