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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Opportunists at Work
Chechen guerrillas have created a grisly business on the side: hostage taking for revenge and (especially) profit. They grab journalists when they can, because the journalists usually work for companies that want their employees back and that can afford to pay big money. Former hostage journalist Dmitrii Balburov told ethnographer Valery Tishkov that he suffered bodily pains, hallucinations, and urges to self-destruction for months after his release. He had, he reported, come close to being killed by his Chechen captors:
When they were told a Russian journalist was to be brought to them as hostage, they were all bloody-minded because, after the attack on Dagestan, bombing had begun in Chechnya, with casualties. “Now we'll press him after full program,” they said meaning torture or even murder. “But when they pulled you out of the car and took off the hood and the ropes and we saw your mug, we lost all such thoughts – look he's not Russian! Are you a Kalmyk?” Yes, I said, I'm a Kalmyk. “But you, Kalmyks, were also deported, why don't you fight the Russians, why don't you rise against them?”
Later that guard told me that they would have killed me if I were Russian: they had twice decided to cut off my head and lay it out as a threat, as with the Englishmen, when the bombing got worse and when one of them had lost his home and family. […]
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