The last time I saw American aid worker Kenny Gluck he was joking about violating curfew.
Doctors Without Borders had imposed the security measure to protect Gluck and his colleagues working in the southern republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia.
Gluck, a 38-year-old New Yorker, was pushing the curfew’s limits to be with us, to share a few beers and a few thoughts about the brutal Chechen war.
We took comfort in Kenny’s practiced nonchalance. But we all knew, Kenny more than anyone, that the threats surrounding him and other foreigners working in Chechnya were not to be laughed off.
That was a month ago in Ingushetia. Today, Gluck is being held captive, almost certainly in Chechnya, probably by a band of the separatist rebels who have been fighting Moscow’s forces for much of the last six years.
Gluck is an old hand in Chechnya, with experience dating to the first Chechen war of 1994-96. He speaks Russian well. He knows that the Chechen war has many risks and few rules.
Yet Gluck chose to take the risks because the Chechen people are desperate. When abducted Tuesday, Gluck was delivering medical supplies, a critical function in Chechnya that Russian authorities have proved either unable or unwilling to perform.
“They talk about normalization in Chechnya, but the vast majority of people being treated by Chechen doctors are coming in with war wounds,” said Gluck, who works for the Dutch branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders. “This includes Russian soldiers. Russian soldiers being treated by Chechen doctors with MSF medicines and supplies.”
Gluck mixes his passion for helping people with a skepticism born of having worked in Chechnya for so long. All wars are exercises in cynicism, but the goings-on in Chechnya can shock even the most jaded observers.
People, weapons and passage are bought and sold with no regard for the stated aims of either the Russian forces or the Chechen separatists.
“The Chechen people do not feel they are part of a war,” Gluck said last month. “They feel they are simply being preyed upon. … They feel they are being held hostage.”
Now Gluck is the hostage.
He was abducted last week in the town of Starye Atagi, about 10 miles south of Grozny, the Chechen capital.
As with most things in Chechnya, the accounts of Gluck’s seizure are confusing, contradictory and disturbing.
With almost all its roads blocked, Starye Atagi now has only one way in and one way out, past a Russian checkpoint. At the same time, Russian forces were conducting a sweep of the area about the time of Gluck’s abduction, local officials said.
Yet somehow a group of armed men was able to stop Gluck’s convoy–well marked as carrying humanitarian aid–and spirit Gluck out of the area.
Chechen rebel leaders deny they seized Gluck. They imply that Russian special forces may have been behind the disappearance.
This is possible, as is most anything in Chechnya. But Gluck’s kidnapping bears all the signs of previous, Chechen-engineered abductions.
The rebels are a loose confederation of groups large and small, some with competing interests and allegiances. Some are religious fanatics. Some are malevolent killers. Some have a history of kidnapping foreigners and killing them if ransom is not paid.
One of the highest-profile cases was the murder of Fred Cuny, an intrepid American aid worker who was executed in 1995 along with three Russian colleagues. Cuny’s death, like those of humanitarian workers, businessmen and journalists in Chechnya, hangs over any foreigner wading into the Chechen morass.
I remember once last year when my guide and bodyguard in Chechnya interrupted his random small talk to drop this gem.
“You remember Fred Cuny?” asked the guide, who was not just my sole ticket into Chechnya at the time but, more importantly, my sole ticket out. “I was part of the team that protected him. I was there when he got killed.”
“Uh-huh,” I answered, stalling. I was wondering whether it was true and what it meant for me in a place where I was just another commodity.
“Why are you telling me this?” I finally managed.
The Chechen swore, more out of habit than menace.
“He was American,” my bodyguard observed. “You are American too.”
In a lot of places in Russia, Kenny Gluck’s being an American would help him avoid trouble. But in Chechnya his foreign status made him a target. Though no ransom demands have been made, if this kidnapping follows form his abductors will soon start asking for millions of dollars.
The Kremlin says it sent Russia’s army to Chechnya to help the Chechen people. The Chechen rebels say they, too, are fighting for the people. No doubt whoever kidnapped Kenny Gluck would mention similarly lofty goals.
But it is Kenny Gluck and people like him who truly are helping the Chechen people. Until last week, that is.
