Ingushetia is a small republic within the Russian Federation with a population of around 300,000. However, in October 1999, its population almost doubled in one fell swoop. When the second Chechen war broke out, between 200,000 and 300,000 Chechens fled to the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia, depending on the source. From then on, they eked out their lives as internally displaced persons in a wide variety of refugee camps. Traditional tent sites, disused agricultural kolkhozes, dilapidated or partially operational factories and improvised settlements consisting of huts made of corrugated iron and clay served as their accommodation. An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Chechens also lived in Moscow, most of them as a result of the wars. They found it difficult to find work there, housing was expensive and they suffered from racist threats from both the authorities and the population.

In 2003, I tried to document the lives of the Chechen women and men displaced from their homeland in both Moscow and Ingushetia. I also spent three days in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.

For many days I wandered around taking photographs in the various refugee camps. What particularly struck me was how clean and well organized the people were in their improvisation. Despite all the poverty and hardship, it didn't look like a slum. The people were putting up a strong fight against their homelessness and had developed great abilities to settle in the simplest and most absurd of places, in places that were not originally intended to house people.
This was most evident to me in the only partially decommissioned cement factory near Karabulak. There was the woman hanging her freshly washed clothes in the dusty environment inside the factory, the self-welded metal staircase as access to the “apartment” with the entrance door knocked through the wall and the conveyor belt converted into a “balcony”. The longer I think about it, the more a single word comes to mind: resilience. These people have lost a great deal: their home, their loved ones and, in a way, their future – and all this in their own country, the Russian Federation, which was supposed to offer them protection. In general, I am always amazed at the enormous ability of many people to make the best out of the most adverse circumstances, but perhaps even more so with the Chechens.

I wonder if this ability is learned and can be explained by their history. Displacement has played a defining role in the existence of the Chechens for a long time. In 1944, they all became indiscriminate victims of one of the greatest crimes of the Stalin era. Accused of collaborating with Nazi troops, they were deported alongside their relatives, the Ingush. Almost 400,000 Chechens and 100,000 Ingush were put on freight trains to Kazakhstan, where they had to do forced labor on plantations or in mines.

Within five years, a quarter of them had died. It was not until 1957 that Khrushchev allowed the deported peoples to return home. I met many older people who experienced the Second World War, were deported to Kazakhstan in 1944 in their early twenties, returned to Chechnya from 1957 onwards, and now, at the age of 80, had to live as displaced persons in refugee accommodation again. The deportation is part of a series of colonial subjugations, and the two Chechen wars were a consequence of this.

The three-day Grozny visit was the first and only time I have visited a war that is still partially active. The visit was not allowed by the Russian authorities and I was smuggled in, almost illegally – how the unchallenged passing of some checkpoints was possible is still a mystery to me today. When the checkpoints were behind us, we drove at high speed in the obligatory Lada into the center of Grozny. At some point, the houses began on the left and right, or rather, what was left of them. We drove through the city and it became clear to me that this was an extent of destruction that completely overwhelmed me. I hardly remember a house that showed no signs of war. So, I thought, it must have looked similar to German cities after the Second World War. Even President Vladimir Putin was reportedly shocked by the extent of the destruction, according to press releases following his visit in the spring of 2004.

I remember very well the feeling of being overwhelmed, thinking what do I want to photograph here, what can I photograph, and indeed, what must I photograph here? In the end, I took certain risks and three days went by quickly. The destruction was so immense that I couldn't even focus properly. Nevertheless, I just tried to work. We visited people in their half-destroyed houses, drove around and got an overview of this city, whose remnants were strewn over the ground. Here, too, I experienced resilience: a family having a picnic on a colorful blanket in the warm May sun in front of their destroyed apartment building, laughingly inviting us to join them, or the boy who sold us a good ice cream from a cool box over his shoulder. And then we met a woman who told us her terrible story, breaking down into tears and talking about her sons who had been killed. When we got into the car and drove past the woman, she was laughing with some other women.

No, I don't doubt for a second that the story she told me is true. But it made me realize that the presence of a journalist or photographer influences situations, that we also become carriers of messages and that we must always be aware of this and ask ourselves whether and which messages we want to convey. But the situation we experienced is also an expression of a coincidence that characterizes life: on the one hand, there is this great sadness for her sons, but at the same time, there is an irrepressible will to carry on with life. On the way back to Ingushetia, before leaving Grozny, we stopped at the side of the road and had a shashlik – it was the best shashlik I had ever eaten (at least until the next one was chosen as the best).

Ten years later, I paid a brief visit to Grozny, without any photographic ambitions. Nothing reminded me of the total destruction; instead, the skyline radiated modernity, the streets were wide and clean. Authorities must have expended enormous amounts of money to transform that wasteland back into a prosperous city, at least at first glance. To me, it all seemed like a shell, with life strangely subdued. The war was no longer visible, but it was still unpleasantly present. But perhaps this was the same as in German cities after the reconstruction? Or was this strange, intangible normality simply a result of what I had heard and read about Kadyrov and his way of ruling this republic?

It has been more than twenty years since my first visit to Ingushetia and Chechnya. That is a short time compared to the time it takes to heal the scars of war, and a very long time compared to how long a person can be in power. Back then, as today, the Russian Federation was ruled by the same man. Back then, as today, a “we will quickly solve this problem” turned into a bloody and long-lasting war with immense destruction. There are always people who predict things and are right in retrospect. In 1995, Dzhokhar Dudayev, Chechnya's first president and a former Soviet army general, said: “Chechnya has curbed [Russia's] appetite a little, but not stopped it. There will be another slaughter in Crimea. Ukraine will come into irreconcilable conflict with Russia. As long as 'Russism' exists, it will never give up its ambitions. Now, under the label 'Slavic', they want to subjugate Ukraine and Belarus according to the old pattern, gain strength, and then it will continue...”.