In the intervening period two of my important official supporters had died: Rasul Gamzatov the national poet and a former member of the Supreme Soviet, in 2003, and his wife Patimat Saidova director of her fine art museum, in 2000; and Ramazan Khappoulaev director of the Kraevecheskii state museum under the ministry of culture, also in 2003. Other friends in the administration had retired, so it fell to my 21-year long academic collaborator Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov to try to get me a visa, which was well outside his previous experience.

Relations between UK and Russia had been in sharp decline with the UK ambassador hounded by Putin’s brown-shirted (Nashi) youthful thugs, in response to his mild speech about environmental damage in Russia at the G8 conference in June 2006. President Putin enriched by the rising prices of Russia’s oil and gas exports has gained in assertive confidence which had resulted in a series of clumsy international actions which avoided the niceties of diplomacy. Then former KGB officer Aleksandr Litvinenko, who had just gained UK citizenship as a refugee, was murdered in London in November 2006 by slow poisoning from radioactive polonium which is only produced by Chernobyl type reactors in Russia, and because of delivery problems is unlikely to be available commercially. It left traces everywhere. In particular there were traces on airplanes which had flown another KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi who had met him back to Russia. Attempts by UK police to interview Lugovoi in Moscow were refused.

The Russian government also attempted to link any help with the extradition from UK of two well-known refugees: Boris Berezovsky formerly the Russian media tycoon, known as an oligarch who continues to oppose Putin (another former KGB officer); and the senior Chechen rebel international spokesman Ahmed Zakhaev. In mid-winter of 2006 Russia cut Ukraine’s gas supply which in turn affected its transit pipeline supplies to Europe, a warning of what surely will happen in future. Russia also abrogated from the 1987 arms limitation treaty and was now moving troops into recently restricted border areas. Furthermore, in response to what Russia states is a threat of US and NATO proposals to site rocket-early-warning bases in Czech Republic and Poland, Russian TU-54 bombers have been over-flying North Sea British and Norwegian off shore oil fields. In addition, the chief Russian admiral demanded access by Russian warships to the Mediterranean. Russia was gradually returning to its sphere of influence Former Soviet States which gained independence in 1991. The usual method was for Russia to use its oil and gas hegemony and other trade relations to impose an economic dominance in concert with, or followed by, continuation of Soviet period military bases.

Against this background it should not have surprised me that my visa took 40 days of uncertainty to appear, which a staffer from Aeroflot in London where I bought my ticket said was now the norm. Also UK applicants had to pay double other EC citizens were charged for their visas. A same-day visa cost me £95. On the other hand I was personally treated well and was not obliged to queue outside. I had given the cultural attaché a copy of our book Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan and did my business in Russian. Just when I thought that all was well, they told me that the rules had changed and in addition to my invitation from either the Academy of Sciences or Magomedkhan’s carpet-weaving business, I needed an invitation from OVIR, which is the public face of the FSB secret police. OVIR controls registration (propiska) which continues although it is illegal according to the new Russian Constitution. I needed a one-page form signed by the single authorized officer in Makhachkala in Daghestan. He had to authorize it and the application was then sent to Moscow, where it was eventually agreed and then sent back to Makhachkala for reauthorisation.

On previous visits I was always met in Moscow and taken to the next airport or put up for the night. Times had changed and I was now on my own. The flight arrived at Shermetievo airport north of Moscow about 6 in the morning. I was determined to use public transport to find out if it worked. There is no train shuttle or inter-airport bus, so I waited for an hour in the warm morning sunshine for a crowded local bus which took me standing to the end of the Moscow Metro. There I joined the rush hour to go to Paveletskaya on the inner circle. There, after a 15-minute walk to another overland part of the station I caught the wide-gauge new express train to Domodedovo the internal airport in south of Moscow. This has recently been impressively rebuilt to European standards. It is indeed a pleasant airy place with many facilities. Although I was unable to buy the connecting ticket from Sibir-7, also doubling with Daghestan Airways, at the Aeroflot office in Piccadilly in London, Magomedkhan bought it for me with my credit card number. When I reached Domodedovo, it was a rapid task to present my email confirmation in exchange for a valid ticket. Moscow-Daghestan return cost about $US 280. For unexplained reasons we got an old Tupolev 154M plane from Daghestan Airways where the seats lurched back when you sat in them and then a bar in the seat stuck into you when you tried to sit up. They dispensed with the statutory safety drill presumably in tacit acknowledgement that any accident would be fatal. The same day as my return ten days later, there was a report of a similar Daghestan Airlines plane engine bursting into flames on the runway in Domodedovo at 4am. Happily, no one was killed or seriously injured and the plane duly flew off at 6.50am.

I liked the brightly-coloured emblem on the airplane’s tail with a sun-bird or simurgh, wings flapping against a golden disc, presumably the sun, over the green-blue-red stripes of Daghestan’s flag in a designer’s pretence of independence from Russia. Since 1992 the Russian-Chechen wars closed virtually all of Daghestan’s trading routes with its largest customer, Russia. Until the Daghestani economic boom began around 2004, it was very difficult to start up a business in Daghestan, with as much as a year’s turnover required as a deposit up front, as decided by the authorities. There was a baffling array of taxes and extortions by officials. The economy was stagnant and the result was and continues to be that Russia subsidizes over an estimated 80% of the Daghestan State expenditure.

At the nearly deserted Makhachkala airport, which had not been modernized, there was the same creaking carousel and long wait for my luggage. I was met by Magomedkhan who had been brought by Gussein in his new VW saloon car.

We wanted to see the difference not only within Makhachkala so we needed transport. It took a couple of hours and help from Magomedkhan’s son-in-law to find Abakar, an ex-army officer aged about 30, whom I hired as driver for $80 a day (£36) plus petrol, which cost a third of UK prices. He had a lot of experience in war zones, so he was suitably cautious on the new asphalt and the old dirt roads.

The first things I noticed driving back from the airport was the new dual carriageway and the endless vista of new two and three-storey stone-built houses. The population of Makhachkala had increased from about 350,000 to 500,000. This is partly because of more migration from mountain villages; partly because with the house-building allowed there was more room, and partly because in Daghestan the birth rate is high at over 20% population increase over a decade. There is plenty of food with relatively far more choice, but correspondingly more expensive than 12 years ago. There were more rich people as well as I strikingly saw when we visited Academician Gadji Gamzatov’s house in Kaspisk. Even with a third storey which he had built onto his house, which used to stand in splendid isolation, it was now somewhat dwarfed and quite surrounded by a large estate of palaces by the sea with its private beach and restaurant where we had a leisurely shaded lunch to the lapping of blue water and squeals of children bathing. They had so many hard and punishing years that I could only feel happy for them, that they had found some contentment and leisure. It is still reported that Daghestan alongside Ingushetia is the poorest republic in Russian Federation.

In contrast, it’s more tense financially in Magomedkhan’s home. His wife Raziat, a trained economist who works as the chief bookkeeper accountant for the Academy of Sciences, carries on after work until midnight to 3am, and at weekends, to make pasta and sweet cakes and pastries for sale in their apartment. This is needed to supplement their incomes with Magomedkhan’s stipend as a senior academy of sciences researcher with a small surplus from his carpet weaving enterprise. His finances were dangerously in disarray after his daughter’s wedding that came to over $10,000; his nephew required a payment of $12,000 to get into police college, having passed all the exams; and his sister needed over $5000 of medical treatment in Moscow to halt a cancerous growth behind her nose, near her optic nerve. In spite of all other dramatic changes there is still no affordable health insurance or consumer banking with credit cards and overdraft facilities. In 1995 average wages in Daghestan were a quarter of those in Moscow. In December 2002 CJES (campaign/ committee for journalists in extreme situations) reported that journalists in Daghestan were paid an average of 2000 to 2500 r ($625 to $780: @ 32r =$1) per month. Energy in Daghestan is mainly provided by hydro-electricity, for example from the new dam beneath Gunib. This also draws attention to the widespread neglect of pollution with the water near the dam entirely covered in discarded plastic bottles, and the scars of dumped garbage on steep mountain slopes in villages.

Everywhere we went there were new houses – Archi mountain village and hamlets at over 2000 metres; Levashi, the lowland centre of cabbages grown for the Siberian market and connected to Makhachkala by a new highway cutting through the mountains that saves 1 ½ hours over the old drive via Buinakst; Gapshima village, where as plant-hunters we picked cat’s pears the purple tattoo dye plant which grows in the cemetery; Gunib Avar, former stronghold of Shamil; Dargi towns: Tashpinar; Khajalmaki; and Akusha; Kumukh the Laki capital; Karakh village of Tabassarani weavers. We found nowhere without new buildings. Reporters and others told us that Makhachkala was the most rapidly developing city in the Russian Federation after Moscow. The strangest development was in the village of Shukti near Gapshima. A close associate of President Gorbachev Mr Magomed Chartayev was the former chief of the Sovkhoz state farm there, and built the locals a new village as a philanthropic act. It was true communism appearing during capitalism. During 1993-1996 he knocked down all the small old one-storey houses and replaced them with all different three-storey carved limestone stone houses. Each family was given a house according to the number of children and the ground floor was provided ready furnished. He died seven years ago and his smaller than average house is dwarfed by his son’s unfinished house with rusting scaffolding. The bank is now coverted into apartments. The whole village infrastrucure was never completed and his name does not even appear on the peeling Soviet sign at the entrance to the village. It has the only unfinished mosque in Daghestan. The portrait of Stalin that remains on the war memorial is colourfully painted and the old Communist administration centre stands with its front door effectively blocked by the Soviet neo-classical portico with its very odd three columns.

Daghestan is now the southern Russian border state with Azerbaijan. The main coastal road had been re-asphalted removing all potholes and random slopes that I remembered and feared from before. There are three main Russian military bases; firstly near the border with Azerbaijan; near Kizliar/ Khasavyurt; and a new base near Botlikh on the mountain road to Vedeno centre of Chechen rebels, with a new highway under construction from the highway to Botlikh, which will cut driving time by hours. In Makhachkala the dangerous driving is reminiscent of Turkey 20 years earlier before Draconian laws were introduced to calm down motorists. The number of cars has increased so that there are now frequent traffic jams in Makhachkala. There are large numbers of newly built petrol stations where I only remember the unavailability of petrol where it was sold in large glass vessels called ballon. The main traffic junction in Makhachkala was crowned by three or four large advertisement hoardings. Most noticeable was one for Harry Potter, celebrating the book launch on 7 July 2007 of “HP and the Deathly Hallows”.

The other more vivid form of communication is mobile phones. Even Magomedkhan’s mother Mayserat, who is a mountain woman of about 70 has her mobile hidden in the folds of her traditional costume. Did she visit neighbours less as she could now ring them? No, of course not. The phone was for talking to more distant people. There is email too in the larger cities.

Then there were everywhere wonderful strings of corner shops, selling for example a hundred varieties of beer. There are several wines from Daghestan too, as Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan are now independent from Russia. When Putin met the Queen in June 2003, in a formal exchange of gifts, she gave him a bottle of Scotch whisky, perhaps to remind him of how Britain has given Scotland some autonomy, and he gave her the best cognac from Daghestan. The many pharmacies were full of generic medicines far cheaper than UK, but still expensive by local standards. The women in the street looked striking taking advantage of the flood of cosmetics now available. There are a few supermarkets and private markets specialising in expensive delicatessen and imported foods, and at the same time the state market ‘number two’ is still vibrant and crowded. The restaurants had improved beyond recognition in Makhachkala but not for example in regional towns like Kumukh. “Briz” night club in Kaspisk was very modern and loud, with customers aged from 6 to 90. The teenage girls and boys followed tradition and danced separately in single-sex groups in circles of ten to twenty.

It appeared that I had become a sort of institution being the foreign link with many famous Daghestanis. Academician, Gadji Gamzatov, was delighted to see me. He told friends that I was his friend abroad and mutual complements flowed. The media was wheeled in. The state controlled main newspaper Novye Delo published a long interview of me with a photo, hooked on to the nomination of Magomedkhan and my book Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan, which was voted second oddest title in the world 2006 by the Bookseller Magazine. It was almost an obituary. There was also a long Daghestan TV interview around my collaboration with Magomedkhan of over 21 years, being the longest between a Caucasian and a foreigner, except perhaps for Stalin and Derzhinski – our joke. Dagestan will become even better known next year with two TV films which I helped set up: Mentorn’s David Dimbleby recreating Lermontov’s journey with Magomedkhan explaining the Caucasus; and Discovery Channel’s Seven remarkable people from Russian Federation with Magomedkhan and his natural dyed carpet production enterprise representing the Russian Caucasus.

Chechnya remained the elephant in the living room. Ever since the repulsed invasion of 1998 there had been an additional tension in Daghestan. In the whole world where there is Islamist terrorism, Daghestan is virtually the only country which has almost eliminated the Wahabi/Taliban/Al-Qaida threat. It is because Daghestan is made up of psychologically strong moderate Naqshabandi Sufis who can stand up to the Islamists far better than the ‘moderate’ Islamic ‘communities’ in other countries, which lack leadership and a focussed voice. This is backed up by massive Russian forces. There are frequent road blocks in place, even if not always operative. On a local Constitution Day on 26 July the authorities had organised a rock concert in Revolution Square, still presided over by a statue of Lenin. The OMON special police militia had been flown in and bussed in from Volgograd, and in Makhachkala every car was stopped and searched. It didn’t make the news, and I was told that it was a common occurrence. Our ex-officer driver passed through quickly, mainly eliciting a request for where he had obtained his sun-shaded windscreen from. Any attack on the televised rock concert was avoided. However soon after on July 27 the moderate deputy mufti Magomed Albogachiyev and his driver were killed by an explosion in Makhachkala. Magomedkhan said that he was a popular man with many friends. By August 3 five militants had been killed and three arrested in separate operations in Makhachkala and Sergokala, a local police spokesman said. There is an apparent contradiction where women can walk alone in the dark streets at night, but officials are targeted by extremists who wish to destabilise the region. We visited OVIR to register my arrival and we were treated politely and relatively quickly, even though we were sent outside to make some photocopies. It is not usually so simple for the locals. Magomedkhan a trained sociologist-ethnographer had also gained experience in this process during the past two months of delays.

Daghestan’s prosperity is relative to its poverty a decade ago, but it is still one of the poorest places in Russian Federation. Its current prosperity is a sort of delayed and seemingly reluctant reward from Putin for not supporting the Chechens when they invaded in 1998, and in general submitting and cooperating with Russian rule. The boom only began in 2003. On 15 July 2005 Putin had briefly visited Derbent, the oldest inhabited city in the Caucasus and Russia – the first Russian or Soviet leader to visit Daghestan in living memory. He also pledged half a billion dollars to be spent on strengthening the southern border with Azerbaijan, a perceived gateway for arms and drugs trafficking, money laundering and terrorist infiltration.

I was told that in 2007 the complicated business regulations, which were in consequence open to official extortion, were being simplified. In particular it would be simpler to register a new business without paying a year’s projected sales as an advance tax; and one overall tax would be charged instead of several. If it happened, in concert with air and rail routes being reopened in Chechnya and an increase in ease of travel in the region, prospects looked to improve.

Author – Robert Chenciner

A Kazakh Nomads’ expression of equine affinity states, “Kazakhs are born in horses”.

Perhaps that’s going a little too far, if taken literally, but there’s undeniably a very close alliance between man and beast in this vast tract of Central Asia.

The present Republic of Kazakhstan was created in 1991 on the dissolution of the USSR and is about the size of Western Europe, with a population of some 15 million people. In the southwest of the country laps the shores of the northeast end of the Caspian Sea; to the east is the Tarim Basin, and the Altai Mountains are to the north. It’s a region traditionally inhabited by nomad herders, but it is now rare to see the traditional gher (felt round-tent) settlements, as most of the nomads were settled under Soviet rule. There is still reputedly some transhumance between summer and winter pastures for some herders, however.

If we take a long stride from nomad life into the present day, we see the survival of horsemeat as a luxurious food in the Republic of Kazakhstan. In September 2004 I found myself there as an OSCE election observer when, as my official work excluded celebratory drinking, I grasped the opportunity to pursue a sober study of this neglected subject. I visited two yamarka (outdoor markets) – one in Almaty, the former capital and largest conurbation; the other 500km north in Stepnogorsk (Russian for ‘town on the Steppes’), a former closed Soviet town with notable levels of uranium, rare metals and gold.

Kumis (fermented mare’s milk) is perhaps the best-known horse product from the Steppes of Central Asia. In a restaurant in Astana I drank repeatedly from a palm-sized bowl of kumis. Once the sickly smell was put aside by application of my mystic sensory controls it tasted better and better, with a tang vaguely reminiscent of some highland malts.

The author with two Horse-Rearers.

Not satisfied without sight of meat on the hoof, I diverted our driver 10 km into the Steppe at Karabulak early on our return route from Stepnogorsk to Astana, the new capital that boasts unique Stalinist Post-Modernist architecture. The vast and endless Steppe has some forestation of small birch trees near the road and then opens out to rolling pasture and scrub. In the small area that I observed it was not the virgin desolate place of my imagination, but criss-crossed with a bewildering number of tracks and spattered with lakes of unknown radioactivity, linking the odd railway wagon shelter and a variety of bits of concrete, spun off from the ruins of kolkhoz State farms. Soviet civilization had left its mark and passed by.

We befriended Bukpeshev Sahintay Olzhabayuli, the horse-rearer in the village of Karabulak, where he looked after the co-operative’s 700 head of horse. The bad news was that a rustler had stolen 50 the previous night, which doubtless accounted for not a horse to be seen when we drove half an hour into the Steppe. His son-in-law uttered that timeless apology in broken Russian as we gazed sharp-eyed about the distant horizons, making horse noises; ‘The horses were here two days ago’.

There was also no glimpse of the two teams of horse-ranchers, each with three men, who alternated three days and nights on and off. I gave up and returned. Of course, no sooner had we returned to the asphalt when we saw another herd of horses, about 200 strong, by the road. Recalling the Horse Whisperer movie, I leapt out, making horse small talk. I was allowed near but they were reluctant to stay for a close-up photograph.

At the two markets, I met, questioned in Russian, and photographed my informants; all female horse butchers, sausage makers and vendors, and their array of products. In Stepnogorsk I was assisted by Kanat Ibrayev, a local post-graduate who had been our official OSCE interpreter. He was one of 12 Kazakhs who had spent a year in an American University, and now works in planning in the Department of Transport in Astana.

So, what does it taste like?
The extremely lean cuts are rich dark and deep-red meat, slightly sweet, redolent of venison but much more tender. Because the horses are Steppe reared, in what must be an original source of the term ‘free range’, there is little fat. In the great intestinal sausage (below), where two thin strips of meat and fat, cut from the edge of the length of the rib cage, are stuffed with crushed garlic salt and pepper – there the fat tastes like the richest butter. My Caucasian Russian friend, who had survived his Soviet Military service there, thanks to the horsemeat, dared me to ask “Is the large intestine preferable to the small intestine for sausage making”; “Of course (stupid question)” was the Almaty woman sausage-maker’s tart reply.

I was hoping that the Kazakh language had a hundred words for horse as the Inuit, Sami and Nenets all reputedly have for snow, but there are far fewer. Breeding, eating, racing, riding and working horses are all distinct animals. For example a breeding horse is not for eating, and, conversely, a horse destined for the dining table, will not be used for breeding.

Stepnogorsk market words for both breeding and eating horses are:
Meren: A gelding.
Zhabakhý (PRON: zhuh-BA-khuh): Up to one-year-old of both sexes
Tay: One- and two-year-olds of both sexes.
Kuman: A three-year-old male.
Bital: A three-year-old female.
Biye: A three- to four-year-old male and female.

At the rear of the hectare-size market, arranged in rows of wooden stalls, was the covered, refrigerated meat section. Through plastic cold doors there were about 40 stalls in a clean and chilly room. Only one sold horsemeat (and beef). The others sold beef, chicken, and mutton. In Astana market we were told that there are two separate rooms for storing meat; one for horse, beef, mutton and chicken, the other for pork and pork products.

We were helped by a partner of the horse stall, Ainagul Sadvakasova, whose daughter Aigul was studying foreign languages. In English she recommended The Aelita Café, round the corner, for the best horse dishes in Stepnogorsk. Unfortunately it was closed.

On their display table, amongst other meats, were four raw cuts arranged in a square – çürek (heart), baür (liver), kharim (stomach), and öpke (lungs). They also had Khazi (the main rib) and the mane, a beehive-shaped cross-section of meat and fat, both special delicacies. For the most respected guests there is an oval fillet from the chops, called omirtkIa. The oblong rump is called kesekyet, which means ‘meat to be divided’, and is used in bestirmek, the delicious preserved meat which is served sliced cold.

There was various sausages, ready for cooking, called shruzikI and kIarta (the small intestine, stuffed with chopped offal). And, of course, the great intestinal sausage (5-6cm diameter), where two thin strips of meat and fat are cut from the edge of the length of the rib cage and stuffed with crushed garlic salt and pepper. A 60cm length is then tied off, cooked, and eaten cold. When I commented that not all parts of horse were on display, they looked me in the eye and told me “we eat all of the horse!”

Yesil (Green) Bazaar, Almaty. The horsemeat was sold under a sign saying “Konili”, a separate part of the meat section of the market, which was as clean and spotless as Stepnogorsk. Each meat section displayed a small, tin flag, featuring a silhouette of the appropriate animal. I was reminded that Mareshchal Kutusov, after the battle of Borodino, repeatedly intoned that Napoleon’s army would be eating horseflesh in Russia before the winter of 1812 was out. He used the words “loshadinoye miase”, meaning beast-of-burden, as opposed to konili, meaning noble steed.

To crosscheck and add to what we saw and heard, I had the bible of Kazakhstan cooking – The National Cooking of Kazakhs, (Natsional’naya Kukhnya Kazakhov, a generous gift from Mary Springer who was then head of public affairs for Mobil (now Exxon) in Kazakhstan. Inside the book I found a contemporary photograph of a mountain summer encampment of two ghers with about eight horses. The photograph, I learned, had been slipped inside by the Kazakhs, who gave Mary the book in the first place. The first food section is devoted to horsemeat. There are captioned photos of cuts, recipes and serving dishes. Most favourite are cold dishes of horseflesh: kazy, shuzhuk, zhaya, zhal, karta and so on.

The kazy sausage recipe shows that the raw sausage is dried, boiled or smoked. If drying, it is better to dry kazy by warm weather, hanging them out for a week in a sunny, aired place. For smoking, it is best to place kazy in dense smoke at 50-60 degrees C, for 12-18 hours and then dry them for 4-6 hours at 12 degrees C. If boiling, Kazy should be boiled for 2 hours in a broad vessel on slow fire. The kazy should be pricked in several places to avoid bursting during boiling. Kazy are served cut into layers and arranged in a circle on a large plate with onion rings and green peas.

Shuzhuk is made of equal weights of horsemeat and suet. The meat is rubbed with salt and kept for 1-2 days in a cool place at 3-4 degrees C. Guts are washed and kept in salt water. The meat and fat are cut into small pieces and stuffed into the gut with salt, pepper and greens. The ends are then tied and the sausage is hung in a cool place for 3-4 hours. Shuzhuk is then smoked at 50-60 degrees C for 12-18 hours and then dried for 2-3 days at 12 degrees C. Dried or smoked shuzhuk is boiled on a low fire for 2-2 ½ hours and served in thin 1 cm slices on a plate, decorated with onion rings and greens.

Zhaya is made from the horse’s hip. The upper muscular layer with fat is cut off and salted. Then it is dried, smoked and boiled. Zhaya is served in slices decorated with greens.

Zhal is an oblong accumulation of fat in the undercrest part of the horse’s neck. It is cut off with a thin flesh layer, rubbed with dry salting mixture and put in a pan for salting. Then it is dried for 10 hours. Zhal can be smoked and boiled. Before boiling zhal is soaked in cold water; then it is boiled on a slow fire for 2 hours. Zhal is served both hot and cold, cut in slices and decorated with onion rings.

Karta – not for the faint-hearted. The thick part of the rectum is washed, without removing the fat, and then carefully turned inside out so that the fat is inside. It is washed once more and then tied up at both ends. Karta can be dried or smoked. To dry karta it is covered with fine salt and kept in a cool place for 1-2 days, then dried out. Karta needs to be smoked for 24 hours and then dried for 2-3 days. After washing it well karta is boiled for 2 hours on a slow fire. It is served cut into rings and decorated with green pepper or dill.

Sur-yet. Horseflesh is cut from bones, tendons, cartilages, and the fat removed. The meat is cut into rectangular pieces 0.5 to 1 kg each, salted and kept in a cool place for 5-7 days. Then it is dried for 10-12 hours. Sur-yet is smoked like zhaya and zhal and consumed only boiled. Before boiling it is soaked in water. Sur-yet is boiled for 2 hours on a slow fire and served cut into thin slices with onion rings and greens.

For those wishing to rush out to their nearest Kazakh market and stock up on horsemeat; In Stepnogorsk, hot smoked, cold smoked, wind-dried and salted horse all cost 1600 tengis per Kg (250 tengis = £1 sterling), while fresh meat costs 600 tengis per Kg for all meat, where lean and fat were considered as equal. In Almaty the raw Great Sausage costs 500 tengis per Kg; raw meat costs 500 tengis per Kg for lean rump, and it’s 800 tengis per Kg for rib – more expensive because it included fat. Cured meat was more expensive, with salami at 800 tengis per Kg, and bestirmek at 1500 tengis per Kg.

A one- to two-year-old horse of 150 – 160 kg (dead weight) is slightly less expensive than the five-year-old horse 280 kg (dead weight), which is considered the better meat. It Almaty they said that a nine-month colt tasted even better. Like spring lamb or sucking pig, I suppose.

Bon appetite!

By Robert Chenciner with Kanat Ibrayev

Russia, since well before the 16th century’s Tsar Ivan Grozny (same name as the city, meaning ‘Terrible’) regarded Caucasus as a buffer between the then Ottoman Turkey, and Persia. As part of the long-advancing Russian fortified line, Grozny was founded as a fortress in 1818. During the 1800 – 1864 Russian subjugation of the Caucasus, Daghestani and Chechen Mountaineers resisted though outnumbered 100 to 1, notably under Daghestani – Avar Imam Shamil, from 1831 to his honourable surrender in 1859. That period was followed by many seeking exile in Ottoman lands.

Stories of the war were famously recorded by Tolstoy and Lermontov, who were stationed in Grozny.

In 1823 oil was found in Grozny but not exploited industrially until 1893 when the train line was built.

The Chechen Soviet Autonomous Republic was imposed in 1922 and then changed to Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic (ASSR) in 1934. In 1937 14,000 Chechens were purged, and in 1944 Beria and Stalin liquidated the ASSR and deported 390,000 Chechens and 90,000 Ingush, on the pretext of collaboration with Nazis, in spite of 40,000 Chechens fighting with distinction in the Red Army. 20% of those deportees died in frozen cattle trucks on the journey to Siberia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In total, 200,000 Chechens and 30,000 Ingush had died in harsh exile by 1957, when Krushchev restored the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. In 1952 316,000 Chechens were registered in Central Asia.

Grozny had become the 2nd oil refinery centre in the USSR by 1989, when its population was 400,000, of whom only 1/3 was Chechen. There were 294,000 Russians in Chechen-Ingush ASSR. In the 1989 census there were near 1 million Chechens counted in the USSR, of which 3/4s were in Chechen-Ingush ASSR.

The break-up of Soviet power saw Djokar Dudayev democratically elected president in 1991 for Chechen independence, which was blocked by Russia. Russians left Chechnya and by 1993 the population of Grozny was 118,000.
Between December 1994 and August 1996, the 1st Russian war was waged on Chechnya, which resulted in extensive destruction. Dudayev was killed in April 1996 and Maskhadov made a peace agreement with Lebed-Yeltsin in September of the same year, which the Russians, incidentally, never implemented. For example, they failed to rebuild Grozny, which had suffered worse bombardment than Berlin, and an estimated 24 times bombardment of Sarajevo.

Maskhadov was democratically elected president in January 1997.

Though the true numbers of Chechen casualties was not known, Ahmed Zakhaev gave estimates of 200,000 with hundreds of thousands of refugees in Ingushetia, Daghestan and Southern Russia. There were also 15,000 elderly Russians killed in Grozny, leaving only some 30,000 survivors.

The Sept 1999 apartment bombs that former Col. Litvinenko has exposed as agent-provocateur, Stalin-style actions, in addition to warlord Shmail Basayev’s (more below) ill-judged incursion into Daghestan in August, condemned by Maskhadov, were Putin’s pretext for election victory, linked to 2nd war that effectively continues today. June 2000 saw Chechen, Akhmad Kadyrov, appointed by Moscow as administrator of Chechnya – the population of destroyed Grozny varied between 90,000 – 190,000 (rising to 223,000 in 2002).

The nature of war changed in June 2000 with the first suicide bombers in Chechnya, and in July 2002 in Moscow. Always condemned by Maskhadov, responsibility was claimed by Basayev. In Oct 2003 Kadyrov was ‘elected’ president in deeply flawed elections. Putin took the war outside of the Russian Federation, when Yanderbayev, Dudayev’s brief successor before Maskhadov, was murdered in Qatar by two, since convicted, Russian SVR agents in February 2004. In May 2004 Kadyrov was murdered in the Stadium bomb on Victory Day, leaving his savage son in charge of Chechen self-policing. On 8 March 2005 Maskhadov’s corpse was exhibited as a Russian casualty, and the best peace negotiator, who Putin repeatedly refused to talk to, was lost. On 10 March Basayev promptly announced a successor – Abd al-Khalim Saidullayeva, who Zakhaev had said was an an anti-Wahhabi cleric, who had been close to Maskhadov.

Among many other NGOs, Amnesty I, Memorial, Helsinki, HRW, IWPR, US State Department and the UK Home Office CIPU have all reported massive Human Rights abuses, but Europe and US have virtually remained silent. Russia has leadership of G8 this summer with a large conference planned in summer 2006. Will anyone mention what’s going on in Chechnya? More importantly, will they discuss that what’s happening can technically be defined as genocide?

Chechen social history
Chechnya occupies a small diamond-shaped area less than 150km across. The top is plains and the lower part the heartland in the northern Great Caucasian Mountain chain. From antiquity there were volnaya obchestva, similar to & smaller than ancient Greek city-states – polis, ruled by a local council of elders. Similar to the Highlands of Scotland, over 130 clans or teips were recorded in late 19th century with combined clans or tukkhum. In spite of Shamil’s attempts to impose Sharia Islamic law, and in later years moves to impose Tsarist Russian law, the traditional Customary Law system called adat continued – and does today. The worst aspect was blood feud vendettas that were stopped in 1923, but reappeared after the Soviet period.

Sunni Islam spread during the 18th and 19th centuries in a predominantly animist society. Membership of Naqshbandi and Kadyriye Sufi tariqats were inherited within families and clans. Fierce Soviet suppression of Islam from 1928 to 1938 was only eased during Glasnost when c1988 people were permitted to go on Hajj to Mecca. Young men were targeted by well-financed Saudi Wahhabis and converted, which split families because Wahhabis ban sheikhs, shrines and the act of revering ancestors, an essential part of Caucasian Sunni Islam. The independent warlords, such as Basayev, have converted to Wahhabism and claim responsibility for suicide attacks in Russia and Chechnya. My Daghestan academic colleague Dr Magomedkhanov estimated that by 2002, some 25% of young men in Chechnya were Wahhabis, compared to 5% in neighbouring Daghestan.

Parties involved in the Chechen war
It is usually confusing to work out who is responsible for what, in Chechnya, so here are the ‘participants’. On one side, there is the Russian Army, which is making a living by extortion following cleansing operations, black market in arms, drugs & trafficking of people. The Russian FSB, put in by Putin to balance the Army and according to ex-Lt. Col. FSB Litvinenko, likely as corrupt; And the pro-Russian Chechen administration and security personnel.
In the middle are Chechen, Russian and multi-national organised criminal groups.

On the other side are the Maskhadov pro-democratic separatist rebels, such as Zakhaev; the independent Chechen warlords, such as Basayev, who are Wahhabi fundamentalist and, according to President Putin, who seeks to link the war to international terrorism, foreign Islamist and Arab forces. However, only Russian-made arms have ever been found in Chechnya.

Of course, rapid changes in local conditions have given rise to a variety of different alliances, and the organised criminals are often part of most of the above groups. The victims of this war are the civilians in Chechnya, a diminishing number of refugees in Russia and an estimated 15,000 dead and 60,000 – 100,000 wounded Russian military, who have returned to their homes throughout Russia; and of course tens of thousands of brutalised FSB officers who have served 3-6 month tours of duty!