Zelim Khan is a security guard at the entrance of a short hiking trail leading to an impressive waterfall near the village of Nkihaloy in the Argun valley of Chechnya. The holes in the rock on the right are caves, where many people from Nikhaloy sought shelter during the daily…
Ostblog Posts
These are the wives and children of two Chechen brothers (+ 1 Russian tourist) who were on holidays near the village of Nikhaloy in the mountains of Chechnya. They left their war torn homeland 17 years ago and moved to Yakutsk in north-eastern Siberia, where they are working in gold…
Gelani is from Shatoy, a small town in the mountains of Chechnya. During Soviet times he served in the Red Army in Turkmenistan. Pointing his fingers at the sunlit mountaintops around the valley, he would explain where the Russian and the rebel positions were during the war. He believes that…
Ahmad (36) is an ethnic Chechen who was born in Jordan. He told me how his ancestors moved there 150 years ago due to persecution during the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. In Jordan his family lived in a small but very intimate Chechen community. Nevertheless, they always wanted to…