Under an iron hand, Chechnya is reborn

GROZNY, Russia - In the evenings, unexpected sights appear in this city, which less than two years ago seemed beyond saving and repair.

Women stroll on sidewalks that did not exist last year. Teenagers cluster under newly installed street lights, chatting on cellphones. At a street corner, young men gather to race cars on a freshly paved road. Considering that this is the capital of Chechnya, it is a scene that feels out of place and from another time.

Throughout the city, local officials, most of them former rebels who waged a nationalist Islamic insurgency against Russia, lounge in cafes, assault rifles beside them.

Three years after a wave of guerrilla and terrorist attacks caused many analysts to say that Russia's war against Chechen separatists could not be won, the republic has fallen almost fully under the control of the Kremlin and its indigenous proxies, led by Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the Chechen president.

Kadyrov's human rights record is chilling, and allegations of his government's patterns of brutality and impunity are widespread. Yet even his most severe critics say he has developed significant popular support, in part because of the clear changes that have accompanied his firm and fearsome rule.

Fighting has been sporadic and small in scale for a second year. A large rebel offensive did not materialize this summer, as the separatists had predicted. Buoyed by a sustained lull in fighting and flush with cash, Kadyrov's government has rebuilt most of its capital and outlying areas.

Like Stalingrad after World War II, Grozny, the Chechen capital, has reappeared from the rubble. It has done so more swiftly than European cities revived by the Marshall Plan.

A recently as early 2006, Grozny was less a city than rows of shattered buildings overlooking cesspools. It now has electricity almost around the clock and reliable natural gas service. Many neighborhoods have water. Block upon block of housing complexes have been rebuilt, and families have moved into apartment buildings that a year ago were buckling shells.

Markets are crowded with products, from laptop computers and office furniture to air conditioners, flat-panel televisions, and new cars.

Improvements have also been made in outlying towns, and services are being extended into the Caucasus Mountains, the separatists' former stronghold. Many residents speak of a degree of peace they had not seen in 13 years.

"I compare how we used to live, and it is like we are in a fairy tale now," said Zulika Aliyeva, 46, whose home was destroyed during Russia's sacking of Grozny in 1999 and 2000 and who spent years squatting in a ruined building. The building she moved to recently has been partly repaired.

Russia's military defeat of the heart of the rebellion in Chechnya appears to flow, in the simplest sense, from a two-stage formula: extraordinary violence, followed by extraordinary investment. One corollary has been that allegations of human rights abuses by both Russia and its local allies have been largely ignored.

At the center of this formula has been Kadyrov, the rebel-turned-Kremlin ally who was widely labeled an illiterate bandit when he entered public life three years ago after his father, the president then, was assassinated by a bomb.

Kadyrov, like the republic he leads, has defied the dark projections. As Chechnya's president since this spring, he has become a populist who has managed to embrace Sufi Islam, Chechen ethnic identity, and Kremlin authority simultaneously.

His success has a paradoxical quality to it. Paramilitary units in his government are suspected of kidnappings, torture, and extrajudicial killings. Combat has not fully stopped and sporadic fighting has spread to neighboring republics. Large graves are full of unidentified remains - the victims, human rights advocates say, of a campaign to kill people suspected of being insurgents and punish their families. But several local people, each of whom had complaints about corruption in the reconstruction programs or inequities in the policies of distributing restored housing, praised him.

Kadyrov, they said, has driven his government to work and forced government-hired contractors to meet his harsh deadlines.

Chechen officials say security conditions have improved so much that the republic, closed to outsiders, hopes to reduce its checkpoints and allow foreigners to visit as soon as next year.