Chiri Yurt is really only a tiny mountain village half-way up the mountain gorge to Shatoi. It is a village in which the mountain folk have roots going back a millennium or two, a cluster of 25 or 30 hamlets perhaps. The village experienced nearly as many vacuum bombs --- the kind of bomb that explodes above the ground and in the explosion sucks all the air away to make sure that nobody hiding in a shelter can survive.

Life-saving surgery

But as the Russian army approached Grozny, it became clear that while not much fighting had been seen yet, the city would be heavily defended.

At the time Movsar was a specialist surgeon at a large hospital in the city. But the surgery he had to carry out, soon became of the simple, life-saving kind, when the victims of the intensive bombing and the ensuing cross-fire started to be carried in. This hospital was in the western suburbs and so effectively soon was located on the front line.

The surgeon's Strategic Retreat

The surgeon crammed his car full with all the medical supplies he could fit, and fled. Taking back-roads out of the city and through the lowlands, he succeeded in reaching his home village of Chiri Yurt.

Movsar was born in this little community. He showed me pictures of the stunning scenery. The steep gorges of the mountains are covered with tall forests. Beyond, the peaks of the Caucasus mountains, that mark the continental divide to Asia, tower over the valleys. To Chechens, that are still very conscious of their mountain origins, this is the hallowed home land.

A symbolic gateway

The rebels knew that if they could hold out in the remote mountain areas long enough for the approaching spring to cover the mountains and foothills in protective forests again they would be able to continue this perpetual war with the Russians. For centuries now, when seemingly every generation took up arms again to fight the Northerners, the sheltering forests had proven ideal guerrilla territory. With a campaign of tiring guerrilla attacks, so they hoped, the Russians would be forced once more to concede this unwinnable conflict.

A mountain village laid waste

Chechen fighters took up positions on heights overlooking the road just shortly beyond the village. And the Russian formations were drawing near. Then the Russian artillery units took up position and the shelling began, supported by heavy use of attack helicopters and small aviation.

Every night the injured would be brought to him, Movsar recounted. And only 50 percent of the seriously wounded would survive the horrific wounds in spite all the effort he and his brother-in-law, an anaesthetist by training, could muster. For two months they hid day and night in the cellars and watched their village die a slow and cruel death. He recounted how on one wall of their shelter the marks recording the unmistakable impacts of the heavy aerial bombs steadily filled one brick after the other.

A war that cannot be recounted in statistics

Dead and mutilated women --- "This is war"

Movsar and his brother brought all the survivors together and tried to make their way to safety. But then the firing started. Several women were killed, and another lost both legs. They pressed on and made it across the Russian line. When the Russian commander was confronted with his broken promise of safe passage, he shrugged and said: "This is war"