Fighters fall back to mountain fortress

A tiny black figure across the valley scaled the sheer rock face, climbing like a cat burglar with his bare hands. High above a narrow gorge in the Caucasus mountains in southern Chechnya, the boy, a member of a mountaineering club, was training, onlookers said.

"Why would people be practising sport when there is a war going on? He is training for a guerrilla war", said Isa Utsiyev from Gukhoi, a hamlet more than 2,000m above sea level near the border with Georgia.

Grozny may not yet have fallen but the Chechnya war has already moved to the southern mountains, where fighters are preparing for a long campaign against the might of Russia's army. The terrain is ideal. Cliffs rise high above narrow gorges, wooded ravines lead into hidden side valleys. Sharp crags and tall medieval towers provide lookout posts above roads. Woods and rocky inclines provide cover.

Russia, in anticipation of the fall of Grozny, has dropped paratroopers in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains, to cut the route south. Following the trail of refugees who have fled to the mountains, Russian warplanes rocketed villages, roads and bridges in the past few days.

"There will be a war in the mountains, a guerrilla war. If they are bombing there, that means it is already war. We have everything for a guerrilla war. Everything is ready," said Mukhadim Khalimov, aged 32.

Trained in the Soviet Army, Mr Khalimov belongs to the "Abkhaz Battalion", a 500-strong fighting force of Chechens who fought in Abkhazia in 1992. He was visiting the commander of volunteers in Goi Thu, a small town 40km south of Grozny, to gather more men and arms. "We gather a group of 15 to 20 men and give them some training and act as a leader to them. Today I will find a group," he said. "It is easy to pass on knowledge. Bravery they already have."

Deeper into the mountains where wooded slopes disappear into the clouds, Chechen figures were thumbing a lift along the narrow road. "I just came up to stay with relatives, to rest for a week, to wash and eat," said one fighter returning to Grozny.

A veteran of the Afghan war, he said: "Now we are teaching the young ones. People are training up here, they are learning how to use weapons, how to strip down a rifle."

The Chechens' best chance, he said, was to draw the Russians into hostile terrain. "We are waiting. We did not attack the Russians when they first crossed the border, we waited until they first came to the city, where we know all the streets, all the buildings, and underground basements.

"It is the same in the mountains. We will wait, we have patience, we are getting ready and we will fight when they come."

Bravado, perhaps. But many men here seem natural fighters and all are experienced hunters. They learnt to shoot at a young age, hunting wild fowl in the summer, bears in the autumn and hares in the winter.

Isa Utsiyev, who said his two brothers were fighting in Grozny, was told by the local commander to stay in his village, to be ready to fight in the mountains.

People in Gukhoi have reason to be concerned. Early on Wednesday morning Russian jets flew over the hamlet, perched high above the valley. They returned at 11.30am, just when Lechi Sadayev's family, with their cousins, refugees from Gikalo, were having lunch. Fifteen children, two mothers and a grandmother were in the house when two rockets slammed through the roof, exploding into the walls.

Twelve children were hurt by shrapnel, including Mr Sadayev's two-week-old baby girl. She died on the way to hospital. She had not lived long enough to be given a name.

Mr Sadayev moved the rest of the family still higher up the mountain the same day. He was scared the jets, which fired 16 rockets, would return.

People had only fled across the mountains into Georgia once before - on 23 February 1944, when the Soviet government began mass deportations. Arbi Islamov and his brother Zelimkhan, leader of the village volunteers in Shatoi, believe the Russians aim to wipe out the Chechen people a second time. Mr Zelimkhan organised 37 hunters to search for two villagers taken hostage by 50 Russian paratroopers who dropped into woods above Shatoi.

They surrounded the troops in the morning fog, returning fire when the Russians started shooting. "We quickly killed two of them and wounded two more. The fighting lasted 20 to 30 minutes, and then one shouted `Don't shoot'. It was one of the hostages and his brother recognised his voice.

"He came up to us and said the Russians wanted to talk."

The Russians, cold and hungry, were taken prisoner. Helicopters flew over the next day, and his and four other villages were told if they did not hand over the paratroopers they would be bombed.

So far, the threat has not been carried out.