MOSCOW (AP) - Here she comes . . . Miss Chechnya?
In the latest effort by the Kremlin to show that normalcy has returned after more than a decade of war in Chechnya, a 15-year-old high school student has been crowned Miss Chechnya in the Muslim region's first beauty pageant.
Zamira Dzhabrailova beat a field of 18 teenage girls Saturday after answering a series of trivia questions, dancing in a Chechen traditional costume and performing on the piano. She won a Toyota sedan and a vacation for two to France.
"I'm very happy that I won first place," she said in televised comments. "Of course, all the girls were very pretty and I love them all."
More than six years after Russian forces invaded the North Caucasus region for the second time in a decade, large scale fighting in Chechnya has largely ended.
However, ambushes by separatist rebels targeting Russian forces and their Chechen allies persist and rebel fighters are increasingly adopting radical Islamic views. Violence has also begun spreading into neighbouring regions.
Chechnya's Moscow-backed government has sought to show that things have returned to normal, reconstructing parts of the demolished capital, Grozny, staging a rock concert, building a new water amusement park, promoting the successes of Grozny's professional soccer team and hosting a boxing tournament opened by Mike Tyson. |