"Come to Chechnya, it's really dangerous!"

[maximus otter]

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.

Armed police officers on patrol in downtown Grozny, Chechnya

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.

Mr Kadyrov's army of irregulars has 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."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/20/wchech20.xml

maximus otter

 

[shaldag]

Hey, sounds good. I'll add it to my tour, right after Gaza and Mogadishu.

And I'll fly out of Newark.

 

[Nordic Viking]

See you on Wednesday, I'm stopping over in Iran first.

 

[stevengregory]

If Kadryov is insane enough to think he can attract Western tourists to his thouroughly messed up country I feel sad for those people, he must be truly a madman. Life will never improve for them.

 

[Nathan S]

"It is like Switzerland, only without the roads."

LOL! That's a good one. "Honey, scratch that trip to Paris, we're taking the family to Chechnya this year!" I'm sure they'll get a lot of takers.