THERE was a time when Ibragim Magamadov would have condemned the Chechen hostage-taking that left 118 innocent people dead in a Moscow theatre a fortnight ago.

The 30-year-old car mechanic had a decent life in Chechnya and was devoted to his wife and two children. But in 1999, just after Vladimir Putin launched Russia’s second war in a decade against Muslim separatists in his homeland, something happened that changed his opinion of the Russians forever.

“I was back in my home town for a few days, in the Urusa-Martan district of Chechnya,” he said. “One Monday night the Russian soldiers burst in and pushed our family into the kitchen. They were holding me with a gun to my head. I could feel their breath on my ear and I could smell the vodka on it.

“They ripped my 19-year-old sister’s dress off and one of the soldiers raped her on the kitchen table. I can still hear her screaming. I can still see her struggling. Those people you call terrorists, they have been there, too.”

In the Chechen refugee camps of Ingushetia, everyone has a similar story. Up to 100,000 Chechens have been killed in the fighting and suffering is part of their lives. Most are sympathetic to the families of the Moscow siege victims, but none will condemn the terrorists unequivocally.

“We know what suffering means,” said Sara Shipyeva, 45, a former oil technician from Grozny, the Chechen capital, “but you must realise that we understand the point of view of the hostage-takers in that theatre, too. They had run out of options.”

There are 3,784 refugees like Sara at the Bella refugee camp on the Chechen-Ingush border, some of the 120,000 who have been holed up in Ingushetia for the past three years. They live five or six to a tent and survive on the charity of international aid workers.

November is always difficult. Temperatures plummet and, if the gas heaters go off, they know that some will die. Now the fear of Russian reprisals has been added. The first reports are coming through.

“Last Monday, Russian soldiers came to my cousin’s house in Chechnya in the village of Chechen-Aul,” Malika Gaysomeva, 50, said. “They came at 2.50am and took one of the sons. They came back ten minutes later and took the other. Isa and Ismail, they were 32 and 26. They were found shot to pieces by the river. They were just chosen at random. It was revenge for what happened in Moscow.”

There is growing anxiety among the refugees that they will be next on the list. Humanitarian organisations say that they are right to be worried.

Since early last week, Russian troops have set up positions with armoured personnel carriers on the edges of some camps. “We know there is a plan to drive the refugees back to Chechnya by the end of the year. This could be a preliminary to the operation,” one international aid worker said. Russian soldiers say that they are there to protect the refugees, but camp residents tell of the Russians firing flares and taunting them.

The anger that has swept Moscow in the past two weeks is understandable, but unless President Putin can find a political solution, the suffering will continue, as will the calls for revenge — from both sides.

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