French university students help Chechen peers find a route to Paris

Milana Bakhaeva was first touched by war at age 5, when Russian soldiers razed Yandi, the village near Grozny, Chechnya, where her family lived.

"The resistance fighters told us to leave, because they didn't want civilian casualties," Ms. Bakhaeva recalls. "Everything we had was stolen, and everyone who stayed there was killed."

Between 3,000 and 5,000 civilians have disappeared since Russia's second war with Chechnya started in 1999, according to estimates from Human Rights Watch. Nearly 150,000 have been killed, including roughly 40,000 children.

"There isn't a family who hasn't lost someone," says Aslan Iznur, a compatriot of Bakhaeva's.

Bakhaeva's family moved to Grozny, where she was eventually able to enroll at university. But the perils of war cut her education short. Fearing for their safety, her family moved to Ingushetia, then back to Grozny. Bakhaeva hoped to leave the country but was stymied both by finances and the difficulty of obtaining a visa.

"Everyone left; everyone wants their children to leave," says Mr. Iznur. The feeling that paralyzes the country, he says, is a conviction that, "If you're of Chechen origin, you don't have a chance."

But thanks to the efforts of a group of French university students, Bakhaeva and Iznur have both seen their lives turn around. One day recently Bakhaeva sat outside her studio apartment at Cité Universitaire in Paris, her long brown hair blowing in the spring breeze, and answered questions about her studies. Last fall, she and Iznur were among eight students selected to study abroad from the University of Grozny under the auspices of Etudes Sans Frontières (Students Without Borders), an organization started by French students.

Bakhaeva is enrolled in a master's program in journalism and political science at France's prestigious Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, better known as "Science Po." Her ultimate aim: to start a publication to give young Chechens a voice. Iznur hopes to study business.

A program allowing young Chechens to study abroad was first proposed in 1997 by Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen president killed last month. Seeing the frustration of the youths in his country, he asked Western countries to help educate Chechen college students.

But only Saudi Arabia and Pakistan responded. "There are a few hundred [Chechens] who went [to study abroad]," says Laure Salefranque, secretary-general of Etudes Sans Frontières. "Many are in Koranic schools, because that was the only opportunity they were given."

Then Ms. Salefranque and three other French students intervened.

"We wanted [Chechen students] to have a democratic education and develop intellectually," Salefranque says. "Chechnya is like a ghetto; it's hard to leave and hard to get back in. They have the impression that they're alone in the world."

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