Another Aidworker Victim of Chechnya's Kidnapping Epidemic

Chechnya's war is over, says the Russian government. It has been pacified. The means were illiberal and often brutal, but they got the job done. That is, essentially, the official line --one that is increasingly out of sync with reality.

After a brief period of relative calm under the repressive rule of Moscow-backed rebel-turned-president Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya is now experiencing a sharp uptick in violence, and so is the rest of the North Caucasus. One of the most chilling features of the deteriorating security in the region is the epidemic of assassinations and enforced disappearances, an epidemic that has not left the humanitarian community untouched. Zarema Gaisanova, a logisitician for the Danish Refugee Council, is the fourth aidworker to be forcibly disappeared or killed in Chechnya in the last five months, and the details of her kidnapping five weeks ago follow a chillingly familiar script.

Gaisanova was taken from her home in Grozny on 31 Oct. and has not been seen or heard from since. According to Amnesty International, witnesses to the kidnapping said that "people they believed to be law enforcement officials in camouflage uniforms searched the house next to the home of Zarema Gaisanova on the afternoon of 31 October. The officials shot at the neighboring house, and then started to shoot at Zarema Gaisanova's house, which then caught fire: a large part of it burned down."

Gaisanova's mother, Lida Gaisanova, also blames the authorities for her daughter's disappearance. "I know the police and other law enforcement agencies took her away," she told the press.

Kidnappings and killings of humanitarian staff are not new to Chechnya, but they are being committed with alarming and increasing frequency in what is now officially peacetime.

In August 2009, Zarema Sadulayeva and Alik Dzhabrailov, a young married couple who ran a humanitarian NGO for Chechen children, were abducted from their office in broad daylight and found dead in the trunk of a car a day later. One month before, renowned human rights investigator and civilian war victims' advocate Natalia Estemirova was bundled into a car outside her apartment building, driven to the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, and shot in a forest. In both cases, evidence pointed to involvement by the notoriously abusive security forces (graphic video) under Kadyrov's command.

While Estemirova publicly ran afoul of Kadyrov's regime many times (in a fantastically creepy interview, Kadyrov said Estemirova "never had any honor or sense of shame") and predicted her own death long in advance, the slayings of Sadulayeva and Dzhabrailov chilled the humanitarian community because the couple's work was apolitical even by Russian standards. If newlyweds working with orphans and disabled children were targets, who wasn't fair game?

No available information suggests a motive for Gaisanova's kidnapping, and Gaisanova's own family has no idea why anyone would want to hurt her. According to Amnesty International, Lida Gaisanova was told by the Public Prosecutor's office last month that her daughter was alive, but no one from the office had access to her. Amnesty has called on  the authorities to immediately disclose Zarema Gaisanova's whereabouts and fate.

Kadyrov's ability to claim all is well in Chechnya is his political currency, and the mere fact that aidworkers are still needed in the republic exposes that claim as false. Until Moscow finds a way to rein in the monster it created, the kidnappings and murders will continue.

[Photo: Screenshot from aforementioned New York Times video.]