Fancy a holiday with a difference? Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed warlord who became prime minister of Chechnya last year, has declared the lawless province open for tourism.Twelve years of intermittent but brutal war may have all but devastated it, flattening its capital, Grozny, and destroying what little tourist infrastructure there was.
But that failed to deter Mr Kadyrov yesterday from revealing his dream of welcoming Western tourists to a region synonymous with kidnapping.
Until the hotels were rebuilt, his government said, tourists wanting to holiday in Chechnya could always camp. Mr Kadyrov's drive to "create interest for tourist visits", drew a lukewarm response from the British travel industry, with leading tour operators saying it was unlikely that Chechnya would be included in their 2007 or even 2008 brochures.
Although the Russian government, which has twice invaded the province to quell uprisings, insists the war is over, a small band of rebels in the southern mountains begs to differ.
Gun battles are common and kidnappings, though less frequent of late, still occur with alarming regularity. The Foreign Office warns against all travel to Chechnya, saying that Westerners are particularly vulnerable to abduction. Three Britons were seized and executed in Dec 1998.
More recently, Mr Kadyrov's army of irregulars have taken to sticking the severed heads of enemies on stakes in at least one village.
Chechnya is also not famed for its natural attractions but Salman Dalakov, the deputy tourism minister, insisted that Chechnya had many sights: "It is like Switzerland, only without the roads."
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