A body has recently been exhumed a half a kilometer away, where, until recently, the Dzerzhinsky Division of Russia’s Special Purposes Forces had been stationed. Stray dogs have been digging around the large but shallow holes here, used by the military to camouflage their equipment. The behavior of the dogs, and sad experience, led the villagers to conclude that more bodies must be buried here.

So they dig. First, they extract three beheaded corpses. When it becomes clear there are more, the villagers ask local officials to investigate. But they refuse. No one wishes to be associated with any inquiry into wrongdoing by this infamous brigade. Consequently, the nightmarish procedure continues in the presence of only this one journalist.

Soon the beheaded remains of 12 other men are unearthed. The bones are transferred to the Shali graveyard and their clothes hung on the graveyard fence in what has become a tradition here–so that people from all over Chechnya, looking for relatives abducted by the military, can identify their loved ones by pants, jackets or glasses.

I speak to Muslim Nasaev, a little boy from Grozny. He is 9 years old and goes to school, when he has time. He came here with his father as soon as word reached them that “new corpses” had been found. For almost five months they have been trying to find traces of Muslim’s older brother, taken from their home by masked federal forces in late December. The boy is extremely upset. “This is not his,” he says with desperation, examining the clothes.

“And what if you are not going to find him?” I ask.

“If I survive, I shall revenge what I cannot find.”

I feel scared because he does not cry. Muslim has already decided everything for himself. He knows what he will pursue, and how he will go about it.

Soon it will be five years since war broke out again in Europe’s Chechen backwater. Five years of such grim life is too much for adults, let alone children. Official propaganda never fails to emphasize the diligence of Chechen students. But away from school, after the deaths of so many friends and family, how do they live? Increasingly, they plant bombs or blow themselves up. It is no accident that the most famous of Chechnya’s “live bombs” involved 15-year-old Alina. A half-Chechen, half-Russian native of the village of Achkhoy-Martan, she drove a truck laden with explosives into Grozny’s pro-Moscow administrative buildings in December 2002. The building, along with more than 80 employees and visitors, was reduced to rubble. In this way, Alina avenged the death of her brother, also killed by Russian forces. Today the blasts of roadside bombs planted by children like her have become a daily staple of this forgotten war.

These children do not go to the mountains to join Chechen resistance forces. They belong to no formal terrorist organizations. No adults equip them, or send them to do their bidding. They are merely a product of the air they breathe. If the sentimental international community were suddenly to send sweets and cookies as humanitarian assistance, these children would receive them with indifference.

“What do you love?” I ask Muslim.

“I love it when mother does not cry,” he replies. “I want to look for my brother so that one day, when I find him, dead or alive, my mother will stop crying.”