Lost generation: ... the children of Grozny amid the ruins of their town

• Published in: New internationalist 1996-07 (281), p.3-3
• Main Author: Ward, Olivia
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Children & youth; Children and war; Social conditions; Social conditions & trends
• ISSN: 0305-9529

I hardly needed expert evidence of childhood trauma. It was built into the lifestyle of war, in the way families lived in concentric circles around their homes as though confined by an invisible fence. The largest circle was for daytime, when cars heaved along the roadways, stall vendors blasted defiant Chechen music into the markets and people stood chatting in the open air. Then a smaller circle as the dreaded curfew approached and children were herded into their neighbourhoods. And finally the tight circle of the family hearth where doors were sealed and heavy wooden shutters bolted in an illusion of safety. In Grozny, as in many towns and villages across Chechnya, every night was a new throw of the dice. Sharing this dim half - life I sat with ten - year - old Aslan and his teenage sisters Fatima and Hodi. Their mother, Ritta, exhausted from her day of hospital rounds, lay on the couch massaging her feet. Tracing the lives of children in Chechnya was like descending through the levels of hell. Close to the bottom were children broken by physical as well as psychological wounds. Amina, her thin fingers wrapped around the hospital - bed railing in pain, sobbed almost absentmindedly, as if she had forgotten how to draw an ordinary breath. From her small pelvis a thicket of tubes sprouted, replacing the functions of organs torn apart by shrapnel.