Scores of girls fall prey to 'madness of war'

Russia says Chechens are suffering from years of separatist war. Picture / Reuters

MOSCOW - Young girls in war-ravaged Chechnya are falling to a virulent mystery illness, stoking local suspicions that Russia has used the republic as a testing and dumping ground for nerve gas and toxic poisons.

Reports yesterday said four women and two teenage girls were taken to hospital with the disease's symptoms, taking the number of people to fall ill to almost 100.

The symptoms are extreme: blackouts, fits, breathing problems, nose bleeds, crazed laughter and hallucinations.

Some sufferers had prolonged violent fits and spasms up to 25 times a day and have become so delirious and disorientated that they could not recognise their own parents.

The authorities and some but not all of the medical professionals who have studied the problem have concluded that the mainly female victims are suffering from "mass hysteria". They describe this as a psychological breakdown prompted by over a decade of separatist war which they argue has led to chronic stress that is only now beginning to manifest itself, aggravated by Chechnya's crushing poverty, extreme hopelessness and heavy militarisation.

But the children's parents and some of the doctors who originally treated the girls believe a cover-up is under way and are convinced that the symptoms have been caused by nerve gas or poison.

The problem came to the authorities' attention on December 16, when schoolgirls in several villages lost consciousness. A handful of boys fell sick, too, but the vast majority of sufferers were girls or female teachers from at least five different schools.

The authorities' first reaction was to say that they thought the victims had been poisoned and a criminal investigation was opened. The schools were closed and it was suggested that the lavatories were likely to be the prime source of the poisoning and that the schools' water supply had somehow become contaminated.

That investigation was swiftly dropped, however, along with the poison theory, when a series of medical specialists, some of whom had flown into Chechnya from Moscow, said the disorder was purely psychological. The doctors blamed the media for heightening panic and triggering more cases of the condition with alarmist reports.

Treatment for what is apparently a psychological disorder such as intensive music therapy has proved largely ineffective though. In fact the only medical success in treating the condition is shrouded in mystery.

A group of the worst sufferers were taken to a hospital outside Chechnya where doctors injected them with substances that alleviated many of the worst symptoms but which caused the girls to put on huge amounts of weight.

The doctors have not said what was in the syringes.

Blood samples from five of the sufferers have also revealed the inexplicable presence of ethylene glycol, a toxic substance used in anti-freeze among other substances.

Separatist rebels claim that Russia has buried poisonous and possibly radioactive substances in at least three places since troops first entered in 1994. Moscow has remained silent.

However, Anna Politkovskaya, Russia's best known independent journalist specialising in Chechnya, is convinced that Moscow has and maybe still is using the republic as a weapons laboratory.

"It is now 2006. Behind us are 11 years of war with short breaks for clearing mines and unexploded shells," she wrote in the bi-weekly Novaya Gazeta. "But the ideology remains: as before, people who have the misfortune to live in Chechnya are seen as biomaterial for experiments."

- INDEPENDENT