Akhmed, who spoke eloquently and thoughtfully, had spent eight years in his youth as the secretary of his local branch of the Komsomol (the Communist youth movement) prior to the Soviet collapse. In the 1990s, he set up a small business, but then war broke out and he joined the fight against the Russians. He claimed that during the second war, he did not fight, but helped the insurgency with supplies. He was arrested in 2005.
Capturing the brother of Russia's number one terrorist was a huge prize for Kadyrov. Akhmed recalled a year of torture and beatings: a cellophane bag was placed on his head and he was dangled in handcuffs from a hook on the ceiling. His captors approached from behind and prodded him with electric shock sticks. Sometimes, there were just simple old-fashioned beatings.
One day, he told me, instead of his Chechen torturers, a soft-spo- ken Russian man came into the room, who Akhmed suspected was a high-ranking intelligence officer. By this point, Akhmed was black with bruises, but the Russian told him he was not there to beat him. 'He was a philosophical kind of guy, he wanted to talk about life and the world. He asked me whom I would support if America started fighting Russia. I thought for a while, and then I said America. If Russia had behaved with a human face towards the Chechens for the past three hundred years, then without a doubt I would fight for Russia; its our neighbour after all. But that hasn't been the case.'
Akhmed was eventually brought to Kadyrov, who told him his father had also been arrested. Kadyrov promised Akhmed his father would be set free, on one condition: he had to go on television to denounce his terrorist brother, and pledge allegiance to Kadyrov as the true leader of Chechnya. For the sake of his father, he agreed. Kadyrov ordered his handcuffs immediately removed, and rushed to embrace him warmly. Akhmed was taken to a luxurious room where he was told to shower and given a change of clothes. A team of six psychologists was made available for the next weeks, to ensure he was ready for his coming out, and he was given a security detail.
He did give the interview to Russian television, but only part of it ever aired. The correspondent wanted him to say, on camera, how grateful he was to the Russians for having rebuilt Grozny so beautifully. Akhmed, whose father had still not been freed as promised, lost patience. He refused to take part in the wilful amnesia. 'I told him it was beautiful before, and it was destroyed by the Russians. Why should I be grateful if you've now rebuilt it, to fool people? Putin became president on the blood of the Chechens; if you want to create peace here, then just withdraw all the special units that are kidnapping and torturing people.'
After the scandalous interview, he was put back in a cell, and was held for a further two years. He was no longer beaten but he would often hear the screams of men being tortured and women being raped, he claimed. One night, he executed a long-planned escape (he wouldn't give away the details) and made it out of Chechnya, through other parts of Russia, to Ukraine, and across the Black Sea to Istanbul.
Akhmed expressed sympathy for his brother's goals, and glossed over the appalling terrorist methods used by the Caucasus Emirate, but even he spoke in the language of an oppressed ethnic group, not that of jihad. Islamism was merely the best way for the peoples of the Caucasus to unite against Russia, Akhmed said. In these times, it was the only possible vehicle through which to realize the long-standing desire for independence.
'Ever since the Russians started their conquest of the Caucasus, there has never been a generation when fathers could pass on the fruits of their labour to their sons: either they were killed, or deported, or humiliated. Every new generation had to start life again, from nothing. They cant understand that we are free people, a free nation. They want to make us like them. But I don't want to be like them. They tell us you should live in our system, and the system will give you bread, flour, and sugar. But if I don't like the system I don't want to live inside it. What am I supposed to do, then?'
IV
In the new Chechnya, however, it was no longer Russians telling Chechens how to live. Almost every key government post in the republic was occupied by a Chechen, who answered to Ramzan rather than to Moscow. Chechens were free to speak their native tongue and practice Islam, and were effectively ruled from Grozny, not Moscow. It was everything that the early proponents of Chechen independence had wanted. That was the compromise Moscow had made to keep control of the territory. But in return, the Chechens were required to recalibrate their memories of the past, and tolerate the Kadyrov personality cult. When Ramzan wanted to make a political point, hundreds of thousands of Chechens were rounded up and sent to the streets for 'spontaneous' marches. The crowds surged through the streets of Grozny waving flags, clutching balloons, and holding aloft giant portraits of Ramzan, who in time was branded Padishah, the emperor.
Most Chechens were genuinely relieved that Ramzan had brought peace; they knew the horrors of war all too well. Some of those appearing on television or at parades shrieking about their love for Ramzan were perhaps doing so genuinely. But the Chechens were a proud nation with a history of fierce adherence to the individual and the family; it was humiliating for them to prostrate themselves before an absolute leader. Many people whispered privately that they were horrified by the pomp and personality cult. Watching the Grozny parades, I was reminded of the words attributed to Dmitry Shostakovich about the bombastic end of his Fifth Symphony, premiered at the height of Stalin's purges in 1937: 'It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing," and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing." '6
Kadyrov's methods made him an international pariah, but Putin's backing meant he enjoyed immunity from retribution, and the West served as a useful rhetorical punchbag. He nevertheless sought to confer legitimacy on his rule over Chechnya using the approval of mercenary Western celebrities. Like nineteenth-century traders seeking favour at the courts of the Central Asian emirs, they happily came to Grozny, flown in on private jets to genuflect to Kadyrov and laud his pet projects, all in return for a fat cheque. Over the years, Brazilian footballers arrived to take part in a rigged kickabout at the central stadium (Kadyrov missed two penalties but managed to score twice nonetheless) and Mike Tyson came to watch a boxing match. The French actor Gerard Depardieu, who would later be given Russian citizenship, came to shoot a mediocre film and hang out with his 'good friend' Kadyrov. He grew upset when I asked about human rights in the press conference. Wafting through the lobby of Grozny City later the same day, his elephantine frame clad in a tent of a white linen shirt, he wagged a finger at me in mock sternness: 'So, they haven't killed you yet, English?' He looked immensely pleased with his joke, the basis of which was apparently that this ignorant Western journalist thought Chechnya a dark and violent place, when actually his friend Ramzan had built a charming new capital with beautiful five-star hotels.
Ramzan's thirty-fifth birthday in 2011 coincided with City Day, a newly anointed public holiday. Lavish celebrations culminated in a gala concert in the evening. Ostensibly the event was to honour the resurrection of Grozny, but everyone knew the real celebration was of its patron. After all, the fates of Kadyrov and his city were inextricably intertwined.
I crouched with my back to the stage at the newly constructed outdoor arena, which seated around two hundred VIP guests. I watched
Ramzan reclining in a front-row armchair, grinning with pleasure as a litany of second-tier Western stars performed for him, voicing eulogies from the stage. Jean-Claude Van Damme, the violinist Vanessa-Mae, and the singer Seal all took their turns to perform for Kadyrov.