Masked men burst into the house of Iman Bagalova's daughter shortly after she moved back to Chechnya from a refugee camp.
"They taped up her mouth, they taped up her husband's hands. Then they stole everything, the television, the clothes, her jewellery. They even stole her shampoo," Bagalova said, brushing away tears of rage as she launched into her story.
"I have a 15-year-old son. How can I take him back to that?"
Bagalova lives in Rassvet camp, a muddy factory yard housing 165 tents near the border of Chechnya. She is one of thousands of Chechens still living under canvas four years after Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, sent troops to smash the region's separatist
government.
President Putin -- who faces re-
election next month -- refuses to negotiate with separatists, who kill troops on a near-daily basis, and insists the region is returning to normal. Authorities, keen to close down the tent camps, have been pressing refugees to go home for more than a year.
Washington expressed its concern last month in a sign of growing world attention to a conflict now more than nine years old. Refugees fear the camps are only being closed because they are clear symbols that there is no let-up in the violence.
"They are giving us a deadline to leave the camps by March. Why? Because on March 14 Putin has his election and he wants to show the world everything is fine down here," said Malika, 45, as she dismantled her tent in the Bart camp, nestled beneath the snow-covered Caucasus mountains.
Humiliated by armed rebels in a 1994 to 1996 war, Russia gave the region de facto independence. But after three years of chaos, Moscow sent the troops back in, vowing to crush separatism for good.
Some 70,000 Chechen refugees live in Ingushetia, a region on Chechnya's western border, and one in 10 lives in faded green tents like Malika.
Bart is no more than a sparse group of tents and huts in a rubbish-strewn field alongside the main road to Chechnya. It is due to close in the next few days.
"They are not actually forcing us to leave Ingushetia," said Malika. "But the Emergencies Ministry and the Chechen Administration say that if we don't do what they want, they won't give us what we need."
Authorities insist refugees, who rely on the government and aid groups for all essentials, may stay in Ingushetia once they leave the camps. But aid workers say little is being done to provide promised alternative housing.
"They are doing things in such a way that they can say there is a viable alternative, but on the ground they will do whatever they can to make sure shelter is not provided," said one aid worker, who asked not to be identified.
Many refugees say they will move to join Chechens living in abandoned buildings -- mainly old factories or collective farms dotted around Ingushetia -- when the tent camps are closed.
But rights groups say refugees outside the tent camps are vulnerable to official pressure to return to Chechnya.
"You can cut the gas or power by telling the owners, who are local people, to pay a huge bill," said Timur Akiyev from rights group Memorial, which has conducted extensive research into accusations of rights abuses by Russian troops in Chechnya.
"Refugees cannot stay in a factory without gas or power, they would freeze to death."
When refugees go back to Chechnya -- where groups like the Memorial cannot work freely -- they are very hard to monitor.
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