Yet here in Argun, a small city just east of Grozny, relatives and neighbors agree that two women have disappeared within blocks of each other in the last few weeks -- both from families with ties to pro-Russian authorities.
Armed men came for Khalimat Sadullayeva, 37, the mother of four children, as the family was sleeping before dawn on Sept. 12.
Madina Mintayeva, 16, and her sister Khadizhat, 20, holding her year-old baby, were at home in Argun, Chechnya, when masked gunmen seized their mother. Chechens and human rights groups say such abductions are on the rise.
(Peter Baker -- The Washington Post)
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"I heard some sort of noise as they were climbing over the fence," recalled Sadullayeva's father, Khamid Magomadov, 65. "I saw that they were wearing masks and military uniforms. There were two of them pointing their rifles at me. My wife was saying, 'Why are you afraid of him? What can he do to you?' They didn't answer."
The men, all speaking Russian, put family members on the floor. "We thought they were coming for our son," said Tamara Magomadova, 55, Khamid's wife. But instead they found Sadullayeva. "Someone pointed at her and said, 'This is her,' " recalled Sadullayeva's sister-in-law, Madina. Three of the men grabbed the woman and began taking her away.
Magomadova chased the one who seemed to be the commander. "I ran after him and he pointed his gun at me and said, 'I'll shoot you if you don't stop,' " she recalled. "All the kids were screaming, shouting, 'Our mama is being taken away! Don't take her away!' "
The men offered no explanation. The only thing they said, according to relatives, was "Where's the money? Where's the bag?" Sadullayeva's parents said they suspected the men had heard a far-fetched rumor that guerrillas had paid her thousands of dollars because her house was destroyed in a firefight last year. But her parents said she received no compensation.
If they thought she was a potential shakhidka, or female martyr, her parents said, they were mistaken. "To be a shakhidka, you need to have somebody in your family dead," said Magomadova, a prominent local figure who served 10 years in the Soviet-era regional parliament. "She didn't have any victims. Why would she become a shakhidka? She had four kids."
Khamid Magomadov and other men in the family have been taken away in the past, but all were released within hours or days. Sadullayeva has been gone for more than five weeks and no government authorities have acknowledged having her in custody. "I never saw a woman taken away before," said Magomadov. "All that time, nobody touched women. Now they're starting to take them, too."
Armed men came for Zalpa Mintayeva at about 5 a.m. on Oct. 9. Like those who took Sadullayeva, they spoke unaccented Russian and appeared to be soldiers, relatives said. After determining that no men were in the house, they chose Mintayeva, a 46-year-old grandmother. "Okay, you're good enough for us," one of them said, according to her daughter, Khadizhat.
"I was begging them, 'Leave her, she's innocent,' " Khadizhat, 20, recalled. Her own two small children were crying, and her 16-year-old sister, Madina, was screaming in panic. "Why were they taking her away? They said, 'We're going to take you and your children away as well if you don't calm down.' I said, 'Take me, but leave my mama.' I kept asking them, 'Who are you? Where are you from?' They said, 'Shut up. You'll find out.' "
The men rifle-butted both sisters' shoulders as they struggled, they said. "One of them told me, 'Don't yell, don't cry. Otherwise we're going to kill you as well,' " said Khadizhat.
Their mother was taken away in her nightgown. As of two days later, she had not been found nor had authorities acknowledged holding her.
Relatives said Zalpa Mintayeva had no ties to the separatists. In fact, they said, her son-in-law -- Khadizhat's husband -- recently was shot dead fighting the separatists in the service of the Moscow-installed government.
As an aging, heavyset woman, relatives added, Zalpa Mintayeva would make an unlikely suicide bomber. "She's twice as big as me," said Arsayeva, her sister. "I could understand a skinny 20-year-old with a foggy mind. We're educated. Why would we need this?"
At least some of the women who have strapped on explosive belts in the last two years were unwilling accomplices, according to authorities, human rights groups, relatives and a failed suicide bomber who had been captured. Many say they believe the women are coerced, drugged, sold by relatives or threatened with harm to their children.
As the long-running war here touches and takes more lives, women now seem at the center. "Each woman who's gone through these two wars can tell you," said Yusupova. "Each one has her own kind of pain. One kind of wound might heal, but another right now opens up." She added, "We always ask the question: What gives birth to terrorism? The system gives birth to terrorism. No one else."
